Our discussion with Adam Tooze about his book Shutdown continues.
In this second part: is more dislocation necessary for politics to be reborn? Do global issues require global solutions – or do we need a return to national democratic politics first? And is the Covid crisis a preview of what's in store for us with climate change, and climate change policies?
...
On Covid and the end of the end of history.
Adam Tooze joins us to discuss his new book, Shutdown. In 2020 everything changed... so that everything might remain the same.
What were the reasons behind the global shutdown? Was it a result of over-protection, a policy of repression, or the result of structural tensions? Has China been the winner of the pandemic? ...
On net-zero, CCP nanny state, and optimised dating.
We start off discussing the HBO series "The White Lotus" before tackling three articles on middle-class anxieties: climate change and pressures on UK living standards; the Chinese state's crackdown on private tutoring; and women's attempt to avoid crappy men through 'Female Dating Strategy'.
Articles:
Out next Reading Club will be on Mike McNair's article, Intersectionalism, the highest stage of western Stalinism? (attached).
The article argues that ‘intersectionality’ is ultimately derived from the People’s Front policy of the 1930s Comintern, as modified by late 1960s–1970s ‘soft Maoism’, and then adopted in the late 1970s–1980s by the political representa...
On lockdowns, education, and the left.
California middle-school teacher and social critic Alex Gutentag (@galexybrane) joins us to talk about the depredations of lockdown in California and the wider world.
How has lockdown affected different segments of society, and how damaging have school closures been on education? Why has the professional middle class been so in favour of widespread restrictions – and how did the left go from backing Medicare 4 All to cheering on lockdowns i...
2021-08-24 07:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
On the Fall of Kabul, plus responding to your questions & comments.
On this Aufhebonus Bonus, we take your critical comments on 'positive biopolitics' and authoritarian responses to Covid. Plus, whether neoliberalism is really ending, the usefulness of PMC or clerisy as terms, and much more.
We start by discussing what's happening in Afghanistan, the 20 years of failure, and what happens next.
2021-08-17 06:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
What comes after neoliberalism - the protective state?
Here is the final part of our interview with Paolo Gerbaudo, plus the After Party, where the boys debate how convincing Paolo's vision is. Is a protective state emerging - and is the left really 'sovereigntist' in any way? Is control just a means to protection? And is a 'pangolin left' something to aspire to?
Reading:
What comes after neoliberalism - the protective state?
We talk to Paolo Gerbaudo about his new book, The Great Recoil, in which Paolo argues we are now turning inwards – globalisation is no longer a sea of opportunity and instead fear dominates. How convincing is his notion of an emerging 'protective state', and do either the left or right variants of it really promise us much at al...
2021-08-10 10:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
On post-liberalism: loving the state, crushing the individual?
For this 3A, articles from different 'conservative' outlets - but how conservative, and of what kind?
Articles:
What country best captures 20th and 21st century history?
For our 200th episode special, we posed the question: "If you had to study the history of only one country from 1900-2020, and thereby understand the history of the whole world, which would you pick?"
You voted on the ten submissions and now we invited the top 3 back on the pod to discuss in more depth: Dominik Leusder on Germany; Da...
2021-07-27 08:25:52 +0000 UTC View Post
On Chinese investment, Swiss democracy, and fleeing from Afghanistan.
In this Three Articles, we discuss flight or departure in various ways: China opening the gates for its huge savings to spill onto world markets; Switzerland leaving (or remaining outside) the EU; and the US's sudden departure from Afghanistan, without telling anyone.
'Three Articles' episodes are normally for subscribers only - but this one's free. Sign up at 2021-07-20 09:36:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Our next Reading Club will be the essay, "Psychoanalysis and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Eli Zaretsky - to be recorded on 19 August.
The essay does two fascinating things: it provides a psychoanalytic reading of how capitalism has changed over the 20th century, while also looking at the history of psychoanalysis over this period and its interaction with social change. Specifically it provides a perspective on how "psychoanalysis served as the Calvinism of the second industrial rev...
2021-07-15 19:44:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Our Book Launch/Bunga Party will be in London on Saturday 24 July at 3pm. We've booked the upstairs room of The Marquis Cornwallis by Russell Sq.
If you'd like to join us (and we hope you do!) please register here in advance.
Books will be on sale if you don't have a copy yet.
Looking forward to it!
-Alex, George, Phil
2021-07-14 17:43:00 +0000 UTC View Post
On pandemic & post-pandemic politics.
We talk to Benjamin Bratton about his new book, The Revenge of the Real, and its argument for a "positive biopolitics". What does an "epidemiological view of society" look like, and why should we let go of the idea that unmediated social relations are the most authentic kind? We touch on the work of Foucault and Agamben and why...
2021-07-13 06:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
In our latest 3A, we discuss "the clerisy" and how it relates to the PMC; how the EU is doing forever war just as much as the US; and the hyper-commodification of football.
Articles:
Vote for the most convincing contribution from episode 200. (Only vote once you've listened to the episode).
"If you had to study the history of only one country from 1900-2020, and thereby understand world history, which country would you pick?"
On world history, 1900-2020.
For our 200th episode special, we pose the question: "If you had to study the history of only one country from 1900-2020, and thereby understand the history of the whole world, which would you pick?"
