Current Affairs

One of the most fascinating and thought-provoking books of our time is Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics (Verso) by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass. The book asks the question: how could we actually have a future for Earth that is both green and socialist? The authors dive into the history of attempts to plan the economy, unearthing useful insights from neglected thinkers like Otto Neurath (developer of the very cool Isotype system). They combine utopian fiction and serious scientific analysis to offer a vision of what humans might be capable of if we put our know-how to work. It's very rare these days to have serious scientific thinkers trying to imagine the path to radical futures, so Pendergrass and Vettese have given us a wonderful gift that all leftists should debate and discuss. The book has an eclectic mix of influences, as the authors write:Half-Earth Socialism draws on ecology, energy studies, epidemiology, biogeography, Chilean cybernetics, history, eighteenth-century philosophy, Soviet mathematics, the socialist calculation debate, Hayekian epistemology, cutting-edge climate modelling, feminist sci-fi, and the forgotten tradition of utopian socialism.Vettese and Pendergrass have even designed a free computer game to go along with their book, in which YOU can attempt to plan the entire global economy, reducing emissions and the destruction of life while keeping the population happy. It's like SimCity but with the whole world, and instead of your task being to build a city it's to maintain a viable eco-socialist global government. GOOD LUCK!  

Daisy Pitkin has been in the labor movement for two decades and is the author of the new book On the Line A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union, which tells the story of an effort to unionize an industrial laundry in Arizona. It's a moving account of the difficult grinding work of putting together a labor union under the most hostile imaginable conditions.In this episode, we discuss:The world of industrial laundries—hot, dangerous places hidden from public view, where workers toil in unhealthy conditions for unbelievably low payThe realities of union organizing: what it actually takes to make a campaign successfulThe difference between "top down" and "bottom up" organizing and why it mattersHow successful union fights change people's lives and give them a sense of their own powerHow the stories we tell about labor struggles often distort the truth and are too "individualistic" in their focusFinally, why moths feature heavily in Daisy's bookKim Kelly's Fight Like Hell, mentioned in the episode, can be purchased here. The book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is an excellent introduction to the real story of Rosa Parks. The story of the Uprising of 20,000 can be found here. 

Anatol Lieven is an international relations expert and journalist who serves as a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His books include Russia and Ukraine and most recently Climate Change and the Nation State. His commentaries on the Ukraine war have appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Anatol is a highly experienced reporter with a thorough knowledge of the region, and in this conversation he explains what he thinks is left out of mainstream discourse in the United States around the war. He explains Russia's motivations and shows the most obvious path to peace. He also discusses the risks of nuclear escalation that could come from a U.S. policy that pushes Russia past red lines. Anatol's explanation of the current state of the war and what happens next is clarifying and intelligent, and anyone wanting to have a better understanding of what is actually going on needs to read Anatol's work.Anatol's major Nation feature from before the war, "Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem In The World" can be read here.Anatol's latest Guardian piece making several of the arguments discussed in this episode is here.The delusional Daily Beast article that comments on "how little Putin and his spokespeople mention NATO in public justifications" is here.The Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that we must "show we can win a nuclear war" is here.An article Nathan wrote mentioning several of the Cold War movies discussed in this episode is here.Our previous episodes with Katrina vanden Heuvel and Noam Chomsky cover some of the same issues.

Cryptocurrencies have been hyped in Super Bowl ads and promoted by everyone from Bill Clinton to Glenn Greenwald to Spike Lee to Larry David to New York City mayor Eric Adams (who has pledged to turn the city into a "crypto hub"). But times are tough for crypto. As the New York Times reports, “the crypto world [recently] went into a full meltdown... in a sell-off that graphically illustrated the risks of the experimental and unregulated digital currencies.”One of cryptocurrency’s most vocal skeptics is Nicholas Weaver, senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and lecturer in the computer science department at UC Berkeley. Weaver has studied cryptocurrencies for years. On today's episode, Prof. Weaver explains why he views the much-hyped technology with such antipathy. He argues that cryptocurrency is useless and destructive, and should “die in a fire.”Nicholas Weaver's YouTube lecture on crypto can be found here.Nathan's take on cryptocurrency is here and his take on NFTs is here.The writings of crypto skeptic Stephen Diehl make an excellent supplement to this interview.A slightly cleaned-up transcript of this interview can be read here.Note: Prof. Weaver's audio is of mixed quality for the first portion of the podcast but gets better as the episode goes on. Edited by Tim Gray. 

Kate Raworth is an economist at Oxford University whose book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist is a radical attempt to rethink foundational concepts in economics and create a new framework for a sustainable economy that does not depend on "infinite growth." Prof. Raworth shows how the ideology that growth needs to be "maximized" causes catastrophic ecological destruction while not even building an economy that serves human needs. She goes beyond critique of the dominant paradigm, however, and actually works out some new models that help us think more clearly about what the goals of economics should be and can replace simplistic neoliberal ideas with more sophisticated and realistic models of the way the world works. This conversation offers a useful introduction to Prof. Raworth's revolutionary ideas, which help us think more clearly about what matters and how to balance competing human and ecological needs in the 21st century. Raworth's Doughnut, a diagram that helps us think about the targets for economic policy, which should aim to make sure the economy produces neither too little nor too much. The article Nathan mentions about the term "development" is here. The episode with Jonathan Aldred discussing the moral assumptions built into economics is here. The books of Mariana Mazzucato, which Prof. Raworth recommends, are here. Prof. Raworth's TED talk, in which she succinctly explains some of her core ideas, is here. CORRECTION: In the program, Nathan mentions a proposed highway expansion in Houston, which he says "is turning an 8-lane highway into a 12-lane highway," as an illustration of the insanity of continued highway expansion. In fact, the highway will be up to 24 lanes. 

