https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-d5zc3-1357261 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…
Tag: Ideology
Excerpt: /310/ Do You Want to De-Grow?
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-vbce6-13526bf 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…
/309/ Sack of Potatoes ft. Anton Jäger
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-3wc5d-133c2f5 On atomisation and association. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone came out 22 years ago and the structural changes he identified then – increasing atomisation – have only worsened. Everyone now blames the internet, and though it may have accelerated…
Excerpt: /308/ A Balance-Sheet of the Left
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-9tcvb-133847e On the global left after the Cold War. [Patreon Exclusive] Has the left declined, been defeated, or is it dead? Is the continuity with the Old and New Lefts of the 20th century, or should we understand 1989 as…
Excerpt: /307/ Aufhebonus Bonus (Dec 2022)
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-8g2c4-1330b17 On your questions & criticisms. [Patreon Exclusive] We debate what kind of work 'shared-labour socialism' would involve in a complex society, and what role 'dispossession' or 'expropriation' has in the contemporary economy. Plus: strategies on Ukraine – backing independence,…
Excerpt: /306/ Reading Club: AI Capitalism
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-2urwj-132a63a 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…
/305/ Techno-Feudal Unreason
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-kq4hx-1327722 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…
Excerpt: /301/ Reading Club: Neo-Feudalism
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wgsgy-1305e1f 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…
/298/ Working For Freedom ft. Alex Gourevitch
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-7nmpd-12f872f On shared-labour socialism. Political theorist Alex Gourevitch talks to us about his critique of post-work thought, and how it presupposes the very labour it seeks to free us from. We start of by distinguishing post-work socialism (e.g. Fully Automated…
Excerpt: /294/ Reading Club: Conspiracy Theory
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-enc8u-12de667 On Empire of Conspiracy and agency panics. [Patreon Exclusive - Tiers II & III] We focus our discussion on the notion of 'agency panic' that is at the centre of Timothy Melley's account of conspiracy theories in…
