Bungacast

/453/ Reading Club: Place 1 - Simmel/Berman

On the maelstrom of the metropolis.

[Full episode only available to subscribers. Join at patreon.com/bungacast]

We kick of the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Georg Simmel's short essay "Metropolis and Mental Life" and Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York).

• How does Simmel relate the metropolitan condition to a historical passage from the 18th century to the 19th?

• Is city life intellectual and blasé, versus small town emotionality?

• Is narcissism built into modernity? Is there an aristocratic individualist revolt in evidence today?

• Do we need places to hang out in before we can do political organising?

• Are we nostalgic for top-down modernisation?

Readings:

• "Metropolis and Mental Life"

• All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York)

/452/ Stormtroopers Can't Shoot Straight ft. Malcom Kyeyune

On the military decline of the American empire.

[Patreon Exclusive]

The Swedish writer Malcom Kyeyune talks to Phil about what happens to the evil empire when the stormtroopers can’t shoot straight and the empire isn’t producing enough star destroyers. They discuss:

• What happens to international politics in a world of new geopolitical rivalries? 

• How does American industrial decline affect US military capacity and strength? 

• Why is America unable to produce enough ships? 

• Why is the US unable to do conscription anymore? 

• Who would win in a showdown between China and America? 

Links:

• America will have to dodge the draft, Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd

• The Houthis now rule the Red Sea, Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd

• The West can no longer make war, Malcom Kyeyune, New Statesman

• The American Empire’s Burning Peripheries, Malcom Kyeyune, Compact

• /240/ Populist Interventions: Örebro Party ft. Malcolm Kyeyune | Bungacast

• Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act?, Adam Tooze, The Guardian

/451/ Capitalism Needs No Help Abolishing Families ft. Dustin Guastella

On pro-family politics, and the US election and labour.

[Patreon Exclusive - in association with Damage magazine]

Dustin Guastella talks to Phil and Alex about what the election of Trump will mean for US labour organisations. We then move on to Dustin's proposal for progressive pro-family policies.

• What actually is "the family" today? 

• Social democrats are proud of policies but wary of encouraging family growth. Why?

• What would pro-family policies look like, what would they do, and what might their negative effects be?

• Is the family not a pillar for the reproduction of authoritarian norms?

• How do we explain the fertility crisis in global terms?

• How do we confront the growing marketisation of everything?

Links:

• Damage issue #3 - MOTHERS - Bungacast subscribers get free access

• NY live event: issue launch - Family Trouble

/450/ The World-Soul Rides a Golden Escalator ft. Matt Karp

On Trump's return and the end of the End of History (still!)

Historian and Jacobin contributing editor Matt Karp joins us to extract the true meaning of the US election. We discuss:

• How Trump's victory explodes so many Democrat assumptions about demography and identity

• How this election re-writes the past ten years' history

• Whether Trump still retains an anti-political or anti-establishment charge

• If the Democrats are preponderant in leading sectors of the knowledge economy, is this a political rejection of its assumptions?

• How to place this election in the sweep of the global anti-incumbency wave

• What the relationship is between inflation, labour and legitimacy

Links:

• Power Lines, Matt Karp, Harper's

• It’s Happening Again, Matt Karp, Jacobin

• Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents, John Burn-Murdoch, FT

• /262/ The Useless Past ft. Matt Karp

• /447/ Brunch Back Better ft. Ryan Zickgraf & Amber A'Lee Frost

• /445/ How I Hacked the US Election ft. Alex Gourevitch

/449/ Aufhebonus Bonus: Nov 2024

On your questions, comments, criticisms.

[Patreon Exclusive]

It's our letter to the episode show where we have a chance to answer you, the listener. We discuss:

• Has Bungacast gone eco-austerian?

• Are Marx and Freud in conflict?

• Is abortion about healthcare or about freedom?

• Why has the left abandoned liberty?

• Did we underestimate Israel’s existential fears?

• And what’s so “complex” about the Arab-Israeli conflict anyway?

Links:

• 2024/25 Reading Club on Place, Nation, Class

• Direct link to the syllabus PDF

• Our substack newsletter

/448/ Foreign Agents, Quiet Oligarchs & Neverending History ft. Hans Gutbrod

On Georgia's pivotal elections and its post-Soviet history.

[Full episode only for patrons]

Hans Gutbrod, who has been working in the Caucasus region since 1999 and now teaches at Ilia State University in Tblisi, talks to Alex about Georgia's choice between the EU and Russia. We discuss:

• Who is Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose wealth is equal to 1/4 of GDP?

