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On geopolitical competition over Africa. [Patreon Exclusive] In light of the 'new Cold War', we look at what the US, Europe, Russia and China's respective "pitches" are to African countries – what are they selling? And we examine the factors that contribute to Africa's place in geopolitics today: Chinese hunger for raw materials, the global war on terror, the green energy transition, drug and people smuggling, and more.  If the original Scramble for Africa (1884-1914) was driven by an attempt to displace European class war onto another terrain, can we say anything analogous is happening today? Links: /303/ The Failure of the French Forever War ft. Yvan Guichaoua  /304/ The Failure of the French Forever War (2) ft. Yvan Guichaoua  Russia in Africa, Financial Times series of articles Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity, Tricontinental Institute Italophone Somalia, Then and Now, Iman Mohamed, The Drift Emmanuel Macron must reset France’s Africa policy, Sylvie Kauffman (Le Monde editor), FT Debunking the Myth of ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’, Lee Jones & Shahar Hameiri, Chatham House Let’s talk about neo-colonialism in Africa, Mark Langan, LSE blog /267/ South Africa Mafia State ft. Benjamin Fogel

On the crisis of crisis.   Bulgarian critical theorist Albena Azmanova joins us to discuss her widely-discussed 2020 book, Capitalism on Edge. We talk critical theory, the paradox of emancipation, her criticisms of Thomas Piketty and why we should be thinking in terms of precarity capitalism, not neoliberalism.   Albena also discusses her concept of the ‘crisis of the crisis of capitalism’ - how the current crisis of capitalism fails to augur a new type of society. Albena makes the case that concepts like neoliberalism obscure more than they clarify.   We also discuss how far critical theorists can be drawn into providing practical political advice to leaders and governing institutions. Plus, what was it like coming of age in communist Bulgaria at the End of History?   Links: It’s the Economic Precarity, Stupid, Albena Azmanova & Marshall Auerback, The Nation Uber’s dangerous drive to serfdom, Albena Azmanova, Unherd Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia, Albena Azmanova, Columbia UP

On the left's understanding of freedom. We continue our talk with Steve Hall and Simon Winlow, social scientists in the northeast of England, about their new book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin From the Beginning Again. This is followed by the After Party, where we debate the extent to which Thatcher 'sold' freedom and what the left's understanding of liberty is. To gain access to episodes like this that normally remain paywalled, subscribe to our patreon: patreon.com/bungacast Part 1 is here: https://bungacast.podbean.com/e/318-the-dead-left-ft-steve-hall-simon-winlow/  Links: /65/ Bunga Gets Ultra-Real ft. Steve Hall /111/ Big Money Talk: The Case for MMT ft. Bill Mitchell /68/ Big Money Talk: The Case against MMT ft. Doug Henwood

On what comes after neo-liberalism.   [Patreon Exclusive]   After 40 years of neo-liberalism, governments are inching their way to some new settlement, under the pressure of repeated crises, as well as populist upsurges. In this episode we try to take a political, not academic, approach to the question. This is not about categorising and labelling, but about understanding what the stakes are in saying a new arrangement is emerging, and grasping how it informs political practice.   What are the main "post-neoliberal" arrangements being pushed by different sides of the spectrum? What do they say about the interests of their constituencies? If successful, what sort of political playing field will they present the masses? Will it be a world of greater or fewer opportunities for emancipatory politics?   Readings: TCS Special Issue: ‘Post-Neoliberalism?’, Various, Theory Culture & Society End of the Neoliberal Era?, David Kotz, NLR The new rules for business in a post-neoliberal world, Rana Forfoohar, FT What's beyond "beyond neoliberalism"?, Amy Kapczynski, LPE Project Reading the post-neoliberal right, Amy Kapczynski, LPE Project

On Martin Hägglund's This Life. [Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive] We begin the 2023 Reading Club with the theme of FREEDOM. In this episode, we examine Martin Hägglund's arguments for secular faith presented in the first half of his book. Is Hagglund right in arguing that much of religious belief, especially in relation to morality, is actually motivated by secular faith? Hägglund's enemy is not so much religion as the "Stoic" attempt to withdraw and detach from the temporal world. Instead we should be engaged and committed to the persons and projects we care about in this life. But does Hägglund underestimate alienation? Is his approach overly demanding? And what about disenchantment? How would we go about re-enchanting the secular world? For local Reading Clubs, email info@bungacast.com Readings: This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free, Martin Hägglund, Profile Books ––Introduction; Chapter 1 (Sections 2, 3, 4); Chapter 2 (Sections 2, 4, 6) From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism, Slavoj Zizek, Cabinet Magazine Vulnerability as Ideology, Peter Ramsay, The Northern Star

On the mainstreaming of racial thinking. We welcome back author and broadcaster Kenan Malik to talk about his new book, Not So Black and White. The book presents a historical account of how racial thinking has accompanied the spread of notions of equality and common humanity.  How is it that many supposed humanitarians in the past were often racists? And how have we reached a point where today, many liberals and supposed anti-racists sustain racial thinking? How have notions of global whiteness/blackness come to dominate the discourse? We also discuss the 'post-liberal' critics of wokeness and their shortcomings, and whether the far right is gaining from the reification of race.   Want more? Subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast   Links: Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, Kenan Malik, Hurst /70/ In Defence of Universalism ft. Kenan Malik

On the app economy.   [Patreon Exclusive]   Delivery apps have taken the world by storm, and the pandemic only deepened our dependence on them. What is the price of convenience – and is there anything wrong with wanting ease? Capitalist keep propping up these money-losing enterprises – why? And can they survive the end of cheap money?   Is the app economy just a battering ram against labour rights? Are delivery apps out to kill off traditional restaurants? And should we defend the petite bourgeoisie and independent bars and pubs?   And does the dream of freedom sold by apps to workers, of being your own boss, work as a legitimating ideology?   Reading: Farewell to the servant economy, FT Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, Adam Greenfield, Verso Delivering Restaurants to Wall Street, Alex Park, Compact 5 Reasons Marxism Has Nothing To Offer Millennials, Austrian Economics Center Links: /59/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 3 ft. Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski Excerpt: /311/ Reading Club: The Precariat Excerpt: /172/ Three Articles: Elite Production (on Uber)

On The Covid Consensus.   We're joined by two authors whose new book asks why lockdowns were adopted almost universally. National and transnational health authorities dropped pre-pandemic plans in favour of open-ended nationwide lockdowns which were to remain in place until vaccines were developed. Why this course of action?    And how to account for the unprecedented level of policy alignment across the majority of countries: was it coordination, imitation, or coercion?   In part two of the interview, we discuss the devastating impact of lockdowns on poor and middle-income countries where the informal economy is the norm.     For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast    Links: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left, Toby Green & Thomas Fazi /213/ The Leopard Lockdown ft. Adam Tooze /38/ The Economics of Exit ft. Thomas Fazi

[Patreon Exclusive]   On your questions and criticisms.   A bumper episode as we respond to your points from December through to the end of January. We discuss 'political capitalism', where the left is today, atomisation, degrowth, disciplining the working class, critical cinema, and family abolition.

On the death of the left.   We talk to Steve Hall and Simon Winlow, social scientists in the northeast of England, about their new book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin From the Beginning Again.   Is the left indeed dead, and what killed it? The turn to culture undoubtedly plays a part, but was the left wrong to turn to liberty, as Hall & Winlow argue? How can we turn back to political economy and what would that politics look like? And if there is to be a future radical movement for and by the working class, would social democracy be its lodestar?     Part two of the interview and the After Party are available at patreon.com/bungacast   Links: /65/ Bunga Gets Ultra-Real ft. Steve Hall  /111/ Big Money Talk: The Case for MMT ft. Bill Mitchell /68/ Big Money Talk: The Case against MMT ft. Doug Henwood

On the key events and developments in 2022.   We look back at how the world transitioned from the pandemic to war over the past year, and what the socio-political fallouts have been. Is everything "better than expected"? Has managerial technocracy been rejuvenated?    We discuss whether we're in a Third World War, how the US empire is strengthening its grip on Europe, and how cultural populists are taking over from economic populists.   Part two is available at patreon.com/bungacast

On aesthetic criticism & performance. The hosts of a new podcast on film, Performance Anxiety, join us to talk about how a focus on performance can break through endless squabbles over wokeness and representation in film.  We also discuss our best and worst films of 2022.  Part two of this episode is at patreon.com/bungacast Links: Performance Anxiety podcast The Greatest Films of All Time, Sight & Sound, BFI The Radicalization of the Film Canon, Adrian Nguyen, Quillette

On the achievement of democracy and the 'impartial' state. We speak to sociologist Dylan Riley about his new book Microverses, a series of aphorisms on social theory and politics. The rational-legal state seems to be under threat by politicians who have no sense of the division between public and private – patrimonialists like Donald Trump, or Silvio Berlusconi. What are we to make of this attack on the notion of office? Anti-corruption politics is often the response, but what happens when the left positions itself as the defender of the 'impartial' bourgeois state – rather than its overthrower? And was democratic capitalism the achievement of a militant working class – or a concession made after the working class had already been disciplined by fascism and war? The second half of the interview, and our After-Party, is available at patreon.com/bungacast Readings: Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, Dylan Riley, Verso Books Seven Theses on American Politics, Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, NLR Inflection Point (podcast), Dylan Riley & Robert Brenner, UC Berkley Safe Substitutes for Posting: review of Microverses, Harold Florida, Damage

Is there a new 'transformative' class?   [Patreon Tier II & III Exclusive] We close of the 2022 Reading Club, and the final section on 'Neo-Feudalism', by discussing how class is changing. Through readings by Guy Standing and Ruy Braga, we ask if the precariat are the new serfs in a supposed feudal-ish social formation. It's clear the old Fordist arrangements have broken down, so what does the working class look like today? Is it still a class in the old sense? Braga argues we are witnessing 'class struggle without class'. But why then do the precariat's revolts only target state political authority, and not property relations? Readings: A return of class struggle without class? Moral economy and popular resistance in Brasil, south Africa and Portugal, Ruy Braga, Sociologia & Antropologia The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class?, Guy Standing, GTI

On 'degrowth communism'. [Patreon Exclusive] Why the rage for degrowth now? With deindustrialisation, energy rationing and severe pressure on standards of living, it looks increasingly like degrowth is official policy. Yet its advocates, drawing from the work of radicals like Mike Davis, John Bellamy Foster, Jason Hickel, and Kohei Saito, would argue that ecological Marxism or degrowth communism is wholly different from stagnant capitalism. How much continuity is there between much older generations of socialists and the contemporary left? Readings: The paradox of Degrowth Communism, Thomas Fazi, UnHerd ‘A new way of life’: the Marxist, post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan, Justin McCurry, Guardian The degrowth delusion, Leigh Phillips, openDemocracy

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.    Does the decline of associationalism open the door to authoritarianism? Are 'right-wing' associations (say, churches or homeowner groups) just as threatened as left-wing ones (like unions or labour clubs)? What are the political valences of growing atomisation?   And are we now like the peasants that Marx described in his 18th Brumaire: just potatoes in a sack - and does this explain the crazy politics of our time? Links:  Fill out our 2022 Listener Survey: tinyurl.com/bunga2022survey  From Bowling Alone to Posting Alone, Anton Jäger, Jacobin Bowling Alone (2020 revised edition), Robert Putnam

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 a synoptic analysis of where the left is, globally speaking, almost a quarter of the way into the 21st century. Is he right that the old dialectics of industrialism and colonialism are no longer operative - and that no new dialectic has emerged?  And is trying to present a "balance sheet" a valid approach in the first place?   FILL OUT OUR 2022 LISTENER SURVEY: tinyurl.com/bunga2022survey Links: The World and the Left, Göran Therborn, New Left Review (2022) Renewals, Perry Anderson, New Left Review (2000) /37/ The Ghosts of May ‘68 ft. Catherine Liu, Bungacast OK BUNGER! The Problem of Generations, ep. 3 (Boomers), Bungacast

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. Fill out our 2022 Listener Survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XNLTVLB 

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 Skynet nightmare? And would the creation of a surplus humanity still be capitalism? Would it be techno-feudal, or something else?   Reading: Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen and James Steinhoff, Pluto Books

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 Reason".  Why has this thesis becomes so popular today, across the political spectrum? What is the economic and political logic of feudalism, and how do current trends supposedly indicate a resurgence of these logics? Why have Marxists, who draw such a clear line between feudalism and capitalism, believe that politically-driven expropriation is replacing exploitation?  And how do Big Tech companies make money - purely through rent, or do they produce commodities?  To join the Reading Club, sign up for $10 at patreon.com/bungacast  Readings:  Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason, Evegeny Morozov, New Left Review The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession, David Harvey, Socialist Register (pdf) Escalating Plunder, Robert Brenner, New Left Review