Our Socialist Book Club

Support the Girls is a one-bad-day film following Lisa (Regina Hall), the manager of a sports breastaurant called Double Whammies. This movie explores the worker-manager-owner relationship, the intersections of race, class, and gender in the workplace, and the cathartic nature of friendship and solidarity. We are joined by our friend and honored guest, Christee, an artist and worker in the food service industry. Thanks to Christee for recommending this film and for bringing her insight and experience to this episode! She puts it best: "Waiting tables in the United States is a performance art." This episode was recorded May 2019.

This week, we read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, a book that dissects the social, historical, and cultural theories implicit in our acceptance of the bullshitization of labor! Truly one of the most elegant and accessible approaches to this topic out there. Thanks to our honored guest and friend Larry for suggesting this one! Read it here on Anarchist Library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs Read his shorter article that preceded the book here: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ We structured this episode roughly around the five types of bullshit work defined by Graeber as: 11:00 duct tapers 12:25 flunkies 15:50 goons 23:45 box tickers 58:50 taskmasters Other Topics: 40:55 the cultural consensus around projects and policies benefiting the ruling class 1:00:00 Universal Basic Income 1:09:05 Moral envy and the systemic under-compensation of the caring professions 1:13:00 Caring, coercion, and the status quo Other Works Mentioned: 51:28 Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, and the rituals around data visualizations and 'predictive' data under capitalism. We reference the HBO documentary "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtDaP18OGfw 1:08:00 "baseball article" refers to this interview in Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/minor-league-baseball-pay-labor 1:20:00 Loic Wacquant's article, "Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0725513607082003 1:21:15 Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" https://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html 1:22:40 "Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements" by Francesca Polletta, who argues in favor of a practical and participatory democracy based in bottom-up decision making.

This week's article is a quick overview of one of the economic theories laying the groundwork for leftist discourse on government spending! Read the article here: https://democracycollaborative.org/content/modern-money-and-escape-austerity We go over some basic concepts, talk through some leftist criticisms of the theory, make some questionable forays into furry discourse re: Jack London, and do some transparent wrangling with our own socialistic instincts. Other texts: - We owe so much to the Season of the Bitch podcast on this very topic! As often happens, we had a bunch of questions about practical approaches to [literally any topic, this time economic redistribution], and SOTB magically came out with a podcast that gave us the language we needed to move forward. Listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/seasonofthebitch/episode-69-modern-monetary-theory - "A Speech on Socialism at Andover" by Nathan J. Robinson: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/a-speech-on-socialism-at-andover - Capitalism Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher http://www.zero-books.net/books/capitalist-realism "We can afford what we can do" is quoted in the article and refers to the book The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers by Ann Pettifor https://www.versobooks.com/books/2706-the-production-of-money

This week, we're reading We Want Everything by Nanni Balestrini! We discuss the novel's historical grounding in Italy's 1969 "Hot Autumn," track the main character's growth from alienated worker to organized revolutionary, and spend some time talking about Lydia's cat-shaped page stickies. Thanks to Hugh (our guest in Episode 7) for suggesting this one! Buy or preview the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2114-we-want-everything Other Texts Mentioned: "New Life" by Webcomicname: http://webcomicname.com/post/179690527329 "Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss" by Meagan Day: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/under-neoliberalism-you-can-be-your-own-tyrannical-boss

This week, we read the chapter "Conricerca as political action" by Guido Borio, Francesca Pozzi, and Gigi Roggero, published in the volume Utopian Pedagogy : Radical Experiments against Neoliberal Globalization. We talk about co-research and collaborative knowledge production, and we touch on worker's inquiry as method! Day, Richard J. F., Greig De Peuter, and Mark Coté. 2007. Utopian Pedagogy : Radical Experiments against Neoliberal Globalization. Cultural Spaces. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, ©2007