We invited 10 contributors to each pitch one country, whose particularities capture the universal sweep of world history from the start of the 20th century till now.
Vote for which you think is best, and we'll have the top 3 back on to discuss in mor...
2021-06-29 06:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey dear patrons, as you probably already know - and are sick of hearing - the Bunga Book is out today.
Thank you to everyone who's patronised us (not like that) over the past couple of years, for your engagement and you critical questions.
If you haven't yet, you can buy the book now, from any of these booksellers wherever you are in the world: https://linktr.ee/bungacast
And we look forward to ...
We take your questions, comments & criticisms.
On this Aufhebonus Bonus, we discuss whether unions are still capable of fighting for their members; the Arab-Israeli conflict at the End of History; a lot more on the 'PMC debate'; plus: whether Phil is "reductionist in the service of his own prejudices".
2021-06-22 06:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
On secularism, nationalism and identity politics.
India is held up as a model developing country: liberal, democratic, multicultural. Renowned Indian writer and activist Achin Vanaik joins us to examine how India has turned away from universalism and secularism.
How did Gandhi, Nehru and the Congress as a whole lay the seeds for today's Hindu chauvinism? What are the consequences of defining secularism as merely 'tolerance'? And how has caste come to function a bit like identity p...
2021-06-18 17:02:35 +0000 UTC View Post
In the lead-up to our 200th episode later this month, we're exceptionally re-releasing our 100th episode special this week.
On the 30 years since 1989.
For our 100th episode, we invited our favourite guests to reflect on the question: “What one event, personal or political, most captures for you the past thirty years, since 1989?”
Are we still living in the death throes of the 20th century, or is something new emerging?
Guests:
On atrocity and sovereignty.
The disasters of Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond are there for all to see. Why hasn't an emphasis on Human Rights led to fewer atrocities? How has Western intervention made the world a less safe place?
We discuss Philip's book Cosmopolitan Dystopia: International Intervention and the Failure of the West and discover that no one really defends sovereig...
On China, economic reform, and the future.
While the USSR famously succumbed to destructive neoliberal "shock therapy", China managed to avoid it. How and why? Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy, tells us about China's opting for gradual reform instead.
What did reform mean for understandings ...
2021-06-01 06:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
On global insurrection and identity politics.
We discuss an essay by the ultra-left collective 'Endnotes' that deals with the same political questions as we do, but comes up with different answers. Are the fragmented and ephemeral movements that have taken to the streets in France, Chile and the US, for example, the future of politics? Anti-political rejections of the establishment seem radical, but can they overcome their own negativity? And are identity politics the necessary form tha...
2021-05-25 06:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
On liberal idealism and imperial overreach.
Why did the winners of the Cold War turn 'revisionist', undermining their own order? How has utopianism come to dominate the discipline of IR, such that we have lost the means to critique power?
We discuss Philip's recent book, The New Twenty Years’ Crisis 1999-2019: A Critique of International Relations, which is both a revisiting of EH Carr's international relations classic The Twenty Years' Crisis as well as an acc...
2021-05-18 06:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
On consequences of the pandemic + important local election results in Spain & UK.
We start off by discussing the telling results of some recent local and regional elections: in the UK, Labour continues its drift to becoming a middle-class party; while in Spain, Madrid goes to the right. Podemos flops, while voters seem to endorse an anti-lockdown stance.
Then we get to our three articles on the consequences of the pandemic: is live-streaming complicit with power? Are liberals ...
2021-05-11 06:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
On class reductionism, commodity fetishism, and value theory.
To discuss Covid, the state as 'PMC leviathan', and the politics of value theory, we’re joined by philosopher Elena Louisa Lange, who also explains why class reductionism is not a theoretical position or a mere mistake, but a social reality. We also address the value of 'going back to school', take on the new Leftist 'holy trinity' of class-race-gender, and hear from Elena why we need to theorise the world before we change ...
2021-05-04 06:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
On Latin America's progressive wave and its discontents.
A new book on Latin America argues that 'pink tide' governments tried to treat the symptoms of neoliberal capitalism while allowing the underlying situation to worse. We talk to the author, Fabio Luis, about cases across the region, including the election in Ecuador and Venezuela's disaster, to Bolivia's coup and Argentina's "path of least resistance". How important is regional integration and what does an alternative socialist vi...
2021-04-27 06:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostREMINDER:
Our next Reading Club will be on Friday 7 May at 7pm UK time. We'll be discussing the second of Perry Anderson's three new essays in the London Review of Books on European politics, this one called Ever Closer Union (attached).
Again, it'll be live-streamed here (via YouTube), for patrons $10+ only. Hope to see you all there (thoug...
2021-04-22 01:25:16 +0000 UTC View Post
On the end of the End of History and neo-feudalism.
In a continuation of our discussion on the emerging transfer state, we ask whether the end of neoliberalism entails the end of the 'End of History'. What are the determinate features of the End of History that we are leaving behind? Which are still with us?
Also, what to make of arguments that our future is neo- or techno-feudal? Do these terms make any sense? Or is it better to think of two alternate futures: Japanisation or Bra...
2021-04-20 11:30:59 +0000 UTC View Post