Bungacast

Taking a short break – back in late August.

On politics and football.

Alex is joined by Karl Sharro, Juan David Rojas, Tim Abrahams, and Euan Marshall to pick over the stories of this World Cup.

• If the World Cup is a branding exercise for the hosts, what exactly is the USA selling here? And Mexico? Canada?

• Are conspiracy theories good, actually?

• Is Argentina evil? Should you support the global South against the colonisers?

• Are evangelicals responsible for Brazilian failure?

• Do you need central planning to become good at football?

• When 23% of players at the WC are foreign born, how can globalisation be ending?

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Links:

• Football won’t rescue the nation, Alex Hochuli, Africa Is a Country

• Note to Leftists, Do Not Squander The World Cup!, Juan Rojas, Substack

• Blood ties and opportunity: Why more World Cup players than ever are not representing their birth nations, BBC

On 'imperialist realism'.

Daniel Bessner, historian, is back on to discuss the relation between US foreign policy and ideology. He talks to Alex and Lee about his forthcoming book and other writings.

• Why has acceptance of imperialism accompanied declining support for empire?

• What is the US's sense of mission and how does this coexist with cynicism?

• Is US politics stuck between liberal guilt and conservative suprematism?

• Does nothing ever actually change? Is the US even a democracy?

• What would an effective anti-imperialist politics look like?

The full episode is for subscribers only, sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Power without Ideology, Daniel Bessner, The Ideas Letter

• Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century, Daniel Bessner, Zer0 Books

• /464/ Decline Under The Donald ft. Daniel Bessner

 

On Roland Barthes' Mythologies.

(This is an unlocked episode from our Reading Club. Subscribe for more like this.)

Alex, George, and contributing editor Catherine Liu delve into Barthes' 1957 classic to understand the form of ideology critique it proposes – and particularly as it relates to left and right.

• If the bourgeoisie generates myth, is revolution a cathartic act that gets us beyond myth?

• Is the direct producer also unable to speak myth, or is this a romanticisation?

• What are predominant left-wing myths today? Is "left vs right" a myth of sorts?

• Is the critic of myths condemned to live a "theoretical sociality"? Should people just be allowed to enjoy things?

On writing the history of capitalism.

Political theorist Corey Robin talks to Alex H and Alex G about what is wrong with Sven Beckert's monumental new Capitalism: A Global History.

• Have historians returned to writing about big themes and grand narratives?

• Why does Beckert date capitalism's emergence to 12th century Arabia?

• Is capitalism essentially about free markets and free trade – or about the state, coercion, violence?

• If capitalism has no beginning and no end, then does that mean we're still at the end of History?

Links:

• The Long Revolution, Corey Robin (review of Sven Beckert), The Nation

• /481/ Everything is Plausible: Oligarchy – or Worse ft. Corey Robin

 

On global shortages and their political consequences.

Benjamin Bradlow, assistant professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton, talks to Alex and Lee about the world-historic impact of the Hormuz Strait closure.

• How will shortages – beyond oil and gas – reverberate through global supply chains?

• Why are markets so sanguine about all this? Are financial economic elites too insulated from consequences?

• Will China be the big beneficiary as more countries turn to importing its tech for renewables?

• Do countries want to trade dependency on the Middle East or US for dependency on China?

• Would a world of energy autarky be more or less peaceful?

• Are "electrostates" a thing?

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

Links:

• The Winners and Losers of the Iran Energy Shock, Benjamin Bradlow, Foreign Affairs

• The energy crisis may just be starting, Martin Wolf, FT

Audio from the live event held at Verdurin, London, on 28 May 2026.

The OG Bunga Boys - Alex, George, and Phil - present their takes, followed by responses from contributing editor Lee Jones and friend-of-the-pod Nina Power - and audience questions.

On Roland Barthes' Mythologies.

Alex, George, and contributing editor Catherine Liu delve into Barthes' 1957 classic to understand the form of ideology critique it proposes – and particularly as it relates to left and right.

• If the bourgeoisie generates myth, is revolution a cathartic act that gets us beyond myth?

• Is the direct producer also unable to speak myth, or is this a romanticisation?

• What are predominant left-wing myths today? Is "left vs right" a myth of sorts?

• Is the critic of myths condemned to live a "theoretical sociality"? Should people just be allowed to enjoy things?

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

On world money and war.

Costas Lapavitsas, professor of economics at SOAS, London, talks to George and Alex about financialisation, arrested development, and the Strait of Hormuz.

• What is the state-led stabilisation of finance capital?

• How does today's imperialism differ from prior versions – even if they also inhibited development outside the core?

• What is the "liquidity tribute" that developing countries must pay?

• How is the war on Iran a perfect case of dollar imperialism: "the dollar and the F35"?

• Why is the talk of "colonialism" today a distraction?

London event: History's Back, Baby!

Links:

• A Topography of the New Dollar Imperialism, Costas Lapavitsas, NLR

• Trump’s Chaotic Imperialism: Economic Warfare, Geopolitical Truculence and Domestic Authoritarianism, Costas Lapavitsas, Socialist Register

• For forthcoming Monthly Review article, see here

• /139/ Dollar Empire ft. Yakov Feygin & Dominik Leusder

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

History’s back, baby! 

Thu 28 May, Verdurin, London

Tickets: https://verdur.in/store/historys-back-baby-admission/

 

It is obvious today that the “end of history”, postulated by Francis Fukuyama in 1992, is over. Liberal democracy as the final form of human organisation? Pah! The arc of history tending towards justice? Pah! 

Will the end of twentieth-century modernity be the start of something new? The building blocks of the past – political parties, ideologies, and institutions – are decaying around us, and nothing new emerges to take their place. 

