Auxiliary Statements

04/06/2021

Yeah yeah this one SOUNDS boring but what if I told you we'll be covering...labor time calculation???

Alright that may also sound boring but if we want to be calling ourselves co**ies and running around calling for an end to capitalism we've got to have an idea of HOW our new world will function. And gosh darn it that is exactly what these people did with this here book.

Ever wonder how production/distribution will operate without exploitation? What would an economy look like without coercion? Well it's all covered in this dang book and let me say...it's waaaaaay more simple than you might think. As our councilist friends would say...ABOLISH WAGE LABOR - WORK IS THE MEASURE OF CONSUMPTION!

This book effing rocks.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

28/05/2021

This week the fellas interview.....a former member of parliament?? Boy how'd they con their way into that one.

You read that right folks, this week we sat down to talk to Thelma Walker, a one time UK Member of Parliament who, after Corbyn had his so-called "whip" removed, had the guts to do what some of us couldn't...leave the Labour Party. But Thelma's career didn't stop there! She recently sat as a candidate for Hartlepool's by-election under the socialist Northern Independence Party and is working hard to build a small party coalition of democratic socialists to rival Labour.

Will the North ever get out from under Westminster's boot? How can we deal with centrist Labourite trolls? Where does the North start? All these questions and more are answered here by the incredible and inspiring Thelma Walker! Woo hoo!

Follow Thelma on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Thelma_DWalker
Follow Thelma and Tom's podcast here (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED): https://twitter.com/thettllpodcast?lang=en
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE: shorturl.at/gmyNU

07/05/2021

Wait a minute, you're telling me America was founded by the same syphilitic capitalists who ruined England??

This week the boys dust off some Foner to take a look at the role of labor in the founding of these here United States. Was the War of Independence a fully bourgeois revolution? Or did labor power and class struggle have something to do with it? Methinks they did.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

29/04/2021

This week our rotund podcast hosts kick back, watch a movie, and try to answer that question that has been haunting humanity since the early-1940s: was Robert McNamara cringe?
The answer is yes. So strap in as the lads take a look at documentary-guy Errol Morris' 2003 classic "The Fog of War".

The movie profiles McNamara as he goes from common Irishman to rare Irishman in his long career as war criminal and professional Numbers Guy. If only he had been born in a baseball town...he may have invented sabermetrics five decades early instead of using his gifts to kill as many people as possible. Makes you wonder about Szymborski.....

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

27/04/2021

This week Jack and Dan trade one big M Marxist for another, Milliband is out, Mattick is in. It’s quite a stark reversal, from a strategy of revolutionary reformism to one of spontaneous action by the workers and their primary organisational arm, the workers council.
That’s right, Council Communism is on the docket for this weeks show and if we know one thing by now the lads always stand ready to be wooed by yet another camp of communists. Mattick’s critique of the reformist left is withering as he calls for not the revival of the old and moribund workers movement but an entirely new one. Is this an ultra-left podcast now?

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

26/04/2021

Be prepared to raise a glass and shed a tear this week as Jack and Dan part ways with their guiding light, their north star, Auxiliary Statements God Emperor, Ralph Miliband. That’s right, your dogged and persistent hosts have finally dusted off their worn and tattered copies of Marxism and Politics for one final time.

This week, a discussion of Marxist strategy as the question is asked whether capitalism can be overthrown by reform within the bounds of constitutional legality or by resorting to revolutionary insurrection. We get from Miliband what we’ve come to expect, a lay of the land account provided in the form of a comprehensive historical overview of the various debates, as well as that rarest of things, an honest to god opinion from the patriarch as He tells us what He actually thinks!

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

02/04/2021

I think we all knew this was the logical conclusion of the last few episodes. The lads are at it again, with Jack well on his way to becoming a primitivist and Dan doing all he can to keep things on the level (no pun intended). In this episode your begrimed hosts discuss England's most radical moment - the occupation of St. George's Hill by Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers in 1649. However! Dan and Jack quickly realize they read two completely different texts! Jack read arch-revisionist Eduard Bernstein and Dan read proud Yorkshireman Christopher Hill. The outcome? A pretty good conversation tbh.

