Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode we have a long

episode but a fascinating episode. It is on Sartre and his critique of dialectical reason.

Austin has been on the show before and he's written a new book about Sartre and his critique

of dialectical reason. So we go through what the critique is, what it consists of some core

philosophical ideas that Sartre puts out in this work and then we take Austin's book and

court of run with it, how he takes those ideas and crafts them and extrapolates them and we have

some just fascinating deep conversation and while the material itself can be sort of challenging,

Austin is an expert at taking the complex and putting it into words that people can understand

who are not specialized in philosophy. So if you're at all interested in Sartre,

in existentialism, in French Marxism, in Sartre's critique of the USSR, I mean there's so much here

that you'll like. We talk about France-Fanon, we talk about Mao and Stalin, we talk deeply about

innumerable philosophers. So wherever you're coming from, I think you're going to find a lot

in this conversation that is valuable and fascinating. I know I learned a lot just by talking

to Austin about this wonderful book. So again, Austin Hayden-Smitt's book is called Sartre

Imagination and Dialectical Reason, Creating Society as a work of art. Let's get into it. Enjoy.

Yeah, cool. So I'm Austin Hayden-Smitt. I kind of jokingly but seriously refer to myself as

a professional scatterbrain. I do some production work sometimes for the YouTube channel Wisecrack.

I co-host a philosophy podcast called Owls at Dawn. I am also an academic and do work on like

critical finance and political economy, critical political economy. But I think I'm most comfortable

kind of being described as a philosopher, a political philosopher, something like that. Professional

dilatant, I don't know, something along those lines. And I am a producer as well in other spaces.

I produced the cinematic adaptation of the film, Inventing the Future, which is the book that was

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