Superstructure: Recent Episodes
Superstructure
In this episode, co-hosts Natalie Smith and Maxximilian Seijo argue that the pandemic not only killed neoliberalism as a tacit ideological formation; it also revealed how neoliberal truisms have never captured the actual causal mechanisms and potentials that defined the past 50 years. Fleshing out these claims, Naty and Maxx journey through the work of rockstar economic historian Adam Tooze, focusing in particular on his widely-hailed recent book, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy (2021). Naty and Maxx affirm Tooze’s characteristically thorough demonstration of the myriad ways that the world-wide response to the pandemic, however inadequate, dismantled the pillars of neoliberal governance. Yet they also critique the elitist complicity of Tooze’s methodological commitment to historical immanence and inevitability, tracing such impulses to back to John Maynard Keynes’ fatal dismissal of Abba Lerner’s proposal to do away with balanced budgets and revenue-constraints. For the Superstructure crew, by contrast, proceeding “in medias res,” as Tooze puts it, requires an abolitionist attunement to genuine conditions of injustice and possibility, from #Defund and ongoing labor strikes to contests over #MintTheCoin and the Green New Deal. During the conversation, wisecracks and burns abound, per usual. This one, too, is packed with citations, including loving shoutouts to David Stein, Jakob Feinig, Mariame Kaba, Dan Berger, Emily Hobson, Alex Yablon, Nathan Tankus, and Rohan Grey.
Link to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
This Money on the Left/Superstructure episode is the eleventh premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers. Typically reserved for Patreon subscribers, this special two-part episode about Toy Story is available to the general public in full.
For access to the rest of the course, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure.
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
CW: trauma, abuse
Will Beaman draws on personal experiences to reflect on how the problematic reduction of “deradicalization” to dialogues between fascists and anti-fascists resembles other forms of emotional and relational abuse. When the imperatives of “coalition-building” require victims of right wing violence to double down on dialogues with hostile interlocutors, the supposedly public realm of ideas resembles an abusive household, in which leaving is not an option. After a cold open from Briahna Joy Gray’s recent interview with Talia Lavin on the “Bad Faith” podcast, Will suggests that distinctly non-carceral and non-“paid for” modes of institutional mediation are necessary for deradicalization to be something more than the emotional blackmail of victims via toxic social norms.
In this special episode, hosts Natalie Smith and @moltopopulare take on the austere sexual politics promulgated by cultural critic and commentator Elizabeth or “Liz” Bruenig. Mirroring the tacit zero-sum logics built into her spouse Matt Bruenig’s analyses of political economy, Liz regularly weaponizes social conservatism and conformity in cruel efforts to shore up a problematic vision of a proper social democratic populace. Natalie and Charlotte lay bare the sadistic violation of sexual freedom and identity that forms the core of Liz's project by examining a wide range of articles on topics such as queer celibacy, the politics of pornography, and 50 Shades of Gray. Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Co-hosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith, and Maxximilian Seijo discuss recent critiques of the Sunrise Movement by influential members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) on social media and in the pages of Jacobin Magazine. Problematizing the DSAers destructive zero-sum rhetoric regarding the allegedly correct “theory of change,” the gang suggests an alternative mode for organizational provisioning, rooted in neither the sovereignty of a dues-paying membership structure nor the sovereignty of “outside” donors. It is impossible to take part in an interdependent social organization that knows no externality because everyone is responsible to everyone else, whether inside or outside a particular organization. Misunderstanding inter-organizational dependence, the Superstructure co-hosts argue, has led these writers to accuse Sunrise of “social disembeddedness,” a reactionary charge with little basis in reality. In contrast, the Superstructure team proffers a self-consciously generative and analogical model of social coordination that opens organizational activity to diversity and difference.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Cohosts Natalie Smith and Will Beaman discuss mutual aid, highlighting the potentials of its often neglected monetary and linguistic dimensions.
Reading against Dean Spade’s interpretation of mutual aid as fully internal or external to money and the state, Natalie and Will recast mutual aid practices as active and vital forms of contestation over the “monetary naming” of other fiscal authorities that naturalize austerity and unemployment. Viewing mutual aid this way, they argue, opens up possibilities for its expansion through monetary creation.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
This Money on the Left/Superstructure episode is the tenth premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the rest of the course, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure.
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
Subscribe to our Patreon to support our work: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews both our eight and ninth premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure.
