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In this conversation, episode 12 in our ongoing series on Cuba, we're joined by Niki Franco, AKA Venus Roots, for a discussion on what the radically different histories of Cuba and Puerto Rico can teach us about colonialism, capitalism, socialism, and the struggle for liberation in the Caribbean and beyond. Niki Franco is a Caribbean abolitionist community organizer, writer, facilitator of spaces for collective study, and author of Flies in the Tropics published this month by 1804 Books.

The conversation begins with Niki describing her connection to Puerto Rico and introducing us to her working class family history in Puerto Rico and presenting the colonial, imperialist nature of the U.S.'s relationship to Puerto Rico. Niki then describes her upbringing in Miami and the reactionary, far-right politics of much of south Florida before describing how she broke out of the city's suffocating anti-communism and embraced socialism.

We then begin our discussion on Cuba and Puerto Rico—beginning with their intertwined colonial and anti-colonial histories. We talk about how, in the mind of many reactionaries, Puerto Rico is elevated to a "good colony" position while Cuba is vilified as what happens to bad colonies. We end by connecting the struggles in Cuba and Puerto Rico to Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and the entire global South's struggle against imperialism and colonialism.

We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel atyoutube.com/@upstream_podcast

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Intermission music: "CARACOL" by dj juanny

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "The Crushing Despair of Class Society." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode of our reading series, Robbie reads a piece of his own titled "Extreme Inequality Is Driving Anxiety and Depression in the US" published by Truthout in 2019. The piece is about the environmental impacts on mental health, focusing specifically on the impacts of economic inequality.

The reading opens with a look back to the dawn of the COVID era, exploring how the pandemic and long COVID have impacted society in a broader sense but also Robbie's personal experience suffering from mental health challenges and the ways that he is coping with that.

We then begin the reading, which explores how economic inequality impacts mental health in a variety of ways. With frequent commentary breaks, Robbie explains how societies with more economic inequality do worse on a very wide range of mental and physical health indicators. We disucss how it's not just those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder who experience worse outcomes, but how even people on the higher rungs in more unequal societies do worse than their counterparts in less unequal societies.

We explore how status anxiety along with racial and other forms of minority discrimination impact people's mental health and discuss the mechanisms through which this occurs. And finally, we explore how the only way to truly reduce economic inequality is by organizing towards a communist society which abolishes class.

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Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Max Haivan for a conversation on gamified capitalism and 21st century fascism. Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in Radical Imagination at Lakehead University and author of many books, including most recently, The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism, which is open-access. He is the designer of the board game Billionaires & Guillotines and teaches a popular education course titled Fighting Fascist Feelings.

The conversation begins with a broad overview of Max's thesis connecting games and capitalism—what he calls gamified capitalism—introducing the concept of 21st century capitalism as a sort of cruel and unwinnable game in which we are all trapped. We discuss the financialization of capitalism as the foundation upon which gamification has flourished, describing the emergnce of the "cheated player" navigating a never-ending series of financialized games—from dating apps to prediction markets.

Max explains how fascism on both a micro and macro level emerges out of this material reality through a sort of revenge politics and the creation of the "cheating other" who must be eliminated from society. We go on to elaborate on this and discuss how fascism in the 20th century differs from 21st century fascism as a sort of entrepreneurial form of fascism that places the emphasis on the individual as opposed to the mass.

We situate Trump in Max's analysis of 21st century fascism as a form of revenge against the cheating other under gamified capitalism, discussing QAnon, the TESCREAL philosophies of Silicon Valley, and other fascistic phenomena along the way. We end by exploring what games can teach the left and how learning from games can contribute to our movements for liberation.

We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel atyoutube.com/@upstream_podcast

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Intermission music: "Shit List" by Carsie Blanton

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Cuba Ep. 11: Actually Existing Ecology w/ Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode, Part 2 of a 2-part miniseries, Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro join us to discuss the ecology of communism as described in the book, Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology by French scholar Guillaume Suing. Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro is Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Henry Hakamäki is co-host of Guerrilla History and the editor and translator, along with Salvatore, of Iskra Books' Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, by Domenico Losurdo as well as the book we'll be discussing today, Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology​, by Guillaume Suing

Our conversation begins with a brief introduction to Guillaume Suing and the book Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology before jumping into a discussion about communist ecology and tackling the question of whether or not the "eco" in eco-socialism is necessary. We discuss the communist response to eco-centricism, which Salvatore argues presents a false dichotomy between humans and nature.

We then move from theory and begin discussing communist ecology in practice as it manifested in Cuba, describing some aspects of Cuba's ecological practices from agroecology to reforestation. We describe what it was about Cuba's socialist system which led it to value ecological sustainability. We end by discussing the "degrowth" movement, how Cuba represents a true example of degrowth in action, and explore how the climate movement and the western left more broadly can and should truly embrace that idea that communism is the highest stage of ecology.

We have unlocked Part 1 of this conversation so it is now available as a public episode. Part 2 will remain as a Patreon-only episode.

Further resources:

Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology​, by Guillaume Suing

Ecosocialism: An Introduction, by Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro

Iskra Books

Guerrilla History

Book Talk: Slow Down with Kohei Saito (The People's Forum)

Related episodes:

Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology w/ Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro

Listen to our ongoing series on Cuba

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism w/ Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante

Socialism Betrayed w/ Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison

Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly

Live Show: Breaking the Chains of Empire w/ Abby Martin (with Bonus Q&A)

Cover art: Ben Stahnke / Iskra Books

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is an unlocked version of our Patreon episode "Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology w/ Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro."

In this episode, Part 1 of a 2-part miniseries, Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro join us to discuss the ecology of communism as described in the book, Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology by French scholar Guillaume Suing. Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro is Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Henry Hakamäki is co-host of Guerrilla History and the editor and translator, along with Salvatore, of Iskra Books' Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, by Domenico Losurdo as well as the book we'll be discussing today, Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology​, by Guillaume Suing

Our conversation begins by outlining how capitalism as an ideology and as a world-system harms ecology by unpacking the logic behind the profit motive and infinite growth characteristic capitalism system. Henry and Salvatore then discuss some of the most prominent preconceptions and misconceptions regarding communism as an inherently "productivist" system, using the Soviet Union as their primary example (we will discuss the example of Cuba in Pt. 2 of this miniseries which will be released as part of our Cuba series). We end the discussion on the USSR by looking at three different areas where the USSR committed to environmental protection—including the famous zapovedniki.

The conversation begins to wrap up with a brief exploration of Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet agronomist around whom much controversy still swirls, and whose story leads us unto a discussion of socialist science and dialectical science. We end by introducing Cuba into the conversation, but just very briefly, as a much deeper exploration of Cuba as a model of communist ecological practice will be the topic of Part 2 of this miniseries.

Part 2 will be released as part of our Cuba series on 9/28/2026.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, we're joined by Carsie Blanton for a conversation on communist folk music and the role of politics in art. Carsie Blanton is a songwriter, touring musician, and organizer with Artists Against Apartheid and People's Songs—an organization of musicians dedicated to adapting, distributing, and performing songs for liberation.

The conversation begins with Carsie giving us a sense of her experience as a Jewish, anti-Zionist musician after Oct 7th and how the repressive atmosphere and her experience on the Global Sumud Flotilla shaped the way she thinks about art and political discourse. She tells us how this experience led her to (re)launch an organization from the 1940s named People's Songs dedicated to adapting, distributing, and performing songs for liberation.

We discuss the ways that communist musicians organized historically and what the response from the FBI and repressive apparatus was to this organizing. We talk about the Congress for Cultural Freedom, for example, and other soft power approaches by the CIA to promote a noncommunist, compatible left in the sphere of art, music, and culture more broadly.

We discuss the repression that musicians faced, from Paul Robeson to Malvina Reynolds, and how the explicitly left, communist politics presentin folk music shifted and dissipated during neolberalism. We end by discussing the challenges facing musicians today in the context of the new Red Scare, how Carsie has navigated this, and how musicians and artists can get involved in organizing.

We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel atyoutube.com/@upstream_podcast

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Intermission music: "FBI" performed live by Carsie Blanton

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 11: Tibet w/ Ken Hammond." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this conversation, episode 11 in our ongoing series on China, we're joined by Ken Hammond to talk about Tibet. Ken Hammond is Professor of History at New Mexico State University, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL, and the author of several books, including China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future and China and the World.

Our conversation begins by situating Tibet geographically and providing a deeper history of Tibet stretching back to the 7th century and through to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912. We then look at Tibet 1912, describing the state as a sort of feudal theocracy dominated by monastic rule and with a life expectancy in the 30s. We then explore the period during and after the 1949 communist revolution, discussing the long and winding process of how socialism was gradually introduced in Tibet—a story which includes an uprising, land reform, CIA sabotage plots originating in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and more.

We talk about the transformations in land, education, and housing which accompanied socialist transformation in Tibet once monastic rule was ended in the late 1950s and how these transformations resulted in literacy rates rising, infant mortality dropping, and life expectancy more than doubling.

We then discuss the "Free Tibet" movement and some of the ways that the State Department, CIA, and other elements of the US government attempted to manufacture a narrative around "cultural genocide" in Tibet, including the Dalai Lama's connection to the CIA. We end by exploring China's ethnic communities in relation to the PRC's new ethnic unity law, the boureois media's attempts to attack China in their coverage of the recent glacial collapse and mudslide in Nepal and Tibet, and by providing an overview of just how much the PRC has supported Tibetan development in the past 75 years.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this conversation, episode 7 in our ongoing series on Venezuela, we're joined by Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert for an on-the-ground assessment of how Venezuela is navigating the latest phase of US imperialism. Chris Gilbert is a professor at Venezuela's Bolivarian University and a writer based in Caracas. He's the author of Commune or Nothing! Venezuela's Communal Movement and its Socialist Project. Cira Pascual Marquina is a researcher and popular educator at El Panal commune in Venezuela. She's the author, along with Chris, of The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution and co-host, also along with Chris, of the Marxist educational project Escuela de Cuadros.

The conversation opens by discussing the new oil agreement imposed on Venezuela by the US regime and examining how it compares to other oil agreements in Latin America, how it compares to past agreements under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and what the most problematic components of it are. We dicuss some of the other blows that Venezuela has experienced since January 3rd, including the shifts in Venezuela's relationship to US-aligned states such as Israel.

We then bring back the lens to discuss the larger picture in terms of the impacts of the US regime's interference in Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. We look at how the communes have responded to this interference, contextualizing the concessions within the broader assaults on Venezuelan sovereignty over the past several years. We also discuss the various allegations and rumors surrounding Delcy Rodriguez and her loyatly to Chavismo and why these narratives are harmful to the revolution.

We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel atyoutube.com/@upstream_podcast

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Intermission music: "Don Samuel" by Ali Primera

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology w/ Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode, Part 1 of a 2-part miniseries, Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro join us to discuss the ecology of communism as described in the book, Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology by French scholar Guillaume Suing. Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro is Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Henry Hakamäki is co-host of Guerrilla History and the editor and translator, along with Salvatore, of Iskra Books' Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, by Domenico Losurdo as well as the book we'll be discussing today, Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology​, by Guillaume Suing

Our conversation begins by outlining how capitalism as an ideology and as a world-system harms ecology by unpacking the logic behind the profit motive and infinite growth characteristic capitalism system. Henry and Salvatore then discuss some of the most prominent preconceptions and misconceptions regarding communism as an inherently "productivist" system, using the Soviet Union as their primary example (we will discuss the example of Cuba in Pt. 2 of this miniseries which will be released as part of our Cuba series). We end the discussion on the USSR by looking at three different areas where the USSR committed to environmental protection—including the famous zapovedniki.

The conversation begins to wrap up with a brief exploration of Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet agronomist around whom much controversy still swirls, and whose story leads us unto a discussion of socialist science and dialectical science. We end by introducing Cuba into the conversation, but just very briefly, as a much deeper exploration of Cuba as a model of communist ecological practice will be the topic of Part 2 of this miniseries.

Listen to Part 2 of this miniseries, "Cuba Ep. 11: Actually Existing Ecology w/ Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro."

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Abby Martin for a conversation on her film, "Cuba after Castro: The Island in the Crosshairs." Abby Martin is a journalist, activist, founder of "The Empire Files," and director of the films "Gaza Fights for Freedom," "Earth's Greatest Enemy," which was the topic of our first episode with Abby, which was actually our first live show ever, and the film we'll be discussing today, which she co-directed with Matt Belen, "Cuba after Castro: The Island in the Crosshairs" which features the first and only interview conducted by an American journalist with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.

The conversation opens with Abby explaining her connection to Cuba and why she chose to interview Cuba's President Miguel Díaz-Canel for this film. We explore President Miguel Díaz-Canel's story and talk about the series of crises that Cuba is facing as a result of U.S. aggression—a kind of slow genocide.

We then explore parts of Abby's interview with President Díaz-Canel, beginning by situating criticisms of Cuba within the context of U.S. terror, sabotage, and invasion attempts and making sense of why Cuba's system has had to remain partially closed and on guard. We acknowledge the advances that Cuba has been able to make, despite this aggression, in terms of its democratic acheivements, its ability to navigate COVID, its robust healthcare infrastructure, etc.

We discuss the recent announcement of economic reforms in Cuba, discuss the concern about capitalist restoration, and explore why Abby believes that Cuba will make it through this latest assault by the Trump regime. We end by exploring the world that can be if we are brave and committed enough to fight for it.

We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel atyoutube.com/@upstream_podcast

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Intermission music: "to each their dot" by Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 10: The Dialectics of Chinese Labor w/ Immanuel Ness" You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode, Immanuel Ness joins us to discuss trade unions in China and the landscape of Chinese labor more broadly. Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York and Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. He's the author of Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries (which we had him on to discuss last year) and most recently, Dialectics of Chinese Labor: Trade Unions under Market Socialism, which we'll be discussing today.

Our conversation begins with an introduction to Immanuel's new book and why he chose to write a book on Chinese labor. Before turning our focus to China, we first outline many of the ways in which unions in the United States and the global South have failed—highlighting extremely low union density and a number of other perpetual challenges that have not been overcome by the Western trade union model.

We then introduce the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) as a stark contrast to the trade union model under bourgeois democracies. We explore how the union functions holistically from the top down and the bottom up and its relationship to the Communist Party of China (CPC). From Shanghai to Guangzhou, from glass-workers to logistics workers to app drivers, Immanuel provides examples from his research on the various benefits that the ACFTU has provided workers in China, giving us an overall sense of its successes and its challenges.

We then discuss the overall labor landscape in China, particularly in the context of the migration of hundreds of millions of people from rural China to urban centers, before launching into a more organic, back-and-forth discussion around some of the most common myths surrounding China's labor landscape.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Charisse Burden-Stelly for a conversation on Cuba and the long history of US red scares through the lens of the US Department of State's recent report on Cuba: "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism." Charisse Burden-Stelly is an associate professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, Movement Builders, and the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective. She's the author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States.

The conversation opens with an outline of the US State Department report as well as the related "National Security Presidential Memorandum 7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence"—more commonly referred to as NSPM-7. We go through the report and examine some of its contents and some of the claims it makes and then explore what the purpose of this report is, asking: why Cuba, and why now?

Dr. CBS then introduces her thesis in Black Scare / Red Scare, looking at how anti-Blackness and anticommunism are combined by the repressive state apparatus to conjure up a red/Black menace, tying that thesis directly to the State Department report. We explore the actual history of cultural exchange between Black radicals and activists in the U.S. and Cuba, going on to highlight the deep hypocricy within the report in terms of the U.S.'s attemps to sabotoage and terrorize Cuba since 1959.

