Revolutionary Left Radio

In this episode, Breht sits down with Ashwin Shantha to discuss the argument that China's green development is not only an environmental achievement, but also a profoundly political one. Drawing on Ashwin's essay "China's Green Development is Both Anti-Imperialist and Socialist," the conversation explores how China became the global leader in solar, wind, and electric vehicles through long-term planning, industrial policy, state capacity, and the disciplining of capital to broader social goals. Together, they examine the relationship between green development, national sovereignty, and anti-imperialism, asking why China has been able to carry out a large-scale green industrial transition while Western capitalist states have largely failed. The discussion also takes up the deeper theoretical question at the heart of the essay: whether China's model is best understood not as "state capitalism," but as a socialist market economy in which capital is subordinated to national development, ecological sustainability,

In this episode, Breht speaks with professor of history Dr. Afshin Matin-Asgari to discuss his book Axis of Empire: A History of Iran–US Relations, about the long arc of Iranian–American relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Matin-Asgari argues that U.S. policy toward Iran has been structured by enduring "imperial priorities," a framework that reframes familiar episodes such as the 1953 coup, the consolidation of the Shah (Pahlavi) client state, the revolutionary rupture of 1978–79, the hostage crisis, and the sanctions-and-war paradigm of the twenty-first century . Together, they discuss how state power, oil, militarization, the Israel lobby, imperialist aggression, American arrogance, and transnational political movements shaped this relationship. Finally, they analyze the current war in Iran through the lens of the history discussed. ---------------------------------------------------- Check out our NEW REV LEFT MERCH with Goods For The People HERE Support Rev Left and get access to bonus

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.    ---------------------------------------------------- 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 F

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 communit

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   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Learn more about Rev Left HERE

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

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 pre

In this episode, Breht interviews Adnan Husain -- Professor of Medieval history and Chair of the Religious Studies department at Queens college -- about the deep historical roots of today's Middle East. The conversation traces the arc from ancient Persia to the Islamic era, explores how Iran became a center of Shi'a Islam, and examines the long rivalry between Persian and Ottoman power. Along the way, they unpack the Sunni-Shia split, the political role of Turkey in the region, the ways Western narratives about Islam were forged through the Crusades and carried forward into the modern world, Zionist Expansionism, and the ongoing illegal war of aggression waged by the U.S. and Israel against Iran, and indeed, the whole region. Check out Adnan's previous appearences on Rev Left HERE Subscribe to Adnan's YouTube channel HERE Watch Adnan's 2 Part episode on Yemen HERE Listen to Guerrilla History podcast HERE --------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon Make a one-time don

Torkil Lauesen joins us to discuss his book Unequal Exchange: Past, Present, and Future and the hidden mechanics of modern imperialism. Lauesen returns to the tradition of Arghiri Emmanuel to argue that while the world market tends to equalize prices, wages remain radically unequal across borders -- driving a structural transfer of value from low-wage production zones to high-wage consumer economies. We walk through Lauesen's reconstruction of unequal exchange through Marx's value theory, the leading approaches to measuring global value transfer, and what contemporary estimates imply about the scale of the drain. From there, we explore the political consequences inside the Global North: why reformism and social democracy have often been stabilized by imperial arrangements, what that means for internationalism, and why the "imperial mode of living" is increasingly unstable. Finally, we turn to the shifting world order -- especially Lauesen's argument that a new mode of production may be emerging, best exemplif

(recorded on 3/1/26) - Breht went on Workers' Lit as a guest! "The American ruling class is at war. Physically, they are at war with Iran, pummeling the country with unrelenting airstrikes, slaughtering civilians, and doing their best to make yet another nation unlivable. But they are fighting another war: a psychological war against every one of us. They are building a world of declining literacy, misinformation, confusion, and fear. Combine those two wars and you get an apathetic American populace even as its own country murders untold innocents Breht O'Shea of RevLeft joins Aysha, Jen, and Jacob to discuss these dual wars and how we can fight back." Check out more from Workers' Lit here: https://www.workerslit.com/ Make a donation to Socialist Night School via Venmo @OmahaNightSchool

On this YT livestream (3/1/26) Alyson and Breht discuss the illegal war of aggression launched by the US and Israel against Iran. Throughout the discussion they take live questions from the chat.   Subscribe to your YouTube Channel 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/

Alyson and Breht discuss a range of current events, including Cuba, the Epstein Files, Iran and much more.  Make a donation to Socialist Night School via Venmo @OmahaNightSchool Outro Song: "to each their dot" by Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover ---------------------------------------------------- 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/

In this episode, we're joined by author and poet Too Black to unpack his essay "Nonviolence is violence, too: Somebody's gotta die," and to challenge the comforting myths that often surround "nonviolent" struggle. We dig into what he means by the claim that nonviolence is never actually bloodless, why he prefers the term "sacrificial violence," and how nonviolent movements frequently gain leverage precisely because an opponent supplies the repression that shocks the public, shifts legitimacy, and forces concessions. Along the way, we talk through the research Too Black draws on including Erica Chenoweth's work on lethal repression, and we explore his core metaphors and case examples, from confronting power like "poking a bear over honey" to the method-independent brutality of settler colonialism in Palestine. At the heart of our conversation is a deep dialectic between Martin Luther King Jr. and Frantz Fanon, and how both frameworks, in different ways, move through violence as an unavoidable terrain of liber

