Bungacast

Excerpt: /310/ Do You Want to De-Grow?

On 'degrowth communism'.

[Patreon Exclusive]

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

Excerpt: /306/ Reading Club: AI Capitalism

On Inhuman Power.

 

[Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive]

 

Contemporary capitalism is possessed by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) question – one of the few areas today in which capitalist 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

/305/ Techno-Feudal Unreason

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

/279/ Society of the Speculative ft. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

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]

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? 

/250/ Oil & Disorder ft. Helen Thompson

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
  

/222/ Nukes 4 Kids ft. Emmet Penney, pt. 1

On the global energy crisis. 

 

Nuclear energy advocate Emmet Penney (@nukebarbarian) joins us to discuss the growing energy crunch in Europe, the US and beyond. Nuclear power is opposed by an unholy alliance of environmentalists and neoliberals - yet it seems the best solution for providing plentiful, reliable, and clean energy. As a demand, it seems an open goal for the left - so why are so many resistant?

 

Part 2 is available here for patreon subscribers. 

 

Links & Readings:

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

/213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze

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

Excerpt: /212/ Three Articles: Middle-Class Anxieties

On net-zero, CCP nanny state, and optimised dating.

 

We start off discussing the HBO series "The White Lotus" before tackling three articles on middle-class anxieties: climate change and pressures on UK living standards; the Chinese state's crackdown on private tutoring; and women's attempt to avoid crappy men through 'Female Dating Strategy'.

 

The full episode is available to patrons only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

 

Articles:

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

 

Excerpt: /192/ Three Articles: Pandemic (Dis)Satisfactions

On consequences of the pandemic + important local election results in Spain & UK.

 

We start off by discussing the telling results of some recent local and regional elections: in the UK, Labour continues its drift to becoming a middle-class party; while in Spain, Madrid goes to the right. Podemos flops, while voters seem to endorse an anti-lockdown stance.

 

Then we get to our three articles on the consequences of the pandemic: is live-streaming complicit with power? Are liberals now anti-science? Will inflation return?

 

Three Articles:

• Stayed home, live streamed, got the T-shirt, Lev Parker, The Conservative Woman
• The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown, Emma Green, The Atlantic 
• Broad commodities price boom amplifies ‘supercycle’ talk, Neil Hume et al, FT 

/186/ Aufhebonus Bonus ft. Lee Jones

On Covid state failure + responses to listeners. 

 

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

 

We start off by discussing listener points and criticisms – e.g. is PMC a useful category? Is a counterculture a terrible idea? Were we wrong on Deleuze? More on the lockdown debate... – before featuring the second part of our discussion with Lee Jones on the coronavirus and state failure (from 45:30).

 

We look in depth at what went wrong in Western state responses to the pandemic, why they didn't follow their own plans, and compare this to South Korea's relative success.

 

Readings:

• How the pandemic has exposed Britain’s failed ‘regulatory state’, Lee Jones, Daily Telegraph
• COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state, Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, Review of International Political Economy

Excerpt: /172/ Three Articles: Elite Production

On Uber, class war among the rich, and its political consequences

Articles:

• The real class war is within the rich, Janan Ganesh, FT
• Uber pays to get rid of its self-driving cars, Pluralistic, Cory Doctorow
• The radical Left is now extinct, Oliver Bateman & Malcolm Kyeyune, Unherd

/168/ Corona, Climate, Communism ft. Andreas Malm

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