• What is the ruling Georgian Dream's pitch to voters, and how has it turned 'rightward'?

• Did Georgia witness the end of history, or merely the de-development of the post-Soviet years?

• How has civil society become dominated by NGOs, and is this a problem?

• Can Georgia flourish in a multipolar world, acting as an entrepôt between East and West?

Links:

• In Georgia, a National Election Is a Geopolitical Struggle, Bryan Gigantino, Jacobin

• Telling Time the New Way: 17 Years of Reform, Hans Gutbrod, Civil Georgia

• Macbeth in the Caucasus: Omnipotence and Loneliness - Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream, Hans Gutbrod (PDF)

 

/447/ Brunch Back Better ft. Ryan Zickgraf & Amber A'Lee Frost

On the US election, messaging and learning stupid lessons.

[Full episode only at Patreon]

We welcome Amber A'Lee Frost (California via Indiana and New York) and Ryan Zickgraf (Pennsylvania via Illinois and Georgia) to preview the US election. We discuss:

• Why the campaigns have been so focused on micro-targeting demographics

• Whether Russians or Brits are illegitimately swinging the election

• How the Democrats have gone back to being smug

• Why it feels like Pennsylvania is the only state voting (and not even there!)

• Whether the US is going back to a pre-2016 period

• How each side will react if they lose

Damage Magazine will hold a launch of its third print issue, "Mothers," in NYC on 23 November at 4-6pm at MoMA’s PS 1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens 11101. Catherine Liu will be in conversation with Dustin Guastella on the question of the family.

Links:

• The Battleground State that Isn't, Ryan Zickgraf, Compact

• The Gospel According to Elon Musk, Ryan Zickgraf, Compact

• To win, Harris should talk more about working-class needs and less about Trump, Dustin Guastella, The Guardian

• Obviousness, Scorn, and Losing Ground, Benjamin Fife, Damage

/446/ The Techno-Fantasy of Perfect Freedom ft. Amber Trotter

On egg-freezing, 'having it all', and neoliberal liberty.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We welcome Damage editor and practicing psychologist Amber Trotter on to talk about "Frozen Freedom", Amber's piece on artificial reproductive technology and different kinds of freedom. Alex and George ask her about:

• How empowering is female emancipation from biological limitations and compulsions?

• Can women now "have it all"?

• Do men feel the contradictions of this type of freedom too?

• Is a proliferation of individual choice making us all neurotic?

• The childhood fantasy of adulthood is of omnipotence – where did it come from?

• What is the relationship between commitment, responsibility, collectivity, the individual, and freedom?

Links:

• "Frozen Freedom", Amber Trotter – Damage issue #3

• /440/ Dear Tradmother, Why Are You Sad? ft. Amber A'Lee Frost

• /210/ Reading Club: Psychoanalysis & Spirit of Capitalism

• /235/ Reading Club: Freedom – on mortality & freedom

• Anti-Social Socialism Club, Dustin Guastella, Damage

 

Damage issue #3 launch event in NYC: Saturday 23 November, MoMA PS 1 Bookstore

/445/ How I Hacked the US Election ft. Alex Gourevitch

On the left-wing case for freedom.

Regular contributor Alex Gourevitch is back on to talk about how the Democrats are approaching the US presidential election. Alex talks us through an influential and widely-read article that he wrote in 2020 with Corey Robin on how the left needed to reclaim freedom as its own.

We discuss:

• Why is the left suddenly talking about freedom?

• When did it abandon freedom in favour of human rights, welfare, or identity?

• What are the consequences of leaving "freedom" to the libertarians and oligarchs?

• How would one critique what the Democrats are doing today from this perspective?

Plus: we hear about Alex’s debate with Tyler Cowen on whether capitalism is defensible.

Links:

• Gaining freedom by escaping the unfreedom of the workplace - PNHP

• Freedom Now, Alex Gourevitch & Corey Robin, Polity: Vol 52, No 3

• The US presidential race will be fought over competing definitions of ‘freedom’, Eric Foner, The Guardian

• The Story of American Freedom, Eric Foner

• /298/ Working For Freedom ft. Alex Gourevitch

/444/ Opportunism & Revenge in the Middle East ft. Karl Sharro & Arash Azizi

On Israel's invasion of Lebanon and beyond.

Karl Sharro (Lebanese-Iraqi architect and satirist @KarlreMarks) and Iranian writer and historian Arash Azizi join us to discuss war in the Middle East. We ask:

• Is Israel finally waging the great war that will rid it of all enemies? 