Syria is entering a new and terrifying phase. In this episode Breht is joined by a panel of scholars and activists (Angie Bittar, Adam, Joma, Nur and Jalyssa) to take a clear-eyed look at what's unfolded over the last year and how it fits into the longer arc of the Syrian civil war, including the rapid collapse of the Assad-era order and the emergence of a new regime centered around HTS and Ahmad al-Sharaa (Jolani). Together, they break down the latest waves of mass violence and displacement across the coast, Suwayda, Aleppo, and Rojava, and ask what these events reveal about the new Syria. From there, they turn to the Kurdish question. They discuss the SDF, the long history of US imperial instrumentalization of Kurdish forces, the recurring pattern of abandonment, and the growing pressure now facing Rojava amid shifting regional and international priorities. They also examine ongoing kidnappings and sect-based killings, the breakdown of accountability, and what the allegations surrounding Syrian security ins

Breht discusses recent events in Minneapolis... ------------------------------------ Outro Song: Song for Alicia by Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover

In this episode, Breht is joined by Kristen R. Ghodsee to dig into her provocative essay on the political economy of love under capitalism. Using Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value, Ghodsee argues that love is not just a private feeling but a material necessity for human flourishing -- and that our economic system systematically depletes the time, energy, and security required to sustain it. Together, they explore how capitalism commodifies two core components of love, attention and affection, turning them into scarce resources bought and sold in everything from therapy and childcare to the attention economy and the market for professionalized intimacy. But the heart of the conversation is the one thing capitalism can't truly monetize: reciprocal flow -- the non-transactional rhythm of giving and receiving that emerges in long relationships, cooperative play, music, community, and solidarity itself. Breht and Ghodsee discuss how inequality and insecurity train people into transactionalism

In this episode, Breht is joined by philosopher, author, and cultural critic Gabriel Rockhill to discuss his new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? The Intellectual World War: Marxism vs. the Imperial Theory Industry. Rockhill argues that the Cold War was not only fought with bombs, coups, and sanctions -- but with ideas, institutions and intellectuals. Drawing on extensive archival research, Rockhill shows how U.S. imperial power built a vast apparatus of foundations, universities, media outlets and cultural organizations to shape what kinds of Marxism were allowed to exist in the West. Rather than simply repressing Marxism, empire promoted a "compatible left"; a version of critical theory and Western Marxism that rejected actually existing socialist struggles and experiments, detached theory from mass struggle, and helped neutralize anti-imperialist politics. Together, they explore the role of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, Cold War cultural warfare, and the long shadow this history still

In this episode, Breht is joined by revolutionary feminist and author Madeline Lane-McKinley to discuss her recent book "Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy", in which she argues for a politics that centers young humans as essential comrades in the struggle for a better world! In the process they examine the concept of childhood as historically structured, which children are granted innocence and which are robbed of it, how to parent through a lens that respects children as unique and autonomous human beings instead of the property of their parents, and much more! You can follow Madeline @la_louve_rouge_ (on twitter and IG) ---------------------------------------------------- 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/

Nov 5, 2025   In this episode, public school history teacher Gianni Paul joins Breht to trace the historical roots of our current crisis — stagnant wages, mass homelessness, collapsing infrastructure, rising fascism, Gilded Age inequality, and a beaten down working class — back to Reagan's counter-revolution against the New Deal and the forty-year neoliberal project that followed. Together, they explore how neoliberalism emerged out of the crises of the 1970s, Carter's role in laying the groundwork before Reagan, the destruction of unions and working-class power, the ideological weaponization of anti-communism, the bipartisan consolidation of neoliberalism under Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, the ways Reagan and Trump represent two phases of the same class project, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of capitalist triumphalism, the slow disintegration of America's middle class into debt and precarity, the explosion of homelessness and hopelessness, the erosion of U.S. imperial dominance alo

Jun 18, 2025   In this powerful and wide-ranging conversation, Margaret Kimberley—senior columnist at Black Agenda Report and a leader in Black Alliance for Peace—joins Breht to dissect the spectacle of American decline and, as usual, Kimberley offers a razor-sharp analysis of late-stage capitalism's collapse into cruelty, chaos, and confusion. Together, they explore the Democratic Party's complicity in ushering in this moment, U.S. weapons transfers to Ukraine in support of their proxy war against Russia, and the genocidal assault on Gaza as a revealing - if disturbing - lens into the true nature of the American empire. Kimberley also shares firsthand insights from delegations to Nicaragua, Venezuela, and China, illuminating how the Global South is resisting U.S. domination and reshaping global power. For those feeling the weight of worsening economic conditions, rising fascism, and political demobilization, Kimberley offers hard-won wisdom about organizing in the belly of the beast. We close with discussion