NOTE: THIS PODCAST DOES NOT ENDORSE DIGGING. ALL DIGGING SHOULD BE REPORTED TO THE NO-TILL AUTHORITIES

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

26/03/2021

Yeah if this Karl Marx guy was so great why didn't he ever write about chicken tractors?? Huh, nerd!?
That's what I thought. This week the lads are dipping their malformed little toes into the pond of prepping for capitalist collapse. What would a collapse look like? What should I do to prepare? Do I buy more guns or less guns? Who am I and why am I here? All these questions and MORE will be answered in this week's episode when we talk to Andy and Elliot from the phenomenal Poor Prole's Almanac Podcast. Go give them a listen!!!! Nerd!!!!
LISTEN TO POOR PROLE'S HERE: https://linktr.ee/PoorProles
WATCH THE FULL LIVESTREAM INTERVIEW HERE: https://bit.ly/3fiTrqz
ALL THE AUXILIARY STATEMENTS LINKS:
https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

22/03/2021

Punk Philosophers

19/03/2021

What do, Egyptian mummified cats, the battlefields of the Napoleonic wars, and millions of tons of South American bird poo have in common? The answer to this and some hopefully more useful and pertinent questions will be revealed on this weeks show as Jack and Dan continue their foray into the world of ecological theory. The lads read some John Bellamy Foster and learn all about how Karl Marx was, contrary to popular perception, a deeply ecologically minded thinker who was all too aware of the environmental destruction wrought by our old foe capitalism.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

12/03/2021

This week Jack and Dan read some blooming Bookchin. An anarchist! And a shockingly prophetic one at that. The boys ask, is mankind a part of nature or does it stand apart from it? What constitutes an ecological system and in what ways are social systems analogous to ecological ones? What is going on in the syphilis addled brains of the British aristocracy? Also the lads are now firmly committed to the no dig revolution which one suspects is largely because it accords with their generally lazy disposition.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

05/03/2021

We've put together a short video primer on Stafford Beer's 'Viable System Model'. We'd love for you to check it out and follow the channel too.

A short introduction to Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) and the potential for its use today.Further reading: https://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsm...

05/03/2021

That's right folks, your brave podcasters have officially made it to T W E N T Y episodes of this here show. And you know what that means: we're phoning it in for another clip show.
What have the boys learned over the last ten episodes? Does any of it matter? Is Marxism a legitimate tool for understanding the current state of things? Was Tom Morello in an episode of Star Trek?
We answer none of these questions except the last one in this absolute knock-down-drag-out BARNBURNER of an ep. Thanks to everyone who's been listening! Go SPIDERS!!

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

03/03/2021

I don't know dude...what if time had like.......a fourth dimension?

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

26/02/2021

Drum roll please! Welcome back to the show, podcast favourite, returning champion, and all round class act, Ellen Meiksins Wood! The lads discuss Meiksins Wood’s defence of EP Thompson’s theories of class against his structuralist and analytic Marxist critics. Discussion ranges from the origins of capitalism, to processes of class formation, and the place of class in politics today. Also covered; the comedy skits of Jerry Cohen.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

19/02/2021

Hark! In the distance. What's that noise? Them's the dulcet tones of the boys talkin' some more Milly Band.
So buckle in, hunker down, tune in, drop out and buckle up for one H-E-double-hockey-sticks of an episode, because this week we're talking about the necessity of a working class party capable of overthrowing this garbage can of a world we currently inhabit. In a twist, during this episode Dan winds up becoming a Stalinist and Jack a Maoist (owing to his propensity of relentless self-criticism). Who said we can't all get along?
Shout-out to our friends in the Cleveland DSA! Go Spiders!!

