Bungacast

On the app economy.   [Patreon Exclusive]   Delivery apps have taken the world by storm, and the pandemic only deepened our dependence on them. What is the price of convenience – and is there anything wrong with wanting ease? Capitalist keep propping up these money-losing enterprises – why? And can they survive the end of cheap money?   Is the app economy just a battering ram against labour rights? Are delivery apps out to kill off traditional restaurants? And should we defend the petite bourgeoisie and independent bars and pubs?   And does the dream of freedom sold by apps to workers, of being your own boss, work as a legitimating ideology?   Reading: Farewell to the servant economy, FT Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, Adam Greenfield, Verso Delivering Restaurants to Wall Street, Alex Park, Compact 5 Reasons Marxism Has Nothing To Offer Millennials, Austrian Economics Center Links: /59/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 3 ft. Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski Excerpt: /311/ Reading Club: The Precariat Excerpt: /172/ Three Articles: Elite Production (on Uber)

On The Covid Consensus.   We're joined by two authors whose new book asks why lockdowns were adopted almost universally. National and transnational health authorities dropped pre-pandemic plans in favour of open-ended nationwide lockdowns which were to remain in place until vaccines were developed. Why this course of action?    And how to account for the unprecedented level of policy alignment across the majority of countries: was it coordination, imitation, or coercion?   In part two of the interview, we discuss the devastating impact of lockdowns on poor and middle-income countries where the informal economy is the norm.     For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast    Links: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left, Toby Green & Thomas Fazi /213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze /38/ The Economics of Exit ft. Thomas Fazi

[Patreon Exclusive]   On your questions and criticisms.   A bumper episode as we respond to your points from December through to the end of January. We discuss 'political capitalism', where the left is today, atomisation, degrowth, disciplining the working class, critical cinema, and family abolition.

On the death of the left.   We talk to Steve Hall and Simon Winlow, social scientists in the northeast of England, about their new book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin From the Beginning Again.   Is the left indeed dead, and what killed it? The turn to culture undoubtedly plays a part, but was the left wrong to turn to liberty, as Hall & Winlow argue? How can we turn back to political economy and what would that politics look like? And if there is to be a future radical movement for and by the working class, would social democracy be its lodestar?     Part two of the interview and the After Party are available at patreon.com/bungacast   Links: /65/ Bunga Gets Ultra-Real ft. Steve Hall  /111/ Big Money Talk: The Case for MMT ft. Bill Mitchell /68/ Big Money Talk: The Case against MMT ft. Doug Henwood

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