Bungacast

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...

On the global left after the Cold War. [ Patreon Exclusive ] Has the left declined, been defeated, or is it dead? Is the continuity with the Old and New Lefts of the 20th century, or should we understand 1989 as marking a definitive break? We use a long essay by Swedish Marxist sociologist Göran Therborn in the latest New Left Review as a plank to examine these questions. Therborn tries to present...

On your questions & criticisms. [ Patreon Exclusive ] We debate what kind of work 'shared-labour socialism' would involve in a complex society, and what role 'dispossession' or 'expropriation' has in the contemporary economy. Plus: strategies on Ukraine – backing independence, guerilla warfare, and what an 'anti-NATO' stance actually looks like; and whether the forces exist for exiting the EU. Fil...

On Inhuman Power.   [ Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive ]   Contemporary capitalism is possessed by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) question – one of the few areas today in which capitalist still seem to have ambition. Why is this so, and is there something about AI that gets to the nub of what capitalism is, as a mode of production?   Is capitalism without humanity anything more than a dystopian S...

On "techno-feudalism". In the Bungacast Reading Club for patrons, we've been discussing various works on "neo-feudalism" - a thesis that tries to explain capitalist stagnation and inequality by arguing that we are moving beyond capitalism – toward something worse.  In this free episode, we discuss one of the most thoroughgoing critiques of this thesis: Evgeny Morozov's " Critique of Techno-Feudal...

On Mali and the Sahel.   French president Emmanuel Macron declared the end of Opération Barkhane on 9 November 2022, bringing to an end to nearly 10 years of French military intervention in Mali. But what is the legacy of the French Forever War in the Sahel, and what happens next?   Sahel expert Yvan Guichaou joins us to talk about French defeat in the war on terror, the continued French military...

A special five-part series on generational consciousness and conflict. Previously released in 2021 only to subscribers at patreon.com/bungacast , a year on we're releasing the whole series to everyone. Part 1: (00:00:00) Part 2: (00:38:11) Part 3: (01:07:54) Part 4: (02:50:32) Part 5: (03:59:24) Part 1: We look at the current, vexed discourse around generations, and analyse competing theories on h...

On your questions & criticisms. [ Patreon Exclusive ]   The weakness of anti-EU forces; the implications of defending Ukrainian sovereignty; what should we call the new far-right and what does it *do* in power? And the gravity of nuclear war   Also, is Phil okay?

On Joel Kotkin's The Coming of Neo-Feudalism   We start off by discussing your points on the last RC, on conspiracy theory. Then we delve into Kotkin's book, asking whether he has an adequate understanding of feudalism, and whether this is the right lens to understand transformations underway now. Is 'techno-feudalism' not just a downturn in 'systemic cycles of accumulation', related to the declin...

On nuclear exterminism.  To commemorate our 300th episode, we discuss how the world is closer to a nuclear conflict than at any point since the Cold War. After decades of inconsequential 'permawar' (at least inside the Western bubble), the proxy war in Ukraine between NATO and Russia is suddenly very consequential indeed. How does our situation differ from that of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis? Wh...

On reclaiming populism.   With only a couple of days to go until the decisive runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro, we continue our Bungazão 2022 series by talking to to political scientist Miguel Lago about how Lula and Bolsonaro both construct a Brazilian people. Lula does so broadly on class lines, while Bolsonaro's construction is a moral one: "good citizens" and those to be excluded.    Why is p...

On shared-labour socialism. Political theorist Alex Gourevitch talks to us about his critique of post-work thought, and how it presupposes the very labour it seeks to free us from. We start of by distinguishing post-work socialism (e.g. Fully Automated Luxury Communism) from various propositions for a Universal Basic Income, and discuss why these ideas are popular today. We then dedicate much of t...

On corruption & anti-corruption. When Bolsonaro won in 2018, he rode a wave of anti-corruption sentiment. Now he's doled out billions in pork via a secret budget, but this doesn't seem to bother his supporters. What happened? Benjamin Fogel, who studies the history of corruption in Brazil, comes on to discuss how a moralistic account of corruption has fortified the far right. How has corruption be...