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

12/02/2021

It's revolution folks! Or is it? This week Jack and Dan take their first look at the German revolution of 1918/19; that most sorrowful of events in the history of the international workers movement where the world failed to turn and the revolutionary wave that began in Russia in 1917 was so abruptly halted. The boys discuss the revolutionaries’ failures, the duplicity of the Social Democrats, the workers councils, and the revolution’s place in the history of German. Reading: Problems of the German Revolution 1918-19 by Reinhard Rürup (1968)

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

09/02/2021

What’s this, a new series from the Auxiliary Statements boys! Jack and Dan attempt to conquer the commanding heights of political economy and dip their toe where the big fish swim. That’s right, Big Daddy Marx’s Capital is the topic of this hopefully irregularly regular new offering to your podcast feed. Will these new acolytes to Marxology flounder or will they fly? Only time will tell.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

05/02/2021

What's that? The lads are a little late getting around to talking about this book? Everyone already talked about it on their podcasts two years ago? Well better late than never I always say.
This week our beautiful brave boys Dan and Jack create a summoning circle of sorts in an attempt to revive the calculation debate. Spoiler alert: markets are bad, folks. Also on the docket, Dan defends the Borg. Again.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

29/01/2021

The boys make a return to Allende’s Chile this week with the conclusion of their sketch of its all too brief flirtation with cybernetic planning. Jack and Dan look at what exactly it was that cybernetician Stafford Beer proposed as a model for real-time decentralised economic management in Chile. They explore the highs, the lows, and some lessons that can be drawn from Project Cybersyn.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

22/01/2021

Well look who stopped by!
Today Dan and Jack are joined by Marxist Podfather Tom O'Brien from the From Alpha to Omega Podcast.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

15/01/2021

This week Jack and Dan try to get to grips with the hip new theory on the block; Cybernetics! Our story starts in 1970s Chile. The boys learn all about how an eccentric British cybernetician named Stafford Beer came to be in the employ of the Socialist administration of president Salvador Allende. What does this management consultant have to teach a bunch of democratic socialists and how might business management theory come to inform our glorious communist future?

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

09/01/2021

Recorded before the events in DC so you won't have to sit through any current event hot takes! That's the Auxiliary Statements promise, baby.
What's it been, six episodes since we talked about our boy Ralph??
This week Dan and Jack climb back aboard the Mili-train to talk a little bit more about the state. Is there a difference between bourgeois republicanism and fascism? Yeah for sure. Are they both bad? Oh yeah most definitely.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

02/01/2021

Here at Axiliary Statements HQ we are gonna try "dance better".

Woody Guthrie's New Year's resolution for 1943.

01/01/2021

Happy new year one and all!

Today's the day folks! Jack and Dan make their best effort to explain why the podcast has the title it does; what is an auxiliary statement? The boys dive deep into some philosophy of science and do there upmost to stay vaguely afloat as they wrestle with the ultimate question, what is scientific investigation and how is it done (and more importantly not done)? Theory is nothing without practice! Pretty rich coming from a theory podcast I hear you exclaim.

https://linktr.ee/AuxiliaryStatementsPodcast

29/12/2020

For the first episode of our mid-week mini-episode series (known henceforth as Adjunct Statements) Jack takes a dive into the greatest book ever written...State and Rev-, uh, I mean The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.
Why the hell is this in my co**ie podcast feed you ask? Not sure, but Jack does his best to explain what use this big ol' book could be to socialists, nerds and freaks today.

https://m.soundcloud.com/auxiliarystatements/adj-1

25/12/2020

Well would you look at that. Dan and Jack have made it to 10 episodes. We couldn't be more proud of our boys, could we folks? This week they take a look back at everything they've read so far in an attempt to draw parallels and maybe a conclusion or two. But after 10 lovely episodes, only one thing is for sure - Louis Althusser was and remains to this day, an anarchist icon.
Happy holidays from the Auxiliary Statements family. Hope you're all staying safe. If you're like us, today is just another cold day in December that has no pagan overtones to speak of. Perhaps it should be that way every year?

https://m.soundcloud.com/auxiliarystatements/episode-10