Episodes

Friday Jan 06, 2023
Excerpt: /311/ Reading Club: The Precariat
Friday Jan 06, 2023
Friday Jan 06, 2023
Is there a new 'transformative' class?
[Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive]
We close of the 2022 Reading Club, and the final section on 'Neo-Feudalism', by discussing how class is changing. Through readings by Guy Standing and Ruy Braga, we ask if the precariat are the new serfs in a supposed feudal-ish social formation.
It's clear the old Fordist arrangements have broken down, so what does the working class look like today? Is it still a class in the old sense? Braga argues we are witnessing 'class struggle without class'. But why then do the precariat's revolts only target state political authority, and not property relations?
Readings:
- A return of class struggle without class? Moral economy and popular resistance in Brasil, south Africa and Portugal, Ruy Braga, Sociologia & Antropologia
- The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class?, Guy Standing, GTI

Tuesday Jan 03, 2023
Excerpt: /310/ Do You Want to De-Grow?
Tuesday Jan 03, 2023
Tuesday Jan 03, 2023
On 'degrowth communism'.
Why the rage for degrowth now? With deindustrialisation, energy rationing and severe pressure on standards of living, it looks increasingly like degrowth is official policy.
Yet its advocates, drawing from the work of radicals like Mike Davis, John Bellamy Foster, Jason Hickel, and Kohei Saito, would argue that ecological Marxism or degrowth communism is wholly different from stagnant capitalism. How much continuity is there between much older generations of socialists and the contemporary left?
Readings:
- The paradox of Degrowth Communism, Thomas Fazi, UnHerd
- ‘A new way of life’: the Marxist, post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan, Justin McCurry, Guardian
- The degrowth delusion, Leigh Phillips, openDemocracy

Friday Nov 04, 2022
Excerpt: /301/ Reading Club: Neo-Feudalism
Friday Nov 04, 2022
Friday Nov 04, 2022
On Joel Kotkin's The Coming of Neo-Feudalism
We start off by discussing your points on the last RC, on conspiracy theory.
Then we delve into Kotkin's book, asking whether he has an adequate understanding of feudalism, and whether this is the right lens to understand transformations underway now. Is 'techno-feudalism' not just a downturn in 'systemic cycles of accumulation', related to the decline of the US empire? And what are Kotkin's politics and how do they relate to his analysis?
Thanks for all the questions received on this one, we discussed them as we went through the episode.
Reading:
- The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, Joel Kotkin, Encounter Books
- Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over, Yanis Varoufakis, Project-Syndicate
Next month: Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen and James Steinhoff, Pluto Books

Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
Excerpt: /296/ Last-Gasp Neoliberalism (Trussonomics)
Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
Readings:
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Liz Truss’s Britain Is a Morbid Symptom of the World’s New Era, Adam Tooze, Foreign Policy
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The markets are wrong about ‘Trussonomics’ just like they were about Brexit, Julian Jessop, Telegraph
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Britain's Tory Meltdown Is a Case of Socially Determined Stupidity, David Jamieson, Jacobin
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The economic consequences of Liz Truss, Martin Wolf, FT

Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
/286/ What Was Communism? ft. Branko Milanovic
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
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Capitalism, Alone, Branko Milanovic, Harvard UP
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The Aloofness of Pax Sinica, Branko Milanovic, Global Policy Journal

Tuesday May 24, 2022
Excerpt: /265/ Three Articles: Inflation!
Tuesday May 24, 2022
Tuesday May 24, 2022
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Chartbook #122: What drives inflation?, Adam Tooze, Substack
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Inflation Is No Accident, Christopher Caldwell, Compact
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Britain is drifting towards economic oblivion, Ben Marlow, Telegraph

Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
/250/ Oil & Disorder ft. Helen Thompson
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
On energy, the material basis for all our politics?
Helen Thompson, podcaster and professor of political economy at Cambridge and author of Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, joins us to talk about the geopolitics of oil, stretching from the 1956 Suez Crisis to the Fracking Revolution of today. How does US energy independence help explain shifting politics in Europe and the Middle East?
Plus, did the End of History stay afloat on a sea of cheap oil?
Part 2 of the interview, plus our After Party, is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/251-oil-disorder-64394535
Readings:
- Profits from fossil fuel energy power Russia's war machine, and Ukraine suffers, Helen Thompson, New Statesman
- What Is Fueling Our Century’s Global “Disorder”?, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, The Nation
- How Did Europe Get Hooked On Russian Energy?, Paul J. Davies, Bloomberg

Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Excerpt: /234/ Three Articles: Restoration?
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
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Millennials Are Supercharging the Housing Market, Nicole Friedman, WSJ (attached)
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A tale of two elites in Washington and Beijing, Gideon Rachman, FT (attached)

Tuesday Nov 09, 2021
Excerpt: /224/ Three Articles: Labour Revolts?
Tuesday Nov 09, 2021
Tuesday Nov 09, 2021
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Wages are surging across the rich world, The Economist
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The Revolt of the American Worker, Paul Krugman, NYT
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US Workers Are in a Militant Mood, Alex N. Press, Jacobin
The full episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

Tuesday Sep 07, 2021
/213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze
Tuesday Sep 07, 2021
Tuesday Sep 07, 2021
On Covid and the end of the end of history.
Adam Tooze joins us to discuss his new book, Shutdown. In 2020 everything changed... so that everything might remain the same.
What were the reasons behind the global shutdown? Was it a result of over-protection, a policy of repression, or the result of structural tensions? Has China been the winner of the pandemic? How have central banks been victims of their own success? And does this represent the end of neoliberalism?
The latter part of the interview continues over on patreon.com/bungacast

Tuesday Jul 20, 2021
/204/ Three Articles: People's Republic of Fleeing
Tuesday Jul 20, 2021
Tuesday Jul 20, 2021
On Chinese investment, Swiss democracy, and fleeing from Afghanistan.
In this Three Articles, we discuss flight or departure in various ways: China opening the gates for its huge savings to spill onto world markets; Switzerland leaving (or remaining outside) the EU; and the US's sudden departure from Afghanistan, without telling anyone.
'Three Articles' episodes are normally for subscribers only - but this one's free. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast for regular access.
London book launch/bunga party: Register here
Articles:
- What happens if Chinese household wealth is unleashed on the world?, Thomas Hale and Tabby Kinder, FT (pdf in patreon)
- Swexit, Wolfgang Streeck, Sidecar-NLR
- US troops abandoned Bagram airport base in the dead of night..., various, Daily Mail

Tuesday Jun 01, 2021
/195/ No Shock China ft. Isabella Weber
Tuesday Jun 01, 2021
Tuesday Jun 01, 2021
On China, economic reform, and the future.
While Russia famously succumbed to destructive neoliberal "shock therapy", China managed to avoid it. How and why? Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy, tells us about China's opting for gradual reform instead.
What did reform mean for understandings of socialism? Do communists make the best capitalists? And is the pursuit of growth and development at any cost China's own version of the End of History?

Tuesday May 11, 2021
Excerpt: /192/ Three Articles: Pandemic (Dis)Satisfactions
Tuesday May 11, 2021
Tuesday May 11, 2021
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Stayed home, live streamed, got the T-shirt, Lev Parker, The Conservative Woman
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The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown, Emma Green, The Atlantic
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Broad commodities price boom amplifies ‘supercycle’ talk, Neil Hume et al, FT

Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
/187/ The Huge Package State ft. Anton Jäger
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
On cash welfarism and state investment. Plus regionalism in Belgium & the UK.
Anton Jäger is back on the pod to discuss the emerging 'transfer state'. We examine Biden's massive trillion-dollar spending plans and ask if this means we're leaving neoliberalism. What are the limitations to the 'cashification of welfare'? Also comparisons with cash transfers or lack thereof in the UK, Brazil and Belgium.
Plus Anton talks us through recent Belgian history and why its immobilism and bureaucracy has actually prevented a full-on neoliberal assault.
[Part 2 available at patreon.com/bungacast]
Readings:
- “Welfare without the welfare state”: the death of the postwar welfarist consensus, Anton Jäger & Daniel Zamora, New Statesman
- Joe Biden Is a Transformational President, David Brooks, NYT

Tuesday Nov 03, 2020
Excerpt: /158/ Three Articles: Cosmopolitan Austerity & Control
Tuesday Nov 03, 2020
Tuesday Nov 03, 2020
Full episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast
In this latest Three Articles, we discuss cosmopolitanism, the end of austerity (maybe?) and social control in the pandemic.
Readings:
- Is cosmopolitanism our destiny?, Aris Roussinos, Unherd
- Meet the Philosopher Who Is Trying to Explain the Pandemic, Christopher Caldwell, NYT
- Global economy: the week that austerity was officially buried, Chris Giles, FT