From Alpha To Omega

After an unplanned hiatus, I am delighted to welcome back Michael Roberts to the show. Michael has a new book just out, called ‘The Long Depression: How it happened, why it happened, and what happens next’. We discuss the main thesis of the book - the idea of a long depression, the problems with Keynesian accounting identities, the hopes for a capitalist revival, and chances of a breakdown. You ca...

This week I am delighted to welcome back Ugo Bardi to the show. Ugo is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Florence, and the man behind the Cassandras Legacy blog, where he writes about resource depletion, climate change, and renewable energy amongst other things. We discuss the recent drop in global C02 emissions and what it means for our global economic system, the hopes for a s...

This week, I am delighted to welcome Alexander Douglas, a lecturer in philosophy at St. Andrews University, to the show, to talk about his recent book: The Philosophy Of Debt. It was great to talk to Alex about the nature of debt and money, and how all of this stuff is explicitly linked to the power relations and class structure of our society. We also got to talk about how this MMT stuff can be v...

In this episode, we have part 2 of the Derick Varn interview, where we discuss the history and theories of Cultural Marxism in great detail. This bumper episode, also veers off into a long discussion on Black Lives Matter, how we need more than just culture wars - how’s about some class wars! Class wars where we call the shots, for a change. Speaking of all this, we start the conversation with mys...

This week I am delighted to welcome back Derick Varn to the show. After listening to the previous show about Cultural Marxism with Doug Lain, Derick sent me an email saying he’d like to come on the show and give his two cents. What followed was a wide ranging discussion on ideology, value theory, and the historical emergence of capitalism. We also discussed the possibility of a revolutionary movem...

This week I am delighted to welcome Doug Lain back to show, for a discussion about cultural marxism, an argument about worker controlled workplaces, and some thoughts on what we can learn from the Inca’s. Doug is the host of the Zero Squared podcast, previously the Diet Soap Podcast, and is the publisher of Zero Books. He is also a sci-fi author, and has been nominated this year for the Phillip K....

After an unplanned hiatus, the show is back with a bang. This week I am delighted to welcome Nick Srnicek to the show. Nick, and his co-author Alex Williams, has recently released a new book with Verso called: “Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work’. I bought this book as a christmas present for myself, and it didn’t disappoint - it’s just the book I have been waiting for s...

This week I am delighted to welcome back to the show Marxist blogger extraordinaire, Michael Roberts. Michael’s blog, ‘The Next Recession’ is one of the best Marxist economics blogs out there, and he also runs a very active facebook group too. We talk about a recent series of articles Michael wrote called: ‘Robots and AI: Utopia or Dystopia, which was prompted by Paul Mason’s recent book Post-Capi...

This week I am delighted to welcome Prof. Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Bill is also the author of the Billy Blog - one of the best places to learn about MMT on the web. He must be the most prolific economics blogger in the world today, and that’s no lie. We met up in London y...

After a long delay, this week I am delighted to welcome another Irishman to the show, Chekov Feeney. Chekov is the man behind the blog chekov.org, where he reflects and theorizes on his 20 year journey through leftist politics, science and the media. Chekov also works as a Senior Research Fellow in the Computer Science department in Trinity College Dublin. We talk about the good and the bad of rad...

This week I am delighted to welcome back to the show Michael Roberts, author of the ‘Next Recession’ blog. We talk about the new reports out on the world economy from the IMF and the Bank of International Settlements, and how Ben Bernanke has come out as a closet Marxist after all these years. We also discuss the recent debate between David Harvey on one side, and Michael and Andrew Kliman on the...

After repeated requests from a number of listeners, this week I am delighted to welcome back to the show Dr Paul Cockshott, a reader in the computer science department of Glasgow University. We talk of the Socialist Calculation debate, the Soviet plans for their own internet, Google vs a planned economy, and the problems with Council Communism. If you'd like to listen to the show on your phone, yo...

This week I am delighted to welcome back to the show Doug Lain, host of what was once called the Diet Soap podcast, but which is now the Zero Squared podcast. We talk about why Doug’s new job as publisher of Zero Books doesn't make him a capitalist, what econophysics has to do with Marx, capitalism as objective reality, base vs superstructure, radical politics and the current balance of forces, ho...