We then zoom out and explore Dr. CBS's argument in Black Scare / Red Scare that anticommunism cannot be viewed as a limited phenomenon that pops up every so often, but rather, that it must be understood as a mode of governance in the United States that is ongoing and pervasive. We close looking at what this current red scare means for the left and what solidarity within the left and by the left for the victims of capitalism and imperialism can look like.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "2001 Blowback" by John Davis

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media" You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode of our reading series, Robbie reads and provides real-time analysis of the opening chapter of the classic book, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media by Michael Parenti. The text explores the role that the media play in capitalism using a materialist, Marxist-Leninist analysis.

The reading begins with Robbie comparing and contrasting Inventing Reality with the better-known book on a similar topic, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Robbie highlights the main antagonisms between Chomsky and Parenti in their approach to this topic and explores why these antagonisms exist.

Robbie then dives into Inventing Reality, providing real-time analysis and commentary throughout. He presents Parenti's thesis and introduction to the content of the book before getting into some examples of how the media function under capitalism. Robbie uses the example of Skydance Media's merger with Paramount Global and the impact this had on CBS news and editorial coverage to explain Parenti's thesis on right-wing bias in the media.

The text explores how the mainstream media covers race, gender, and class, and how this coverage is a result of the class position of those who own and control the media. This also explains why the mainstream media rarely if ever explore the structural causes of many of the issues they report on in society. Parenti explores the conservative nature of mainstream media through a variety examples, including coverage of candidates for political office. Robbie reads Parenti's analysis and then applies it to our current time, connecting the dots from the 1980s and 1990s when Parenti was writing the book to the present.

Robbie takes the example of skewed coverage of third-party candidates during elections to again parse out the differences between Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent, introducing Chomsky's concept of "structural filters" and contrasting it with Parenti's emphasis on property relations and class-struggle.

The reading ends with an exploration of how the media set the parameters around what is acceptable and not acceptable to discuss publicly—framing the limits of allowable discourse in a way that does not require them to always be controlling our minds in an Orwellian sense. Parenti argues that it's often much easier and more effective for our ruling class to set the ideological tone and issue agenda with a much more insidious, subtle form of control than the nakedly brutish tactics of overt oppression.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Mohamed Khougali for a conversation exploring the history and politics of Sudan from the perspective of a Sudanese psychotherapist who participated in the 2018-2019 revolution. Mohamed Khougali is a socialist who was part of the Sudanese revolution of 2019. He's the author of Politically Unconscious: The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution, published by Iskra Books. He is currently residing in Germany, where he started the Black Radicals to incorporate the Black Radical Tradition into the German Left.

The conversation opens with an overview of Politically Unconscious and then dives into Mohamed's work as a psychotherapist and his approach of praxis psychotherapy. We then take some time to orient ourselves to Sudan geographically and give some important context around its regions before we begin to explore Sudanese history.

We discuss Sudan's history beginning with the Anglo-Egyptian colonization period which lasted from the late 19th century to 1956. He discusses how this period shifted property, governing, and class relations in Sudan and paved the way for Sudan's contemporary conflicts. We discuss the resistance to colonialism and the formation of the Sudanese National Liberation Movement which later became the Communist Party of Sudan. We go on to talk about Sudanese independence, the quick overthrow of its new parliament by its first dictator, and then the emergence of neoliberalism in Sudan.

Mohamed then talks about the financialization of Sudan—Khartoum in particular—and how this shaped and reshaped property relations and the lives of people in both the cities and rural areas. He talks about rebellions in the South and the West, the formation of the Jangaweed, which later turned into the Rapid Support Forces (or RSF), and the immiseration, racialization, and violence that resulted from these processes. We end by discussing the 2018-2019 revolution, how it was seized, and where Sudan is now.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Ana lstu ri'deedan" by Atbarawi

We'll be off for the next couple of weeks for our summer break, so unless you're a Patreon subscriber this will be the last episode until August 10th. For Patreon subscribers, we've got an episode for you next week and then we'll be taking a break there also until mid-August. We've got some really exciting episodes planned for the weeks we're back so stay tuned!

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "250 Years of Bourgeois Democracy w/ August Nimtz" You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode, August Nimtz joins us to discuss 250 years of bourgeois democracy. August Nimtz is professor of political science and African American and African studies and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of many books including The Ballot, the Streets, or Both? From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution, which we had him on to speak about back in 2023, and most recently, Black Marxism: A Marxist Critique.

Our conversation begins by revisiting our last conversation with August and providing a brief synopsis of The Ballot, the Streets, or Both?, setting the record straight on the intentions of the book in order to clear up some misunderstandings that many democratic socialists (particularly those of DSA) have around Marx, Engels, and Lenin's views on electoralism. In the process August discusses the recent victories of progressive candidates in Democratic primaries in the context of the two diseases of bourgeois politics: voting fetishism and parliamentary cretinism, which he says organizations and progressive politicians such as DSA and Bernie Sanders are afflicted with.

We then take a deep dive into the history of the American Revolution, looking at the differences between the Revolution of 1776 and the writing of the Constitution—which August describes as a form of counterrevolution. We explore the creation of the proletariat as the first class in history that has the ability to emancipate humanity and explore bourgeois democracy—particularly what the bourgeois revolution required in order for capitalism to flourish, including certain rights intended for the emerging bourgeoisie.

We then fast-forward to the present and explore how Donald Trump is an embodiment of American capitalism—a perfect example of the ideals put forth in the Constitution and the most authentic capitalist who has ever been in the White House. We discuss how Trump is capitalism's chicken coming home to roost. We end by talking about the "Great American State Fair" and survey the mood of the country, questioning whether the anger that people feel right now can be channeled into a constructive direction.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode Cecilia Guerrero joins us to pick apart the sordid origins and class orientation of the Democratic Party. Cecilia Guerrero is chair and founding member of A Luta Sigue, an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee which incubates and trains young people and workers within advanced sectors of the working class to build and lead their own class struggle organizations.

The conversation opens with a history of the Democratic Party, which is also a history of the development of US capitalism. Cecilia takes us back to the formation of the Democratic Party and describes the role it played in opposition to the Republican Party during slavery and up to the Civil War. She then outlines how the party shifted and evolved up through the Robber Barron days around the turn of the century up to WWI.

We then explore how the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), despite its successful origins, succumbed to opportunism and failed to be a vehicle for the working class in the United States. This resulted in the New Deal Democratic alliance being widely recognized as a working class party, despite, of course, being nothing of the sort. This shift paved the way for Franklin D. Roosevelt's program of throwing crumbs to the working class while working on behalf of the bourgeoisie to reform and stabilize capitalism.

Cecilia goes on to describe how the Democratic Party has now fully embraced the role that it took on under FDR—promising watered down reforms to an increasingly exploited and immiserated proletariat as a release valve for their anger while never delivering meaningful change. She describes how the Democratic Party inserts itself into radical movements only to co-opt and neutralize them, providing examples from Ferguson to Nashville, where she herself organizes.

We then discuss the Democrats role in upholding imperialism through their history of supporting imperial exploit, particularly their uncompromising reliance on sanctions, predatory development schemes, and other forms of economic warfare. Finally, we discuss what needs to happen in order for us to break out of this two-party duopoly of capitalism and build a party that truly represents the working class.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "The Democrats" by Carsie Blanton

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Iran Pt. 5: Is the US-Iran Deal a Trap for Iran? w/ Elina Xenophontos" You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Although the episodes build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone

In Part 5 of our ongoing series on Iran, Elina Xenophontos joins us to discuss the US-Iran deal and what it could mean for Iran's economic sovereignty. Elina Xenophontos is an international law and economic globalization specialist. She produces much of her own material on her Substack and is also featured regularly on the Colonial Outcasts podcast.

Our conversation begins with a brief overview of how Iran and the United States got to this point, leading up to the current deal that is being negotiated. Elina unpacks the various terms of the current agreement before discussing how one element of it, the $300 billion reconstruction and economic development fund, is an attempt to impose a form of neocolonial imperialism onto Iran by injecting Western capital into Iran's strategic sectors.

We tie this agreement into the broader geopolitical context, looking at how the United States is attempting to sustain itself, maintain its global hegemony, and prevent China's growing influence and tying in Venezuela and Cuba. Elina outlines the strategic role that Iran plays in China's Belt and Road Initiative and how the United States is attempting to disrupt China's growing influence. Elina then describes the threats to the petrodollar posed by Iran's strategic alliances and how the United States is attempting to intervene in these alliances.

We end by discussing how this deal potentially threatens Iran's anti-imperialist unity and its role in the Axis of Resistance and explore how this deal and Iran's potential liberalization are being grappled with internally by the Islamic Republic's different political factions.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The hyper-individual, anti-collectivist ideology that defines and permeates Western societies has profound consequences in multiple realms, from mental health to ecological health to economic health—it's a way of living and thinking that has stained our society from the start.

No one knows this more than those individuals and cultures who have, for thousands of years, practiced life in a different way. And among those are many Indigenous cultures and nations which have prioritized a way of life that emphasizes the collective over the individual—not erasing the individual, but weaving the individual back into the fabric of society and the web of life.

One of the defining questions of our time is this: how can we learn from Indigenous wisdom to reimagine the world? How can we reimagine the scarcity, competition, and hoarding that defines Western society and replace these values with reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude? And how does connecting with the natural world help us as we reimagine?

This is the question asked in the latest book by Robin Wall Kimmerer: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. And we've brought on a terrific guest to help us unpack Robin's book and share their own wisdom and experience in relation to it.

Gregg Castro is the Culture Director for the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone and a writer and activist within the California Indigenous community focusing on issues regarding cultural preservation, protection, education and traditional practices.

In this conversation, Della and Gregg talk about their insights and takeaways from The Serviceberry while sharing about their own experiences. Gregg tells us about his childhood growing up in the South San Francisco Bay Area—a region once known for its vast orchards—and talks about how the natural world and the traditional wisdom of his ancestors has shaped his life and his values. They talk about key takeaways from the Indigenous practices and principles of the potlatch, the honorable harvest, and seven generation thinking. And finally, they explore how we can all unplug, unwind, and contribute to a more just and beautiful world based on the lessons of nature and Indigenous wisdom.

Further Resources

Related Episodes:

Intermission music: "Tsitsutsa Tsigesv (When I was a Boy)" by Agalisiga

Artwork: John Burgoyne

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 9: Taiwan w/ Charles Xu and Feiyang Sun." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Charles Xu and Feiyang Sun join us for a conversation on Taiwan. Charles Xu is a member of Qiao Collective and Sovereign Media. Feiyang Sun is a member of Qiao Collective.

Our conversation begins with an introduction to Taiwan geographically and historically prior to the modern period and into the early modern period, including the colonization by Japan in the early 20th century—disputing certain Taiwan separatist arguments along the way. We then revisit the Chinese Civil War, discussing the Communist Party of China (CPC) and The Kuomintang (KMT) as opposing forces and situating Taiwan within this history up to the revolution in 1949, including the KMT's retreat to Taiwan and the terror campaign that ensued on the island.

We discuss the role that the United States played in this history leading up to the revolution, and then the emergence of Taiwan as a counterrevolutionary force for US imperialism during the Cold War and into the present. We explore what KMT rule in Taiwan looked like until the transition out of martial law in the 1980s and the contending class conflicts and political landscape of Taiwan into contemporary times. We then discuss the "One China" policy, the tensions between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) in Taipei both domestically and internationally, and introduce the Taiwanese independence movement.

We then discuss the military exercises in the South China Sea, United States arms sales to Taiwan, and other current events before concluding on why the question of Taiwan is a crucial one for the Western, anti-imperialist left.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Thank you to Qiao Collective for the cover art.

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Fadhel Kaboub for a conversation about the US dollar, its hegemony over the globe, and the emerging challenges to this hegemony. Fadhel Kaboub is a Tunisian-American economist, professor of economics at Denison University, president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and author of Global South Perspectives on substack.

The conversation opens with a historical overview of how the US dollar became the dominant global currency and the power that this brought with it—exploring the petrodollar, the use of sanctions, and other neocolonial mechanisms upheld by the dollar. We then introduce BRICS and exploring how BRICS challenges US dollar hegemony and the limitations to this challenge.

Fadhel then unpacks the ways that US dollar hegemony is and can continue to be challenges through focusing on food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and industrial/technological sovereignty, which Fadhel unpacks in depth. We then explore some examples of attempts to achieve this kind of sovereignty, beginning with the Alliance of Sahel States and their successes and challenges in seeking sovereignty but looking also at Iran, Cuba, and China.

We explore some concrete examples of how not just the dollar but other colonial currencies both past and present have been utilized to subjugate people and states in the Global South, focusing on the CFA Franc. Fadhel then gives us a sense of the better world that can exist outside of the neocolonial, imperialist structures that dominate today and how that world can be achieved in a concrete way.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Capitalocene" by Wes Carroll Confabulation

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Cuba Ep. 8: Lessons from the Fall of the USSR w/ Helen Yaffe." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode, part 8 of our ongoing Cuba series, we're joined again by Helen Yaffe for a conversation exploring the lessons Cuba learned from the crisis brought on by the fall of the USSR—known as Cuba's "special period". Helen Yaffe is a professor of Latin American political economy at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World, and Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution. She is also the cohost of the Cuba Analysis podcast and the documentary "Cuba's life task: combating climate change."

Our conversation begins with an introduction to Cuba's "special period", the period of economic crisis in Cuba which occurred as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Helen gives us some context on how closely entwined Cuba's economy was to its primary trading partner, the Soviet Union, before describing how this partnership was impacted in 1991 and what this meant for Cuba more broadly.

Before we discuss the ways that Cuba adapted to the loss of the USSR, we discuss how the United States took advantage of the crisis in 1991 to strengthen sanctions through mechanisms like the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act while also engaging in outright terrorism out of Miami—including the "Brothers to the Rescue" incident (and the CIA-trained terrorist network within which it was situated) that serves as the pretext for the Trump administration's recent indictment of Raúl Castro.

Helen then goes on to describe in more detail the impacts on Cuba of the fall of the USSR and takes some time to talk about how Cubans adapted in the midst of this crisis, drawing from both her scholarly work and also from her experience living in Cuba during this period. We end by discussing the Cuban medical brigades and how this program adapted in the post-Soviet era, particularly in shaping Cuba's relationship with many states in Latin America and reshaping its own economy, before drawing lessons for the current crisis facing Cuba.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Cuba Analysis podcast

We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World

Related episodes:

Listen to our ongoing series on Cuba

Socialism Betrayed w/ Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Helen Yaffe joins us for a conversation exploring what the attempts to build socialism in Cuba look like in a practical sense—from housing to food distribution to economic management. Helen Yaffe is a professor of Latin American political economy at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World, and Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution. She is also the cohost of the Cuba Analysis podcast and the documentary Cuba's Life Task: combating climate change.

The episode begins by bringing back the lens and exploring what we mean when we talk about socialism and communism and transitional states, inserting the centrality of development and underdevelopment into the conversation of building socialism and situating Cuba into this framework. We break down the main components of Cuban socialism, which include central planning, the decentralization of feedback mechanisms (deep democracy), the commitment to social welfare with a particular emphasis on medical advancements and technology, science, etc.