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018
Ian (@ian_as_portrait) joins Natalie Smith to discuss the hyper-normative left rhetoric of philosophy instructor and frequent Jacobin contributor Ben Burgis. Emblematic of a certain deadpan logical sobriety seen in certain left circles, Burgis’s debate style downplays heterogeneity, pleasure, and generativity in an effort to convert libertarians and rightwingers to an incrementalist tax-to-spend vision of democratic socialism. Calling out the austerian and deeply fatalist assumptions of Burgis’s reactionary approach, Ian and Naty instead affirm the potentials of an inclusive, heterogenous, and emotionally wide-ranging left discourse.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Maxximilian Seijo, Andrés Bernal and Scott Ferguson plunge into the latest Disney Plus streaming series, Loki (2021) as part of their ongoing examination of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). For all its deliciously queer aesthetic & political potentials, they argue, Loki represents another MCU tragedy about the promise & perpetual failure of social contract theory, and fascism’s seductive exploitation of that failure. In doing so, they critique how the show’s neoliberal and tacitly Deleuzean conception of time as “univocal difference” problematically pits care against heterogeneity in a zero-sum trade-off between fascism and democracy. At the same time, they suggest that Loki’s polyvalent and often-campy aesthetics nevertheless express new longings for alternative modes of questioning and organizing the world.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Frederic Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (page 16-17)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
The episode concludes Season 1 of Processions. Stay tuned for announcements about Season 2.
Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (www.nahneenkula.com)
Silvina Ocampo, "Forgotten Journey", in Thus Were Their Faces (page 1-3)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
Processions will be released Monday, Wednesday, & Friday to the public, and Tuesday & Thursday as Patreon exclusives.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Sean Cubitt, Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technology (page 7)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (page 9-10)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Siegfried Kracauer, History, the Last Things Before the Last (page 42-43)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our seventh premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure.
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
Hosts Natalie Smith and Maxximilian Seijo dive into the world of personality types as exemplified by the likes of astrology, MBTI and Enneagram. Complicating John Ganz’s recent dismissal of personal types as univocal, alienating and repressive, Naty and Maxx queer such typologies, drawing attention to their playful, generative and relational meanings. Sprinkled with references to Adorno, Deleuze, Leibniz, and Hegel, the episode treats astrology, MBTI and Enneagram as analogical practices and asks how such practices can inform a non-zero-sum left politics of money.
Link to Ganz's essay: https://johnganz.substack.com/p/thats-not-a-personality-sweetie
Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies, (Page 272-273)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Ndongo Samba Sylla, Colonialism’s Neoliberal Origins (https://moneyontheleft.org/2021/06/14/neoliberalisms-colonial-origins/)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Page 90)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (Page 8-9)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Page 127-128)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Stuart Hall, Essential Essays (Vol. 2): Identity and Diaspora, "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities" (Page 67)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon for more: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Rebecca L. Spang, Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Page 6)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon for more: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Inferno, by Dante Alighieri (Canto 1, lines 1-15)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon for more: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
The Stars Down to Earth, by Theodor W. Adorno (Page 48-49)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon for more: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
Simulation and Simulacra, by Jean Baudrillard (Page 1)
In Processions, host Maxximilian Seijo reads and reflects on one page of a given text, five days a week. Taking a tour through a vast array of thinkers, concepts and methods, one snapshot at a time, Maxx explores the redemptive capacity of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective’s method of analogical critique.
After the first five episodes, Processions will be released as a Patreon delayed exclusive. Episodes will be available for public listening seven days later.
Subscribe to our Patreon for more: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music by Nahneen Kula (https://www.nahneenkula.com)
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our sixth premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure.
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
@moltopopulare joins co-hosts Natalie Smith, Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo to problematize unquestioned leftist critiques of the “Professional Managerial Class,” or “PMC,” past and present. As exemplified by a recent episode of The Dig podcast, leftists frequently invoke the epithet “PMC”--as well as its cousin, “ultra leftist,” or simply “ultra”--in order to shore up class solidarity against capitalist cooptation and ward off allegedly unfeasible political aims. Yet in reality, the Superstructure gang argues, the left PMC trope conceals deeply zero-sum and exclusionary logics that undercut universal emancipation and caretaking. Often stemming from a place of self-loathing or a desire for self-exculpation, such logics not only police leftist discourse according to a univocal workerist ethos, but also violently divide supposedly legitimate from illegitimate horizons of contestation in a manner that reduces universalism to exceptionalism. Tracing the PMC figure’s theoretical and historical roots, the episode culminates with a sustained reading from Karl Marx’s controversial essay, “On the Jewish Question.”
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
¡Llegó el primer episodio de Superstructure en Español!