On Trussonomics.   [ Patreon Exclusive ]   Having stumbled upon a successful recipe under Boris Johnson which would see greater state intervention, Britain's Tories then pivoted to a much more pro-market approach. But the markets haven't liked it – they've hated it.   What does this say about neoliberalism and what the new orthodoxy is? Why did markets react so badly against a budget that featured...

On who's responsible for prolonging the Ukraine War + your questions & criticisms.   [ Patreon Exclusive ]   We start off by discussing whether the Zelensky tail is wagging the NATO dog, and what possible exits to conflict there might be.    Then, in the main section, we respond to listener comments: we talk about the possibility of a "Chinese Dream", what the point of economic growth is, the mona...

On Empire of Conspiracy and agency panics.   [ Patreon Exclusive - Tiers II & III ]   We focus our discussion on the notion of 'agency panic' that is at the centre of Timothy Melley 's account of conspiracy theories in postwar America. Does it apply to the Great Reset and Russiagate equally?   Melley's approach is a useful way of understanding what conspiracy theories give voice to – but is Melley...

On the meaning of Gorbachev.   [ Patreon Exclusive ]   Mikhail Gorbachev continues to be lauded in Western circles for overseeing the collapse of the Soviet Union without much bloodshed. But given the historic societal disaster that followed, is this status unmerited? How naive was Gorbachev about the wolves at the door? And to what extent was the writing on the wall by the late '80s – was there a...

On Brazil's containment of the crisis. We talk to members of the Unbridled Possibility Collective ( Fabio Luis B. Santos | Thais Pavez | Daniel Cunha ) about their intervention, trying to look beyond this week's election in Brazil. What does establishment support for Lula this time round represent? Is Lula guilty of "unrealistic pragmatism"? How will Brazil react to a potential coup attempt by Bol...

On the Brothers of Italy. We talk to Mattia Salvia, former Rolling Stone Italia politics editor and author of Interregno , about Italy's election last weekend in the context of a Europe in crisis. The big question to start: is Meloni a fascist - and will her government be fascist? With very low turnout, it seems like the working class has deserted politics, with 5 Star being the last gasp of prole...

On La Macronie, or Macronistan Is France in perma-crisis? We talk to Nathan Sperber, independent researcher on political economy based in Paris and the author of a recent piece on Macronistan in American Affairs.   Does Macron evince a neo-statist turn, away from the entrepreneurial, neoliberal rhetoric of 2017? And what about the anti-establishment forces, left and right – how much of a chance do...

On your questions and criticisms. [ Patreon Exclusive ] We discuss the Chinese Dream, speculation and horizontal politics, foreign fighters and spies, Dune, and killing Phil.

[ Patreon Exclusive ]   On the death of Queen Elizabeth, a 20th century figure   To our own surprise, we are doing an episode on the Queen of England. How will her death impact the UK when she was basically the only institution that still retained popular trust? Will Britons be made to face up to the question of what kind of country they want?   We revisit the Nairn-Anderson theses about how and w...

On Communism's historic role.   We talk to renowned Serbian-American economist Branko Milanovic about growing up in Yugoslavia and how, in much of the world, History never ended. We then dedicate much of the episode to discussing Branko's claim that communism was essentially an engine of economic convergence, allowing developing countries to haul themselves into the industrial age.   We also talk...

On Brazil's elections and the military.   A month away from the first round showdown between former president Lula and current president Jair Bolsonaro, lawyer, podcaster and communist Alcysio Canette joins us to look at the features that have shaped the past years.   How did Bolsonaro's response to the Covid pandemic – denialism, essentially – tarnish his image? What role is the military playing...

On Anthony Giddens' The Consequences of Modernity (ch.3) [ Patreon Tier 2&3 Exclusive ] In the second episode of the Cynical Ideology section of the 2022 Reading Club, we look at what trust is and why it has declined so precipitously in recent decades, especially in relation to institutions.  Is the opposite of trust mistrust, or is it existential angst? What's the link between the absence of trus...