Aufhebunga Bunga

On atrocity and sovereignty. This episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast   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 sovereignty today. What's behind the concept of 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P)? And should we understand it as a form of "liberal imperialism"? 

On China, economic reform, and the future. While Russia 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 of socialism? Do communists make the best capitalists? And is the pursuit of growth and development at any cost China's own version of the End of History?

On global insurrection and identity politics.  This episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast  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 that re-politicisation has taken?    Readings: Essay discussed Onward Barbarians, Endnotes Background The Bleak Left, Tim Barker, n+1 Endnotes no.5: A melancholic goodbye…, Angry Workers of the World On communisation and its theorists, Friends of the Classless Society

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 account of the contemporary crisis of the liberal international order.  Reading: The New Twenty Years’ Crisis 1999-2019: A Critique of International Relations, Philip Cunliffe, McGill-Queen's UP

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 now anti-science? Will inflation return?   Three Articles: Stayed home, live streamed, got the T-shirt, Lev Parker, The Conservative Woman The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown, Emma Green, The Atlantic  Broad commodities price boom amplifies ‘supercycle’ talk, Neil Hume et al, FT 

We discuss the second of Perry Anderson's three LRB essays on the making and unmaking of the EU: "Ever Closer Union?"  Our monthly Reading Club is for patrons $10+. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

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 it. Readings: The Middle-Class Leviathan: Corona, the “Fascism” Blackmail, and the Defeat of the Working Class, Elena Louisa Lange and Joshua Pickett-Depaolis, Crisis and Critique, 2020 Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan, Germaine A. Hoston, Princeton, 1987 Lawyer’s Fees, Beetroot, and Music, Elena’s Substack Value Without Fetish, Elena Louisa Lange, Brill 2021 Marxist Class Theory for a Skeptical World, Raju J. Das, Haymarket, 2018

On memes and the counter-culture.   Theorist and curator Mike Watson advances the argument for "acid leftism". What is this, and why do we need a new counter-culture? Is contemporary leftism lacking a utopian imaginary?   Plus: slow memes and fast memes; the democratisation of art and media; and generations: which ones became conservative, which might not?   Running order: (00:04:15) - Interview with Mike Watson (01:02:00) - 'Afterparty' discussion on what a counter-culture might look like today Readings: Can the Left Learn to Meme? , Mike Watson, Zero Books The Acid Left, YouTube channel The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (pdf)

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 vision entail? And we ponder a sad question: is the dream of development and modernisation over?  Readings: Power and Impotence: A History of South America Under Progressivism (1998-2016), Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos, Haymarket /93/ Hot Chile and Other Neoliberal Failures ft. Pablo Pryluka Bungacast

How to address the political problems of leftwing parties today?   Liverpudlian historian David Swift argues that the problem is hobbyism - people for whom politics constitutes their identity rather than expressing their interest in social and political change. He joins us to take us through his arguments about hobbyism, and how he thinks the Left might change for the better. Readings: A Left For Itself, David Swift, Zer0 Books How the Left lost all purpose, James Bloodworth, Unherd How not to be a white anti-racist, David Swift, Unherd

On the end of the End of History and neo-feudalism. This episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast 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 Brazilianisation?  The End of the End of History, Bungacast, Zer0 Books Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?, Jodi Dean, LA Review of Books Neo-feudalism in California, Joel Kotkin, American Affairs  

On cash welfarism and state investment. Plus regionalism in Belgium & the UK. Anton Jäger is back on the pod to discuss the emerging 'transfer state'. We examine Biden's massive trillion-dollar spending plans and ask if this means we're leaving neoliberalism. What are the limitations to the 'cashification of welfare'? Also comparisons with cash transfers or lack thereof in the UK, Brazil and Belgium. Plus Anton talks us through recent Belgian history and why its immobilism and bureaucracy has actually prevented a full-on neoliberal assault.  [Part 2 available at patreon.com/bungacast] Readings: “Welfare without the welfare state”: the death of the postwar welfarist consensus, Anton Jäger & Daniel Zamora, New Statesman Joe Biden Is a Transformational President, David Brooks, NYT

