Money on the Left

Historian and philologist Brendan Cook joins Scott Ferguson for the final installment of their 3-part mini-series devoted to Plato’s Republic. (See Part 1 and Part 2, if you are new to the series.) In Part 3, Brendan and Scott take up the vexed and largely maligned role of money in Republic. Weighing the fact that there is no linguistic equivalent for the modern English term “money” in Attic Greek, Brendan and Scott nevertheless align the text’s negative treatment of money-related activities with Plato’s impoverished univocal thinking. Next, they consider the limits and potentials of Plato’s well-known taxonomy of political regimes in Book 8 of Republic, noting how unfavorable invocations of “money loving” throughout the text’s latter sections abet a fatalistic and anti-democratic politics. Brendan and Scott then ponder the ironies of Socrates’ second paradoxical argument against poetry. And lastly, they explore the celestial “myth of Er” that closes Plato’s Republic. On their reading, this concluding myth not only implicitly betrays Socrates' injunction against poetry, but also encapsulates the text's key contradiction between expansive provisioning and zero-sum trade-offs.Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure

Scott Ferguson joins Varn Vlog to discuss his approach to critical theory, aesthetics and politics. Special thanks to C. Derick Varn for permitting Money on the Left to re-publish the interview here.You can find more Varn Vlog interviews here:  https://www.youtube.com/c/CDerickVarnVlogYou can support Varn Vlog by becoming a patron:https://www.patreon.com/varnvlogYou can support the Money on the Left Editorial Collective by becoming a patron:https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure

Benjamin C. Wilson, Taylor Reid, and Max Sussman join the podcast to discuss their forthcoming co-written essay, “Food, Money, and Democracy: Cultivating Collective Provisioning for Resilient and Equitable Communities of Work.” Inaugurating our new journal, Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice, the article politicizes what Sanjukta Paul and Nathan Tankus term “coordination rights” across monetary and production sectors and focuses on the coordination of food systems, in particular. Coordination rights are fundamental to the process of building resilient communities, our guests argue, determining whether social provisioning systems are “collective” or “concentrated.” In our conversation, Wilson, Reid, and Sussman consider several promising cases of collective provisioning, which prioritize democratic participation and ecosocial stewardship over the austerity and profit-maximization associated with concentrated industry. Such examples include La Via Campesina movement for Food Sovereignty, the Black Cooperative Movement in the U.S., and restaurant reactions to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lamenting the failures of such models when faced with systemic illiquidity, our co-authors also importantly extend collective coordination principles to monetary systems, exploring small and medium-scale monetary experiments that use food systems as a way to build community capacity.Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructureMusic by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com

In episode 5 of Projections, Will reflects on how recent editorial decisions at The Washington Post and New York Magazine have opened both institutions to public pressure and contestation during a period of right wing media campaigns against feminism and so-called "wokeness."Visit our Patreon page here: https://patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure…Music: “Lilac” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting.http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.comTwitter: @actualflirting

Historian and philologist Brendan Cook joins Scott Ferguson for the second installment of their 3-part mini-series devoted to Plato’s Republic. (See Part 1, if you are new to the series.) In Part 2, Brendan and Scott turn their attention to the education of the guardian class that occupies Republic’s middle books in an effort to examine how the text’s zero-sum or “univocal” metaphysics of mediation variously undermine its commitments to abundant provisioning. Along the way, our co-hosts investigate Republic's elitist critique of democracy, contradictory endorsement of the so-called “noble lie,” and much-discussed analogies of the sun, divided line and cave. Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure

Mike Siegel and Mike Lewis join Money on the Left to discuss municipal currency politics. The conversation focuses, in particular, on our guests’ recent success in Austin, Texas, where they helped critically rewrite anti-public and anti-environmental crypto legislation to open fresh possibilities for public banking and payments that support local communities and ecologies. A former public school teacher, Mike Siegel is a civil rights attorney, a co-founder of the progressive non-profit Ground Game, and a former Democratic candidate to represent Texas’ 10th Congressional district in the US House of Representatives. Mike Lewis, meanwhile, served as communications director for Siegel’s 2020 campaign, works regularly to advance Ground Game’s commitment to progressive electoral politics, and remains a prolific advocate for public money. In early 2022, Siegel, Lewis and Money on the Left Collective member Andrés Bernal mobilized an effort to block the development of an official cryptocurrency in the City of Austin. Initially, they appealed to the Austin Chronicle opinion page to reshape public opinion. Next, Siegel, Lewis, and Bernal persuaded and then worked alongside Austin City Council members to amend recently-passed crypto legislation. Impressively, these amendments introduced new language into municipal law, warning against the eco-social dangers of crypto, on one hand, and articulating a broad-based need for robust public banking and payment systems, on the other. Woefully underreported in comparison to news about all things blockchain, the story of municipal money politics in Austin represents a powerful model for local public money action worldwide, particularly in light of the recent catastrophic crash in crypto markets. Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructureMusic by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com

Catch up on the May 2022 episodes of Projections, a new series from the Money on the Left Editorial Collective hosted by Will Beaman (@agoingaccount). Projections offers short readings of current events that destabilize and contest mainstream conservative narratives on behalf of an inclusive progressive politics. Tracklist:1. Up for Grabs2. The Calls Are From Inside the House3. Grab-bags & Constellations4. Cops Don’t CareVisit our Patreon page here: https://patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure…Music: “Lilac” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.comTwitter: @actualflirting

Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) draws out the ideological stakes of recent comparisons between teachers and police in the wake of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, TX.

Historian and philologist Brendan Cook joins Scott Ferguson for this special 3-part  Superstructure in which they examine a keystone of the Western philosophical tradition: Plato’s Republic. In Part 1 of their discussion, Brendan and Scott set up a critical consideration of the influential text’s fraught metaphysical commitments and political implications by situating The Republic within Fourth-Century (BCE) Athenian Democracy and teasing out its complex dialogical approach to the question of justice.   Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure

This week, Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) offers critical reflection on recent statements by Jacobin Magazine's Matt Karp, in which he dismissed recent Democratic Party primary victories against establishment candidates as moving backwards to a "pre-Bernie era" of "vague constellations of grab-bag progressives."