We then break down how these components existed within the different stages of Cuba's attempts to lay the foundations for socialism, focusing on the different experiments with their economic management system from the 1960s to the early 1990s as Cuba pulled towards and then away from the Soviet economic management model and what this meant.

We then explore the concept of motivation and salaries and how this works under socialism without profit incentives or wage incentives or other material incentives, exploring how Cuba navigated these issues by focusing specifically on its salary system. We go on to discuss the complexities of how housing and food distribution is arranged under Cuba's socialist system and the challenges that Cuba faced during the period leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is where we will pick up the conversation with Helen next week in our Patreon episode exploring Cuba's "Special Period."

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Baila con mi Rumba" by Roberto Carcassés

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Cuba Ep. 6: The Political Thought of Fidel Castro w/ Renzo Llorente." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Renzo Llorente join us for a conversation on the political thought of Fidel Castro. Renzo Llorente is associate professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University-Madrid and the author of the books The Political Theory of Che Guevara and The Political Thought of Fidel Castro, which we'll be discussing in today's episode.

Our conversation begins with a brief introduction to Fidel Castro before diving into his political thought. Renzo gives us a sense of how Fidel was radicalized and how Marxism-Leninism and anti-imperialism became part of his ideological makeup. We explore his views on Latin America and his belief that Latin America should form a unified bloc similar to what the European Union is. We then discuss his views on religion before comparing and contrasting his overall ideological orientation with that driving the Soviet Union—exploring how Cuba both adopted and rejected aspects of the Soviet model of socialism (this exploration dovetails with Ep. 3 of this series, where we explore Che Guevara's contributions to building socialism in Cuba with Helen Yaffe).

Renzo then takes some time to explore the similarities and differences between Fidel Castro and Joseph Stalin—responding to claims from both the left and the right that Fidel was a "Stalinist" or that his leadership resembled Stalin's in the most negative ways of Stalin's leadership. We then explore what Fidel actually thought of Stalin and how he viewed the term "Stalinism."

We end with an exploration of Fidel's ecological approach to Marxism, his views on racial justice and gender oppression, and his approach to undoing the racism present that stained pre-revolutionary Cuba.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Manolo De Los Santos & Liz Oliva Fernández join us for a conversation exploring the current state of the island and how Cubans are responding to Trump's oil blockade. Manolo De Los Santos is a founder of the People's Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the co-editor Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War, Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez. Liz Oliva Fernández is a Havana-based journalist with Belly of the Beast (a U.S.-based independent media outlet) and the presenter of The War on Cuba.

The first half of the episode is our conversation with Manolo De Los Santos and begins with him recounting what he witnessed and experienced during his recent trips to Cuba. Manolo brings us up to date on the Trump regime's efforts to impose blockades and sanctions on Cuba and then describes what the impact of these assaults look like on the ground on the island. He then tells about the Cuban people's efforts at not just surviving these assaults but continuing to resist and build decentralized networks of support while also working on a centralized scale to continue to organize and build socialism. Finally we look at the global implications of the United States' efforts to subjugate Cuba and tie things together by understanding the war on Cuba as part of the opening salvos of a new Cold War with China.

In the second half of our conversation Liz Oliva Fernández joins us from Cuba to go further into depth regarding what life is like on the island. We discuss the dynamics of energy and solar while being realistic about its short term limitations. We explore the violence that is imposed on Cuba by the United States and bring into relief the toll it has taken on the Cuban psyche. Liz tells us about the various efforts of the Cuban people to resist the United States and gives us a sense of both the exhaustion and the drive towards resistance that is present on the island today.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism w/ Torkil Lauesen." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode we're joined by Torkil Lauesen for a wide ranging conversation exploring what the transition towards socialism has looked historically like and continues to look like to this day. Torkil Lauesen is the author of multiple books including The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism and Unequal Exchange: Past, Present, and Future—both published by the great folks at Iskra Books.

Our conversation begins with an overview of Torkil's thesis in The Long Transition—that the shift between modes of production, be it feudalism and capitalism or capitalism and socialism, does not happen in short-term time frames but rather unfolds over longer periods of time in messy, overlapping fits and starts.

The rest of the conversation follows the trajectory of the book by taking individual examples of revolutionary moments and attempts at building socialism and connecting them over time as nodes and learning lessons in the long struggle for socialism waged by revolutionaries across the globe. We begin with the largely unsuccessful revolutions of 1848 in Europe, looking at the "hungry 40s" which led to many social and national upheavals which ultimately did not result of socialist revolution but liberal reform. We explore the lessons learned from the Paris Commune and the emergence of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a crucial element in socialist revolutionary theory, the lessons learned from the failed European revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century, the rise of fascism and the betrayal of the social democrats, and the "socialism in one country" approach of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

We then shift the conversation towards China, first exploring the Cultural Revolution and the lessons that process provided for the movement towards socialism, and then taking a deeper dive into China's role as a "transitionary state" somewhere between capitalism and socialism. Finally, Torkil reflects on China's ability to enter into an advanced stage of socialism and lays out the stakes on which this transition depends on.

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Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Ramsey Robinson for a conversation exploring the need for socialism in California (and beyond). Ramsey Robinson is a mental health social worker, organizer, and revolutionary based in San Francisco. He is running for Governor of California with the Peace and Freedom Party.

The conversation begins with Ramsey discussing what compelled him to run for Governor of California with the Peace and Freedom Party, and in doing so we outline many of the problems facing US society—problems that stem from the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of one class and with the problems coming from this arrangement falling disproportionately onto the rest of us. We introduce the topic of liberation psychology and talk about how it has influenced Ramsey's work and politics—looking at how the mental health crisis in America is fueled by capitalism and what can be done about it.

Ramsey then tells us about the Peace and Freedom Party—giving us a sense of its roots and also contrasting it with the Democratic Party, which Ramsey describes as being captured by the same ruling class that is responsible for all of our problems In opposition to this vision, Ramsey shares with us his vision of what a socialist California could look like and how we can get there.

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Intermission music: "Rich People" by Carsie Blanton

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is an unlocked version of the episode "Palestine Ep. 17: Capital Accumulation at Any Cost w/ Jason Hickel." You can help to support our work and access Patreon-only episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

In this episode we're joined again by Jason Hickel for a conversation on Palestine and the role that Palestinian liberation plays in the global fight against imperialism and capitalism. The conversation opens with a discussion on why Palestinian liberation is a threat to capitalism globally—we unpack the role that Palestine plays geopolitically in West Asia and the role that West Asia plays in global capital accumulation. We go on to talk about Israel's role as the US's proxy force and attack dog, not just in West Asia, but throughout the globe as well, from Argentina to Guatemala.

We then talk about Trump's so-called "Board of Peace," and its vision for Gaza before discussing what's taking place in the West Bank and the official death of the Two State Solution. We then broaden the conversation out and situate what's happening in Palestine into the context of the United States' quest for geopolitical hegemony, what this means in terms of the Second Cold War with China, and the implications for Palestine, West Asia, and the world at large.

Jason Hickel is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World.

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Intermission music: "Courage, My Friends!" by Andrew Glencross

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Iran Ep. 4: Towards a Multipolar World / Matteo Capasso." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber ,you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Matteo Capasso joins us to discuss the global implications of the war on Iran. Matteo Capasso is professor of Middle East Studies based in China and the editor of Middle East Critique, a peer-reviewed Middle Eastern studies journal published by Taylor & Francis.

Our conversation begins with a brief overview of the so-called ceasefire agreement, taking a zoomed out look instead of focusing on the details. Matteo then explains why this war is not just existential for the Islamic Republic of Iran, but for the United States and Israel as well, examining the war's implications on both the internal contradictions of the United States as well as the financial architecture of the unipolar world system. We bring back the lens and explore not just the regional implications of the war in terms of the Gulf states but also with Europe and, significantly, with China, which, when you zoom out far enough, plays a significant role in the United States' decision to go to war with Iran, as outlined in the United States' National Security Strategy document published in 2025.

We then bring in Israel and the Great Israel project, tying it into our analysis and explaining how Palestine is emblematic of the contradictions that have led the United States and its imperial project into deep crisis. Matteo draws a line from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the overthrow of Libra, Syria, and the assaults on Lebanon and of course Palestine and explains how all of these assaults are part of a larger project and military strategy by the United States and its proxy force in the region—Israel.

In closing, we take a closer look at China, comparing and contrasting China and Iran's models of sovereign development and exploring their current relationship with a dialectical and historical materialist analysis. We conclude with a look at the competing visions of a world order that can be contrasted between the United States and Israel—a vision based on genocide and the accumulation of waste—and the diverse visions embodied by states such as Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or China, which present a path forward that looks much different from the death and destruction offered by the United States.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Renzo Llorente joins us for a conversation exploring the counterrevolution to Cuba's 1959 revolution and the various forms it took. Renzo Llorente is associate professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University-Madrid and the author of the books The Political Theory of Che Guevara and The Political Thought of Fidel Castro.

The conversation begins with a look at the current assault on Cuba from the Trump administration and situates it within the context of a long counterrevolution, which has been by and large a bipartisan project since the revolution's inception. We then discuss why counterrevolution occurs in socialist societies and the toll that it takes on the revolutionary ambitions of societies attempting to lay the foundations for socialism. We look at examples of sabotage—from assassination attempts to economic disruption, examples of outright military excursions like the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more.

We then look at how Cuba has been forced to respond to these perpetual attempts at counterrevolution often fueled and resourced by the imperialist powers, and why the degree of repression seen in Cuba can be understood as a direct and dialectical response to the United States' never ending quest to return Cuba to what it was before 1959. Specifically, we examine the concept of political prisoners and explore ways in which we can view political prisoners in Cuba as counterrevolutionaries. We examine multi-party versus one-party systems and discuss their potential for representation and democracy. And we explore the concept of a free press and how this is weaponized by the imperialist powers in not just Cuba, but in all states where imperialism is seeking a foothold. Finally, we discuss how counterrevolution has served to strengthen Cuba's resolve and determination to continue their long-fought battle for sovereignty.

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Intermission music: "Celos eternos" by Roberto Carcasses

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, we're joined again by Jason Hickel for a conversation on Palestine and the role that Palestinian liberation plays in the global fight against imperialism and capitalism. The conversation opens with a discussion on why Palestinian liberation is a threat to capitalism globally—we unpack the role that Palestine plays geopolitically in West Asia and the role that West Asia plays in global capital accumulation. We go on to talk about Israel's role as the US's proxy force and attack dog, not just in West Asia, but throughout the globe as well, from Argentina to Guatemala.

We then talk about Trump's so-called "Board of Peace," and its vision for Gaza before discussing what's taking place in the West Bank and the official death of the Two State Solution. We then broaden the conversation out and situate what's happening in Palestine into the context of the United States' quest for geopolitical hegemony, what this means in terms of the Second Cold War with China, and the implications for Palestine, West Asia, and the world at large.

Jason Hickel is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Courage, My Friends!" by Andrew Glencross

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Helen Yaffe joins us for a conversation exploring Cuba's transition to socialism after the revolution through Che Guevara's contributions. Helen Yaffe is a professor of Latin American political economy at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World, and Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution. She is also the cohost of the Cuba Analysis podcast and the documentaryCuba's Life Task: combatting climate change.

The episode begins with a brief introduction to Che Guevara, providing an overview of Che's life and biography. We then discuss what the Cuban revolutionaries inherited in terms of Cuba's semi-colonial economic and political state—unemployment, poverty, inequality, underdevelopment, and dependency. We talk about how socialism became the guiding light of revolutionary Cuba and how the revolutionary government became more radical in response to the United States' attempts to sabotage it.

We discuss Che Guevara's role in developing the productive capacities of Cuba and his many roles, ranging from President of the National Bank of Cuba to Head of Ministry of Industries (MININD). We also discuss his unique approach to laying the foundations of socialism in Cuba, which put just as much emphasis on developing consciousness as developing materially. We contrast this with the Soviet system, which Che was critical of.

We then explore the role of intellectual, political, and training education in the emerging socialist state of Cuba, which had experienced a mass emigration of managers and business owners after the revolution and had a working class that was accustomed to viewing labor as an exploitative endeavor and not as a means of liberation. Finally, we explore Che's legacy and tie it into present day Cuba, which is still under siege by the imperialists.

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Intermission music: "Señor Martí" by El Guajiro

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

In Episode 1 of our new series on Lebanon, Hussein Assaf joins us to discuss the ongoing assault on Lebanon by Israel and the United States. Hussein Assaf is a journalist with Vocal Politics based out of Beirut.

Our conversation begins with an update on the ongoing assault on Lebanon by Israel and backed by the United States. We then talk about the political forces at play in Lebanon, giving a brief history of the political makeup of the country to help put the current assault in context. We talk about Hezbollah and the relationship it has with the Islamic Republic, unpacking the common talking point in the West that Hezbollah is an Iranian "regime" proxy and instead providing a more appropriate analysis (and in doing so, giving insight into how the United States treats its proxies). We close on a discussion on the information and psychological warfare that is a part of the US and Israel's assault on West Asia and on its own populations at home.

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Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

In this episode, part 3 of our ongoing series on Iran, we're joined again by Bikrum Gill for a conversation exploring sovereignty and imperialism in Iran. Our conversation opens with an unpacking of the intersections and distinctions of imperialism, sovereignty, colonialism, and capitalism in a theoretical sense. Once these foundations are laid, we then apply this framework to Iran, answering the question of why Iran's sovereignty is so threatening to the United States.

We then jump into current events and explore the thread that ties together the US's assault on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, etc.—and this brings China into the conversation. We talk about the construction of client states and why so many states in Latin America and West Asia have refused to intervene on behalf of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Palestine. Finally, we discuss the Israeli-US war on Iran and what the resistance to it looks like both regionally and within Iran itself.

Bikrum Gill is a faculty in political science and international relations and a scholar of international political economy. He's the author of The Political Ecology of Colonial Capitalism: Race, Nature, and Accumulation, published by Manchester University Press.

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Intermission music: "Another War" by Carsie Blanton

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is an unlocked version of the Patreon episode "Atlantic Slavery and the Plantation System w/ David McNally." You can support us through Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode we're joined by David McNally to discuss his new book, Slavery and Capitalism: A new Marxist History, a systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery. David McNally is a radical socialist activist and award-winning scholar. He currently holds the Cullen Distinguished Professorship of History & Business at the University of Houston.

The conversation opens with an introduction to the idea that the Atlantic slave system and the plantation system were forms of capitalism using the example of Barbados and George Washington in Virginia to explain the industrial-scale level of this system and its position in global capitalism as a node of commodity production. We explore the idea of modes of production and what Marx had to say about colonialism and slavery before we discuss race-making as a modality of capitalist discipline during slavery. We discuss the difference between constant and variable capital and why this is important in understanding the capitalist nature of the plantation system.

We then discuss the nature of class conflict on the plantation, exploring how Atlantic bondpeople were the first workers of the industrial age to use the mass strike as a weapon of struggle and emancipation, and what this tells us about enslaved labor under capitalism. Finally, our conversation ends with an examination of the intersection of Marxism and revolutionary abolitionism in the US and how they dialectically informed one another.

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Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Manolo De Los Santos joins us for a conversation on the Cuban Revolution. Manolo De Los Santos is a founder of the People's Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the coeditor Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War, Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez.