On Covid state failure + responses to listeners.    The full episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast   We start off by discussing listener points and criticisms – e.g. is PMC a useful category? Is a counterculture a terrible idea? Were we wrong on Deleuze? More on the lockdown debate... – before featuring the second part of our discussion with Lee Jones on the coronavirus and state failure (from 45:30).   We look in depth at what went wrong in Western state responses to the pandemic, why they didn't follow their own plans, and compare this to South Korea's relative success.   Readings: How the pandemic has exposed Britain’s failed ‘regulatory state’, Lee Jones, Daily Telegraph COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state, Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, Review of International Political Economy

On the uprising in Myanmar, plus Covid state failure. Southeast Asia scholar (and Bunga recidivist) Lee Jones joins us to talk about the coup in Myanmar (and why the word “coup” can be misleading), and explains the nature of the forces opposing the military, in the context of the country’s recent transition to civilian rule. Then, from 40mins, we discuss how the UK failed in dealing with the pandemic, and how this applies across the West. Lee's recent work looks at the neoliberal "regulatory state" and its incapacities, so we compare the UK's failure with Korea's relative success. Readings: Preliminary thoughts on the Myanmar “coup”, Lee Jones, Medium Responding to the Myanmar coup, Crisis Group How the Civil Disobedience Movement can win, Aye Min Thant and Yan Aung, Frontier How the pandemic has exposed Britain’s failed ‘regulatory state’, Lee Jones, Daily Telegraph COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state (pdf), Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, Review of International Political Economy 

We discuss the first of Perry Anderson's new essays on Europe published in the London Review of Books, which focuses on Luuk van Middelaar - described as the EU's first organic intellectual. We discuss what that means, as well as the role of the "coup" in forming the EU. Reading Club episodes are for subscribers $10+. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

On memes and the counter-culture.   This is a sample. For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast   Theorist and curator Mike Watson advances the argument for "acid leftism". What is this, and why do we need a new counter-culture? Is contemporary leftism lacking a utopian imaginary?   Plus: slow memes and fast memes; the democratisation of art and media; and generations: which ones became conservative, which one might not?   Running order: (00:04:15) - Interview with Mike Watson (01:02:00) - 'Afterparty' discussion on what a counter-culture might look like today Readings: Can the Left Learn to Meme? , Mike Watson, Zero Books The Acid Left, YouTube channel The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (pdf)

In this latest Three Articles, we examine the rise of 'techno-populism', look at the EU's vaccine debacle, and question whether cinema - and popular culture in general - is being desexualised and pornified at the same time.   This episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast   Readings: The rise of the technopopulists, Chris Bickerton, New Statesman (pdf attached) Accelerating Decay, Wolfgang Streeck, Sidecar - NRL blog Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny, RS Benedict, BloodKnife

On the socialist case for Scottish independence. David Jamieson and Cat Boyd, writers and hosts of Conter, the Scottish anti-capitalist website and podcast, join us to to talk about the prospects for Scottish independence in advance of the Scottish parliamentary elections in May. Would an independent Scotland within the EU be a contradiction in term? How would an independent Scotland fare - and what would it mean for the "national question" across Europe? And what's up with the factional strife among Scottish nationalists? Readings: Contercast, podcast hosted by Cat & David Independence Beyond Salmond and Sturgeon, David Jamieson, Conter The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, Neil Davidson, Pluto Press

On gay liberation and sexual politics. After big advances over the past decades, we can now ask, did the gays win? And if so, so what? Mark Simpson in the UK and River Page in Florida join us to discuss whether something was lost in that victory.  We ponder whether gay politics was the original identity politics and what happens when a narrow focus on equality triumphs over liberation. Do sexual liberation politics have any future? Plus: how Blairism was the biggest drag act of all.  Readings: Anti-Gay, Mark Simpson (Bloomsbury, 1996) Being Gay in the Thirties (Gay Life), documentary mentioned by Mark Trading in the Past: Queer London, Mark Simpson The Standpoint Bureaucracy, River Page, TwinkRev The Woke Resurrection of a Gay Sex Panic, River Page, TwinkRev

How to address the political problems of leftwing parties today?   Liverpudlian historian David Swift argues that the problem is hobbyism - people for whom politics constitutes their identity rather than expressing their interest in social and political change. He joins us to take us through his arguments about hobbyism, and how he thinks the Left might change for the better.   This is a sample. For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast Readings: A Left For Itself, David Swift, Zer0 Books How the Left lost all purpose, James Bloodworth, Unherd How not to be a white anti-racist, David Swift, Unherd