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Radio Free Humanity is a podcast covering news, politics and philosophy from a Marxist-Humanist perspective. It is co-hosted by Brendan Cooney and Andrew Kliman. We intend to release new episodes every two weeks. Radio Free Humanity is sponsored by Marxist-Humanist Initiative (https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org), but the views expressed by the co-hosts and guests of Radio Free Humanity are their own. They do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of MHI. Click here for a list ...
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Resuming a discussion of Paul Raekstad’s “Karl Marx’s Realist Critique of Capitalism,”the co-hosts respond to the book’s interpretation of Marx’s conception of socialist society. Paul contends that socialism, for Marx, centers on democratic planning, ending the division of labor, and distribution according to need. The co-hosts discuss important fe…
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Marc LiVecche joins Providence contributor Keith Pavlischek and the Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz on a wide-ranging exploration of Israel's war against Hamas and adjacent themes. Taking place on the leeward side of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, they discuss ongoing antisemitism as it exploded on American colle…
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Co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly welcome past guest and Marxist-Humanist Ralph Keller on the show to discuss the status of the Ukrainian struggle against Putin’s invasion. They discuss the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, the rising resistance in Russian, and the imperative need for foreign aid to Ukraine’s struggle. Keller’s report has y…
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Co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly discuss Marxist-Humanist Initiative’s upcoming editorial “TheNew Stage of Struggle Against Trumpism.” The co-hosts, and the editorial, consider the situation we all faceafter Trump’s second election. In particular, they discuss the current lack of a concerted resistance, the electedDemocrats who are toyin…
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Author and communications expert Tim Ward joins co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly to discuss what it means to stand up for truth in politics. The discussants considered how the Harris campaign handled the issue of post-truth politics, how Trump will continue to erode truth, and cognitive biases that help fuel the power of post-truth lies.…
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Author and communications expert Tim Ward joins co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly to discuss what it means to stand up for truth in politics. The discussants considered how the Harris campaign handled theissue of post-truth politics, how Trump will continue to erode truth, and cognitive biases that help fuel the power of post-truth lies. …
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Carlos Ezquerra and Sebastián Hernandez join co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly to discuss the rising influence of libertarianism in the Spanish-speaking world. Much of the discussion focuses on the influential book “Anti-Marx,” published by Spanish libertarian Juan Ramón Rallo in 2022, and Andrew’s recent response to it. Andrew demonstrat…
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Radio Free Humanity celebrates its 125th episode with a two-hour Zoom chat between participants and the co-hosts, Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly. Listeners and some former guests joined the co-hosts on Zoom to make comments or ask questions. The discussion was overwhelmingly focused on the 2024 American presidential election and its consequence…
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The co-hosts welcome Christos Balomenos of the University of Athens to discuss his recent articles that seriously challenge Michael Heinrich’s allegations against Marx’s falling-rate-of-profit theory. After painstaking archival research, Christos flatly rejects Heinrich’s claims that Marx had second thoughts about the theory and that Engels’ editin…
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The world looks very different a year after the Iran-orchestrated Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023. With Israeli counterstrikes in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran itself—and with hatred for Israel reaching an all-time high around the world—it’s worth asking what it all means. In this episode, Marc LiVecche talks with Providence’s co-founder and Editor…
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Jane Michaels, a Marxist-Humanist and lifelong rural white Wisconsinite, joins the cohosts to discuss Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman’s recent book, “White Rural Rage.” They talk about the book’s focus on rural whites as the base of Trumpism and resurgent authoritarianism in the US, negative feedback the book has received, J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Ele…
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The co-hosts interview Paul Reitter and Paul North, co-editors of the new English edition of volume 1 of Marx’s "Capital,” which Reitter also translated. Much of the discussion explores differences between the new translation and previous ones. They also discuss why Reitter decided to produce a new translation; the co-editors’ collaborative process…
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Aaron Williams talks with the co-hosts about his experiences during decades of work as a union staff member. He stresses that the job of a staffer is “not emancipatory,” because a union is a “service organization.” He and the co-hosts also talk about how the labor movement and the challenges it faces have changed over the years, including some posi…
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Episode 116: Is There Life After Tankieism?: BadMouse Recants, BadMouths StalinismThe co-hosts welcome Dave, aka BadMouse, who was a prominent Stalinist YouTuber but has since recanted. They discuss why some youth find Stalinism appealing, and why Dave himself turned to it. He then recounts how and why he became disillusioned. He and the co-hosts d…