The conversation picks up where Episode 1 left off, in the early 50s, setting the stage for the lead up to the 26th of July Movement and introducing some of the main characters of the revolution, including, of course Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Manolo tells us about the attack on the Moncada Barracks, Fidel's exile to Cuba where he meets Che and begins training, and their return on the Granma to Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains where they reignite the revolutionary guerrilla army of the 26th of July Movement. We talk about the Battle of Santa Clara which led to Batista's overthrow on January 1st, 1958, and the triumph of the revolution.

We explore the role of political education in the revolution and the role that the United States played in resisting the revolution. We then talk about the reforms that were initiated immediately after the revolution, the largest and most significant being land reform and de-privatization, as well as some of the complexities of the early revolution, such as elections. We analyze the Guantanamo Naval Base, notions of nonviolence, and Cuba's material support of revolutionary movements across the globe.

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Intermission music: "Que Se Vayan" by El Guajiro

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is an preview of the Patreon episode "The Political Economy of Love in Capitalism w/ Kristen Ghodsee." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode we're joined by Kristen Ghodsee to discuss the political economy of love in capitalism. Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the critically acclaimed author of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women.

The conversation opens with an exploration of the three components of love and how capitalism co-opts, commodifies, and ultimately destroys them. We explore how different components of love, like attention and affection, are transformed from a use-value to an exchange-value in capitalism and how capitalism transforms and transactionalizes friendship and love. We also talk about the concept of "reciprocal flow" and how this is another component of relationality that is being distorted and corrupted by market relations and the commodification of everything.

Finally, we end the conversation exploring what we can do to fight against the commodification of friendship and love and how we can incorporate activities that facilitate trust, social bonds, and relationality that is not dominated and dictated by capitalist relations of production.

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Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we're joined by Gabriel Rockhill to discuss his new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, which takes a fascinating dive into the world of anticommunist Marxism and the role that the CIA and other nefarious imperialist forces play in dividing and neutralizing the left. Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic, and activist teaching Philosophy and Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University and he runs an educational nonprofit called the Critical Theory Workshop. He is the editor of multiple books, including Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn, by the Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo.

The conversation opens with an overview of Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, orienting us towards Gabriel's analysis of bourgeois intellectual production and its role in perpetuating anticommunism among the left. We then bring in the Epstein files and discuss their relevance to our conversation before exploring what led to Gabriel writing about the intellectual world war and the process of putting this book together itself.

We then introduce the idea of intellectual warfare and the role that the intellectual world war plays in shaping our ideologies in the most insidious and pervasive ways. We explore why the US empire must control our minds in such a way in order to maintain its hegemony, and what this looks like in practice. Gabriel then tells us about the political economy of knowledge production and the role of the imperial professional-managerial class plays in intellectual production.

We then discuss real world examples of how the compatible left was used by the financial-state-intellectual complex in its global war against communism—from the Frankfurt School to Noam Chomsky and beyond. We end with a commemoration of a left figure who embodies the opposite of the compatible, anticommunist left: Michael Parenti.

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Intermission music: "Song for Alicia" by Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Iran Ep. 2: The Impacts of Economic Strangulation w/ Elina Xenophontos." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Elina Xenophontos joins us to discuss the history and impacts of sanctions on Iran—including the impacts on the current crisis in the country. Elina Xenophontos is an international law and economic globalization specialist. She produces much of her own material on her Substack and is also featured regularly on the Colonial Outcasts podcast.

Our conversation begins with a very deep dive into the history of the sanctions imposed on Iran from the 1979 Islamic Revolution to the present, providing a detailed understanding of exactly how the sanctions have impacted the Islamic Republic's economic and political spheres for the past half decade. We then situate the unrest in Iran in the context of the sanctions, urging those in the West to understand what's happening in Iran from a dialectical and historical materialist analysis that understands Iranian agency and grievances as a direct result of imperialist strangulation. Elina then gives us a 101 on the Islamic Republic's internal political forces and factions, outlining their tensions, dynamics, and ideological orientations. We then discuss Iran's political economy, discussing how the sanctions have shaped Iran's class dynamics and its society more broadly and how the sanctions are a barrier to working class organization and revolution in Iran because they engender a rentier economy not rooted in production but in survival and perpetual crisis.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is an unlocked version of the Patreon episode "Venezuela Ep. 6: The Empire Strikes w/ José Luis Granados Ceja Andreína Chávez." You can listen to our entire 5-part series on Venezuela by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

José Luis Granados Ceja and Andreína Chávez join us to discuss the aftermath of the abduction of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores and the United States' attempted takeover of Venezuela. José Luis Granados Ceja is a journalist with Drop Site News based in Mexico City who has been covering Venezuela for 20 years. Andreína Chávez is a Venezuelan journalist based in Caracas.

Our conversation begins with an overview of the night of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores's kidnapping, told by Andreína who was in Caracas at the time. We also get an update on Maduro and Flores's detention in the United States and the charges they are facing. We then explore the US's intentions behind the kidnapping, the oil deals that are being "negotiated," and the rumors that Acting President Delcy Rodriguez was involved in the Special Forces operation (she wasn't) and that Chavismo is dead (it isn't). Andreína then gives us a bit of background on Maduro and his rise to the presidency, highlighting his working class background and underscoring his support among the Venezuelan people. We then zoom out and take a look at what this all means in terms of the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 and what it means in the context of the new Cold War. Finally, we discuss the implications for the globe as the United States rips off its mask and escalates its campaign of terror at home and abroad.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Manolo De Los Santos joins us to explore Cuba before the Cuban revolution. Manolo De Los Santos is a founder of the People's Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the co-editor Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War, Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez.

The conversation opens with an exploration of Cuba's Indigenous peoples and their culture and practice of resistance to European colonialism which continues to this day. We then talk about the early history of the Caribbean and Cuba's position in the Atlantic slave trade and early industrial plantation capitalism as well as some of the many rebellions led by enslaved Africans on the island of Cuba. Manolo also tells us about Cuba's "independence" in 1902, or what he refers to as a false independence and the imposition of US imperialism on the island.

We then introduce Fulgencio Batista and the period of dictatorship beginning in the 1930s which inaugurated an era of "paradise" in Cuba—paradise for US corporations and for the political and military elites surrounding Batista. We talk about the social inequality and repression in Cuba during this period as well as the development of the tourism industry which was a model that was later exported across the world. We conclude with the lead up to the Cuban Revolution and the material conditions which led to it. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, ¡Viva la Revolución, where we'll take a deep dive into Cuba's revolution.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Que Salga el Sol" by El Guajiro

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is an unlocked version of the Patreon episode "How Fascism Works." RIP Michael Parenti, (September 30, 1933 – January 24, 2026)

In this episode of our reading series, Robbie reads and provides real-time analysis of the opening chapter of the classic book Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti. The text covers the topics of plutocracy and autocracy, whom the fascists last century supported, a bit of history on Hitler and Mussolini, the rational and irrational aspects of fascism, patriarchy and pseudo-revolution, collaboration, and much more.

The analysis provided in the reading brings this text into our current conditions and looks at where Parenti's analysis holds up and where it might need to be stretched and adapted to help us understand the rise of neofascism in the United States under Trump and his modern day fascist footsoldiers. We explain why it's more important than ever to resist collaboration and to stand in full solidarity with all of the racialized and criminalized "others" in order to combat the fearmongering and scapegoating that fascism relies on in order to grow in strength.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Ep. 4: The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara w/ Amber Murrey." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Amber Murrey joins us for a conversation on Thomas Sankara's, legacy, and politics. The conversation opens with an exploration of Sankara's early life and how his experience with French colonialism shaped his politics and philosophies. We talk about how those philosophies were implemented into policy after a 1983 coup d'etat that put him into the presidency. We explore his fight against French imperialism and for sovereignty of the Burkinabé population. We discuss his assassination, who was responsible, and why it's more important than ever for us to share about his work and uplift his legacy here in the West.

Amber Murrey is Associate Professor in Human Geography, Fellow and Tutor at Mansfield College, and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Geography & the Environment at the University of Oxford. taught at universities in Ethiopia, Egypt, Cameroon, the US. Amber is also the editor of 'A Certain Amount of Madness': The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara and Associate Editor of The African Geographical Review.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Artwork: Sanyika

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, part 2 of our 2-part miniseries on US labor and imperialism, Jeff Schuhrke joins us to take a deep dive into his new book, No Neutrals There, exploring US labor's support of Zionism.

Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian, journalist, union activist, and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University. He's the author of Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade, and No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine.

The conversation opens with a history of Zionism, looking at the rise of Zionism and crucially contrasting it to the Jewish Labor Bund and their different approach to Jewish emancipation. We then present a history of the settler-colonial project which became Israel, looking at the labor landscape in Palestine during the first half of the 20th century (the Great Arab Revolt, WWII, the period of the Holocaust) and exploring US labor's role in supporting the Zionist project ideologically, financially, and even militarily throughout the Nakba and the creation of the State of Israel.

We then talk about how US labor's support (specifically the AFL-CIO's) for Zionism after the creation of the state of Israel, providing billions of dollars of support and lobbying on behalf of Israel, providing crucial early support.

Part 1 of this miniseries took a deep dive into Jeff's book Blue-Collar Empire, looking at US labor's role in supporting imperialism and anticommunism.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

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Cover art: Berwyn Mure

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Note: We have unlocked this Patreon episode which originally aired on Jun 23, 2025

It's easy to get lost in the narratives that are fed to us by the very same institutions that oppress us. Whether liberal institutions or far right ones, there's always something crucial missing—some component of analysis that's left unaddressed, some root cause that remains misidentified or distorted. And the reason is because when it comes to the class war that we are all engaged in—whether we like it or not—the issues of class, of imperialism, and of monopoly capitalism are never, ever part of the mainstream discussion.

So, what are the root causes of immigration? What do the ICE terror campaigns look like on the ground in cities like LA or Nashville? What happens when we apply a materialist lens to the conversation about mass deportations and conversation about the scapegoating of the more vulnerable groups in society? And what happens when we shift the frame from the more liberal, rights-based approach to activism to one based on unified, solidaristic class struggle? Well, we've brought back on the perfect guest to help us unpack some of these pressing questions.

Cecilia Guerrero is Chair and Founding Member of A Luta Sigue, an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee, which incubates and trains young people and workers within advanced sectors of the working class to build and lead their own class struggle organizations.

In this episode, we talk about the terror campaign being waged on immigrants throughout the country and the responses coming from working class communities who are standing up for themselves and standing in solidarity with the oppressed and exploited classes across the globe. We talk about ICE, the role that immigration plays in the imperialist global system, the attempts by liberal institutions to co-opt and neutralize our radical movements, and what the MAGA right gets wrong about the root cause of their immiseration.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Artwork: CPSU propaganda poster

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Happy Holidays! In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on insights and questions from the past year and share visions for the year ahead. They discuss how to not get stuck in embitterment, concerns and questions about AI, and where they are currently finding hope in these dark times.

Manda Scott is a novelist, smallholder, and host of the Accidental Gods podcast, which showcases individuals and organizations at the emerging edge of our world to set the foundation for a future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Manda's latest novel, Any Human Power, is out now and available here.

Nathalie Nahai is a behavior science advisor, author and host of the podcast The Hive, which focuses on psychology, technology, and human behavior. Nathalie is the author of Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

One of Della's offerings in the new year is a course she designed about how to cultivate regenerative livelihoods. She created this course with insights that she has found most helpful in bringing Upstream theories and ideas into people's lives as a Right Livelihood coach. Whether you are in a livelihood transition, want to be in community with others trying to find meaningful work, or you just want to know more about work as a vehicle for post capitalist systems change, this course is a great fit. It includes live sessions, engaging module materials and activities including Upstream episodes, and a lively discussion forum to bring the material to life. Click here to learn more and to register and use "FRIENDS-20" for 20% off the course fee.

Thank you to the Accidental Gods team for editing this episode.

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Reconnecting to the Land and to Place." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode, part of our ongoing Patreon reading series, Robbie reads an essay titled "The Place, The Region, The Commons" by the poet, author, an environmental activist Gary Snyder. The episode begins with an update on Robbie's life—which goes into specifics about health issues involving long COVID, ME/CFS, CIRS, as well as housing, mold, and other issues that impact our health under capitalism.

He then begins reading "The Place, The Region, The Commons," interspersing the reading with many thoughts, reflections, and criticisms along the way. The essay argues for bioregionalism—the idea that we should center place in our how we organize society and understand ourselves. Through compelling prose and beautifully descriptive language, Gary Snyder lays out an argument for coming back to nature and the wild while taking many interesting side paths. What are the commons and what happened to them? How can industrial society reconnect to the land? How can we balance social needs with environmental needs? And what are the real boundaries we should be paying attention to? These are just some of the questions explored in this reading.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Cover art: "something" by Robert Raymond (MS Paint)

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, part 1 of a 2-part miniseries on US labor and imperialism, Jeff Schuhrke joins us for a conversation on how US labor aided and at times even led the US's global fight against communism throughout much of the 20th century.

Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian, journalist, union activist, and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University. He's the author of Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade, and No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine.

In this conversation we take a deep dive into Jeff's book Blue-Collar Empire, exploring US labor's role in fighting global communism during the 20th century. The conversation opens with a history of the early US labor movement, anchored by the AFL, the CIO, and the IWW which all presented different approaches and ideological orientations towards labor and capital. We then look at how labor was systematically deradicalized over the course of the first half the 21st century, leading to a mostly anticommunist, class-collaborationist labor movement by the post-WWII era. We then look at how the AFL-CIO and its various arms participated and at times led the global war against communism abroad, participating in sabotage campaigns and in outright regime change operations led by the CIA and the State Department—from France to Guyana to Brazil to Chile to Vietnam to the USSR. Finally, we explore how US labor's anticommunist, pro-imperialist positions throughout the 20th century impacted the US proletariat and the international working class more broadly.

Part 2 of this miniseries takes a deep dive into Jeff's book No Neutrals There, looking at US labor's role in supporting Zionism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Only Got One Body" by Shiv and the Carvers

Cover art: Berwyn Mure

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Mexico Ep. 2: Morena and The Fourth Transformation w/ Stephanie Weatherbee Brito." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In Episode 2 of this series, we're joined by Stephanie Weatherbee Brito to discuss the rise of Morena and Mexico's Fourth Transformation. Stephanie Weatherbee is a popular educator and coordinator for the secretariat of the International Peoples' Assembly. Stephanie is also an occasional researcher with Tricontinental, where she recently co-authored the excellent Tricontinental dossier "Mexico and the Fourth Transformation."

We begin the conversation with a brief overview of the history and conditions which led to the rise of Morena and its leaders Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum. We talk about neoliberalism as a counterrevolution and how Morena is fighting against it both as an economic policy and as an ideology. We discuss Morena's attempts at social reforms and some of the policies it has been implementing, its attempts to contend with the United States, and some of the internal challenges it faces. Finally, we discuss the path forward and what the future of Mexico might look like under Morena's leadership.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

The cover art for this episode comes from the Tricontinental Dossier, where they write that "The artworks in this dossier are from the mural series Los Nadies (The Nobodies), created by Colectivo Subterráneos in Oaxaca, Mexico. Founded in 2021 to democratise art as a tool for social transformation, the collective draws on Mexico's graphic tradition – from the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People's Graphic Workshop) to Mexican muralism – as well as the 2006 Popular Teachers' Movement of Oaxaca. Inspired by Eduardo Galeano's poem of the same name, the series includes prints and murals that highlight indigenous and mestizo peoples forgotten under colonial rule and modern capitalism, confronting the historical debt to the marginalised and amplifying voices that demand justice in a Mexico under transformation."

