We Read Theory: Recent Episodes
We Read Theory
Mark and Alex take turns explaining famous works of Leftist political theory to each other and to their audience in simple, understandable terms
Theory is BACK! In this one, Alex leads Mark on a journey through the philosophy and practice of Anarcho-Syndicalism as told by Rudolf Rocker.
Mark and Alex investigate the first in a (non-continuous) series of socialist leaders from the 20th century and beyond. This week, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso!
Mark and Alex celebrate a year of theory by returning to the bearded chad that started it all. In this second installment of the Kropotkin Saga, the boys discuss the various ways in which mutual aid, rather than competition, has defined our social lives throughout history.
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Sources used in this episode:
"Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution: by Petr Kropotkin
This time the boys don't just read theory, they roast it. Mark and Alex explore the need for material analysis, what it means for an ideology to be incoherent, and why many definitions of freedom are misleading. And what better ideology to examine for this purpose than Libertarianism?
Mark and Alex run through Errico Malatesta's cafe dialogues, in which based and breadpilled anarchism enjoyer crushes small-brained conservatives in the arena of ideas
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Sources used in this episode:
"At the Cafe" by Errico Malatesta
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-at-the-cafe
Mark and Alex embark on the perilous journey of attempting to talk about economics without boring everyone to death. In particular, the boys investigate Modern Monetary Theory, a radical and relatively new perspective on money and the state.
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Sources used in this episode
From the State Theory of Money to Modern Money Theory: An Alternative to Economic Orthodoxy, By L. Randall Wray
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_792.pdf
Understanding the Economic Fallacies of the Intergenerational Debate, by Bill Mitchel and Warren Mosler
http://billmitchell.org/publications/journals/J51_2006.pdf
My Response to a German Critic, by Bill Mitchel
Part 1: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=38964
Part 2: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=38992
Part 3: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=39022
A Skeptic’s Guide to Modern Monetary Theory, By N. Gregory Mankiw
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/skeptics_guide_to_modern_monetary_theory.pdf
Mark and Alex take a look at Michael Parenti's "Blackshirts and Reds"
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Sources Referenced in this episode:
"Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti
"How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler" by John Broich https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/
"Confidence in Democracy and Capitalism Wanes in Former Soviet Union" from Pew Research https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/
Mark and Alex cover Antonio Gramsci's advice for political parties and defend the legacy of Machiavelli
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Works referenced in this episode:
All by Antonio Gramsci
"Brief Notes on Machiavelli’s Politics"
"Machiavelli and Marx"
"Politics as an Autonomous Science"
"Elements of Politics"
"The Political Party"
"Conceptions of the World and Practical Stances: Global and Partial"
"Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Economism"
"Prediction and Perspective"
"Analysis of Situations: Relations of Force"
"On Bureaucracy"
"The Theorem of Fixed Proportions"
"Number and Quality in Representative Systems of Government"
"Continuity and Tradition"
"Spontaneity and Conscious Leadership"
"Against Byzantinism"
"The Collective Worker"
"Voluntarism and Social Masses"
Mark and Alex take a look at some of the ways in which our mainstream understanding of mental health fails to combat the legacy of colonialism and its effects on the mental health of Indigenous communities
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Sources discussed in this episode:
"Patients' Diversity is Often Discounted" by Shankar Vedantam
"The Wretched of the Earth" by Frantz Fanon
"Challenging Hidden Assumptions: Colonial Norms as Determinants of Aboriginal Mental Health" by Sarah Nelson
"Piblokto and European-Inuit Relations" by Lyle Dick
Mark and Alex follow Fanon through a decolonial dialectic
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Alex stops shitposting for a while to read and discuss Angela Davis' thoughts on freedom with Mark.
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Link to literature: https://archive.org/details/AngelaDavis-LecturesOnLiberation/page/n1/mode/2up
Mark and Alex attempt at great pain to explain one of the most opaque concepts in Marxism and its implications
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Works Referenced in this Episode:
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Frederick Engels
Dialectics of Nature, Frederick Engels
Dialectical and Historical Materialism, J V Stalin
The Materialist Conception of History, Karl Kautsky
Mark and Alex take a walk through American history and learn some interesting lessons about race and class along the way.
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Mark and Alex finish their discussion of Alex Vitale's "The End of Policing," covering the drug war, gang suppression, border policing, and political policing.
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Mark and Alex begin their discussion of defunding police, covering the policing of schools, mental illness, homelessness, and sex work
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Mark and Alex examine the goals and expectations of a communal society as described by Abdullah Öcalan
Mark and Alex discuss how our worldview affects our ability to build fair institutions and combat climate catastrophe. Later, the boys put forth a mildly passionate defense of astrology.
Mark and Alex discuss the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault and explore its implications.
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Picking up where they left off last time, Mark and Alex explore Marx's famous critique step by step
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We all know Marxism is a thing and it's important but what is it exactly? Mark and Alex attempt to answer this question as concisely as possible.
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Mark explores the 1981 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II and the media narratives that formed around it.
Mark and Alex bridge the social distance to discuss the various shortcomings of a reform-based approach to Socialism.
Mark and Alex explore a number of ways Fascism has been defined over time and consider each definition's usefulness in describing and combating Fascism
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Mark takes Alex through the first half of Herman and Chomsky's analysis of the mass media, covering the five filters of media content and their effect on coverage of Latin American elections in the 1980s.
Mark and Alex discuss the various methods by which Capitalism asserts itself as fact rather than ideology and the effects of those methods on our mental well-being.
Mark teaches Alex about the stages of non-violent resistance and white moderates using one of Martin Luther King Jr's most famous texts
Introducing We Read Theory, a new podcast for anyone interested in gaining familiarity with the most famous and somewhat niche voices of leftist theory across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.