Marxist radio program online

[Christopher Hill]

This forum would be the best bet.. I suppose you could also try text messaging (530)-321-8534 (This is my personal number, so no funny business please)

[Joshua Purcell]

The amount the working class produces is not returned back to us after our services is given to the capitalist organization.

Means of production should be owned by the working class.

The working class is the nothing more than the majority of the people in society.

[Joshua Purcell]

I'll make posts here during the show that go in line with what you are saying and possibly expand on that in some meaningful way... because of that these posts won't make much sense after the show :D

[Joshua Purcell]

Competition, as far as the wage labor is concerned, only means a race to the bottom. Paying higher wages is incompatible with generating a higher profit.

[Joshua Purcell]

One argument against Marxism (Socialism, Communism, etc.) that I constantly hear is that it bases too much of the blame on this class system, but this class system is ascendable (unlike race, for example). The ability to ascend this supposed class system proves to the capitalist that the arguments against this class system are unfounded.

Yes, some individuals will always be able to ascend this capitalist class system, unlike race. But these capitalist are also many times individualists, and because of this they tend to narrow in on the individual and forget about the majority in this case (and many others). Capitalism cannot work unless the majority is denied access to the majority of the wealth and resources that our society has generated. A good example of this is the ever increasing wealth gap in the US.

[Joshua Purcell]

Another example of how the government is merely a tool of the ruling class is the fact that there is really no change between any administration who takes power... Obama is no different than Bush on a whole range of issues, and in fact many of the same people in the previous administration are now working in Obama's administration.

[Joshua Purcell]

It would be nice to talk about ways in which we can help change this capitalist system at some point in the show.

The main ways I know anyone can help to further these goals (and in turn work against the current inability of government to get anything done) is to:

- read about the issues (from places other than the major media)
- ask questions (on this show, various working class groups like WIL, etc.)
- become aware of what is good for the majority of society as compared to what is good for the individual. Realize that the collective good and the individual good does not work against each other... any individual only has as much freedom, as many rights, and in turn as much power as any other individual in the long-term. The real long-term sustainable power is gained through individuals working together collectively. Until that happens people will work to fight their oppression.

[Joshua Purcell]

Many people have an understandably bad connotation with the term nationalizing, and for that matter government. But the definition of government that many people have (which matches what we have now in the US) is NOT what a democratic government looks like. The government should be a vehicle of the people, the public... not the private undemocratic organizations that have control over our government at this point.

[Joshua Purcell]

Does a revolution have to be violent? Well, will the small minority of people who control the vast majority of wealth, resources and power give up that power without a fight? Of course they won't! If they would, then without a doubt the coming revolution would have no need to be violent. The fight against oppression directed towards the majority by the minority will always continue, that will be constant until the situation changes. It is up the minority, who control the power and resources, to decide whether or not the coming change in this situation is violent or not.

[Joshua Purcell]

twitter may be a better method of communication during the show, or just another avenue not sure. The show is being discussed and questions are being asked now on twitter... check #birdstreetradio

[Joshua Purcell]

Something that came up on twitter during the show was (I think) a good topic for an upcoming show... the differences between the various leftist ideologies. Now this would definitely not be an easy one... anyone would obviously be biased towards their chosen ideology and we are no exception to that. Some of the ideologies that are most likely to be considered leftist (but would be up for debate like many other things) are:

Marxism, socialism, communism, anarchism, libertarianism (the real historical kind, not what passes for it here in the US conservative circles), Stalinism, Maoism, Leninism, Trotskyism, etc. It would be difficult to attempt to explain what the differences are between all of these (some more than others), but a brief description and the important differences between each may make for an interesting show. There are plenty of other leftist ideologies that could be mentioned... maybe revleft and wikipedia would be a good place to get a more complete list as well as some of the details on each. I wouldn't recommend asking for a description of these various ideologies on revleft though, because it will only turn into a flamefest and you will get very little useful information... wikipedia and here would be much better in that regard.

That brings up the other important thing... featuring this topic in one of your upcoming shows would most likely piss someone off. But hey that can be both good and bad right!? I'm much more in favor of working with people who are 80% in favor of what I am for rather than griping over the 20%, but it's up to you how you would like to handle it for the show of course. Your descriptions could either focus on the similarities between the others or focus on the differences... it may be more informative to focus on the differences.

