Upstream
This is a free preview of the episode "The More Than Human World" You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at or at . Thank you. "The More Than Human World" is a phrase...
info_outline A Solstice Celebration for 2024 w/ Manda Scott and Nathalie NahaiUpstream
Happy Solstice! In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on the past year and set some intentions for the year ahead. Manda Scott is a novelist, smallholder, and host of the podcast , which showcases individuals and organizations at the emerging edge of our world to set the foundation for a future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Manda’s latest novel, Any Human Power, is out now and available . Nathalie Nahai is a behavior science advisor, author and host of the podcast , which focuses on psychology,...
info_outline Historical Materialism w/ Torkil LauesenUpstream
Historical materialism is the science of Marxism. It’s the theory developed by Marx and Engels that explains how human societies develop and change over time based on economic organization. Like Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, historical materialism serves as a powerful tool in understanding the world around us. It explains why societies are arranged the way that they are, why there are classes, why revolutions happen—and when taken together with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism, historical materialism becomes a rigorous scientific tool for...
info_outline [UNLOCKED] Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shaun HarrisonUpstream
Anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Being Black and fat in our capitalist, white-supremacist, ableist, heteronormative society is to live in a body that is subjected to a form of unique violence marked by policing, misdiagnosis, discrimination, abuse, trauma—the list goes on. And anti-fatness and anti-Blackness are not simply two separate things—disparate nodes on a circuit of oppression—anti-fatness and anti-Blackness form a crucial intersection, and are ultimately one and the same, according to our guest, in terms of their history, structural, weaponization, and deployment by the...
info_outline [TEASER] Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An IntroductionUpstream
This is a free preview of the episode "Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An Introduction." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at or at . Thank you. "Sure, I...
info_outline How to Be a Good Ancestor w/ Roman KrznaricUpstream
It's been said that “the shortest path to the future is always one through the deepening of the past.” But how do we balance the past, present, and future, when all three weigh so heavily on our consciousness and our social existence? Perhaps one way to find a balance—or at least to distill these various webbed threads of temporality—might be to pose them as questions: what can we learn from the past to help us in the present? And how can I be a good ancestor for the people of tomorrow? These are the questions that inform and guide the recent work of our guest on today's episode. is a...
info_outline [TEASER] Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick HigginsUpstream
This is a free preview of the episode "Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at or at . Thank you. The Palestinian...
info_outline The Exhausted of the Earth w/ Ajay Singh ChaudharyUpstream
Exhaustion. What a perfect and powerful word to describe our times. Exhausted bodies—over-worked, over-productive, over-stretched. Bodies pushed to their limits, treated like machines whose sole existence is to produce profit. Exhausted ecosystems—extracted, ruined, plundered. Viewed as nothing but raw material for the ceaseless flow of capital accumulation. Exhausted minds—hurried and harried, no time for joy, for introspection, for pondering the cosmos. Our minds are tethered to an orbit delineated by distraction, denial, and despair. Exhaustion. 2024 is on track to be the hottest year...
info_outline [TEASER] Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shaun HarrisonUpstream
This is a free preview of the episode "The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shuan Harrison," which will be unlocked in a few weeks. To can get early access to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this...
info_outline Prefigurative Politics and Workplace Democracy w/ Saio Gradin and Nicole WiresUpstream
Prefigurative politics, building the new within the old, exercising our muscles of collectivity and collaboration—muscles that have grown weak and atrophied under capitalist hegemony—these are all ideas and practices that play a crucial role in our revolutionary movements. And examples of prefiguration can and do take many interesting and inspiring forms—one of these forms is worker self-direction, or worker cooperatives. In today’s episode we’re talking prefiguration and worker self-direction—and we’ve split the episode up into two parts so that we can dive deeply into...
info_outlineThis is a free preview of the episode "Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast
As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.
The Palestinian resistance movement—when seen as a continuous struggle taking shape in the early 20th century and continuing to this very day—has been one of the most profound and long-lasting resistance movements the world has ever seen. The movement was forged in the struggle against British colonialism, Zionist settler-colonialism, and later, US imperial hegemony, and through its long struggle, was not just inspired and informed by Marxist theory—but it itself developed and expanded Marxist revolutionary theory and tested it in the battlefields of West Asia. The contributions—both materially and theoretically—by the Palestinian left, cannot be overlooked, and we’ve devoted this episode to an exploration of this history and of this development of the global, international, anti-imperialist left. And we’ve brought on a terrific guest for this conversation.
Patrick Higgins is a researcher and writer with a PhD in Arab History. He is a co-editor of the publication Liberated Texts. He is currently adapting his dissertation into a book on the history of Palestinian resistance against US imperialism.
In this conversation, Patrick walks us through a history of revolutionary Marxist parties and organizations in Palestine, from the Palestine Communist Party in 1919 all the way up to the present resistance coalition of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—among others. We explore the role that pan Arabism and Arab Nationalism played in the development of the Palestinian left’s struggle, the rise of Israel as a US proxy in West Asia, the aims and goals of US imperialism and the United States’ involvement in the region, the contributions of the Palestinian left to anti-imperialist theory, and how the current genocide can be analyzed and contextualized from the perspective of the Palestinian revolutionary left.
Further resources:
- Resistance News Network
- A Study of Physical Education, Mao Tse-tung
- The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism, Musa Budeiri
- Ghassan Kanafani: The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine
- Red Round Globe Hot Burning: A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard, Peter Linebaugh
- al-Hadaf
- “Lessons from the Paris Commune”. Al-Hadaf (Beirut), February 28, 1970
- Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Related episodes:
- Our ongoing series on Palestine
- Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly
Cover art: “The Path of Armed Struggle” issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1970.
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