Bungacast

On the key events and developments in 2022.   We look back at how the world transitioned from the pandemic to war over the past year, and what the socio-political fallouts have been. Is everything "better than expected"? Has managerial technocracy been rejuvenated?    We discuss whether we're in a Third World War, how the US empire is strengthening its grip on Europe, and how cultural populists are taking over from economic populists.   Part two is available at patreon.com/bungacast

On aesthetic criticism & performance. The hosts of a new podcast on film, Performance Anxiety, join us to talk about how a focus on performance can break through endless squabbles over wokeness and representation in film.  We also discuss our best and worst films of 2022.  Part two of this episode is at patreon.com/bungacast Links: Performance Anxiety podcast The Greatest Films of All Time, Sight & Sound, BFI The Radicalization of the Film Canon, Adrian Nguyen, Quillette

On the achievement of democracy and the 'impartial' state. We speak to sociologist Dylan Riley about his new book Microverses, a series of aphorisms on social theory and politics. The rational-legal state seems to be under threat by politicians who have no sense of the division between public and private – patrimonialists like Donald Trump, or Silvio Berlusconi. What are we to make of this attack on the notion of office? Anti-corruption politics is often the response, but what happens when the left positions itself as the defender of the 'impartial' bourgeois state – rather than its overthrower? And was democratic capitalism the achievement of a militant working class – or a concession made after the working class had already been disciplined by fascism and war? The second half of the interview, and our After-Party, is available at patreon.com/bungacast Readings: Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, Dylan Riley, Verso Books Seven Theses on American Politics, Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, NLR Inflection Point (podcast), Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, UC Berkley Safe Substitutes for Posting: review of Microverses, Harold Florida, Damage

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

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

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 some aspects, the problem goes deeper. The social consequences – loneliness, mistrust, depression – are widely discussed, but the political ones less so.    Does the decline of associationalism open the door to authoritarianism? Are 'right-wing' associations (say, churches or homeowner groups) just as threatened as left-wing ones (like unions or labour clubs)? What are the political valences of growing atomisation?   And are we now like the peasants that Marx described in his 18th Brumaire: just potatoes in a sack - and does this explain the crazy politics of our time? Links:  Fill out our 2022 Listener Survey: tinyurl.com/bunga2022survey  From Bowling Alone to Posting Alone, Anton Jäger, Jacobin Bowling Alone (2020 revised edition), Robert Putnam

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 marking a definitive break? We use a long essay by Swedish Marxist sociologist Göran Therborn in the latest New Left Review as a plank to examine these questions. Therborn tries to present a synoptic analysis of where the left is, globally speaking, almost a quarter of the way into the 21st century. Is he right that the old dialectics of industrialism and colonialism are no longer operative - and that no new dialectic has emerged?  And is trying to present a "balance sheet" a valid approach in the first place?   FILL OUT OUR 2022 LISTENER SURVEY: tinyurl.com/bunga2022survey Links: The World and the Left, Göran Therborn, New Left Review (2022) Renewals, Perry Anderson, New Left Review (2000) /37/ The Ghosts of May ‘68 ft. Catherine Liu, Bungacast OK BUNGER! The Problem of Generations, ep. 3 (Boomers), Bungacast

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, guerilla warfare, and what an 'anti-NATO' stance actually looks like; and whether the forces exist for exiting the EU. Fill out our 2022 Listener Survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XNLTVLB 

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

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