This Machine Kills

We're unlocking the second half of our exploration into the techno-politics of Luddism. Let us all go forth into the new year with dreams of smashing machines and sabotaging capital. In this episode, we offer the case for a techno-politics of unmaking to combat innovation fetishism. Talk about examples of Luddism in action at Amazon warehouses and on the silver screen. And wrap up with an exciting reading series of a shockingly prescient essay from the old radical computer industry magazine, Processed World. Some stuff we reference: • Is it OK to be a Luddite? by Thomas Pynchon: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html • Surviving Amazon by Sam Adler Bell: https://logicmag.io/bodies/surviving-amazon/ • World Processor by Jacob Silverman: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/world-processor • Sabotage: The Ultimate Video Game by Gidget Digit: http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue05/05sabotage.htm Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

With all the end of year reading lists rolling out, we decided to hop on the bandwagon and offer our own recommendations for what to read over the holidays and beyond. Sometime in the near year we plan to release the TMK Syllabus – a live document of books, articles, and other resources that inform the TMK ethos of critical techno-politics. In this episode, we provide a preview of the TMK Syllabus by discussing some of the books that have influenced us in different ways – the good, the bad, and the weird – and some of the excellent new books from this year. Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

We’re joined by the great Veena Dubal (twitter.com/veenadubal), law professor at UC Hastings, for a fantastic discussion about how gig work platforms like Uber have weaponized ideas of flexibility and entrepreneurship, the political / legal origins of the distinction between “employees” vs. “independent contractors,” and the possibilities for building worker power in the face of authoritarian neoliberalism. As Silicon Valley takes aim at other professions – rolling out flexible exploitation, eviscerating labor rights, and turning all jobs into piecework – the fate of gig workers is the fate of everybody. Some stuff we reference: • Those in Power Won’t Give Up Willingly: On the Future of Organizing Under Prop 22 by Veena Dubal and Meredith Whittaker: https://onezero.medium.com/amp/p/e6eaa3ee2324 • Wage Slave or Entrepreneur?: Contesting the Dualism of Legal Worker Identities by Veena Dubal: https://repository.uchastings.edu/faculty_scholarship/1596/ • The Drive to Precarity: A Political History of Work, Regulation, & Labor Advocacy in San Francisco's Taxi & Uber Economies by Veena Dubal: https://repository.uchastings.edu/faculty_scholarship/1589/ • Words Matter: How Tech Media Helped Write Gig Companies into Existence by Sam Harnett: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3668606 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

We offer the case for a techno-politics of unmaking — quite literally deconstructing capital — to combat the innovation fetishism that masks the social relationships inherent in all technology. We also talk about examples of Luddism in action at Amazon warehouses. There’s some great tangents along the way (the acting roles that Ethan Hawke has been taking lately are surprisingly, righteously Luddish). We wrap up with an exciting reading series of a shockingly prescient essay from the old radical computer industry magazine, Processed World. Some stuff we reference: • Is it OK to be a Luddite? by Thomas Pynchon: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html • Surviving Amazon by Sam Adler Bell: https://logicmag.io/bodies/surviving-amazon/ • World Processor by Jacob Silverman: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/world-processor • Sabotage: The Ultimate Video Game by Gidget Digit: http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue05/05sabotage.htm Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

At last, the Luddism episode has dropped! We dig into the actual, and massively misunderstood, history of Luddites — not as an insult for people who are deemed “anti-progress,” but as a labor movement who confronted the machinery of industrial capitalism. We discuss how Luddism should inform militant working class power, what lessons we can apply today for how we think about technology, and draw connections to other struggles against oppressive systems, whether in the streets or the shop floors. Think of Luddism as like Marie Kondo, but for technopolitics. Does this technology contribute to human well-being and/or social welfare? If not, take it apart and toss it away! (Listen to the end for a post-outro treat from Klobbering Klobuchar.) Some stuff we reference: • A Nod to Ned Ludd by Richard Byrne https://thebaffler.com/salvos/a-nod-to-ned-ludd • Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurly Flynn https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/flynn/1917/sabotage.htm Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl). Thanks to Laura for voicing Klobbering Klobuchar.

Folk, country, punk, rap – these seemingly disparate genres all have deep roots in radical politics of the working class. They each emerged out of particular material conditions and, in turn, sought to create music about those conditions. And they have all been subjected to, in their own way, processes of depoliticization that have attempted to defang their social messages. To help us recover these lost histories – and draw parallels to the ways technology has also undergone processes of being made ahistorical and apolitical – we are once again joined by Alexander Billet, an editor at Locust Review and contributor to Jacobin, whose work provides great materialist analysis of music and culture. Check out Alex’s work http://alexanderbillet.com/ and follow him on twitter https://twitter.com/UbuPamplemousse Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

[Oh the irony that, on an episode about music, the sound quality on this episode is a little gritty due to some recording issues – big ups to Jereme for working production magic cleaning up the audio.] In this episode, we discuss the cultural and technological politics of music and the shadow that Spotify has cast over the industry. As exploitation in the cultural economy accelerates, it’s become radical to even recognize that artists are also workers. And, as such, we all have a stake in their struggles and solidarities against the platformization of culture. Joining us on this journey into sound, we have Alexander Billet, an editor at Locust Review and contributor to Jacobin, whose work focuses on the intersections of art, music, and politics. Check out Alex’s essay on Spotify’s exploitative streaming model: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/spotify-streaming-model-exploitation-class-conflict Follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/UbuPamplemousse. Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

Conservative commentators used the phrase “immanentize the eschaton” as a criticism of socialism and communism. For these stooges, who thought they stood at the end of history, any alternative to neoliberal capitalism and American hegemony was tantamount to ushering in the apocalypse. Well we’re here to tell you not to fear the end of their grand utopian project. If the rest of us experience this reality as a lived dystopia, then why not try to hasten its demise? We dig deeper into our discussion on the radical potential of real utopias, providing more examples along the way. Subscribe to hear more analysis and get premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

TMK is taking a break from our regularly scheduled analysis of the ongoing dystopia by pivoting to utopianism! In this episode, we take seriously the question: What would it mean to do utopianism in a way that doesn’t demand abandoning our commitments to materialist critique? We argue for why the anti-capitalist left must reassert its capacity for utopianism and outline some examples of “real utopias” with radical potential that are inspiring our thinking about the kind of alternatives that are imminently achievable. Our discussion builds on the analytical framework detailed by Erik Olin Wright in his work on real utopianism and anti-capitalism: • Transforming Capitalism through Real Utopias (essay) https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Published%20writing/Presidential%20address%20--%20uncorrected%20page%20proofs.pdf • How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century (book) https://www.versobooks.com/books/3065-how-to-be-an-anticapitalist-in-the-twenty-first-century Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).

We continue our discussion on Huawei by laying out the ways that network infrastructure has become a site for proxy battles as the US/UK and China pursue different agendas for national security and industrial policy. Subscribe to hear more analysis and get more premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).