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Patreon: www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast Mazlo: https://donate.mazloweb.com/donate/xsKGfZHZFXvoNMzVKaSvH

In this episode we're joined by Andrew Fanning for a conversation about doughnuts…no, not that kind of doughnut. We're talking about Kate Raworth's famous Doughnut from Doughnut Economics.

Andrew Fanning is an ecological economist exploring how to move our interconnected societies towards the goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. He is particularly interested in finding ways to visualise progress towards this goal in data. Andrew is Research & Data Analysis Lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab, where he co-creates metrics and research-related tools that make visible the core concepts of Doughnut Economics, and convenes spaces to connect scholars putting these concepts into action. His research has been published in leading journals, such as Nature and Lancet Planetary Health, and he leads the ongoing development of an interactive website entitled 'A good life for all within planetary boundaries', which makes indicators tracking the social shortfall and ecological overshoot of countries visible and widely accessible.

In this conversation, we get the latest progress report about our global economic system through Doughnut 3.0, we explore how environmental degradation and social deprivation differs among countries in the imperial core and the periphery, and we hear about ways communities are responding to Doughnut Economics to bring local and global economies into greater balance.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Green in the Valley" by Nicole Lawrence

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Mexico Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Cecilia Guerrero." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In Episode 1 of this series, we're joined by Cecilia Guerrero for a socialist introduction to Mexico. Cecilia Guerrero is chair and founding member of A Luta Sigue, an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee, which incubates and trains young people and workers within advanced sectors of the working class to build and lead their own class struggle organizations.

We begin the conversation with a peak into the deeper history looking at the various civilizations present in Mesoamerica prior to Spanish colonization. We then explore the colonial period, the War of Independence, the War of Reform, and the Mexican Revolution from with a historical materialist analysis. We talk about the US's imperialist ambitions in Mexico starting with the Mexican-American War, the imposition of NAFTA, and the drug cartels. We explore the Mexican left—both anarchist and socialist—and the recent rise in center-left politics with the The National Regeneration Movement, or Morena and the presidencies of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum. We end looking at the United States' recent aggression towards Mexico and threats of invasion by the Trump regime.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Cover art: "The History of Mexico" by Diego Rivera

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, part of our ongoing From the Frontlines series, Tara Raghuveer and Josh Poe join us for a conversation about tenant organizing. Tara Raghuveer is a tenant organizer with KC Tenants based in Kansas City, Missouri and with the Tenant Union Federation. Josh Poe is the organizing director with the Kentucky Tenant Union, formerly known as the Louisville Tenant Union and organizes with the Tenant Union Federation along with Tara.

Our conversation opens with a introduction to tenants unions before diving into the specific work that is being done by our guests. We discuss some of the ongoing fights being waged against private equity and corporate landlords by the Kentucky Tenants Union across the state of Kentucky and by the Tenant Union Federation across the country. We explore the root causes of skyrocketing rents and the housing crisis, the idealogical and legal barriers to organizing in the south, and some of the false and real solutions. Finally, we explore what a logical and humane housing system could look like.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Forest Floor" by Witchdream Mansion

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century w/ John Smith." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

The core capitalist countries no longer need to rely on military force and colonialism to increasingly extract profits from workers in the Global South. Of course, as we see daily, violence is still utilized—but it's not the primary way in which imperialism now functions. Imperialism in the 21st century works through market mechanisms—not just through superexploitation, uneven exchange, and other economic instruments of empire that keep the Global North's boot firmly on the rest of the world's neck. So, how does it all work, exactly? Well, we've brought on the perfect guest to walk us through it all.

John Smith is the author of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism's Final Crisis, published by Monthly Review Press.

In this conversation, John helps us to understand the way that imperialism works in the 21st century. We talk about the history of imperialism and how capitalism co-opted imperialism and made it its own. We trace a commodity through the circuits of capitalism to help us understand how imperialism functions, we talk about super exploitation, revolutionary subjects, the crisis of capitalism, and much more.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Yueren Zhang joins us to discuss Mao Zedong and the political philosophy of Maoism. Yueran Zhang is Assistant Professor in the department of sociology at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the comparative studies of capitalism, socialism, and transitions in between, with a special emphasis on political economy and the dynamics of development in the Global South.

The conversation opens by presenting a biographical and historical overview of Mao Zedong, the context in which the Chinese Revolution occurred, and Mao's role in the Chinese Revolution. We then introduce Maoism as a philosophy and political practice and take a deep dive into how Mao's philosophy shaped his political practice—using the cultural revolution and building mass movements as examples. We explore Mao and his relationship to Deng Xiaoping, China's political system, and whether we can view China as a socialist or capitalist state (Yueren holds a very different view from most of our previous guests in this episode), the role that Mao's political practice and philosophy play in modern-day revolutionary movements, and much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Intermission music: "The Way That You Slope Your Shoulders" by Witchdream Mansion

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Venezuela Ep. 4: The Empire vs. Venezuela w/ Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza and Saheli Chowdhury." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza and Saheli Chowdhury of Orinoco Tribune join us to discuss the US empire's attacks on Venezuela—both historically and into the present. Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza is an expert in international relations, Venezuelan politics, and communications and is the founding editor of Orinoco Tribune. Saheli Chowdhury is from West Bengal, India. She's studying physics as a profession and has interests in history and global movements. Saheli is a co-editor of Orinoco Tribune, an independent media outlet that provides news and analysis from Venezuela, Latin America, and the Global South.

Our conversation begins with an update on the latest escalations of aggression by the United States before presenting a brief history of US aggression against Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution more broadly. We then discuss the grassroots and institutional response in Venezuela, including the role that the communes play in resisting US empire. We talk about María Corina Machado and the Venezuelan far right more broadly and the role they play in advancing the interests of the United States and transnational corporations. We talk about the geopolitical context of all of this, the war on drugs, and much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, Timothée Parrique joins us for a discussion on degrowth. We begin the conversation with explaining the concept of degrowth, looking at its history, and really unpacking what it is and what it isn't. We talk about degrowth's two-fold agenda to both downscale production and consumption for environmental reasons, as well as its potential for removing the profit-motive as a central concern in how we organize society. We outline the differences between degrowth and recessions, the problem with GDP as a measurement tool for success, how degrowth can help to reduce poverty in certain contexts, the benefits of a dynamic steady state economy, where the degrowth movement is today, and much more.

Timothée Parrique is an economist originally from Versailles, France. He is currently a researcher at HEC Lausanne – The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He works on macro-ecological planning in Switzerland as part of the STRIVE research project. He's also the author of Slow Down or Die: The Economics of Degrowth.

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Intermission music: "Atlas" by Muma

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Venezuela Ep. 3: Sanctions as Economic Warfare w/ Cira Pascual Marquina." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Cira Pascual Marquina joins us to discuss sanctions with a focus on the US-imposed coercive economic measures on Venezuela. Cira Pascual Marquina is a researcher and popular educator at El Panal commune in Venezuela. She's the author of the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution with Chris Gilbert and co-host along with Chris of the Marxist educational project Escuela de Cuadros.

Our conversation with Cira opens with an update on the United States' military buildup in the Caribbean and the escalation of threats by the Trump administration against the Venezuelan people and their elected president Nicolás Maduro. We discuss what sanctions are more broadly, how they work, and how they are deployed as a weapon of war against governments that defy US hegemony. We then take a deep dive into the history of sanctions against Venezuela, the impact they've had, how the government and the people of Venezuela have resisted these sanctions, and how we can stand in solidarity with Venezuela during this period of heightened US aggression.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

A quick but important announcement: if you're a recurring donor through Flipcause (not Patreon, but Flipcause) please check your spam folder for an email from upstreampodcast.org because we've sent out some important emails regarding your donation and the Flipcause platform. Check your spam for the subject line "Action required: your Upstream donation." And just a reminder that this is only for Flipcause donors, not Patreon subscribers—if you're a Patreon subscriber please completely disregard this announcement.

In this episode, Immanuel Ness joins us for a discussion on migration as economic imperialism. We begin the conversation looking at the causes of migration—both intentional, structural parts of the global capitalist economy and also as certain consequences of this economic system, things like wars, sanctions, and ecological devastation. Immanuel then discusses the various ways in which migration is a function of imperialism, dispelling the myth among Western economists and the development industrial complex that migration actually benefits workers and helps to develop their countries of origins, but that migration in fact leads to underdevelopment of origin states, a dependency of Global South countries on the West, and heightened global inequality. We talk about the attack on immigrants in the United States and analyze the Trump administration's war on immigrants from a dialectical materialist perspective before ending the conversation discussing what a rational, humane system of labor migration might look like.

Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn, School of Humanities and Social Sciences and author of Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries.

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Intermission music: "Unfair" by Bliss

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Venezuela Ep. 2: Socialist Communes and Anti-Imperialism w/ Chris Gilbert." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Chris Gilbert joins us to discuss Venezuela's socialist communes from a Marxist, anti-imperialist perspective. Chris Gilbert is a professor at Venezuela's Bolivarian University and a writer based in Caracas. Grounded in a Marxist perspective, his research includes communes, socialist strategy, social reproduction theory, and imperialism. He's the author of Commune or Nothing! Venezuela's Communal Movement and its Socialist Project and Venezuela, the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution with Cira Pascual Marquina. He's also a co-host of the Marxist educational podcast and television program Escuela de Cuadros.

In this episode, we open with a discussion on the socialist commune itself and what Marx had to say about communes as they relate to socialism before we examine the Venezuelan commune movement, distinguishing it from the hippy communes of popular culture and also from more anarchist-inspired communes like the Zapatista Autonomous Regions in Chiapas or the communes of Rojava. We discuss the way the Bolivarian revolution unfolded from the early 1990s to the present and the role that communes have played in laying the foundations for anti-imperialism and socialism. In the second half of the conversation we take a look at current events, taking stock of the Trump administration's escalation of aggression and tackling the narrative of Venezuela as a narco-state, the Trump administration's obsession with Tren de Aragua, and more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, Part 5 of our ongoing Post Capitalist Parenting series, Jo delAmor joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about raising children in the midst of a global crisis. We open our discussion with a nod to the late scholar and activist Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects which she developed and which has shaped and influenced both Jo and Della's work. We then talk about Jo's framing of the power over and thriving life paradigms and the role they play in how we parent under capitalism. Della and Jo talk about the false paradigm of separation and how this can be overcome through a deep understanding and practice of interconnectedness and how this can be imparted to our children. And finally, Jo invites us to see parenting as activism and to relearn the world alongside our growing children, partnering with them on behalf of life.

Jo is the author of Raising Children in the Midst of Global Crisis: A Compassionate Guidebook for New Paradigm Parenting. She is also a mother, coach, and Work That Reconnects facilitator who has cared for and worked with hundreds of other people's children of all ages in a wide variety of contexts over twenty years. In all her work with children, she has paid close attention to what the next generations truly need at this pivotal time on Earth, charting what works, what doesn't, and what is being called forth from us as parents, mentors, neighbors, and teachers.

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Intermission music: "Believe" by Amanda West

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Ep. 3: Hyperimperialism w/ Mikaela Nhondo Erskog." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog joins us for a wideranging conversation about hyperimperialism and the Sahel's fight against it. We begin the conversation talking about the anti-LGBTQ law that was passed in Burkina Faso criminalizing "acts of homosexuality." We explore the law itself (part of a broader family code bill) and explore how we in the West can wrestle with the contradictions it presents. We then focus our conversation on hyperimperialism, looking at how Western Africa is responding to decades of colonialism and neocolonialism. We talk about what the decline of the US portends for the future of the Global South, the on-the-ground development projects that the AES is embarking on with Russia and China, how the AES and other states on the African continent are attempting to reverse decades of underdevelopment and unequal exchange, and much more.

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog is a researcher at Tricontinental. a doctoral student in International Relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, and regional coordinator of the International People's Assembly in Pan Africanism Today.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Artwork: Soviet-era propaganda poster by Eduard Artsrunyan titled "Colonialism is Doomed!"

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode, Part 4 of our ongoing Post Capitalist Parenting series, Robina Khalid joins us to talk about the process of birthing from the perspective of a midwife.

Robina is a mother of four, a writer, former academic, and activist. In this conversation, Robina shares with us the fascinating history of the field of obstetrics and its white supremacist, colonialist, and capitalist roots. We explore what midwifery is, the role it has traditionally played in society, and how capitalism's devaluing of this important health science and profession has negatively impacted the birthing experience in the contemporary world. Additionally, in this episode, Della shares about her recent birthing experience and Robina describes how we can simultaneously hold an appreciation for modern medicine while being critical of Western medicine under capitalism. Finally, Robina shares with us her vision of what post capitalist birthing could look and feel like and provides some invitations for everyone listening.

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Intermission music: "Labour of Love" by Carsie Blanton

Covert art: Palestine Poster Project, Naim 1975

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Venezuela Ep. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Vijay Prashad." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Vijay Prashad joins us to discuss Venezuela's history, politics, and its ongoing fight against US imperialism. Vijay Prashad is a journalist, political commentator, and Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He's the author of many books, including The Darker Nations, Washington Bullets: The History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, and Red Star Over the Third World.

In this episode, we discuss Venezuela's political and economic conditions prior to the Bolivarian Revolution of 1999 when Hugo Chávez came to power. We discuss how oil colonialism kept Venezuela in a state of underdevelopment and poverty. Vijay tells us about the promise of the Bolivarian Revolution and how it was delivered, the obstacles that Venezuela continues to face in its fight against imperialism, the hybrid war of coup attempts, sanctions, and propaganda campaigns imposed by the US, what socialism in Venezuela actually looks like, the most recent escalation by the Trump administration, and much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Artwork: Political Repression in Latin America Poster printed by La Raza Silkscreen, 1975.

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this episode we've invited on two guests for a wide-ranging conversation around the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and the movement it's part of: Chris Smalls and Huwaida Arraf.

Chris Smalls is a labor organizer, founder and former President of the Amazon Labor Union, and was a member of the most recent Freedom Flotilla voyage to Gaza. In this conversation, Chris shares about his experience on the Handala—the boat that sailed from Italy to the coast off of Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's illegal siege and blockade of food, medicine, and other lifesaving necessities in Palestine. We talk about the IOF's siege of the Handala in the waters of the Mediterranean just off the coast of Gaza and Chris's treatment after being kidnapped by Israel. We also explore the connection between working class politics in the United States and the struggle for liberation in Palestine, the complicity of the Western labor movement and the Democratic Party in the Palestinian genocide, the need for a labor party in the US, and what's next for the Freedom Flotilla missions.

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American human/civil rights attorney, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, and organizer with the Freedom Flotilla. In this conversation, Huwaida tells us about the history of the Freedom Flotilla and the various voyages to Gaza from 2008 to the present. We discuss the framework of international law, whether or not it still exists in a meaningful way, and how Israel and the US routinely violate it. Finally, we talk about a possible future where those responsible for the Palestinian siege and genocide, from Israeli leaders to IOF foot soldiers, are held accountable for their war crimes and crimes against humanity, and what the future holds for more freedom flotillas defying the brutal and illegal siege on Gaza.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Intermission music: A section of "Deepwater Horizon Dream" by Robert Raymond

Covert art: Palestine Poster Project, Abel El Hameed

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 7: A Socialist Response to the COVID Pandemic w/ Creighton Ward, Alessandro Zancan, and Kevin Li." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode we take a deep dive into one of the most impressive and underreported achievements of the 21st century: China's Zero COVID policy. Zero COVID was a mostly successful attempt by the world's largest socialist state to protect its population (and, as we'll see, the world's population) from the SARS-CoV virus.