This week I am delighted to welcome to the show Jose A Tapia Granados, associate Professor in the Department of History and Politics in Drexel University. Originally trained as a medical doctor, Jose now specialises in the links between fluctuations in the economy and health conditions. He also is interested in purely economic issues, and is the co-author of the book ‘La Gran Recesión y el capital...

This week I am delighted to welcome Sean Michael Wilson to the show. Sean Michael Wilson is Scottish comic book writer, who now lives and works in Japan. In the last couple of years, Sean Michael has released a couple of explicitly political graphic novels: 'Parecomic: The Story of Michael Albert and Participatory Economics' 'Fight the Power! A Visual History of Protests Among the English Speaking...

This week I am delighted to welcome Gavin Mendel-Gleason to the show. Gavin works as a Post-Doctoral researcher in the computer science department at Dublin City University. Gavin also writes for the very interesting blog: Spirit of Contradiction, which focuses on various different aspects of leftist or socialist politics and theory. Gavin recently wrote a really interesting article on some empiri...

This week I am delighted to welcome Thom Workman to the show, Professor of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick. Thom’s research explores the philosophical and sociological critiques of modernity, especially as these have developed over the post-Enlightenment era. In this episode we discuss the history of the Philosophy of Science, Marx’s understanding of science at the time of wri...

This week I am delighted to have Rick Rozoff, long-time anti-war activist, NATO expert, and curator of the - Stop Nato: Opposition to Global Militarism blog. In a wide ranging interview, we discuss the current Ukraine Situation, Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Grand Chessboard, the NATO expansion and encirclement of Russia, and the plight of Syria. You can check out his blog here: http://rickrozoff.wo...

This week I am glad to welcome C. Derrick Varn back to the show. We discuss the council communism and the Ultra-left, a man who told Stalin where to go and survived, autonomous Marxism and the Occupy Movement, and the failure of revolutions. Enjoy! The music and voice used on this show are: ‘The Order of the Pharaonic Jesters’ by Sun Ra and his Arkestra Paul D'Amato discussing the life and work of...

This week we have part two of our discussion with Professor Peter Hudis, of Oakton Community College, about his book 'Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism'. We talk about the Soviet experiment and the alienation of labour, the role of the state in a post-capitalist society, the Spanish revolution and the anarchist understanding of revolution, and the co-operative model as an alternative...

This week I am delighted to welcome Professor Peter Hudis, of Oakton Community College, who has recently published his new book: 'Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism'. We discuss what Marx had to say about post-capitalist societies, and the reluctance of those on the left to talk about what it might actually look like. We also talk of the theoretical reasons for the failure of the Sovi...

This week I am delighted to welcome back to the show, the Jazz Pianist, Marxist auto-didact, YouTube star, and the man behind the Kapitalism 101 blog, Brendan Cooney. I’ve recently just finished reading volume II of Marx’s Das Kapital, and so I’ve invited Brendan on the show to see what he makes of it all. We discuss Marx's concept of science, dialectics, Rosa Luxembourg and empire, the role of go...

This week I am delighted to welcome back the economist, economic historian, and extremely prolific author, Professor Michael Perelman of the California State University, Chico. We talk about the latest book he is working on: 'The Matrix: An exploratory political economy of the dangerous, paradoxical interactions between war, the economy, and economic ideology'. We discuss unintended consequences,...

This week we have the second part of our interview with Professor Andrew Kliman. We continue our discussion about his latest book - ‘The Failure of Capitalist Production’ - and in particular focus on Andrews critique of the Underconsumptionist Theory of Crisis, which is pretty dominant on the Marxist and non-Marxist left alike. We hear how the empirical evidence sits squarely in the face of this t...

This week I am delighted to have Prof. Andrew Kliman back on the show to talk about his latest book - ‘The Failure of Capitalist Production’. The book is a brilliant example of empirical economic research, and shows us how relevant and insightful Marx’s work still is, in helping us understand the workings of our capitalist economy. We discuss the empirical evidence in the US that supports Marx's T...