This week, special guest and dear friend HUGH joins us to share his experiences as a union organizer and to talk about Jane McAlevey's book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age! Many thanks to friend and organizer Melanie for suggesting this text. Other texts mentioned: The scandal involving Elon Musk, Grimes, and Azealia Banks - https://bit.ly/2BwUUHx Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky - https://bit.ly/2QFJYL5 The story of Elizabeth Holmes, technowizard darling turned fraud - https://nyti.ms/2MyAors We Want Everything by Nanni Balestrini - https://bit.ly/2D9RmvP

In this episode, we talk about the film Sorry to Bother You! We read two interviews with Boots Riley in Vox (https://bit.ly/2MC1h1w) and Jacobin Magazine (https://bit.ly/2ojKHVC). We also draw from the thoughts in this review by Eileen Jones (https://bit.ly/2LzzyZJ) and in this feminist critique in Bitch Magazine (https://bit.ly/2nL2rcc). Other texts we mention: - We briefly talk about nurses strikes at the 22 minute mark, and it's a topic we plan on returning to after we've done some more reading! This is the Labor Notes article that came to Lydia's mind mid-discussion: https://bit.ly/2MQvNEf - Martin took this quiz, "Which dystopia have I found myself in?" Super fun, very bleak: https://bit.ly/2PfAGEd - Here's a link to the SNL sketch we mention at the 25 minute mark, "Prison Job": https://bit.ly/2wu86Y9 Recorded August 12, 2018

In this episode, we read "Health, Health Care, and Capitalism" by Colin Leys, published in the Socialist Register, Vol 46, in 2010. Found on pages 7-23 of this PDF: https://bit.ly/2n6UjCz Some topics we cover: Grimes + Musk :(, the individualization of illness, the intersection of wealth and fame, Abdel Omran's theory of the epidemiological transition, and how the profit model makes our medicine and health care worse. This episode was recorded in May 2018.

In this episode, we covered a bunch of teachers' strikes that were in the news back in March 2018! This episode was recorded before the verdict of the Janus decision, but never fear: the outlook for unions is more hopeful than ever! ~Let's keep building together~ http://www.labornotes.org/2018/03/west-virginia-option https://jacobinmag.com/2018/04/oklahoma-teachers-strike-democratic-party-liberalism https://www.thenation.com/article/oklahoma-teachers-strike-for-a-fourth-day-to-protest-rock-bottom-education-funding/ http://www.labornotes.org/2018/03/inspired-west-virginia-teachers-spread-red-ed-movement-across-arizona https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2018/04/03/is_michigan_a_bellwether_for_teachers_unions_nationwide_110575.html http://www.labornotes.org/2018/03/only-way-survive-janus

This week, we talk about Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity by Micah Uetricht! You can buy it here: https://bit.ly/2tO9cfI You can also read a shorter article about the strike by the same author here: https://bit.ly/2tM3qv5 In this episode, we talk through our personal experiences with learning labor history, common social misconceptions about unions, and how unions can build the kind of power that transforms local politics. Also mentioned: Plasma donation! Allergy season! And the great article, "Trickle-Down Feminism" by Sarah Jaffe (https://bit.ly/2hxsggf)! This episode was recorded in March 2018.

This week, we read two short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (https://bit.ly/2t73WUe) and "The Day Before the Revolution!" (https://bit.ly/2FqBViD), two stories that explore grief, age, complacency, and revolution. Other topics covered in the first half hour: We talk openly about what it's like to first join a union in a "Right to Work" state and talk through some common questions (that we've since gotten some more satisfactory answers to), and we would love to hear about your own experiences with this! We also talk about executive dysfunction, time management, and good sleep under capitalism. This episode was recorded February 2018. Tweet at us @OSBookClub!

Martin and Lydia discuss Neoliberalized Knowledge by Wendy Brown! You can read it here: https://bit.ly/2JP14G6 You can also read the other work we mentioned, Marketing the Library? by Sarah Clark, here: https://bit.ly/2JAL1w7 We also talk about our intentions for this podcast and make some disclaimers about our complete lack of expertise and authority. You can find the "feudalism meme" we quoted ("Mister Gotcha" by Matt Bors at The Nib: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha Tweet at us: @OSBookClub