Episodes

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

Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Excerpt: /306/ Reading Club: AI Capitalism
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022

Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
/305/ Techno-Feudal Unreason
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
On "techno-feudalism".
In the Bungacast Reading Club for patrons, we've been discussing various works on "neo-feudalism" - a thesis that tries to explain capitalist stagnation and inequality by arguing that we are moving beyond capitalism – toward something worse.
In this free episode, we discuss one of the most thoroughgoing critiques of this thesis: Evgeny Morozov's "Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason".
Why has this thesis becomes so popular today, across the political spectrum? What is the economic and political logic of feudalism, and how do current trends supposedly indicate a resurgence of these logics? Why have Marxists, who draw such a clear line between feudalism and capitalism, believe that politically-driven expropriation is replacing exploitation?
And how do Big Tech companies make money - purely through rent, or do they produce commodities?
To join the Reading Club, sign up for $10 at patreon.com/bungacast
Readings:
- Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason, Evegeny Morozov, New Left Review
- The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession, David Harvey, Socialist Register (pdf)
- Escalating Plunder, Robert Brenner, New Left Review

Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
/279/ Society of the Speculative ft. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
On our financialised world.
We talk to Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou about his new book, Speculative Communities. How has speculation become the very practice around which modern societies coalesce? And how does speculation actually give voice to the waning legitimacy of neoliberalism?
Do dating apps, Tik Tok and other social media give birth to 'speculative communities'? And is populism a speculation on the future, a leap into the unknown?
![/273/ Eco-Leninism? [UNLOCKED]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/ep-logo/pbblog2148233/Ecolenin_300x300.png)
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
/273/ Eco-Leninism? [UNLOCKED]
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
On the climate emergency.
We are specially unlocking this episode of our monthly Reading Club – the concluding episode of the first half of the 2022 syllabus (download it here). If you'd like full access to all of the Reading Club, go to patreon.com/bungacast
We discuss Andreas Malm's Climate, Corona, Chronic Emergency and Adam Tooze's review essay, "Ecological Leninism". How convincing is Malm's call for Soviet war communism as a model for responding to climate change?
We also approach these readings in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the knock-on consequences for energy politics. And what should we make of Tooze's contrast of social democratic time-frames with the eco-Leninist one?

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 Nov 02, 2021
/222/ Nukes 4 Kids ft. Emmet Penney, pt. 1
Tuesday Nov 02, 2021
Tuesday Nov 02, 2021
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Nuclear Barbarian - pro-nuclear podcast & newsletter
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ex.haust - Emmet's other, co-hosted pod
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Undeveloping America, Emmet Penney, The American Conservative
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Political Life in the Lottery of Babylon, Emmet Penney, The American Conservative
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How we happened to sell off our electricity, James Meek, LRB
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A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations, Robert Bryce, Public Affairs (book)

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 Aug 31, 2021
Excerpt: /212/ Three Articles: Middle-Class Anxieties
Tuesday Aug 31, 2021
Tuesday Aug 31, 2021
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Boris Johnson’s push for net zero plunged into chaos, Edward Malnick & Emma Gatten, The Telegraph (attached in patreon)
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China’s nanny state: why Xi is cracking down on gaming and private tutors, Tom Mitchell & Thomas Hale, FT (attached in patreon)
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‘Sales funnels’ and high-value men: the rise of strategic dating, Katie Cunningham, The Guardian

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 13, 2021
/186/ Aufhebonus Bonus ft. Lee Jones
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
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How the pandemic has exposed Britain’s failed ‘regulatory state’, Lee Jones, Daily Telegraph
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COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state, Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, Review of International Political Economy

Tuesday Jan 26, 2021
Excerpt: /172/ Three Articles: Elite Production
Tuesday Jan 26, 2021
Tuesday Jan 26, 2021
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The real class war is within the rich, Janan Ganesh, FT
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Uber pays to get rid of its self-driving cars, Pluralistic, Cory Doctorow
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The radical Left is now extinct, Oliver Bateman & Malcolm Kyeyune, Unherd

Tuesday Jan 05, 2021
/168/ Corona, Climate, Communism ft. Andreas Malm
Tuesday Jan 05, 2021
Tuesday Jan 05, 2021
On the 'war communism' solution
As we enter the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic and its attendant turmoil, suffering and lockdown, inevitably the search for systemic causes and systemic responses grows more intense. Swedish ecologist and social theorist Andreas Malm joins us to discuss one possible response - a crisis communism modelled on the War Communism of early Soviet rule, as discussed in his new book ‘Corona, Climate Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty First Century.’ We discuss the nature of our contemporary crises, and how far the left needs its own distinctive form of emergency politics.
Readings:
- “To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism”, Jacobin interview with Andreas Malm
- Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, Andreas Malm, Verso
- Nature Defends Itself, Dayton Martindale, Boston Review