Andrés Bernal (@andresintheory) y Natalie Smith (@orangeasm) conversan sobre la relevancia de la Teoría Monetaria Moderna para Latinoamérica con dos expertos económicos de la región, Jesus Resendiz (@Tlacuachito) y Daniel Rojas (@DanielRMed).
Analizamos las protestas recientes en Colombia, con sus formaciones reaccionarias y las posibilidades para la izquierda, incluyendo la candidatura de Gustavo Petro, una carta abierta de economistas Colombianos heterodoxos criticando una tendencia común a la izquierda de entender los impuestos como la fuente del gasto público, y una propuesta para una ley de garantía de trabajo. Después, vamos a México para conversar sobre los supuestos ortodoxos de austeridad asumidos sin crítica por el gobierno de la izquierda de AMLO.
**
It's the first Superstructure episode in Spanish! Andres Bernal and Natalie Smith discuss the relevance of MMT for Latin America with two Latin American economic experts, Jesus Resendiz and Daniel Rojas. We discuss the recent protests in Colombia, reactionary formations there and prospects for the left, including the candidacy of Gustavo Petro, a recent open letter from Colombian heterodox economists criticizing left tilt towards understanding taxes as funding the government, and a job guarantee proposal. Then we move to Mexico and discuss the orthodox austerity assumptions uncritically taken on by the purportedly left government of AMLO.
Look out for the English and Spanish transcripts in the coming weeks!
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Andrés Bernal joins Scott Ferguson and Maxximilian Seijo to discuss the historical and political implications of the latest Marvel streaming series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Together, they tease out unstable contradictions between the show’s desires for racial and geopolitical reparation and justice, on one hand, and its punishingly zero-sum Malthusian drama, on the other. The result is a fascinating and, at moments, surprising Marvel offering, which struggles to keep up with the contemporary crises of American imperialism and white patriarchy.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our fifth premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure. If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
In this episode; Scott Ferguson and Maxximilian Seijo discuss the politics and aesthetics of Marvel’s WandaVision (2021), which was released via the Disney Plus streaming service earlier this year. Picking up questions about blockbuster form and apophatic analysis they’ve pondered in previous episodes, Scott and Maxx affirm the show’s exceptional foray into past sitcom aesthetics and other similarly abstract forms in light of the present neoliberal paradigm crisis. They tease out WandaVision’s critical engagement with the white heteronormative patriarchy that sitcoms have complicatedly mediated. And they critique the program’s ultimate capitulation to conventional blockbuster aesthetics, which substitute a finite and fatalistic physics for what is in truth a capacious and transformable process of monetary mediation.
Maxximilian Seijo (@MaxSeijo) speaks with Natan Last (@natanlast) about his recent essay for the Superstructure vertical, "A Graceful Kind of Non-Absence."
Read it here: https://moneyontheleft.org/2021/04/07/a-graceful-kind-of-non-absence/
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our fourth premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full video lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure. If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
Contra leftist praise for today’s seemingly anti-capitalist papacy, co-hosts Naty Smith, Maxx Seijo, & Will Beaman offer a critical close reading of “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis' third and most recent encyclical. Unearthing the austere logics that inhere in Bergoglio's ideas of encounter, charity, and reconciliation, Naty, Maxx, and Will take on the pope’s not-so-lefty Jesuit career and Peronist history, as well as the Franciscan ideology and history that inspired his Covid-era message to the world. Framed by readings of Scott Ferguson’s work on the symptomatic search for solidity in the modern and neoliberal moments, the gang exposes the deeply toxic nationalistic impulses behind the Pope's metaphysical, theological, and political exhortations. Superstructure, in other words, cancels the pope Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
The Money on the Left Editorial Collective is proud to present a recent talk by English literature scholar Rob Hawkes titled, “‘The Power of Money is so Hard to Realize’: Literature, Money and Trust in George Gissing's 1891 Novel New Grub Street.” In it, Hawkes draws out urgent, though regularly overlooked linkages between modern money and modern literature. In particular, he explores British novelist George Gissing’s reflexive and genre-bending book to pose the problem of social trust from a neochartalist or MMT-informed perspective.
Dr. Rob Hawkes is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Teesside University in the United Kingdom; a Fellow of the English Association; and a member of the Executive Steering Committee of the British Association for Modernist Studies. He is the author of Ford Madox Ford and the Misfit Moderns: Edwardian Fiction and the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and co-editor several related books on Ford Madox Ford. Recently, he contributed ‘Openness, Otherness, and Expertise: Uncertainty and Trust in Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle’ to the collection, Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak, edited by Helen Davies and Sarah Ilott (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). And he is now working on a monograph on literature, money, and trust from the 1890s to the 1980s.
