Bungacast

/476/ Freedom against the New Nihilism ft. Jensen Suther

On critical theory and autonomy.

[For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

Jensen Suther, a junior fellow at Harvard working in philosophy and literature, talks to Alex H and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about art, culture, and socialism. He also offers a riposte to previous guest Anna Kornbluh's discussion of immediacy, and its cultural forms such as autoficition.

• What does Suther think Kornbluh gets wrong – and right – in her critique of contemporary culture?

• How autonomous is art from society and the economy?

• To what extent can we tie cultural forms to deep changes in the economy?

• What is the right response to the historical defeat of the working class? What does it mean for critical theory?

• What is the difference between immanent critique and critique from the outside – and how dow this relate to freedom?

• And what does it matter if you read Hegel right?

Links:

• The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?, Jensen Suther, Nonsite.org

• /458/ The Society of Pure Vibe ft. Anna Kornbluh

• /473/ Make Alienation Great Again ft. Todd McGowan (features a different response to the question about critical theory after the defeat of the working class)

• Jensen's thread on X on capitalist totality and the end of the working class

• Jensen's thread on X on the return to Hegel, against economic determinism

/475/ Class Power: Professionals, Petits and Proles ft. Dan Evans

On class formation, fragmentation, pessimism and optimism.

George and contributing editor Leigh Phillips talk to Dan Evans, a writer and academic based in South Wales. We discuss his piece in the New Socialist, ‘Is the Working Class Back?’ and themes emerging from it.

• How important are definitions of class?

• If the working class remains weak and fragmented, and its politics increasingly chaotic, what is to be done?

• How does Gabriel Winant's pessimism about the industrial working class compare to Evans'?

• What are the class contradictions of the contemporary Left?

• Who is the real oppositional class today? Should we be more positive about the petite bourgeoisie?

Links:

• Is the Working Class Back?, Dan Evans, New Socialist

• A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Dan Evans, Repeater Books

• /349/ The PMC & Their Politics ft. Dan Evans & Catherine Liu

/474/ Urban Power in a Planet of Slums ft. Ben Bradlow

On cities and the politics of development.

[For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

Ben Bradlow, assistant professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton, talks to Alex about his book Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg.

• If our future is urban – and it is – why is it different to what we imagined?

• Are Johannesburg and São Paulo representative of what is going on in cities?

• How did democratic promise and neoliberal disappointment go together in the 1990s, through to today?

• What has been the role of social movements (e.g. for housing) in transforming cities and municipal government?

• Is the radical right in the global North and South fundamentally different? What is the urban dimension?

• What does China's lead in industries like electric vehicles mean for countries like Brazil?

• Is industrial upgrading possible under post-neoliberalism?

Links:

• Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg, Benjamin Bradlow, Princeton UP

• A processual framework for understanding the rise of the populist right: the case of Brazil (2013–2018), Tomás Gold and Benjamin Bradlow, Social Forces

• Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, Peter Evans, Princeton UP

/473/ Make Alienation Great Again ft. Todd McGowan

On Embracing Alienation.

Todd McGowan is back on the pod, talking to George and Alex about his book, Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try To Find Ourselves.

• Why is alienation good actually? What does it give us?

• How is alienation related to subjectivity and freedom?

• What is the problem with anti-alienation politics of Left and Right?

• What happened to the 1960s concern with alienation, where did it go?

• Why is an embrace of the public realm, against therapy culture, the right response?

• What is the task of critical theory today?

Links:

• /167/ The Kingdom of God Is on Main Street ft. Todd McGowan

• Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try To Find Ourselves

/472/ Munich, MAGA, Musk, Malema ft. Will Shoki / Ryan Zickgraf

On Trumpworld: Vance in Munich; Musk in South Africa.

[This contains only the interview on South Africa – for the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

Alex, George and Ryan Zickgraf round up events in Germany: first the elections, then US Vice-President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference where he called out Western elites' hypocrisy on liberalism and democracy.

Then Alex speaks to Will Shoki, editor at Africa Is A Country, about what Musk wants from South Africa, why the global radical right has fixated on land reform in South Africa, and what is really at stake for South Africans.

We round out by taking your questions and comments – and by welcoming in carnival by discussing drinking & socialising, and its anti-social enemies.

Running Order

• 00:03:10 – German elections

• 00:08:20 – Vance's Munich speech

• 00:26:00 – Will Shoki on South African politics

• 01:04:55 – Musk and the global radical right

• 01:13:20 – Letters to the Editors

• 01:23:10 – Carnival and social drinking

Links:

• Trump’s Tool: The Limits of Bannon’s Postmodern Nationalism, Alex Gourevitch, The Northern Star

• Make Afrikaners great again! National populism, democracy and the new white minority politics in post- apartheid South Africa, Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, Ethnic and Racial Studies 

• Why Trump loves corrupt Democrats, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

• The Case for Social Drinking, Ryan Zickgraf, Jacobin

• The Hangover and Life as a Commodity, George Hoare, Damage

• Segregation Is Still Alive in Mardi Gras’s Birthplace, Ryan Zickgraf, Jacobin

/471/ Reforming the Deformed ft. Nathan Sperber & George Hoare

On Gramsci in the 21st century.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Sociologist Nathan Sperber and our own George Hoare talk to Alex H and Lee Jones about the new edition to their book, An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy, which includes a new chapter on Gramsci's relevance to contemporary politics and events and a new section on Gramsci's influence on the New Right. We discuss:

• How does this book differ from other introductions to Gramsci?