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In the midst of ongoing debate regarding the military service record of Democratic party vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, Providence's Marc LiVecche spoke with Marine Corps veterans Mac Owens and Keith Pavlischek to clarify the real issues. Focusing on the charge that Walz placed his own interests over his duty to his men by retiring rather th…
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The co-hosts welcome Ralph Keller, author of “Treating the TSSI Like a Dead Dog: A Response to Seth Ackerman,” which responds to a “Jacobin” piece by Ackerman. Ralph explains why he regards Ackerman’s conduct as “unscholarly” and “intellectual immorality.” He calls out Ackerman for ignoring the fact that the “Okishio theorem” has been disproven. He…
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The co-hosts respond to Suresh Naidu’s piece in “Jacobin,” “What Marx Really Meant.” They begin by discussing norms of interpretation (of texts and of history), with emphasis on why principled interpretation is ethically important. They critique Brill, a major publisher, for insinuating that texts can’t be misinterpreted. They then respond in detai…
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Gabriel and Andrew welcome William Clare Roberts, author of Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of “Capital,” in which he reads the first volume of Capital as a work of political theory. They discuss differences between this and other ways of reading Capital, its engagement with Proudhonism and related non-Marxist tendencies on the left, Marx’s re…
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The co-hosts expose a real-world case of spurious correlation—the correlation between industry-level “values” and “prices,” drawing on chapter 11 of Andrew’s book, Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital,” and “Christianity versus Alternative Faith Bases,” his parody of the value-price correlation “studies.” They discuss why the value-price correlations are spu…
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Is the “law of value” specifically capitalistic, or does it also operate in socialism? What is the import of Marx’s claim that labor in capitalism is only indirectly social, but that it will be directly social in socialist society? If you’re a worker, what does that mean for you? To address these and related questions, Theresa Henry interviews Andr…
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Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly welcome Scott Homan and Chad Rhiger to discuss their film, “Witness Underground,” a documentary about young Jehovah’s Witnesses with a shared interest in music who managed to break free from the religion. They discuss Scott and Chad’s lives, the religion’s attitude to truth, and its cruel practice of shunning. The…
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Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly interview Yuval Idan, author of “To my Western leftist friends, from your leftist Israeli friend.” This widely read Medium post addresses Western leftists who treated Hamas’ terrorist attack as “an unfortunate situation,” “stayed silent,” or “lecture[d] us about context and resistance.”After recounting her own pol…
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Marc LiVecche hosts COL Keith Pavlischek, USMC (RET), long-time Providence contributor for a long-form discussion about the Israel-Hamas War. Points of focus include getting the meaning of proportionality right, the criticality of making basic distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong, causal and moral responsibility, and much else.Among …
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Radio Free Humanity Ep. 104: “‘From Each According to Their Ability, to Each According to Their Needs’—Part 2.” More of everything you always wanted to know about the principle. Current-events segment: the US autoworkers’ strike (w/Gabriel Donnelly).By MHI
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Andrew Kliman and Brendan Cooney discuss this famous principle of distribution, in the context of Marx’s work and as discussed in a recent Ph.D. dissertation by Edoardo Bellando, ”From Each According to His Ability, to Each According to His Needs”: What Could it Possibly Mean, and What Lies Behind this Marxian Principle? After briefly reviewing the…
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RFH celebrates its 100th episode with a two-hour Zoom chat between participants and the co-hosts. Anne Jaclard welcomes everyone, and then reads out participants’ chat questions and comments as well as greetings from former RFH guests; Brendan and Andrew respond. In this wide-ranging chat, the co-hosts and participants discuss a variety of politica…
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The co-hosts welcome Jane Michaels, who grew up in an outwardly apolitical environment in rural Wisconsin. They discuss her efforts to reason with family and friends who suddenly embraced Trump and Trumpism in 2016, why she failed, and the courage and independent thinking she displayed by refusing to join them and distancing herself from her past. …
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The co-hosts discuss “Trump’s Kryptonite,” an opinion survey and analysis recently issued by a Jacobin- aligned thinktank. Jacobin proclaims that the study shows that “economic populism can help progressives win more working-class voters,” but the co-hosts find that there’s less here than meets the eye. After detailing some of the weaknesses and am…
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The co-hosts welcome philosopher Susan Neiman to discuss her new book, Left Is Not Woke. Neiman separates her critique of “wokeism” from right-wing attacks on it and argues that woke ideology rejects key elements of leftist thinking, by rejecting “commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibil…
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The co-hosts welcome back Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, to discuss his new book, If It Sounds Like a Quack… A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine. Matt explains how the libertarian-instigated “medical freedom” slogan has helped to unite the quacks, make their fringe movement go viral, and threaten the future of evidence based healthcare. He and…
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