Blog Update (Spring 2026) - Producing Radical Knowledge

This is a quick update regarding the direction of this blog. If you’re interested in helping me determine the direction of this project, please fill out the Critic of Political Economy | Readers Survey Spring 2026 after reading this post. Thanks to all of you who have been reading and in particular to my paid subscribers who have support my writings. It means the world to me.

You can support my work by becoming a paid subscriber or by making a donating a 🚩revolution🚩 here . If you’re Canadian, I accept e-transfers by email instead of going through Stripe, this avoids fees and taxes for me and the exchange rate for you.

Just last week I returned to Montreal from Hamilton Ontario, where I completed 8 months of PhD courses. After 6 courses and two teaching assistant positions, I am officially done the first major part of my degree. For the remainder of the year, I will be mainly studying for my comprehensive exams, attending a few conferences, and organizing within the city.

Before I get super busy again, I wanted to write down my thoughts on the future of this blog. I started this blog in 2022 during my MA when I just wanted to find an outlet to write. But now, I have more of a plan. In essence, I want to produce radical educational content that can directly inform those engaged in political struggles. My longer term goal post-PhD is to become an independent researcher and intellectual, serving political movements by helping in the process of forming counter-hegemonic knowledge.

I assume to many this sounds vague, pretentious, naive, or even cheesy to say. Does this mean I just want to be an academic? Another one of those Marxists that publish books saying the same thing for 40 years but not organizing at all? My goal is the opposite in fact, in that I want to make my intellectual work more directly political work, something that was much more common in the 20th century than today.

In the practice of both political struggle and intellectual work, there is only so much that can be achieved if one is done in absence of the latter. Do not associate the word intellectual with academic, as they are not interchangeable. As Stuart Hall says, it may in fact be the case that being an academic prevents you from doing serious intellectual work. The academic system, as Hall says, encourages us to cut off the transmission of knowledge into actions, of ideas to and from the people. All people are intellectuals.

As Hall writes in reference to the revolutionary intellectual Walter Rodney, governments across the Caribbean despised him and plotted to kill him because they understood “the power of critical ideas, powerfully and cogently expressed, to take root among people and to move them into action and organization.” I don’t think anything else could better capture my thought process on this issue.

However, one without the other is limited in its power to spur social transformation. I have seen a lot of brave and inspiring political work limited by its lack of intellectual engagement with practical issues, and infinitely more “intellectual” work that is trapped in a lack of engagement with real political issues. Intellectual and political work are necessarily related, whether you are a communist, fascist, or liberal, this remains the case. Articulating intellectual and political work is a critical part of the developing a revolutionary arsenal against bourgeois hegemony.

As Marx said, the goal of the radical intellectual is not merely to propagate “better” ideas, but to “show the world what it is really fighting for”, to help them understand the real movement of things and thus build the capacity to change them.

In service of this goal, I want to produce content that helps to produce critical consciousness through explaining the ongoing transformations in global capitalism. The goal is not only to disseminate knowledge on particular issues, but also give people the general skills to understand the practical issues they face everyday.

In summary, I want to give people the tools to become organic intellectuals in their own daily lives to forward struggles in all corners of capitalism. The battle against the plague of capital requires a war of position — a long-term and protracted struggle in all spheres of capitalist social reproduction building toward the moment of revolutionary rupture. Once political hegemony is won, then the real work begins, the construction of a truly free world.

Having gone through some of the justifications of my own project, I want to talk briefly about some ideas and logistics. First, in terms of becoming an independent researcher/intellectual, this would require developing a base source of income. My long-term goal is to make enough money to have writing and researching be my main source of work/income for the majority of the year.

What I do know is that over the next 3 years of my PhD, I am looking to try my best to produce weekly/biweekly content. This can range from short, medium, to long pieces, (more detaisl below) but I want to try to get something out every week. By the time I am done with my PhD, I would like to have grown my paid subscriber base to be substantial enough to give me some flexibility in looking for a job.

In the next 5-10 years, if I could make around 40,000–50,000 CAD (36,000 USD) through subscribers and grants, I would be able to live relatively well. Considering I’d be doing what I love, I think I’d be very happy. The details of how I could reach this goal, are still something I’m figuring out. I need to budget out what to set as my subscription tiers, and whether to move to Ghost, which would save me money on fees.

As of now I have about 17 paid subscribers paying 7 USD a month, and I’m estimated to get 1,000 CAD a year. I need to see what price makes sense along with which platform works better, but for now I’m continuing with Substack until I figure out how affordable Ghost is.

One thing is that I never want to paywall content. At most, I would maybe give people early access, but I don’t want to permanently block anything. In general, if people have tips about how to approach this, I’d love the advice.

Finally, there are a lot of different forms of content I want to make to widen my audience and get information out there. What I’m thinking of doing includes:

1. Making short-form videos in reels/shorts/TikTok style that are 2–3 minutes long, going over a specific “point” well enough to catch people’s interest: I call this the ‘hook’ content.

2. Writing short, medium, and long-form blog posts that cover an issue at varying degrees of complexity. Also, if people are interested, I am thinking of recording audios for all of these. This is the bulk of the content produced.

3. Producing educational materials (e.g., workshops, crash courses) which will also be posted online in written and audio formats. This will be something directly integrated to organizing work on the ground.

I am less sure about also doing :

4. Longer-form video essays on YouTube that will go through more complex topics.

5. Interviews with researchers, activists, and others involved in political struggles.

6. Posting content in French and Italian as well.

The topics I will discuss are:

1. The growth of finance capital in the production and control of critical infrastructure.

2. The renewable revolution and its relation to capitalist accumulation and competition.

3. Socialist construction and the creation of alternative modes of production.

4. Canadian political economy and politics.

5. Class struggle and political strategy.

6. Anything else I am interested in.

I’m looking for feedback in terms of the form and content of what I’m looking to produce. Are there topics people are interested in? Are there formats people think that I should pursue, etc.? Any suggestions are welcome. Please fill out the Critic of Political Economy | Readers Survey Spring 2026 to help me out, and think of subscribing!

If you enjoy my work and want to support it, the best thing you can do is like, repost and share it on other platforms. The most important thing is that people learn something from my work!.

You can also become a paid subscriber on Substack or make a one time donation of a ★🚩revolution🚩★ here . If you’re Canadian, I accept e-transfers by email instead of going through Stripe, this avoids fees and taxes for me and the exchange rate for you.