• What is wrong with the post-Marxist, post-colonial or culturalist version of Gramsci?

• What are Gramsci's top 3 insights into politics?

• How has Gramsci been taken up by the political Right?

• How has Gramsci been used and abused by the Left? What to make of the post-Marxist radical democracy of Laclau and Mouffe ("left-populism")?

• Why is the concept of the "national-popular" that Gramsci takes from the Jacobins so important to rediscover?

UNLOCKED: /418/ Neoliberal Order Breakdown System, German-Style ft. Gregor Baszak

This episode, originally published in June 2024 only for subscribers, is crucial backdrop to this Sunday's (23 Feb 2025) snap elections in Germany. 

For more like this, join us at patreon.com/bungacast

On German political derangement.

Independent researcher and writer Gregor Baszak joins us to talk about German centrism being squeezed under pressure from both left and right — Sahra Wagenknecht and the AFD. Meanwhile the German economy is getting squeezed between the US and Russia, and NATO pressures Germany to up its defence spending.  

• Is German public life remilitarising? 

• What are the prospects for Sahra Wagenknecht’s new ‘left-conservative’ politics? 

• What was the original political vision behind the Nordstream 2 pipeline? 

• Why are Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni trying to carve the AFD out of pan-European national-populist cooperation? 

• Where does Germany now stand in relation to the Ukraine War? 

Links:

• Europe After America, Gregor Baszak, The American Conservative 
• What’s the Matter With Germany?, Gregor Baszak, The American Conservative
• The Left-wing maverick who could stop the AfD For many, Sahra Wagenknecht is a tribune of the people, Gregor Baszak, UnHerd

/470/ Political Reaction to System Failure ft. Tim Pendry

On the world under Trump, and British responses. 

Tim Pendry, author of the Unstable Times substack, as well as an international affairs consultant, talks to Alex H and Lee Jones about the world under Trump II, the massive shifts underway, and his own policy work with the Workers Party of Britain.

• How has intra-bourgeois struggle shaped the past decades in politics?

• What is "American imperial nationalism (MAGA)" plus a "real-estate negotiation style"?

• Who are the winners & losers of a "rational" return to classical great-power, sphere-of-influence politics?

• Why are the UK's tensions and problems an extreme version of what may soon apply to any ostensible American ally?

• What is the Workers Party of Britain's pitch and strategy?

• Are the bulk of British people really "left on economics, right on culture", and how does the WPB try to appeal to workers?

• What are the practical challenges of building and organising a new party?

Links:

• Manifesto – Britain Deserves Better, Workers Party of Britain

• The Foundations of the Liberal Polycrisis, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

• Taking Trump Seriously, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

• Trumpism and Geo-Politics, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

/469/ Draining Europe ft. Anton Jäger

On European decline and inertia.

[For full episode: patreon.com/bungacast]

Anton Jäger is back, talking to Alex and George about Belgium's new right-wing government, American hyperpolitics, and the lack of a European future.

• The radical right has prevailed in Belgium, despite having factors that should impede this, like higher union density, lower inequality and so on. Why?

• Why is the US particularly 'hyperpolitical'?

• Are those who say hyperpolitics is over correct?

• Why is Europe now a pale imitation of authoritarians in the East and the unbridled capitalism to its West?

• Is it Europe's capitalists – not its workers or pensioners – who are in need of strict market discipline?

Links:

• Things Are Terrible in Europe, and They’re Only Going to Get Worse, Anton Jäger, NYT

• Goodbye, ‘Resistance.’ The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over, Ross Barkan, NYT

• My Country Shows What Europe Has Become, Anton Jäger, NYT

• Hyperpolitics in America, Anton Jäger, New Left Review 

• Is Trump 2 the End of ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’?, Lee Jones, The North Star

• /454/ The Last Man at the Euro Tango ft. Michael Wilkinson

/468/ Reading Club: Place 4 – Harvey

On David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989).

[Patreon Exclusive - subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

We focus in particular on Part III: The Experience of Space and Time – and reflect on the general themes of this section. The central question is:

How do we rescue a sense of ‘place’ – in a political, forward-looking and future-oriented way – after the age of globalisation?

• The age of globalisation generated and emphasised placelessness. But if oppositional struggles need to start from a definite place, where is that?

• And how do they not get restricted by that same sense of place – that is, not becoming particular, nostalgic or backward-looking?

• And if walls are now being put up, halting globalisation, then does this provide a more propitious scenario for struggle?