Yet history now has new protagonists: states, corporations, and oligarchs, often acting in synthesis. What if history’s back but not as we wanted it? The stakes are high: the sunset of the US hegemony is in sight and even Fukuyama now agrees on the impending primacy of the “Chinese model”. Yet even such geopolitical shifts aren’t leading to the creation of a new hegemony – disorder is the order of the day. 

Five years on from the publication of The End of the End of History, its authors and hosts of Bungacast reflect on a world in a state of accelerated decay, with responses from guests Lee Jones and Nina Power.

They say that “nothing ever happens”. Pah! Something ever happens.

On angry young women.

Ashley Frawley, sociologist and senior editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to delve more deeply into young people's political polarisation on gender lines.

• Why is there a lack of mutual understanding or goodwill between young men and women when we have never been more equal?

• Why do differing political views on anything from Israel/Palestine to Donald Trump cause such interpersonal rancour?

• Young women are centrally concerned with pain, trauma, and empathy – and see men as lacking. What's behind this?

• How is the conservative explanation (bad lefty ideas) just as faulty as the lefty one (patriarchy)?

• What will the political consequences be of gender polarisation?

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

Links:

• Revealed: the new radicalism among young women, Scarlett Maguire, New Statesman

• Meet the Angry Young Women, Emily Lawford, New Statesman

• Why young women are so angry, Pippa Bailey, New Statesman

• Don’t panic about “Angry Young Women”, Jack Davey, The Critic Magazine

• Why do young women hate men?, New Statesman, YouTube

• /394/ Girls, Left / Boys, Right ft. Nina Power (see for additional links)

• Girls and Boys are becoming very different, Alex Hochuli, Substack

 

On the gig economy, big tech, and ideology.

Sociologist Will Charles talks to Alex about a form of social organisation that has stopped trying to justify itself.

• How should the gig economy work and how does it actually work?

• Is any worker in this economy a 'true believer'?

• Why isn't digital sophistication a proof of economic efficiency?

• What's the relationship between secular stagnation, value capture, and rentierism?

• Do workers hold to a latent moral economy that could provide the basis for revolt?

Full episode for subscribers only. Sign up: patreon.com/bungacast

Readings:

• Muskism and the Myth of Productive Revolution, Will Charles

• Post-Legitimate Society, Will Charles & Ryan Gunderson

• Muskism Is the Specter Stalking Our Present, Alex Hochuli, Jacobin

Relevant episodes:

• /538/ Muskism ft. Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff 

• /522/ At the Bottom of the Tar Pit ft. Benjamin Studebaker

• /540/ Welcome to the Apolar and Post-Multilateral World ft. Tom Chodor

• /546/ Reading Club: Are We All Post-Liberal Now? ft. Geoff Shullenberger

• /547/ What Are the Politics of Stagnation? ft. Dylan Riley

On political capitalism and divided workers.

Sociology professor at UC Berkeley, Dylan Riley, talks to Alex and Lee about economic stagnation, the state propping up capitalism, and class politics.

• What is "political capitalism"? And is it true that plunder and predation matter more now than exploitation?

• Why hasn't the ruling class purged the system through mass bankruptcies and unemployment?

• How does Chinese state capitalism fit into the story of stagnation and excess capacity?

• What is the difference between economic interests and class interests? How is the working class divided today?

• Is there a way out of the impasse? What possibility is there of a pro-growth politics?

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Links:

Relevant Episodes

• /312/ Consolation-Prize Marxism & the Bunga-Bunga State ft. Dylan Riley

• /515/ State Capitalism Is Now ft. Ilias Alami

Riley & Brenner

• Seven Theses on American Politics, New Left Review, 2022 

• The Long Downturn and Its Political Results, New Left Review, 2025

Some Key Responses

• Reflections on Political Capitalism, Lola Seaton, New Left Review, 2023

• Notes on ‘Political Capitalism’, John Ganz

• Seven Theses on Brenner and Riley's "Political Capitalism", Tim Barker

• Robert Brenner’s Unprofitable Theory of Global Stagnation, Seth Ackerman, Jacobin

• From Politics to Theory and Back, Benjamin Fong, Damage

 Notable pieces in Sidecar by Dylan

• Lenin in America

• First Principles

• Contra Arendt

On postliberalism, MacIntyre and Gray.

• How was the 1950s "end of ideology" (Bell, Lipset) different from the Fukuyaman 1990s "end of history"?

• Is John Gray correct in his characterisation of Alasdair MacIntyre as a prelapsarian?

• Does hyperliberal individualism lead to a search for meaning, and thus to communitarianism?

•  Is the competition between liberalism and post-liberalism now our political spectrum? 

• Is contemporary liberalism now reducible to professionalisation of the state and civil society?

• If liberalism has failed – a basic point of this podcast from the start – has post-liberalism now also failed?

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

Links:

• The End of History and the End of the End of History, Alasdair MacIntyre

• How to Save British Liberalism, John Gray, New Statesman

• What ever happened to post-liberalism, Nicolas D Villarreal, Substack

• /533/ Reading Club: Illiberalism?

 

On Hungary's elections.

Hungarian political analyst and editor of Partizan, Szilard Pap, talks to Alex about the end of 16 years of Fidesz in government.

• What is the scale of Fidesz’s wipeout?

• Who is Péter Magyar, and is he actually to the right of Orban?

• What was Orban’s rule built on, and what parts of it have been rejected?

• Does Orban mark a shift from national-populism to radical conservatism? From anti-politics to hyperpolitics?

• What is the impact on global radical right? Was there a global Orbanism, and is it over?

• How will this impact European “unity” and will Orban's defeat lead to escalation in Ukraine?

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

Links:

• The Mittel Man, Ivan Krastev, Equator

• Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian Model Has Collapsed, David Broder, Jacobin