Welcome to another episode of the vast majority. I'm Jack Mendipi, editor, Micahutript.

Perpetual question on the left. What to do about the Democratic Party? If you're listening

to this podcast, you probably heard multiple discussions, including on this very podcast

on this question. Maybe you're tired of it, but it's something that we all constantly

having to wrestle with every day in our political practice. And somebody who has written quite a bit

on this question is Eric Belonk, who is a frequent contributor to Jack Abin as well as someone

who is working on a book for verso books on the party question. And he's got an article in

Jack Abin at Jack Abinmag.com called The Birth of the Labor Party has many lessons for socialists

today, where he goes through the early days of the British Labor Party and it's founding

starting in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. And as I say during my discussion with him,

I was kind of shocked reading and editing his piece how directly many of the lessons from the

British Labor Party applied to what it is that socialists are trying to do in the United States

today. It's obviously a very different political and economic and cultural and just time

context. Everything is different in many ways, but there are indeed many lessons to be learned

from studying this history. You can of course read the article. I'll link to it in the show notes

to this piece. Eric Belonk is a frequent contributor to Jack Abin. He is the author of a book in

our verso books series, Red State Revolts, which we have interviewed him over in the past.

And here's my conversation with Eric.

Eric Belonk, welcome. It's good to be on. Returning champion. What is this number three?

Number four? Five? I'll say nine or ten. In case no listeners have been really following that

closely. Definitely the most frequent guest on this podcast, Eric Belonk,

owing to your prodigious productivity. And speaking of your productivity, the conversation that we're

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