Creighton Ward, Kevin Li, and Alessandro Zancan are our guests for this conversation. Creighton is a member of the Friends of Socialist China, Qiao Collective, and a Long COVID, ME/CFS patient advocate. Kevin is a member of Qiao Collective working as a writer and translator and is trained in public health and epidemiology. And Alessandro is a Marxist artist and developer, a member of the Iskra Books editorial board and a member of the Friends of Socialist China Britain Committee.

In this conversation we unpack the various elements of China's Zero COVID policy—contact tracing, mass testing, border quarantine, and, of course, lockdowns. We talk about the results that Zero COVID had, which could perhaps be characterized as one of the most remarkable achievements of the 21st century. We compare China's socialist COVID response to that of the West—particularly the US and the UK—and discuss how these very different political and economic systems operate and what this means about how they value human life and societal well-being. We explore China's international solidarity during the initial phases of the pandemic, dispel some of the most common myths about China's COVID response, explore a bit about China's overall healthcare system, and analyze the different experiences of living in a country with socialist values versus living in a country where capital accumulation is all that matters.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In our inaugural episode on Marx's Capital, we took a deep dive into Capital Vol. 1, the first of three volumes on political economy written by Karl Marx in the late 19th century. Capital Vol. 1, though, is just the beginning—and unfortunately most people stop there. But Vol. 1 really just looks at one aspect of capitalism—how surplus value is produced. It doesn't dive into the entire circulation process—or what we refer to as the circuits of capital. Vol. 2 provides the full picture of how capitalism functions—and we've brought on two terrific guests to help us make sense of it all.

Richard Wolff is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York, host of the Economic Update and The Dialectic at Work podcasts, and founder of Democracy at Work.

Shahram Azhar is a political economicst, musician, Associate Professor of Economics at Bucknell University and host of The Dialectic at Work podcast.

In this episode, we talk about the process that went into writing and compiling Marx's Capital Vol. 2. We talk about how Capital Vol. 2 builds off of Vol. 1, going from an analysis of how surplus is produced in the productive circuit of capital to really looking at the whole process of capital circulation. We talk about capital as a process as opposed to a thing, the various stages it passes through, what the implications are for the concept of the working class, the different antagonisms between the various kinds of capitalists—industrial, merchant, banking—and much more.

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Intermission music: Ultrabonus

Covert art: Berwyn Mure

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Third Worldism and the Bandung Spirit w/ Pranay Somayajula" You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Third Worldism—a term that might feel outdated but which is anything but—is on the rise. When we talk about the Third World, or the Global South, we are talking about the nations of the world which have been subjugated and exploited by the global imperialist order over the past several centuries. Colonialism, far from ever being abolished, is alive and well in these countries in a new and even more insidious way. And in order to help us understand exactly what this means, and what Third Worldism is, we're going to take you back to 1955—the year that the Bandung Conference was held in Indonesia—to look at a view of colonialism and imperialism, and the resistance to it‚ from within the Third World.

Pranay Somayajula is a writer, organizer, political educator, researcher, and host of the podcast Return to Bandung. He's the author of several pieces that we'll be discussing today, including most recently a piece from his Substack titled "this is the human race speaking..." reviving the bandung spirit in a multipolar world."

In this conversation, we talk about the Bandung Conference—a groundbreaking and pivotal meeting of many newly decolonized—and we'll unpack this term much more as we go along—states in Asia and Africa. We'll explore what was so significant about the Bandung Conference, the global context in which it occurred, the fight by the imperialist powers to keep the Third World subjugated all throughout the 20th century, how the spirit of Bandung lives on, and much, much more.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

It's not hyperbole to suggest that the imperialist wars waged upon the Global South by the United States and the imperialist bloc that it leads are akin to a protracted genocide. The sheer amount of death, carnage, destruction, immiseration, crushed dreams, is almost unfathomable. But it's real. And it's the status quo for what we love to refer fondly to as "Western Civilization." And there's no other force more responsible for implementing this protracted genocide on the Third World than NATO. And in today's conversation—Part 2 of our ongoing series on NATO—we're going to explore the role that this military alliance has played in the long war on the Third World.

Pawel Wargan is an organizer and researcher based in Berlin and the coordinator of the secretariat of the Progressive International. He's the author of the Monthly Review piece "NATO and the Long War on the Third World" which we'll be focusing our conversation around today.

In this episode, Pawel tells us about the fascist roots of NATO, its "dark mandate" which ushered in an era of terror against the populations of the Global South leading to a protracted genocide that has left tens of millions dead and even more immiserated. We talk about the way that NATO operates in Africa, Poland, and how NATO has served as a leading opposition to liberation struggles in the Third World and across the globe.

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Intermission music: "Black Serpent" by Noroth

Covert art: Soviet anti-NATO propaganda poster

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Ep. 2: A View from Within w/ Inem Richardson." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

It can be quite difficult for someone on the left in the United States or the UK—or in any Western state for that matter, to feel patriotic. Patriotic? About what, exactly? I mean, for most of us, the American flag is a symbol that represents nothing but pain, immiseration, destruction, genocide…so it's hard to imagine what it must feel like to be a part of a state project that you're actually proud of. One that's standing up to that blood-drenched American flag—standing up to the flags of all the imperialists and genocidaires across the globe.

But there are countries where national pride is well-deserved, where patriotism is appropriate, and where hope for a better future is alive and well. And in Part 2 of our series on the Alliance of Sahel States, we're going to be in conversation with someone who is right in the middle of one of those countries.

Inem Richardson is the President and Co-Founder of the Thomas Sankara Centre for African Liberation and Unity, a member of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, and a journalist with African Stream based out of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

In this conversation, Inem tells us about the journey that brought her to Burkina Faso and led her to co-founding the Thomas Sankara Centre. We talk about what it was like to live through Burkina Faso's revolution, some of the undertakings and achievements of Ibrahim Traore's government, what the Alliance is up against, and what its future might hold, and why the world should be paying attention to what's happening right now in the Sahel.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

NATO—The North Atlantic Treaty Organization—far from being just a defensive alliance between the United States and Europe, is actually the spear tip of imperialism's military arm. It's the force used to discipline any global actor who dares to defy US hegemony and dominance on the world stage. From Greece to Libya to Ukraine—NATO is where we must look to understand how destabilization occurs and how defiant states across the globe are subjugated and opened up to Western markets and capital. And we're lucky enough to have a terrific guest on today to tell us all about how it all takes place.

Elina Xenophontos is an international law and economic globalisation specialist. She produces much of her own material on her Substack and is also featured regularly on the Colonial Outcasts podcast.

In this episode, Part 1 of what will be an ongoing series on NATO, Elina presents a history of NATO, exploring its role as a force against communism and for capitalist discipline in Europe and the Global South and laying the foundations for what will be deeper dives in coming episodes. We explore its expansion during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods as a military arm of imperialism, its role in Yugoslavia, Libya, Ukraine, Iran, and other wars or conflicts, its drive to destabilize any state that refuses to be subjugated under the boot of US imperialism, and why it's crucial for the Western left to correctly identify NATO's role in global capitalism and imperialism in order to effectively combat it.

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Intermission music: "Love Life" by Daily Ghost

Covert art: Soviet anti-NATO propaganda poster

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Immigration, ICE, and Working Class Rebellion w/ Cecilia Guerrero." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

It's easy to get lost in the narratives that are fed to us by the very same institutions that oppress us. Whether liberal institutions or far right ones, there's always something crucial missing—some component of analysis that's left unaddressed, some root cause that remains misidentified or distorted. And the reason is because when it comes to the class war that we are all engaged in—whether we like it or not—the issues of class, of imperialism, and of monopoly capitalism are never, ever part of the mainstream discussion.

So, what are the root causes of immigration? What do the ICE terror campaigns look like on the ground in cities like LA or Nashville? What happens when we apply a materialist lens to the conversation about mass deportations and conversation about the scapegoating of the more vulnerable groups in society? And what happens when we shift the frame from the more liberal, rights-based approach to activism to one based on unified, solidaristic class struggle? Well, we've brought back on the perfect guest to help us unpack some of these pressing questions.

Cecilia Guerrero is Chair and Founding Member of A Luta Sigue, an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee, which incubates and trains young people and workers within advanced sectors of the working class to build and lead their own class struggle organizations.

In this episode, we talk about the terror campaign being waged on immigrants throughout the country and the responses coming from working class communities who are standing up for themselves and standing in solidarity with the oppressed and exploited classes across the globe. We talk about ICE, the role that immigration plays in the imperialist global system, the attempts by liberal institutions to co-opt and neutralize our radical movements, and what the MAGA right gets wrong about the root cause of their immiseration.

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Artwork: CPSU propaganda poster

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

As seems to be the case with most of the countries that the United States goes to war with—much of the population here doesn't know very much about those countries. And what they do know is usually Western propaganda, misinformation, or outright lies. This couldn't be more true with Iran, where if it were up to our political leaders and corporate media, the story that Iran was a perfectly happy democracy that was abruptly and rudely destroyed by a rabid and power hungry group of Ayatollahs would never go unquestioned. They certainly wouldn't want you to know about the Western backed coup of a left-leaning government in 1953, or that Iran suffered greatly during the Shah's reign. But that's why we're here today—to help combat some of that propaganda, dispel some of those myths, and hopefully to provide a dose of reality to a nation whose war drums never cease to beat. And we've brought on a terrific guest to help us do it.

Séamus Malekafzali is a freelance journalist whose work focuses on the Middle East and Global South.

In this episode, Part 1 of our new series on Iran, we give a potted history of Iran from the colonial period up to the present, introducing the Pahlavi dynasty, touching on important events like the rise of Mohammad Mosaddeq and the attempt to nationalize Iran's oil industry which was sabotaged by Western powers. We explore the rise of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the repressive regime he led as a Western puppet. We talk about the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the role Iran now plays as a leading state in the Axis of Resistance against US hegemony. And, of course, we talk about the ongoing war being waged against Iran by the United States and its proxy, Israel and explore the regional and global implications.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

One of the most radical things you can do is live your life in direct opposition to the forces that control our society. Not just fighting for policies or organizing your community, although those are certainly important parts of it, but also living with values that oppose the values of our dominant society. And even more importantly, raising the next generation to embody those values—not in a coercive way, but through organic parenting and role modeling that make radicalism irresistible. This is how we raise revolutionaries: instilling community, love, egalitarianism, and a need for justice into children. And this is just what our guest in today's episode has devoted himself to doing.

Breht O'Shea is an activist, organizer, political educator, and host of the podcast Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the podcasts Red Menace and Shoeless in South Dakota. He is a father of three based out of Omaha Nebraska.

In this conversation, Part 3 of our Post Capitalist Parenting series, Breht shares with us insights about parenting that he's learned over the years as a father of three and what Marxism teaches us about parenting. We discuss the classic text by Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, which is a dialectical materialist analysis of patriarchy and the family, tracing the emergence of the patriarchal family and it took through various iterations of class society but also exploring what families have looked like under actually-existing socialism and also what it might look like under communism. We also explore the anti-natalist position which attempts to argue that having children is immoral, why this perspective is deeply flawed, what Buddhism can teach us about parenting, and much, much more.

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Intermission music: "Cool 4 U" by Club Cafe

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 6: The Long Transition Towards Socialism w/ Gabriel Rockhill." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to biweekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

The transition to socialism is not going to be an overnight project—and no amount of willing it to be so can change that. No, the transition towards socialism is going to be a long and winding road, traveled with fits and starts, peppered with retreats and losses. But despite it not being an overnight project, it is still a project that is being undertaken with a degree of passion and discipline that should give us hope that its outcome, perhaps not guaranteed, is at least a real possibility worth fighting for. And China, despite what imperialist propaganda wants you to think, is on this path towards socialism. In fact, it's leading it. And our guest for today's episode, Part 6 of our series on China, makes a very compelling case to support this thesis.

Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic, and activist teaching Philosophy and Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University and he runs an educational nonprofit called the Critical Theory Workshop. He is the editor of multiple books, including Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn, by the Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo. Western Marxism was the focus of our conversation with Gabriel in October last year. Gabriel is also the author of the upcoming book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? Volume I of The Intellectual World War: Marxism versus the Imperial Theory Industry, which is forthcoming in December, 2025 by Monthly Review Press.

In this conversation, we talk about what Gabriel refers to as the intellectual world war waged by imperialists against the rest of us and how this pertains to anti-China propaganda, we discuss socialism as a process that unfolds over time versus a utopian vision that we can achieve instantly, what China learned from the socialist project of the USSR, the connections between China and the Alliance of Sahel States, the limits of liberal identity politics and China's strategy of spreading socialist economic development throughout the Global South. We dispel the myth that China is imperialist and reveal it as a propaganda by the imperialists themselves as an attempt to disparage and discredit China, the distinction between tactics and strategy in the context of the dialectics of socialism, and what the rising tensions between China and United States mean for the global world order in the coming decades and beyond.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Artwork: CPC Propaganda Poster titled "Unite and work hard to build the four modernizations."

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Imperialism is the primary contradiction facing the globe—and the split of the world into two poles, the imperialists and the anti-imperialists, is going to continue to shape our revolutionary struggles moving forward. This anti-imperialist struggle is occurring all over the Global South, and perhaps nowhere quite as prominently as in Africa's Sahel region, where the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have been waging a struggle against neocolonialism and building a movement towards pan-Africanism through the Alliance of Sahel States—an alliance that has received the praise of anti-imperialists across the globe, and which has also raised the ire of imperialists who are not happy to see Africans fight to take back control of their resources and their labor.

In this episode, we've brought on Prudence Iticka, a Camaroonian pan-Africanist and member of United African Diaspora and The Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa, to tell us more about the AES and the struggle it's currently undertaking.

We begin with a brief history of Burkina Faso during the colonial period, and explore the rise of Thomas Sankara and the anti-imperialist movement he led, his assassination and the neocolonial puppet that replaced him for three decades, and the recent rise of the revolutionary leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré. We talk about the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—and how they are the seeds for a pan-African future and the leading spear in the fight against imperialism and neocolonialism. We explore imperialism as the primary contradiction in the world, how imperialist propaganda infiltrates Africa and what the AES are doing to combat it, and much, much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

If you look around at the state of the world—and the despair that comes with the reality of climate change, fascism spreading its tentacles around the world, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—it's very difficult to feel hope. It begins to feel like the forces of destruction and death have colonized our futures, limiting our dreams and stifling our imaginations.

It's in these times specifically that it's essential we remember that the future, our dreams, our imagination—that these things are political. And that exercising our hope for a just and beautiful future is an important, in fact, crucial political act. Not on its own, of course, but imagining and dreaming fuels our actions and gives soul and spirit to our revolutionary movements. And as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "The future must enter into you long before it happens."

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and the author of several books including The Transition Handbook, From What is to What if, and most recently, How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller's Guide to Changing the World.