To contact Dr. Hawkes, email him at r.hawkes@tees.ac.uk. Or, you can find him on Twitter @robbhawkes.
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Thank you to the English and Creative Writing Research Seminar at Teesside for hosting and giving us permission to sharing Dr. Hawkes’ lecture.
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our third premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full video lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure. If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith, & Maxximilian Seijo are joined by Ian from Twitter (@tweet_boxian) to visit America’s favorite socialist family, the Bruenigs. They begin with reflections on a New York Times piece by Elizabeth Bruenig on the need to forgive the recently canonized Franciscan friar Junipero Serra, who oversaw the torture, enslavement and murder of indigenous Americans in California during the 18th century. Next, they consider Matt Bruenig’s “Family Fun Pack” policy paper. They critique the paper's exclusionary economic premises and natalist aesthetics, and suggest an alternative political economy based on public creation rather than zero sum redistribution.
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
In the wake of the release of Rep. Ayanna Pressley's (D-MA) job guarantee resolution, Maxximilian Seijo invites Andrés Bernal to reflect on this historical moment in intersectional left-wing activism.
Link to the resolution: https://pressley.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-pressley-economists-advocates-unveil-historic-federal-job-guarantee
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Scott Ferguson joins Maxximilian Seijo to discuss method and the dangers of overly positive or negative orientations to the historical world. First, they critique Liam Kofi Bright’s problematic revival of logical positivism, which submits left praxis to reductive and exclusionary market models. Next, they affirm the negative approaches to aesthetic criticism found in the works of Siegfried Kracauer, the Frankfurt School, and Fredric Jameson. Finally, they celebrate the often-overlooked “double movement” of positive & negative impulses that animate Karl Marx’s writings, only on analogical rather than dialectical terms.
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our third premium release, a one-off lecture from Scott Ferguson on Abbas Kiarostami's Close Up (1990) for Patreon subscribers.
The full video lecture can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/modern-movie-in-46862120
For access to the full video lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description:
In this lecture, professor Scott Ferguson explores a reparative cinematic approach to social alienation and unemployment in the film Close Up (1990) by the late Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.
In this episode, cohosts Natalie Smith, Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reflect on some ill-fated responses to the right-wing insurrection at the Capitol, utilize feminist psychoanalysis to articulate a film theory of the state, and meditate on the mental health side of an MMT-informed left-wing praxis.
Link to our Patreon: https://patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
In this short episode, Maxximilian Seijo reads from Theodor W. Adorno's Negative Dialectics, complicating the philosopher's discussion of nihilism to critique contemporary left pessimism.
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our second premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full video lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure. If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
In this episode, Natalie Smith & Maxximilian Seijo host Daniel Bessner (@dbessner) to debate the pertinence of contemporary leftist efforts to analogize Trumpian neoliberalism to 1930s fascism. The conversation also takes up matters of left strategy & media, including the role of theoretical provocation and the politics of online culture.
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews our first premium release from Scott Ferguson's "Neoliberal Blockbuster" course for Patreon subscribers.
For access to the full video lecture, subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
If you are interested in premium offerings but presently unable to afford a subscription, please send a direct message to @moneyontheleft or @Superstruc on Twitter & we will happily provide you with membership access.
Course Description:
This course examines the neoliberal Blockbuster from the 1970s to the present. It focuses, in particular, on the social significance of the blockbuster's constitutive technologies: both those made visible in narratives and the off-screen tools that drive production and reception. Linking aesthetic shifts in American moving images to broader transformations in political economy, the course traces the historical transformation of screen action from the ethereal “dream factory” of pre-1960s cinema to the impact-driven “thrill ride” of the post-1970s blockbuster. In doing so, we attend to the blockbuster’s technological forms and study how they have variously contributed to social, economic, and political transformations over the past 40 years. We critically engage blockbusters as "reflexive allegories" of their own technosocial processes and pleasures. Above all, we think through the blockbuster's shifting relationship to monetary abstraction and the myriad additional abstractions monetary mediation entails.
Blockbusters:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
Avengers: Infinity War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018)
Cohosts Will Beaman and Natalie Smith are joined by Scott Ferguson and Andrés Bernal to reflect on a recent "close encounter" with the Dirtbag Left. They diagnose the perverse comfort that the Dirtbag Left takes in contracting political economy around fixed points of "leverage" over political elites. Touching on the Jimmy Dore controversy and a recent Chapo episode on Avatar, the team compares the austere physics metaphors that structure the Left's hopelessness to neoliberal action cinema's preoccupation with what Ferguson has called its "Hyper-Newtonian Aesthetics".
