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Class is the official podcast of the National Political Education Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America. We believe working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few. Class is a podcast where we ask socialists about why they are socialists, what socialism looks like, and how we, as the working class, can become the ruling class.
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Send us a Text Message.Send us a Text Message.This is the second part of our conversation with Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heideman about U.S. politics, conflict within the Republican Party, and the current state of American democracy. We invited Saniv and Paul back onto the podcast as a follow-up to their 2022 presentation at the Socialism Conference in Chicago. Sanjiv Gupta is a member of the River Valley DSA chapter in Western Massachusetts and a sociologist at UMass-Amherst. Paul Heid...
Send us a Text Message.In today’s episode, we talk with Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heideman about U.S. politics, conflict within the Republican Party, and the current state of American democracy. We invited Saniv and Paul back onto the podcast as a follow-up to their 2022 presentation at the Socialism Conference in Chicago. Sanjiv Gupta is a member of the River Valley DSA chapter in Western Massachusetts and a sociologist at UMass-Amherst. Paul Heideman is a writer and high school teache...
Send us a Text Message.This episode is an attempt to make the first part of the Communist Manifesto, the part called “Bourgeois and Proletarians” intelligible for some one knew to socialism. This text is a part of the DSA NPEC “What is Capitalism?” curriculum. Written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this is one of the foundational texts of the socialist movement. The first chapter covers the expansion of capital and the consolidation of the bourgeoisie as a class, as well as t...
Send us a Text Message.Achieving the liberation of the queer community requires realizing the intersecting nature of all U.S. cultural oppressions — including class oppression — ties the liberation of all to the end of capitalism. Today, queer oppression is being used not only to sustain capitalism but to help grow fascism. When so many people’s personal hierarchy of needs requires them to spend their limited resources struggling simply to survive an onslaught of existential attacks, how does...
Send us a Text Message.In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote that “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” Almost two centuries later, the battle for democracy continues. Today, economic precarity and social upheavals have led many to question our present political system. In these times, DSA’s position that the United States is “no democracy at all” is a rousing and powerfu...
Send us a Text Message.Local DSA chapters have been conducting what is called Socialist Night School. Socialist Night School is a democratic space for people to participate in the education process. In today’s episode we talk with Guy Brown, Molly Culhane and Evan Moravansky. They are members of the National Political Education Committee. Evan is the chair. They will explain more about what the National Political Education Committee is, and they’ll explain much more about Socialist...
Send us a Text Message.Today we are talking with members of the Chicago Teachers Union, Ayesha Qazi, David Stieber and Hadeil Abdelfattah. As you may remember from our episode on the victory Chicago’s mayor, a former CTU member, Chicago’s students and educators have lived through a neoliberal hell. From 2003 to 2013 Chicago closed 50 schools, only making conditions for students worse. These closures moved the members of the teachers union to become militant. Their militancy changed the direct...
Send us a Text Message.DSA is becoming a true working class organization. Today we are continuing our conversation with three past and present members of DSA’s National Labor Commission, also known as the NLC. The National Labor Commission has several campaigns underway. We have talked about the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee or EWOC on this podcast a number of times.Ayesha Mughal was an NLC Steering Committee member from 2022-2023 and is currently a staff organizer on the Starbucks...
Send us a Text Message.This has been an important year for the labor movement and for DSA. Workers are seeing the value in forming a union and using the credible threat of a strike to win better pay, working conditions and political power. Today we are speaking with three past and present members of DSA’s National Labor Commission, also known as the NLC. The National Labor Commission has several campaigns underway. We have talked about the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee or EWOC on t...
Send us a Text Message.NPEC Presents: "Understanding the Israeli–Palestinian Colonial Conflict,” with featured speakers: Moshé Machover and Sumaya Awad.How should we understand what is taking place in Gaza and across occupied Palestine? What history do we need to know to understand and interpret the present? What can we do in the present to shape the future? Moshé Machover and Sumaya Awad will help us answer these questions.Moshé Machover, born in Tel Aviv in 1936, is a mathematician and soci...