In this episode, we explore what it's like to be a time traveler from Rob's perspective, how dreams and imagination are powerful tools for driving change, and the role that art and music play in the fight for a better future. We explore examples of communities that have made a claim on the future, from the Afro-futurism and Black Utopianism of jazz musician Sun Ra to the occupation of Waterloo Bridge in London and the pop-up community that arose as a result. And finally, we look at how the future is not just an abstract concept, but something that can be felt, touched, heard, seen, and smelled.

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Intermission music: "A Car-Free Neighbourhood" by Field Recordings for the Future Artwork: Aga Kubish

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, an experimental educational project focused on heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. EcoGather hosts gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. The EcoGathering for this episode will be held on Friday, June 27th. Find out more at ecogather.ing.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 1: Burkina Faso – An Anti-imperialist Introduction w/ Prudence Iticka." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Imperialism is the primary contradiction facing the globe—and the split of the world into two poles, the imperialists and the anti-imperialists, is going to continue to shape our revolutionary struggles moving forward. This anti-imperialist struggle is occurring all over the Global South, and perhaps nowhere quite as prominently as in Africa's Sahel region, where the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have been waging a struggle against neocolonialism and building a movement towards pan-Africanism through the Alliance of Sahel States—an alliance that has received the praise of anti-imperialists across the globe, and which has also raised the ire of imperialists who are not happy to see Africans fight to take back control of their resources and their labor.

In this episode, we've brought on Prudence Iticka, a Camaroonian pan-Africanist and member of United African Diaspora and The Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa, to tell us more about the AES and the struggle it's currently undertaking.

We begin with a brief history of Burkina Faso during the colonial period, and explore the rise of Thomas Sankara and the anti-imperialist movement he led, his assassination and the neocolonial puppet that replaced him for three decades, and the recent rise of the revolutionary leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré. We talk about the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—and how they are the seeds for a pan-African future and the leading spear in the fight against imperialism and neocolonialism. We explore imperialism as the primary contradiction in the world, how imperialist propaganda infiltrates Africa and what the AES are doing to combat it, and much, much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

There is nothing natural about the way we arrange families under capitalism—in fact, there are many who would argue that there is something quite unnatural about narrowing the experience of romance and child-rearing into the rigid form of the nuclear family. That there are much better ways of arranging these things might come as a surprise to some—but for those who have researched it, it's no shock: there are much better ways of arranging things, and there's quite a bit of evidence to back this up.

Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the critically acclaimed author of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women.

In today's episode, Part 2 of our ongoing series on Post Capitalist Parenting, we take a deep dive into Kristen Ghodsee's work around the family and parenting. What restraints and barriers are imposed upon us through the capitalist nuclear family? What do the pro-natalists get wrong about the obsession with birthrates and the "return to tradition" when it comes to childrearing? And what alternative arrangements are out there which can provide parents and children alike with an experience that is arguably much more healthy and sustainable than the way we do things now? These are just some of the questions we explore in this conversation with Kristen Ghodsee.

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, an experimental educational project focused on heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. EcoGather hosts gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. The EcoGathering for this episode will be held on Sunday, May 25th from 11-12:30pm ET. Find out more at ecogather.ing.

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Intermission music: "Venus (feat. Alex Mansour)" by Stratøs

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "The Imperial Boomerang w/ Julian Go." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

The imperial boomerang, colonial feedback, fascism returning home. These are all phrases that convey the same basic idea—that the mechanisms of repression that originate in the colonies will, inevitably, return back home to the core where they will be utilized against not only marginalized populations here, but against the entire population as a whole. The boomerang exists in many different forms, but the form that we'll be focusing on today is the form of police militarization. And we've brought on a terrific guest to walk us through how it all works.

Julian Go is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and author of the book Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US, published by Oxford University Press.

In this conversation, we explore the history of civil police forces starting with the Metropolitan Police Force of London back in the early 19th century. We explore the colonial roots of this historic force and how its architects were inspired by military tactics, tools, and technologies from England's colonies in Ireland and elsewhere. We explore how racialized subjects were criminalized at home and treated as colonized subjects were abroad, how different waves of police militarization in the US mirrored various colonial wars and occupations through the past few centuries, and how the most recent wave of militarization is just one flow of a continuously rising tide of colonial repression boomeranging back home, the only differences being the subjects targeted and the specific tactics and tools utilized to shut down dissent and criminalize a racialized subproletariat that capitalism both relies on and simultaneously disdains.

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Artwork: Berwyn Mure

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Chris Smalls had no idea the direction his life would take when he was discharged in 2020 for organizing a walk out in protest against Amazon's safety protocols during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had no idea he was about to embark on one of the most challenging David and Goliath unionization efforts of our century.

In this episode, we speak with Chris Smalls, the founder and a former president of the Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, as well as Mars Verrone, a filmmaker, musician, and educator from Los Angeles who recently produced the documentary film, Union, following Chris and the other organizers in their fight for better working conditions at Amazon. We hear the origin story of the Amazon Labor Union, learn about the internal and external challenges faced by Amazon labor organizers, and explore a broader view of the union movement and its crucial role in advocating for systemic change. Chris and Mars also talk about the importance of unions in today's political landscape—especially under the Trump Administration—and the significance of this year's May Day and its resonance for workers around the world fighting for justice, dignity, and a post-capitalist future.

This episode was sponsored by EcoGather, an experimental educational project focused on heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. As EcoGather's active phase comes to a close its self-paced online courses are being made freely available at www.ecogather.ing and its vibrant community is reconvening in a new organization called otherWise. Find out more at www.otherwise.one.

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Intermission music: "You Are Not a Number" Original score for Union by Robert Aiki and Aubrey Lowe

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 5: A Socialist Approach to Ecological Development w/ Tings Chak". You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

One of the primary challenges facing Global South countries in the 21st century is the question of sustainable and just development—how do you raise living standards and eliminate poverty, what some refer to as the process of industrialization, without going down the same ecologically destructive and often deadly path that Western capitalist countries went down—the path of slavery, genocide, colonization, and now, a form of neocolonialism that is essentially colonialism in all but name. How can you compete in a global capitalist economy against countries that have no qualms about ethnically cleansing an entire people just so that they can build a "riviera of the Middle East"?

Well, this is a massive question that cannot be answered in a single episode, but we can begin to chip away at it and uncover some lessons and explore some evidence-based analyses that can help us to at least understand the alternative approaches that at least some Global South countries are experimenting with—because, despite what the monsters in power want us to think—there are alternatives to capitalism.

In this conversation, we've brought on Tings Chak to talk about China's attempts to balance ecological and human development through the lens of a specific environmental project. Tings Chak is the Art Director and Asia Coordinator at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Editor of Wenhua Zongheng. She is the co-author of the recent piece "Reviving Erhai Lake: A Socialist Approach to Balancing Human and Ecological Development" published in Tricontinental.

In this conversation, we talk about Erhai Lake—which is the site of a restoration and cleanup project that China has been working on for quite some time now. A decade ago, Erhai Lake was a microcosm of how China's rapid economic development led to ecological devastation. Today, it's an example of quite the opposite—how China aims to move towards its own stated goal of creating an ecological civilization that represents a harmonious balance between ecological and human development.

How and why did the Communist Party of China initiate a massive poverty reduction and ecological restoration project across the country, and how does Erhai Lake fit into it? What can be learned from this project by other Global South countries looking for alternatives to the capitalist model of development? And why should we be exploring these questions in the first place? This is just some of what we cover in this conversation between Robert and Tings Chak.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Artwork: Tricontinental

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

"What is the price of an assassin's bullet? Some dollars here and there. The cost of the bullet. The cost of a taxi ride, a hotel, an airplane, the money paid to hire the assassin, his silence purchased through a payment into a Swiss bank, the cost to him psychologically for having taken the life of one, two, three, or four. But the biggest price is not paid by the intelligence services. The biggest price is paid by the people. For in these assassinations, these murders, this violence of intimidation, it is the people who lose their leaders in their localities. Each bullet fired struck down a Revolution and gave birth to our present barbarity. This is a book about bullets."

These are the words of Vijay Prashad in the opening paragraphs of his book, Washington Bullets: The History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations—a fascinating and meticulously researched and gut-wrenchingly evocative book which takes readers on a tour of the US empire's wide-ranging project of global dominance.

Vijay Prashad is a journalist, political commentator, and Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He's the author of many books including Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations, and the book that we'll be discussing today, Washington Bullets.

This conversation explores many of the concepts outlined in the Washington Bullets, from the CIA's manual for regime change to how economic shock and military coups were utilized to achieve said regime changes in countries like Chile. But more than just a chapter by chapter overview, today's conversation with Vijay takes many side-alleys and side-paths that range from the importance of art and emotion in politics, why we need to rethink the idea of conspiracy theories, why cancel culture is a dead end, and why the left needs to reexamine its use of language and propaganda in the face of a US cultural apparatus that won the PR campaign against socialism decades ago.

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Intermission music: "Stolen Empires" by Andrew Glencross

Artwork: Tings Chak

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "How Fascism Works." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode of our reading series, Robbie reads and provides real-time analysis of the opening chapter of the classic book Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti. The text covers the topics of plutocracy and autocracy, whom the fascists last century supported, a bit of history on Hitler and Mussolini, the rational and irrational aspects of fascism, patriarchy and pseudo-revolution, collaboration, and much more.

The analysis provided in the reading brings this text into our current conditions and looks at where Parenti's analysis holds up and where it might need to be stretched and adapted to help us understand the rise of neofascism in the United States under Trump and his modern day fascist footsoldiers. We explain why it's more important than ever to resist collaboration and to stand in full solidarity with all of the racialized and criminalized "others" in order to combat the fearmongering and scapegoating that fascism relies on in order to grow in strength.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The moniker The Merrimack Four might be something you're already familiar with—perhaps you saw the headlines in the late fall of 2023 about a handful of direct actionists being arrested on the rooftop of a facility owned by a major weapons manufacturer in New Hampshire. Maybe you heard about the multiple felony charges that were being pressed against these actionists, the concern about RICO charges…or maybe you haven't heard about any of this at all. Regardless of how familiar you are with the Merrimack Four, you'd be hard-pressed not to be gripped by the story you're about to hear recounting the events of November, 2023 from someone who was actually on that rooftop facing down US empire.

Calla Walsh is an anti-imperialist organizer and activist who was part of the Merrimack Four—a group of activists who faced severe state repression in response to an action organized by Palestine Action US against an Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire—Elbit is one of the major arms suppliers to the IDF—or more accurately IOF—in Israel.

In this conversation, Calla tells us about the momentous event which changed her life forever. She talks about Palestine Action—an organization who you might be familiar with if you've been listening to our series on Palestine—and walks us through the action in New Hampshire, her arrest along with her fellow actionists, and the long and winding journey through the legal system which landed her in jail. We talk about state repression more broadly, looking at what is taking place right now under the Trump administration with abductions and deportations, talk about some cases that haven't made it into the mainstream coverage, and end with a discussion about why Palestine is the tip of the spear when it comes to the fight against US imperialism.

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Intermission music: "Erase" by Scary Hours

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 4: Unlearning Anti-China Propaganda w/ Li Jingjing". You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Living in a world dominated by the United States leaves us all with a lifetime of propaganda to unlearn. No matter what corner of the globe we're in, we're not immune to Western hegemony and the hard and soft power deployed to brainwash our minds, exploit our bodies, and destroy our cultures. But there are, despite the power of capitalist PR and commodity fetishism—alternative pathways. There are ways to unlearn the propaganda. And in today's episode, we're going to attempt to do just that: break at least some of the chains of imperialist propaganda when it comes to China.

Li Jingjing is a multimedia reporter at China Global Television Network, or CGTN, based in Beijing, China. And despite the scare-tactics of Mark Zuckerberg and our other tech overlords labeling her Instagram account as "China state-controlled media"—which is a real pot calling the kettle black moment as the oligarchs in the White House text their plans to bomb hospitals in Yemen to high-profile journalists—despite these red-scare labels applied to Li only meant to fearmonger and propagandize, Li's social media is a breath of fresh air when it comes to unlearning Western propaganda on China.

In this conversation, Episode 4 of our China series, we bring some of Li's shorter videos dispelling propaganda to you in a more longform way, starting with a conversation about her recent coverage of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which we introduced in Part 2 of this series with Ken Hammond. Li explains to us how the political system in China works and what some of the policy outcomes of these conferences were before embarking on a fascinating conversation that weaves together personal anecdotes and stories with data and statistics to dismantle many of the myths we believe about China and which reveal a picture of a society that our warmongering policymakers and their lapdogs in the media don't want you to know about.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Artwork: Chinese Communist Party propaganda poster commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the party.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Capitalism is a social phenomenon—yes, it is deeply grounded in concrete, material reality—but it's a reality that ultimately relies on a series of tricks and spells, awash in deceit and veiled in subterfuge.

What is capitalism, exactly? How does it function? Why are we seemingly trapped inside of it? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we break free? Well, in this episode we're taking a very deep dive into the crowning achievement of a man who spent his entire adult life seeking answers to these questions. Karl Marx wrote Capital Vol. 1 over ten years, spending countless hours researching and redrafting this crucial text until it was finally published in 1867. It incorporates vast amounts of historical data, concrete examples, and brilliant theorizing and is ultimately one of the most important books to ever be written. In it, Marx explains how capitalism functions. And in this episode, we've brought on a scholar and expert on Marx to walk us through it.

David Smith is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas and author of the book Marx's Capital Illustrated. In this conversation, we explore Capital Vol. 1 through the lens of David's accessible guide, illustrated by Phil Evans. We explore and unpack concepts like the commodity, use and exchange value, and abstract and concrete labor. We talk about what money is, what capital is, and unpack the famous concept of commodity fetishism and the role it plays as the guiding spirit of capital accumulation. We talk about how capital accumulates while taking a journey into the history of expropriation and the creation of the propertyless proletariat during the enclosures in Britain and in other parts of the world. We talk about how profit is generated by capitalists through our surplus labor, what the rate of profit is and why it has a tendency to fall, and finally, why Capital Vol. 1 remains an essential text for understanding the world around us.

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Intermission music: "November Rain" by Mount Eerie

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The world that we all grew up in is no longer a reality—although, in many ways, those in power are grasping onto it with the desperation of drowning men flailing, lashing out—furious, terrified, and in denial of what is staring them in their faces: imminent death. The rest of us are watching this process unfold before our very eyes—also terrified, but seemingly powerless. It's a weird time to be alive. But when has it ever not been?

As we watch, experience, and feel the collapse of the state that we live within—or for those of us not currently living in the belly of the beast, the imperial world that this state rules over—it feels like an important time to explore this collapse. Specifically, it's an important time to understand what's happening in the imperial world order, and in order to do that, we must understand China.

In this conversation, we've brought on a regular guest—a guest who you all know and love—Jason Hickel, to talk about China. Jason Hickel is a professor at The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World.

In this conversation, we first take a brief dive into modern Chinese history, looking at the pre-revolution period, the 1949 communist revolution itself, the Mao period, the Deng period, and the Xi period. We analyze what the rise of China means in terms of the current world order and the implications for the United States. We tackle some common questions and dispel some common myths about China—like, is China capitalist? Is it imperialist? We analyze some current events like trade wars and Tiktok bans, and finally, we explain why it's crucial not to fall into the trap of U.S. propaganda when it comes to how we on the Western left analyze China.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Artwork: Berwyn Mure

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 3: Bourgeois Democracy vs Socialist Democracy w/ Vijay Prashad." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

It's a difficult task to compare bourgeois democracies to socialist democracies—and not just because it's difficult to be living in the belly of the beast as it enters into its death spiral all while watching social and technological advancements take place in what we're told are "authoritarian" communist "regimes"—but because in many ways the democratic experiments of the Atlantic world originated in an entirely different context as the socialist democratic experiments in places like China—and they have almost entirely different aims. What are those aims? And how are they—and are they not—being advanced?