A recent article in Vanity Fair about the National Conservatism Conference profiles figures on the "New Right," including Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, Blake Masters, and a deeply unpleasant individual called Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin/Moldbug is an advocate of "neoreactionary" politics and explicitly believes in ending democracy and instituting a dictatorship in the United States. J.D. Vance, who may well be a U.S. senator soon, admits in the Vanity Fair profile that he is an admirer of Yarvin's thinking. For a long time, "neoreactionary" thought dwelled mostly in the darker corners of the internet, but we may well soon see these ideas become more mainstream as the American right becomes increasingly extreme and hostile to the democratic process.Today on the podcast, author Elizabeth Sandifer joins to discuss "neoreaction": what its tenets are and why it is both incredibly stupid and incredibly terrifying. Sandifer is the author of Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right. Sandifer's book profiles some key neoreactionary thinkers and is a witty demolition of their horrible ideas. In this episode, Sandifer explains the core of neoreactionary philosophy, including some of the more bizarre ideas to percolate through this ecosystem such as the "basilisk" of the title. We discuss why these ideas catch on and the threat they pose. The photograph above is of Curtis "Mencius Moldbug" Yarvin, who looks precisely like what you'd expect a sinister pro-dictatorship pseudointellectual named Moldbug to look. 

Santa Claus is the mayor pro-tem of North Pole, Alaska. Yes, he's real, and he's a democratic socialist running for Congress in the special election against Sarah Palin. Current Affairs is honored to be joined by a man falsely thought to be a mere myth. In fact, when parents tell their children there is no Santa, they just don't want kids to know that the real Santa is a leftist who believes love is more important than presents.Note from Nathan: Apologies for the absence of new podcast episodes over the last week. I had to defend my PhD dissertation this week and it took all of my energy away! Good news is that's done and I am Dr. Robinson now. Many magnificent new podcasts coming soon so stay tuned!! Thank you so much for all your support we have great stuff planned for the next months.      

Tom Wetzel's forthcoming book Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century (AK Press) is both a primer on the basic left critiques of capitalism and a handbook for creating a new economic system. Wetzel explains in clear, accessible language why exploitation, waste, and environmental destruction are built into the capitalist model and then explores possible alternative economic structures and shows how we might get there. He probes important questions like "What is the role of electoral politics?" "What kinds of unions do we need?" and "What cautions does the history of Marxism-Leninism offer us?" In the best libertarian socialist tradition, Wetzel is a critic not only of domination and hierarchy in the contemporary capitalist economy, but of attempts to bring about socialism through authoritarian institutions. He explains the importance of democracy and why it must guide everything we do. Overcoming Capitalism is an important contribution to the literature of the left, the product of over a decade of research and writing, and today Tom Wetzel joins us to explain the basics of his ideas. 

Jennifer Taub is a law professor whose book Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay is about the double standard in American law that harshly punishes street crime while giving a free pass to corporate criminals. Taub tallies up the immense costs of corporate wrongdoing from fraud to wage theft and exposes how CEOs commit acts of destructive criminal wrongdoing with complete impunity. But Taub isn't just bemoaning the corruption of the justice system—she also shows how we can change it, and her book is a manifesto for action as well as an indictment. As the San Francisco Chronicle writes, Taub "proposes straightforward fixes and ways everyday people can get involved in taking white-collar criminals to task." Prof. Taub joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson and online editor Lily Sánchez to talk about how corporate criminals get away with it and why we don't need to resign ourselves to a two-tiered justice system. 

Tariq Ali is the author of two dozen books and his career as a public intellectual and activist stretches back to the 1960s. His new book Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes is an effort to demolish the "Churchill myth" that has been built up since the Thatcher years. Ali demonstrates that Churchill was: - Not actually popular among the British public, who threw him out of office immediately at the end of World War II, and voted in the socialist Labour government instead- A virulent white supremacist whose core political beliefs were the violent maintenance of the British empire abroad and the suppression of class struggle at home- Not actually an opponent of fascism on principle, having highly praised Mussolini. Churchill saw the threat that Hitler posed to Europe but would happily tolerate far-right governments to stop the spread of Bolshevism- Responsible for hideous colonial atrocities such as the Bengal famineAli's book is not just a myth-busting biography of Churchill, but a history of imperialism and the British working class movement, and a case study in how falsified myths are used to justify the maintenance of the existing social order. Today, everyone from Boris Johnson to Volodymyr Zelensky invokes the Churchill of legend, but we need to understand the Churchill of historical fact, and face up to the horrors of the British empire and the way that powerful countries rationalize their misdeeds with appealing self-righteous rhetoric and the turning of morally repugnant rulers into saintly icons. A review of Ali's Winston Churchill has been published in Current Affairs here. Footage of the British public booing Churchill and chanting "We Want Labour!" can be found here.