Send us a Text Message.This episode is going to be different from prior episodes. Today we’re going to be talking about psychoanalysis. Marx esteemed scientific rationality. Many, including many socialists, reject psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience. I have my own questions, honestly. Nonetheless, there is a significant branch of Marxism grounded in Freudian psychoanalysis, including controversial yet influential thinkers like Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek.On Today’s episode I asked Michael ...
Send us a Text Message.October 7, 2023 Hamas executed a surprise attack on military and civilian Israeli targets, killing over 1200 people and taking around 200 hostages. Israel’s response to Hamas’s horrific actions has once again been disproportionate and genocidal. We demand a ceasefire and condemn any attacks on civilians. In recent years DSA has made solidarity with Palestine a priority. We already had plans to do an episode on Palestine soon, but due to recent events we wanted to p...
Send us a Text Message.Sara Nelson took office as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO on June 1, 2014, and she is currently serving her second four-year term.Sara became a United Airlines Flight Attendant in 1996 and has been a union activist since nearly the beginning of her career, including serving as strike chair and leading communications for nearly 10 years at AFA’s United chapter. In the summer of 2019, she addressed DSA’s largest ever ...
Send us a Text Message.Vivek Chibber is the guest on today’s episode, discussing his essay “Why the Working Class?” which maybe not so coincidentally is the name of our series. In this episode Vivek not only answers the question he proposes to answer, but he talks some about what socialism could look like, and DSA’s role to getting there.Vivek Chibber is a professor of sociology at New York University. He is the editor of Catalyst: a Journal of Theory and Strategy.NPEC Curriculum - Vivek Chib...
Send us a Text Message.Early forms of socialism envisioned a better world for everyone, and before socialist theory workers fought for autonomy and respect from their bosses, but Marx and Engels played an important role uniting the workers movement and socialist movement. Marx’s pamphlet “Wage Labor and Capital” is a concise text for articulating how capitalism functions, and how it exploits the workers. Marx had not yet fully developed his concept of labor power, which he explored in far gre...
Send us a Text Message.If you’ve been listening to this podcast for very long you probably already know the answer to the question “why the working class?” In some ways this question is the reason for existence for the podcast. We want to raise class consciousness. As members of the working class we have interests that do not align with the large business owners and investors. Only by coming together can we serve our interests: to live and flourish on this planet with each other sustainably.&...
Send us a Text Message.Today’s episode part 2 of a 2 episode series on the National Convention, one of the primary democratic mechanisms within the structure of DSA. To discuss the national convention Justin Charles from the NPC will return. We’ll also be joined by Renée Paradis. Both are members of the Platform and Resolutions Subcommittee.Links:2023 DSA Convention2023 DSA Convention Compendium (Resolutions)Register for NPEC's Comradely Disagreement and Debate Training: July 27th Join the Na...
Send us a Text Message.Today’s episode will be the first of a 2 episode series on the National Convention, one of the primary democratic mechanisms within the structure of DSA. To discuss the national convention Justin Charles from the NPC will return. We’ll also be joined by Renée Paradis. Both are members of the Platform and Resolutions Subcommittee.Justin Charles is a member of North Brooklyn DSA, and has been a member of the DSA National Political Committee since July 2020.Renée Paradis i...
Send us a Text Message.Something big has been happening in Chicago. If you have not heard, Chicago recently elected the most progressive mayor in the country. Brandon Johnson was endorsed by a variety of unions, especially the Chicago Teachers’ Union, of which he was previously a member and an organizer. He was also endorsed by Bernie Sanders. In this episode we have Miles Kampf-Lassin, a journalist from In These Times that followed the Brandon Johnson campaign, to talk about something w...
Send us a Text Message.What would a socialist economy look like? Sam Gindin stresses the importance of establishing the feasibility of an alternative socialist society for the development of a strong socialist movement. He presents a vision of a future socialism, and poses important questions that a socialist society will have to figure out.In this episode members of DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) discuss Sam Gindin's essay.José La Luz is a lifelong labor organizer and campaigner wi...
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