To explain the differences to us, we've brought back onto the show Vijay Prashad. Vijay is a journalist, political commentator, and executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He's the author of many books, including Washington Bullets: The History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, and Red Star Over the Third World.

In this conversation, we explore the differences between bourgeois and socialist democracies more broadly before taking a deep dive into specific examples comparing China and the United States. We dispel a number of myths about Chinese society, ask Vijay to share his perspective on what is taking place with the Uyghers, the role of Western propaganda in destabilizing communism, and much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Marxism is not some esoteric philosophy meant to be analyzed and discussed in the ivory towers of the academy—not that appreciating Marxism from an intellectual perspective is wrong, or anything—we do that quite a bit—but at its essence, Marxism is a weapon. It's a tool for change—revolutionary change. It helps us understand the world around us not just for the sake of knowledge—but so that we can act accordingly.

This is the focus of our episode today—and the focus of our guest, who came to Marxism through real life struggle and teaches it to others with the very same spirit. Savannah is a co-founder of All Power Books—a radical bookstore and community space in Los Angeles. She developed and teaches Marxism 101 and 102 classes as part of All Power's People's Education Program.

In this conversation, we take a deep dive into these classes which aim to bring the social science of Marxism up to speed for our time and context. These classes are taught at an 8th grade level to be universally applicable and easy to understand—but they are crucial not just for newcomers to Marxism but for those of us hoping to improve in our communication and dissemination skills when it comes to radical theory and practice. In an incredibly effective and accessible way, Savannah teaches us about the differences between Private and Personal property, what the 'Means of Production' are, who owns them, how to easily grasp Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and more—all while dispelling some of the most prevalent myths about Marxism along the way.

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Intermission music: "Keep Planting Flowers" by Stick to Your Guns

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Pt. 2: Socialist Democracy and Democratic Centralism w/ Ken Hammond." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

"China is an authoritarian dystopia." That's probably the totality of your understanding when it comes to Chinese society and the political system it's governed by if all you know about China is what you hear on MSNBC or Fox News. But is that really accurate? Is China a dystopian, authoritarian police state? Or is that just propaganda force fed to the mass of Americans because it serves the interests of Western capital? Well—the answer is an obvious and emphatic "no." China is not authoritarian—in fact, the opposite is true. Their system of democracy is arguably and demonstrably much, much deeper and more effective than ours here in our bourgeois society. Don't believe us? Well, we've brought on an expert on China to help explain why.

Ken Hammond is Professor of History at New Mexico State University, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL, and the author of several books, including China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future and most recently, China and the World.

In this conversion we dispel the myth that China is not a democratically run society. We take a deep dive into the mechanisms of democracy in China, exploring how democratic centralism and the mass line shape how the Communist Party of China and Chinese society practice and participate in democracy. We look at the history of Chinese democracy, get into the nuts and bolts of how democratic decision making and policy proposals take place, and end with an analysis of current geopolitical events when viewed within a historical materialist context.

Artwork: The cover art for today's episode is from 1804's publication of Ken's 2003 book, China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future, designed by Hannah Craig.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Capitalism has placed us under many spells that influence and limit what we believe to be normal and natural. Parenting is one intimate site where capitalism's spell is particularly impactful. Often leaving parents and children to feel especially isolated, alone, and precarious—perfect for keeping working people separated and oppressed and for grooming children into docile workers under capitalism.

To kick off our new series on Post Capitalist Parenting, we've invited on Toi Smith, mother of four and a Growth and Impact Strategist. Toi's work centers on doing life, business, and motherhood differently and collaborating with people who are countercultural, liberatory, and revolutionary. In this conversation, we start to reveal and unlearn what Capitalism has told us about what parenting should look like and what it is for. We deconstruct motherhood under capitalism and explore post capitalist parenting strategies, tools, and resources. And we look at how viewing parenting as a political act can help to empower, connect, and liberate both families and communities.

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, a collapse-responsive co-learning network that hosts free online Weekly EcoGatherings that foster conversation and build community around heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. In this collaboration, EcoGather will be hosting gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. We hope you can join the gathering on March 8, 2025 at 12pm - 1:30pm EST to discuss the topics covered in this episode. Find out more here.

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Cover art: Carolyn Raider Intermission music: "Left Fist Evolution" by Bianca Mikahn

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "China Ep. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Jason Hickel." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

The world that we all grew up in is no longer a reality—although, in many ways, those in power are grasping onto it with the desperation of drowning men flailing, lashing out—furious, terrified, and in denial of what is staring them in their faces: imminent death. The rest of us are watching this process unfold before our very eyes—also terrified, but seemingly powerless. It's a weird time to be alive. But when has it ever not been?

As we watch, experience, and feel the collapse of the state that we live within—or for those of us not currently living in the belly of the beast, the imperial world that this state rules over—it feels like an important time to explore this collapse. Specifically, it's an important time to understand what's happening in the imperial world order, and in order to do that, we must understand China.

Jason Hickel is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World.

In this conversation, we first take a brief dive into modern Chinese history, looking at the pre-revolution period, the 1949 communist revolution itself, the Mao period, the Deng period, and the Xi period. We analyze what the rise of China means in terms of the current world order and the implications for the United States. We tackle some common questions and dispel some common myths about China—like, is China capitalist? Is it imperialist? We analyze some current events like trade wars and Tiktok bans, and finally, we explain why it's crucial not to fall into the trap of U.S. propaganda when it comes to how we on the Western left analyze China.

Artwork: Berwyn Mure

Further resources:

Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

If you know anything about the way the world works—and even more so if you're someone who's an expert in economics, political economy, etc.—then you'll know that the narratives and rhetoric coming out of the White House on a whole variety of topics is, well, with the kindest interpretation, confused. Some harsher critics might say these narratives do a violence to reality. And it's no different with the current discussion around tariffs: it's all bluster, bloviation, and, ultimately, theater.

What are tariffs, how are they being deployed and weaponized, and why? If these are questions you've considered over the past few weeks, you're in the right place and today's guest will walk you through all of the answers you wish you didn't have to ask about what's happening with the trade wars being concocted by the US against China, Mexico, and Canada.

Richard Wolff is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York, host of the Economic Update podcast, and founder of Democracy at Work.

In this episode, we explore what tariffs are, how they work, and how and why the Trump administration is weaponizing them against China, Mexico, and Canada. We explore the impending decline of the U.S. as the leading global imperial power, why politicians in this country are in denial about the trajectory of the country's economy, and much more.

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Intermission music: "The System Works for Them" by Aus Rotten

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "(Chinese) Socialism vs (U.S.) Capitalism." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this episode in our reading series, Robbie reads a piece written by Indrajit Samarajiva titled "How Communism Is Outcompeting Capitalism." Why is the entire techno-capitalist class, along with their loyal handmaidens in the media, freaking out about DeepSeek—a Chinese AI company's an open-source large language model? Why are electric vehicles (EVs) so much cheaper, efficient, and better in China? Why is the United States ramping up anti-China hysteria in this country? And why are living standards and life expectancy in China overtaking those in the United States?

The answer is simple: socialism is better than capitalism. On every single front. And in this reading series, Robbie reads and reflects on Indrajit Samarajiva's piece as it provides a brief history of the rise of communism in China, the period of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms, and the superiority of socialist economies over capitalist ones.

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Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Class is the thread that ties different systems of oppression together—whether it's patriarchy, national oppression, racist oppression, reproductive injustice, anti-trans oppression. Although these forms of oppression impact individuals, they operate on systemic levels. These forms of oppression cannot be understood as single, isolated, or parallel struggles—they are all manifestations of class society and can only be abolished with the end of class society. Class is what ties it all together.

When we understand this, we can begin to appreciate the importance of class-based organizing. We begin to understand why it's crucial to identify class positions, class interests, and class politics when we talk about organizing workers, organizing tenants, or organizing around any issue within capitalism.

This is what we'll be focusing on in today's episode in this second installment of our "From the Frontlines" series—where, far from simply analyzing these ideas from an armchair, we'll be talking about them with someone who has spent many years organizing and building worker power—particularly in the Southeast of the United States.

Cecilia Guerrero is a chair and founding member of A Luta Sigue, an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee which incubates and trains young people and workers within advanced sectors of the working class to build and lead their own class struggle organizations.

In this conversation we explore what it's like organizing a wide variety of working class people in Nashville, Tennessee—from Uber and Lyft drivers to construction workers—most of whom are refugees and immigrants. We talk about the importance of injecting militancy and radical politics into labor organizing, of the failures of liberalism and the Democratic party, how A Luta Sigue identifies revolutionary classes and individuals and helps to incubate them and coordinate campaigns, organizing under Trump, the need for a communist party in the United States, and much, much more.

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Intermission music: "Payday at Coal Creek" by Odetta & Larry

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

One thing that has become quite clear in recent decades is that the best form of disaster preparedness is …community. Being plugged into an organized community can make all the difference when disasters hit. This is just as true for the slow violence perpetrated against all of us under capitalism as it is for responding to emergencies like hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or wildfires.

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about organizing in our communities—specifically focusing on some of the organizing taking place in response to the LA wildfires—but also zooming out much more broadly to talk about organizing in general. It's the inaugural episode of our organizing series here on Patreon, taking deep dives into a wide variety of different organizing spaces and issues, from immigration to labor to issues around abortion access and trans rights and much more.

Although we focus most of our political education work on upstream root causes—taking deep dives into many radical ideas and revolutionary theories—it's crucial to also focus on the practice itself, the on-the-ground work taking place on the frontlines, so that we can, as Frank Chapman has so eloquently put it, also practice our way into correct thinking. And, of course, as Fred Hampton famously put it: "Theory's cool, but theory with no practice ain't shit. You got to have both of them—the two go together."

In this inaugural episode, we've invited on two friends and comrades from the incredible All Power Books in Los Angeles to talk about their involvement in the grassroots, community response to the fires whose impacts are still being felt—and will be for years—on the broader Los Angeles population.

Gage is a co-founder of All Power Books as well as an artist whose work is featured prominently at All Power. Sean is a co-founder and leader of the All Power Free Clinic. All Power Books is a radical bookstore and community space in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. They co-hosted our very first live episode last year with Abby Martin.

In this conversation we talk about Gage and Sean's experiences during the first hours of the fires which erupted on January 7th. We talk about the emergence of mutual aid and survival programs which focus specifically on disaster response, the challenges and lessons that emerge from this kind of work, the role that disaster plays in capitalism, how to build class consciousness and infuse on-the-ground survival work with political education, the failure of the official response, All Power's free clinic, and much more.

Outro music by Stick to Your Guns

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Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Technofeudalism—you might already have some sense of what the term means, even if you haven't sat down and unpacked it fully. A mode of production with one hand in the past and another the future—an updated form of feudal relations married to an advanced epoch of the productive forces that mark late capitalism—forces that we often associate with futuristic feats of technology. Except this is not some kind of techno-utopia—it's really a dystopia.

Is capitalism over? Have we entered into a new mode of production defined by feudal relations and the technological forces of the algorithm? Did capitalism die, before our very eyes, in 2008? These are all questions that we tackle in today's episode with a very special guest who's written a book about all of this.

Yanis Varoufakis is a self-described anti-economist and author of many books. He was a member of Syriza and was Greece's Minister of Finance between January 2015 and July 2015, negotiating on behalf of the Greek government during the 2009-2018 Greek government-debt crisis. Since 2018, he has been Secretary-General of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) which is a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founded in 2016. His latest book is Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, which we'll be discussing in today's episode.

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Cover art: B. Mure Intermission music: "No State Solution" by Zombie Giuliani

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "World on Fire." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In this bonus Patreon episode, Robbie takes some time to reflect on the fires in the LA area and reads a piece that he wrote for Huffington Post which exposed the privatization of firefighting services during the 2018 Woolsey Fire in LA.

This episode in our reading series covers a wide variety of topics from climate change, forest mismanagement, how neoliberalism shapes our municipalities, the rise of fascism and cop cities, the role of mutual aid, the rise of private firefighting services (and the rich assholes who utilize them while simultaneously working for the defunding of public services), the oligarchs who run California's agriculture industry, the connection between imperialism and climate change, and much more.

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Related episodes:

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This is a free preview of the episode "Four Ways to Be Anticapitalist." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

Can capitalism be reformed? Or does it have to be smashed? This is an age-old question that has generated much discussion, debate, and disagreement on the left. In this episode of our Patreon reading series, Della joins Robert to discuss these questions within the context of a Jacobin piece written by the late Erik Olin Wright, "How to Be an Anticaptialist Today."

Can capitalism be tamed? Can it be eroded? Can it be escaped? Or must it be smashed? In exploring and answering these questions, Della and Robert cover a wide variety of topics from historical materialism, Marxism, Leninism, anarchism, prefigurative politics, and much, much more. We synthesize learnings from many of our recent episodes, explore how we've developed in our analysis since some of our older episodes, bring in explorations of history and theory, and explore what has changed and shifted in the last decade of capitalism in the West.

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Capitalism, imperialism, monopoly—far from being separate concepts that just happen to take shape parallel to one another or to overlap from time to time, these terms all really refer to the exact same overall process. We call it capitalism because it's not always practical to call it "monopoly capitalism in its imperialist stage" or something like that, but really, capitalism is, as we'll see, inevitably monopolistic and imperialist.

The process of capitalism's historical evolution from its so-called, and somewhat fabricated stage of free-enterprise to monopoly capitalism, and then further into what we refer to as imperialism, was outlined both theoretically and empirically by Vladamir Lenin well over a century ago in his classic text, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. The connection between monopoly and imperialism might not seem quite straightforward to you at first, and an understanding of imperialism itself as a process grounded in political economy may seem somewhat counterintuitive—especially if you're used to thinking of imperialism and empire in the more popular sense of the words. But that's why we've brought on two guests to walk us through this crucial text and help us make sense of it all.

Alyson Escalante and Breht O'Shea are the hosts of Red Menace, a podcast that explains and analyzes revolutionary theory and then applies its lessons to our contemporary conditions, and they're both return guests of the show. In fact, they've been on a number of times to talk about other texts by Lenin but also to explore a wide variety of topics from trans liberation to revolutionary Buddhism. Breht is also the host of the terrific podcasts Revolutionary Left Radio and Shoeless in South Dakota.

In this episode, we unpack Lenin's Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. This episode is an excellent introduction to the text but it also takes deep dives and gets granular at times, picking apart the nuances and various interpretations of the text. We explore the historical context in which Lenin wrote this book and then trace capitalism's history from its early stages into its monopoly form. We explore how finance capital emerged and became similarly concentrated, how this merging of concentrated finance and industrial capital began to spread out from capitalist countries into the periphery and began to carve up the world, and how this process led to what we now understand to be capitalism's final and highest stage: imperialism. And, of course, we apply the text to a variety of current events and explore how we can apply Lenin's ideas in ways that help us grow and strengthen our socialist movements globally.

Further Resources

Related Episodes:

Cover art: From WellRed Books' edition of Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism Intermission music: "Fallin' Rain" by Link Ray

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.