/467/ Mosques & Malls & Nation-States ft. Djene Bajalan

On Syria, the fall of Assad, and nationalism in the Middle-East.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Historian Djene Bajalan talks to Alex about a major rearrangement in the Levant. We discuss:

• Who are Syria's new rulers HTS, and what is their vision – if any?

• Did geopolitics really determine the fall of Assad and the Ba'ath Party?

• How HTS's victory is so profoundly different from Islamism in Iran 1979

• Why 2025 finally closes the book on the Arab Spring – and on secular Arab nationalism

• Were the Kurds wrong to rely on US protection?

And in the full episode we continue by discussing...

• Is Turkey the big winner of the decade?

• What the Left gets wrong on nationalism

• Civic versus ethnic nationalism, revisited

• What was democratic, liberal and revolutionary about nationalism – and whether it can be again

• How conservatives recuperate left-wing ideas, which were always conservative from the start

Links:

• Djene's writing at Jacobin

• /95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton

/466/ Regime Change in the West?

On disinformation, NATO vs Russia, terrorism + more.

[Full episode for subscribers only. Go to patreon.com/bungacast]

We look back at a turbulent last month or so with the help of guest and "disinformation bot" Tara McCormack. We put it all in the context of Trump's return, post-neoliberalism and deglobalisation.

• 00:13:52 – Jacob Siegel  talks to Alex about Meta's policy U-turn on censorship and what it means for the public-private partnership on digital surveillance.

• 00:50:11 – How will European powers react to the US's relative withdrawal of its protection? Will France, Britain and Germany double-down on the Ukraine war?

• 01:06:21 – Why is Luigi Mangione not understood as 'terrorism' while the Magdeburg Christmas market attack is? What drives terrorism and is that even the right term to understand explosive anomie?

•  01:15:24 – Letters to the Editors: on the global radical right, and Trump's foreign policy

Links:

• /369/ Information-War and War-Politics ft. Jacob Siegel

• /34/ War Propaganda ft. Tara McCormack

• To the Finland Station, Branko Milanovic, Substack

• Trumpism & Geopolitics, Tim Pendry, Substack

• Class Patricide, Dustin Guastella, Damage

/465/ Quick Coups & Post-Development in Korea ft. Jamie Doucette

On the martial law crisis in South Korea.

For the full episode: patreon.com/bungacast

Jamie Doucette, who researches contemporary political economy and Korea's development at the University of Manchester, talks to Alex and George about December 2024's coup attempt and the past 50 years in the Republic of Korea.

•  Why is South Korea western capitalism's best propaganda tool?

• Did Yoon Suk Yeol want to institute a dictatorship? Did he want to militarise all of society, or only politics?

• How "unreconstructed" is the South Korean right? Do they dream of dicatorship?

• What was the Park Chung-hee regime of the 60s and 70s like? What is authoritarian developmentalism?

• Why did S. Korea democratise? Did the workers win it or did elites concede it?

• What is the post-developmental state, how neoliberal is ROK, and what does the left-right spectrum look like now?

• What was the Candlelight movement of 2016?

Links:

•  /420/ Fertility Freefall & Gender Strife in South Korea ft. Hyeyoung Woo

• The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea, Jamie Doucette (OPEN ACCESS)

• The Logic of Compressed Modernity, Chang Kyung-Sup 

/464/ Decline Under The Donald ft. Daniel Bessner

On Trump's foreign policy, the 2nd time round.

Historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner joins Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Lee Jones to ask how this era of rot and decay will proceed under Trump II, from Ukraine to China and beyond. We discuss:

• Will we see "America First transactionalism"?

• Does Trump have a capable cadre to bend the state to his will?

• What will Trump’s relationship be to the deep state?

• How important are generational splits in attitudes to the US empire?

• Will there be a peace deal in Ukraine? Where does that leave 'Atlanticism'?

• Is confrontation with China baked in?

• Is the Middle East the key to world peace?

Links:

• Empire’s Critic: The Worlds of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Bessner, The Nation

• American Prestige podcast

• EU blows hot and cold over Trump, Benoît Bréville, Le Monde diplomatique

• America First, Russia, & Ukraine, Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, Fred Fleitz, AFPI

• /171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner 

• /142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

/463/ Reading Club: Place 3 – Sennett

On The Fall of Public Man.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus and the first theme, The Future of Place. We ask is politics possible without a sense of place. Here we discuss chapter 13, "Community becomes uncivilised", and deal with listener questions.

• How does the changed relationship between public and private impact notions of community and of place?

• How does the maintenance of impersonal relations signify 'civility'?

• Is impersonality really the summation of all the worst evils of industrial capitalism?

• What is wrong with yearning for community, or specifically “love of the ghetto, especially the middle-class ghetto”

• How does "fratricide" become "logical" when people use intimate relations as a basis for social relations? Why is fratricide "system-maintaining"?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

• Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt

• The Making of a New Political Subject, George Hoare, Café americain