• Does Israel have any real plan? What motivates its actions in Gaza and Lebanon?

• What is the impact on Hezbollah of losing its leadership layers?

• How will Iran respond and what is the balance between moderates and hardliners there?

• If Hezbollah is severely weakened, what happens to the Lebanese state?

• What should we make of the global culture war around Israel, Palestine and the rest

Links

• Lebanon in the heart of the storm, Akram Belkaïd, Monde Diplo

• Israel is not ‘saving western civilisation’. Nor is Hamas leading ‘the resistance’, Kenan Malik, The Guardian

• Iran Is Not Ready for War With Israel, Arash Azizi, The Atlantic

• /225/ Wokeistan & Lebanonworld ft. Karl Sharro

• /141/ Oh Lebanon, What Now? ft. Rima Majed

 

/443/ Nations, Globalisation & De-development: Reading Club (sample)

On Nations & Nationalism since 1870.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We start by dealing with your questions regarding last month's RC, on Stalin, Zhukhov and WWII.

Then we read and discuss Eric Hobsbawm's classic work in which he emphasises that nations are exclusively modern constructions. We discuss:

• How succulent Hobsbawm's account is

• Whether he was wrong about globalisation eclipsing nationalism – and why he argued this

• Whether the revolutionary-democratic aspects of nationalism can be rescued from its later ethnic-particularist elements

• What the relationship is between citizenship, patriotism and nationalism

• How nationalism intersected with revolution - and fascism

• And whether the nation is any more solid an exit from our political vacuum than whatever other postmodern BS

Links:

• Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Eric Hobsbawm

• Film: Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History, LRB

• Some reflections on 'The Break-up of Britain', Eric Hobsbawm, New Left Review (pdf)

• /421/ Who Are the Wrong Ukrainians? ft. Volodymyr Ishchenko

 

/442/ The Unique French Capacity for Disappointment ft. Nathan Sperber (sample)

On France's permacrisis.

[Patreon Exclusive]

French sociologist Nathan Sperber talks to George and Alex about his new essay in the New Left Review, "The French Crisis: Organic or Conjunctural". We catch up with what has happened in France since Macron gambled and called impromptu elections in the summer. We discuss:

• Why does France always seem to be more in crisis than its neighbours? 

• How has France ended up with hollow "leaderist" parties?

• Is Macron a true neoliberal or a reactive emergency politician?

• Did the left-wing France Insoumise miss its shot?

• How inevitable is a Le Pen government, and will it be co-opted by the French bureaucracy?

• What's the difference between an organic and a conjunctural crisis – and which one is France in?

 

Readings:

• The French Crisis: Organic or Conjunctural?, Nathan Sperber, New Left Review (pdf attached)
• An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy, George Hoare & Nathan Sperber, Bloomsbury (Feb 2025)

/441/ Original Source End of End of History

On liberal takes on the end of the End of History.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We start by discussing Yasha Mounk's dismissal of an end to the End of History. Does he underestimate liberal democracy's inability to legitimise itself anymore? Is the talk of populism a way of deflecting from liberalism's undoing?

We then deal with your comments and questions [for patrons only, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

/440/ Dear Tradmother, Why Are You Sad? ft. Amber A'Lee Frost (sample)

On tradwives, influencers, and boys.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Amber is back on the pod, talking to Alex and George about her forthcoming piece on neo-traditionalism and women, in Damage issue 3, which will be on Mothers. We discuss:

• What are the models of 'tradwives' out there?

• If homemakers make homes, do tradwives make content?

• Does the tradwife phenomenon speak to sense of exhaustion with being a neoliberal girlboss?

• When does internet crap start being real? Do influencers actually influence?

• What is the political upshot of all this?

 

/439/ We Can Shape Our Own Environment ft. Ted Nordhaus

On "eco-modernism".

Ted Nordhaus, co-founder and executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, talks to Leigh and Alex the 20th anniversary of "The Death of Environmentalism" and the 10th anniversary of "The Ecomodernist Manifesto". We discuss:

• The fundamental philosophical differences between "building-out" and "restraint".

• Whether industrial policy like the Inflation Reduction Act is in line with the ecomodern approach

• Why environmentalism differs in the US versus Western Europe

• Why modernisation gets lost in discussions on the environment

• What techno-optimism and what techno-fixes are

• What the Abundance Agenda is

Links:

• The Death of Environmentalism, Breakthrough Institute

• An ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO