Bungacast

On Roland Barthes' Mythologies.

Alex, George, and contributing editor Catherine Liu delve into Barthes' 1957 classic to understand the form of ideology critique it proposes – and particularly as it relates to left and right.

If the bourgeoisie generates myth, is revolution a cathartic act that gets us beyond myth?

Is the direct producer also unable to speak myth, or is this a romanticisation?

What are predominant left-wing myths today? Is "left vs right" a myth of sorts?

Is the critic of myths condemned to live a "theoretical sociality"? Should people just be allowed to enjoy things?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

On world money and war.

Costas Lapavitsas, professor of economics at SOAS, London, talks to George and Alex about financialisation, arrested development, and the Strait of Hormuz.

What is the state-led stabilisation of finance capital?

How does today's imperialism differ from prior versions – even if they also inhibited development outside the core?

What is the "liquidity tribute" that developing countries must pay?

How is the war on Iran a perfect case of dollar imperialism: "the dollar and the F35"?

Why is the talk of "colonialism" today a distraction?

London event: History's Back, Baby!

Links:

A Topography of the New Dollar Imperialism, Costas Lapavitsas, NLR

Trump’s Chaotic Imperialism: Economic Warfare, Geopolitical Truculence and Domestic Authoritarianism, Costas Lapavitsas, Socialist Register

For forthcoming Monthly Review article, see here

/139/ Dollar Empire ft. Yakov Feygin & Dominik Leusder

/142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

History’s back, baby! 

Thu 28 May, Verdurin, London

Tickets: https://verdur.in/store/historys-back-baby-admission/

 

It is obvious today that the “end of history”, postulated by Francis Fukuyama in 1992, is over. Liberal democracy as the final form of human organisation? Pah! The arc of history tending towards justice? Pah! 

Will the end of twentieth-century modernity be the start of something new? The building blocks of the past – political parties, ideologies, and institutions – are decaying around us, and nothing new emerges to take their place. 

Yet history now has new protagonists: states, corporations, and oligarchs, often acting in synthesis. What if history’s back but not as we wanted it? The stakes are high: the sunset of the US hegemony is in sight and even Fukuyama now agrees on the impending primacy of the “Chinese model”. Yet even such geopolitical shifts aren’t leading to the creation of a new hegemony – disorder is the order of the day. 

Five years on from the publication of The End of the End of History, its authors and hosts of Bungacast reflect on a world in a state of accelerated decay, with responses from guests Lee Jones and Nina Power.

They say that “nothing ever happens”. Pah! Something ever happens.

On angry young women.

Ashley Frawley, sociologist and senior editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to delve more deeply into young people's political polarisation on gender lines.

Why is there a lack of mutual understanding or goodwill between young men and women when we have never been more equal?

Why do differing political views on anything from Israel/Palestine to Donald Trump cause such interpersonal rancour?

Young women are centrally concerned with pain, trauma, and empathy – and see men as lacking. What's behind this?

How is the conservative explanation (bad lefty ideas) just as faulty as the lefty one (patriarchy)?

What will the political consequences be of gender polarisation?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Revealed: the new radicalism among young women, Scarlett Maguire, New Statesman

Meet the Angry Young Women, Emily Lawford, New Statesman

Why young women are so angry, Pippa Bailey, New Statesman

Don’t panic about “Angry Young Women”, Jack Davey, The Critic Magazine

Why do young women hate men?, New Statesman, YouTube

/394/ Girls, Left / Boys, Right ft. Nina Power (see for additional links)

Girls and Boys are becoming very different, Alex Hochuli, Substack

On the gig economy, big tech, and ideology.

Sociologist Will Charles talks to Alex about a form of social organisation that has stopped trying to justify itself.

How should the gig economy work and how does it actually work?

Is any worker in this economy a 'true believer'?

Why isn't digital sophistication a proof of economic efficiency?

What's the relationship between secular stagnation, value capture, and rentierism?

Do workers hold to a latent moral economy that could provide the basis for revolt?

Full episode for subscribers only. Sign up: patreon.com/bungacast

Readings:

Muskism and the Myth of Productive Revolution, Will Charles

Post-Legitimate Society, Will Charles & Ryan Gunderson

Muskism Is the Specter Stalking Our Present, Alex Hochuli, Jacobin

Relevant episodes:

/538/ Muskism ft. Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff 

/522/ At the Bottom of the Tar Pit ft. Benjamin Studebaker

/540/ Welcome to the Apolar and Post-Multilateral World ft. Tom Chodor

/546/ Reading Club: Are We All Post-Liberal Now? ft. Geoff Shullenberger

/547/ What Are the Politics of Stagnation? ft. Dylan Riley