What do you think about this idea? A twitter user named alpharowe3 first brought up this question during the show and I expanded on it here.

[Antonio Balmer]

I appreciate your work outlining the comments from the show and your input, as well as helping to spread the word on twitter and elsewhere. I've been working all weekend out of town so I haven't had internet access but I was able to glance at your comments briefly during the show. I think it's great that there's dialogue going on and people are responding to the show. I have no experience with twitter, but maybe my Oroville comrade Chris Hill could figure that out and work with that during the show. I think what would be ideal is to get comrades to call in and discuss with us on the air. As far as the idea to have a show covering different leftist tendencies, it sounds like a great idea to me. I know I would love to watch/hear a program about this topic. My only problem is that I am so limited in my knowledge of other tendencies. Trotskyism has always proved itself to me to be such a rational and complete set of ideas, I've never been let down or unsatisfied by studying this. So consequently I don't understand the mind of people who call themselves stalinists or maoists. I know a bit about Anarchists though, and I know a decent amount on libertarianism. So maybe I can go with that plan in this upcoming show, if not a future one. Thanks so much again for supporting our efforts here. Our audience is steadily growing and I hope it continues. I would love to feature some more WIL comrades on the air to get other people talking and sharing so it's not just me every week.

[Joshua Purcell]

I will call in when I can for sure, but it is hard most of the time since my kid is sleeping in the next room. I'm sure I'll be able to work something out in the future though, and either way I'll be using this forum and twitter to communicate before and during shows. Twitter actually works well because the website we use to view/hear the show has twitter integrated into the page. Listeners can just log in and chat while they watch the show, which is what we were doing last week.

One thing that I just wanted to mention as a potential future discussion point for your show is a focus on conservative libertarianism. This would be good because I strongly feel that many people who consider themselves conservative libertarians are very confused...

Conservative libertarians many times see the exact same problems those of us on the left do, but these conservatives focus like a laser on the big bad government... and justifiably no doubt! But in the process they completely miss the underlying reason why the organization that we currently know as the government (or the state) is in bureaucratic mess it is in, which is the private organizations that have been built over time by the capitalist system. Our government is only serving the interests of these private organizations when it should actually be protecting and serving people from these organizations.

Conservative libertarians have forgotten much of what the historic definition of libertarianism actually stands for, and many of them are under the false impression that they are working to build up some type of revolution. In order to have a revolution though, you have to actually be working to change something, and it has to be for the good of the people. Working to stop the only hope for democratic control, the state, over these private organizations that are in no way democratic is nothing but counter-revolutionary. Conservative libertarians' view of history only goes back so far as their dear old grandpa working on his farm milking cows back in the good ol' days, where he could set up shop where ever he wanted and government (or big business) didn't have any say in the matter. They only see the eventual shutting down of grandpa's farm as a product of the big bad government making it impossible for the small business to compete. And all of this is true! But it only takes a second to see WHY the government actually passed laws that made it hard on smaller businesses... because the bigger businesses wanted to remove more of the competition and take over more of the market for their commodity.

I really don't know why this concept is so hard for conservatives to understand, and my hope is that it is only because they haven't looked into it. I'm also hopeful because, like I mentioned above, conservative libertarians and many leftist groups have identified many of the same problems with our current situation. It is just a matter of showing some of the more understanding of this group that there is a system that has been working to create this situation, and it is a process that will continue unless we focus on the root causes of the problem (instead of just the symptoms we see in the bureaucratic mess we now call our government).

Martin Luther King Jr. said something along these lines in a speech he gave over the war in Vietnam, where he said "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar....it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring". I say that true Libertarianism is more than dismantling the laws and regulations that stop people from having a better quality of life... it is dismantling the system that produces these laws and regulations.

I've discussed this topic alot with people and think it would make for a great show. Let me know what you think.

[Antonio Balmer]

You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this topic. I know so many people who think this way you're describing, especially small-business owners. I will most definitely be planning a show on this topic. I am going to start a new topic about this. Thanks for bringing this up I want to continue to clarify this ideology.

[Antonio Balmer]

Revolution Radio starting in a few minutes!