Episodes
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
[FROM THE VAULT] /74/ Order Not Freedom ft. Quinn Slobodian
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
FROM THE VAULT: GEORGE'S PICK (2)
On the unexpected origins of neoliberalism. We talk to Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists, about how neoliberals look back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the League of Nations. Why does neoliberalism talk about freedom, but promote order? Is neoliberalism about more or less state - or is it about what kind of state?
Plus why the genuine neoliberals didn’t care about the Cold War and how Murray Rothbard laid the ground for Trump.
Readings:
- Globalists, Quinn Slobodian
- Neoliberalism’s World Order, Adam Tooze
- Why I am not a conservative, F.A. von Hayek
- The EU is a betrayal of Europe’s exceptionalism, Douglas Carswell
Subscribe for access to the Synthesis Session, where the guys discuss the broader implications: patreon.com/bungacast
Saturday Dec 02, 2023
Excerpt: /378/ Reading Club: Globalisation (II)
Saturday Dec 02, 2023
Saturday Dec 02, 2023
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Are you 'Team Brenner' or 'Team Arrighi'?
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Was neoliberalism a counter-revolution? A passive revolution? A restoration?
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How does the depression of the 1870s compare to that of the 1970s or the post-2008 period?
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What are the characteristics of our own Belle Époque (1993-2007)
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What matters more in explaining the downturn: inter-capitalist global competition? Upward wage pressure? The role of the global South?
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
/367/ Don’t Pay Them Back ft. Jerome Roos
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
Tuesday Oct 10, 2023
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Memoria del saqueo (Social Genocide), film on 2001 debt crisis and uprising in Argentina (many versions available online)
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/83/ Now It’s Syrizous (episode on Syriza's defeat in Greece)
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The World in One Country: Greece, Jonas Kyratzes (part of ep.200)
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
/357/ Lucky, Meaty Nations ft. Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
- Australian Labor’s hollow victory, Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor, UnHerd
- Jacinda Ardern still haunts New Zealand, Tom Chodor, UnHerd
- /136/ Banana Monarchy ft. David Edgerton
Thursday Apr 06, 2023
UNLOCKED: /306/ AI Capitalism: Inhuman Power
Thursday Apr 06, 2023
Thursday Apr 06, 2023
On Inhuman Power.
[Unlocked episode from Bungacast 'Reading Club', originally released 6 December 2022]
Contemporary capitalism is possessed by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) question – one of the few areas today in which capitalists still seem to have ambition. Why is this so, and is there something about AI that gets to the nub of what capitalism is, as a mode of production?
Is capitalism without humanity anything more than a dystopian Skynet nightmare? And would the creation of a surplus humanity still be capitalism? Would it be techno-feudal, or something else?
Reading:
Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen and James Steinhoff, Pluto Books
Tuesday Apr 04, 2023
/331/ The Zone (pt. 1) ft. Quinn Slobodian
Tuesday Apr 04, 2023
Tuesday Apr 04, 2023
On cracked-up capitalism.
Historian of ideas Quinn Slobodian joins us again, this time to discuss his latest book, Crack-up Capitalism – the vision of a global capitalism with its constituent nation-states perforated by ‘zones’ shorn of any national oversight or democratic accountability. We talk through these archetypal zones encompassing deregulation, investment and sweatshop labour, ranging from the glittering city scapes of Hong Kong, Singapore and Canary Wharf to forgotten zones such as Ciskei in apartheid South Africa as well as the gated communities of California and bit-coin paradise Honduras.
We also talk about archetypal crack-up capitalists such as Peter Thiel, William Rees-Mogg and Milton Friedman’s offspring. How did crack-up capitalism feature in the Tory vision of Brexit? Plus, why is Dominic Cummings the one true Singaporean, and why do crack-up capitalists love medieval LARPing?
For part two, sign up at patreon.com/bungacast
Readings:
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The Ciskei experiment: a libertarian fantasy in apartheid South Africa, Quinn Slobodian, The Guardian
- /115/ Singapore Shangri-La ft. Lee Jones
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As special enclaves proliferate, what are the consequences for democracy?, Kwasi Kwarteng MP, The Spectator
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Dominic Cummings understands Singapore. The Tories still don’t, Quinn Slobodian, The Spectator
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Crack-up Capitalism video trailer, Twitter
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
Excerpt: /326/ What Did Capitalism Do Next?
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
Tuesday Mar 07, 2023
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TCS Special Issue: ‘Post-Neoliberalism?’, Various, Theory Culture & Society
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End of the Neoliberal Era?, David Kotz, NLR
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The new rules for business in a post-neoliberal world, Rana Forfoohar, FT
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What's beyond "beyond neoliberalism"?, Amy Kapczynski, LPE Project
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Reading the post-neoliberal right, Amy Kapczynski, LPE Project
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
Excerpt: /323/ Tasty Frictionless Convenience
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
Tuesday Feb 21, 2023
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Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, Adam Greenfield, Verso
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Delivering Restaurants to Wall Street, Alex Park, Compact
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5 Reasons Marxism Has Nothing To Offer Millennials, Austrian Economics Center
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