About us

The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—both a political rival of Marx in the First International and translator of the first Russian edition of Capital, Vol. I—once mocked the intellectualism of his Marxist opponents by quipping “we have too many ideas and not enough action.” Today the situation seems to be the opposite. Direct action after direct action, dedicated leftists put their bodies on the line without anything resembling a vision of a better world. This is an inevitable result of the collapse of working-class power and socialist politics in the late 20th century. Communism—the vision of humanity emancipated from class society—is dismissed as a fantasy, or even as undesirable in principle.

Marxism, the theoretical basis of communist politics, is consigned to an obsolete niche in humanities departments. This academic Marxism—even on the rare occasion it can genuinely help us understand the world—is often detached from the goal of classless society. A leftist politics this disoriented is as likely to achieve basic democratic reforms as it is to guide a world socialist republic. To orient ourselves towards universal human emancipation, we must rebuild the approach of scientific socialism. Marx and Engels produced the concept of a ‘scientific socialism’ to argue for a socialism based on and for reason—a socialism with a rigorous analysis of both existing material conditions and history, with an eye towards how to use the best of humanity’s capacities to transform the world. While the term ‘scientific socialism’ has become synonymous with Soviet state ideology, we believe that it is a concept worth upholding. Peddling ideological snake oil to a desperate public does nothing to change the world and advance humanity. Abstract ideals about the way things ought to be do not suffice. We must have scientific knowledge of how to fight this bourgeoisie and how to help build a new world.

Therefore it is necessary for Marxists of all backgrounds and skills to create intellectual institutions independent of academia, wherein communists can develop their vision, strategy, and overall critique of capitalist society. Cosmonaut aims to be a platform of debate, where Marxists can develop an analysis of history, critique the prevailing “common sense” of our time, and conceive a programmatic communist politics relevant to our circumstance. We seek to develop a Marxism for the 21st century based on scientific inquiry through a process of collective discussion and debate, not dogma based on fidelity to what this or that Great Man. Our organizing principles are internationalism over all standing armies and borders; building class-independent, democratic institutions; and a vision of a future where the world is a classless community of humanity, finally free of exploitation and oppression—communism.

Central Committee

Donald Parkinson

Amelia Davenport

Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina

Matthew Strupp

Peter Moody

Tobias Houlgate

Aliyah VP

Jackson Albert Mann

Editorial Committee

Donald Parkinson

Jackson Albert Mann

Aliyah VP

Jack L

Anton Johannson

Jeremy Rich

Podcast Committee

Renato Flores