Rev Left Radio

Alyson and Breht apply dialectical and historical materialist analysis to the current war of aggression in Iran. Together they break down the Marxist methodology into its three main parts - dialectics, materialism, and history - and showcase how they apply to the US and Israeli war on Iran, before bringing them back together into a coherent whole. Then they compare and contrast dialectical and historical materialism as a mode of analysis to other forms of analysis: from academic modes like liberal internationalism and Realism to common popular modes like conspiracy theories and moralism.

Throughout the process, they aim to show the superior clarity and demystification offered by Marxism in understanding our world, as it unfolds in real time. 
 
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In this episode, public school history teacher Gianni joins Breht to trace the historical roots of our current political and economic crisis -- democratic breakdown, endless war, institutional distrust, rising authoritarianism, and deepening inequality -- back through the George W. Bush administration and the early 2000s. Together, they explore the contested election of 2000 and the Supreme Court's decisive intervention, the burial of that crisis in American political memory, the continuation and intensification of neoliberal economics through tax cuts, deregulation, and financialization, the role of No Child Left Behind in reshaping public education along market lines, the rise of neoconservatism and the ideological drive toward the Iraq War, the structural forces behind U.S. imperial policy across administrations, the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and Israeli strategic interests, the 2008 financial collapse and the total lack of accountability for elites, the devastation of working-class communities through war and economic crisis, the transition from Bush to Obama and the limits of liberal restoration, the conditions that gave rise to Trump, and more!
Follow Gianni and The People's Classroom on Instagram @thepeoplesclassroom315 
 
Check out his full lectures on YouTube HERE
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Check out our NEW REV LEFT MERCH with Goods For The People HERE
Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Breht reads and reacts to "A Letter To The American People" written by Masoud Pezeschkian, the Iranian president, as a ground invasion of some sort seems imminent.

Check out our new design in collaboration with Goods for the People HERE
 
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In this episode, we're joined by professor Joel Wainwright (co-author of Climate Leviathan) to discuss his newest book, The End: Marx, Darwin, and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis. Together, Breht and Joel explore the intellectual impact Charles Darwin had on Karl Marx, and why it matters for the ecological crisis of our time. Wainwright argues that Marx's study of Darwin helped him develop a distinctly Marxian concept of natural history, reshaping how he understood history, nature, and capitalism itself. Reading Capital through this lens, they unpack how Marx's critique becomes an ecological critique: capitalism as a social formation that reorganizes the human–Earth relation, producing crisis, "surplus" populations, and new forms of domination - and have some fun disagreements along the way. They close by asking what this natural-historical Marx can contribute to building an eco-socialist alternative beyond capitalist growth and climate catastrophe.
Check out Breht and Alyson's previous episode on Climate Leviathan HERE
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Matthew Vernon Whalan joins the show to discuss Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, an interview-driven, investigative journalistic, and collectively narrated portrait of life inside Bullock Correctional Facility in Alabama.

Through the words of incarcerated people themselves, we explore the everyday realities that rarely make it into public view: mental health crisis and predation, sewage and infrastructure collapse, cruel and unusual punishment, sleep deprivation, violence, drugs and overdose, and the informal social orders that take shape when official protection fails. This book is truly an act of witness -- and a demand that we look directly at what incarceration actually does to human beings. Once examined, we can see the U.S. prison system as a disturbing microcosm of the pathologies infecting and eating away at the broader American society. 
Support Matthew and his work directly on Venmo @Matthew-Whalan-1
Get 15% off any book at Left Wing Books HERE
Check out our previous episode with Project Hope t0 Abolish the Death Penalty HERE
 
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Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
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Learn more about Rev Left HERE