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure/posts
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Kicking off a Money on the Left / Superstructure Patreon fund drive, Scott Ferguson joins Maxximilian Seijo to discuss MMT, eco-fascism and Avengers: Infinity War. This premium episode offers listeners a sneak peek at Ferguson’s Hollywood Blockbuster course, which will be rolled out for subscribers in the coming months.
While we appreciate support for our premium content on Patreon from those who can afford it, this is not a hard paywall! If you are unable to pay, reach out to the Money on the Left/Superstructure team for free access to our premium content.
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure/posts
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
In this episode, Maxximilian Seijo (@maxseijo), Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) & Natalie Smith (@orangeasm) are joined by Matt Christman (@cushbomb) from Chapo Trap House to discuss their critique of his zero-sum methodology.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Link to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith, and Maxximilian Seijo are joined by historian Dan Berger to reflect on the political economy of abolitionism and its critical importance for the Left.
Dan Berger (Twitter: @dnbrgr) is an Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington at Bothell.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith, and Maxximilian Seijo reflect on the importance of Modern Monetary Theory for the Left.
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith and Maxximilian Seijo discuss Maxx's recent article in the Journal of Environmental Media, titled “Governing media information through a Green New Deal: History, theory, practice."
Featuring a special report by Australian Twitter Correspondent @moltopopulare from inside the Superstructure, and a surprise call-in from friend of the show, Liz Bruenig.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Link to Maxx's paper below: https://www.academia.edu/43950105/Governing_media_information_through_a_Green_New_Deal_History_theory_practice
Will, Naty and Maxx are joined by @Moltopopulare to critique the hopeless aesthetic imagination of the Red Scare podcast and related films by Red Scare cohost Dasha Nekrasova.
Joined once again by Natalie Smith (officially a cohost of Superstructure!), Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo discuss the work and legacy of Antonio Gramsci. Opening with a close reading of Amber A'Lee Frost's 2018 essay titled "Daddy Issues," Will, Naty and Maxx critique the exclusionary assumptions at the core of Gramsci's conceptual understanding of working class struggle as well as his understanding of the connection between education and populist politics.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Re-evaluating the left’s symptomatic preoccupations with the Epstein scandal, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo critique the atomizing and othering “Islands Discourse” that animates such responses. Will and Maxx begin with the island obsessions behind the TrueAnon podcast and Jacobin Magazine. They then historicize such desires through critical close readings of Gilles Deleuze’s Desert Islands and Karl Marx's analysis of Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
In this episode of Superstructure, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reflect on the shape of the post-Covid19 Left across the English speaking world with fellow MMTer and UK Labour activist William Sorenson.
Reaching topics from the UK's Job Retention Scheme (JRS), to the US' Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF), to Scottish independence, as well as the broader horizon of possibility for a renewed and abundant left fiscal imagination, William S. sketches an analytical framework for a locally sensitive Left-MMT politics.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Maxx did a thing.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
In this episode, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo discuss the abolitionist political vision with guest Maite Salazar (@MaiteSalazar4MO), progressive congressional candidate for Missouri's 5th Congressional District in Kansas City.
Linking the movements for prison abolition to the long & evolving fight against institutions of slavery, Will, Maxx & Maite reflect on the ongoing activist-led approaches to social justice through Maite's particular experience in Kansas City organizing. They insist on the need for a total transformation of the political and economic frameworks upon which such genocidal institutions were founded.
For more information about their congressional campaign: https://www.votesalazar.com
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Cohosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo uncover the cultural and aesthetic foundations of popular histories of inflation. They discuss the 1930’s Weimar hyperinflation, 1970s American “stagflation”, and more.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
This week Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo are joined by their first guest, Natalie Smith, from Santiago, Chile. Together, they consider deep analogies between the 2019 Chilean uprising against Santiago’s transit infrastructure and the current wave of US protests against the infrastructure of violent policing. Drawing inspiration from Black abolitionism’s calls to reconstruct all forms of social infrastructure, Naty, Will and Maxx reflect on the necessity of an abolition framework for a modern money imaginary.
You can follow Naty on Twitter at @orangeasm, Will at @agoingaccount and Maxx at @MaxSeijo.
Music: “Yum”, from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com Twitter: @actualflirting
Hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo briefly address responses to “The Bellows (Part 1)”, before articulating a positive vision of a Left political praxis informed by the political economy framework of the late heterodox economist Frederic Lee and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
Following a discussion of Lee’s “heterodox social surplus” approach and how it relates to discourses in critical theory, Will and Maxx connect their framework to the recent “Uni” proposal from the Modern Money Network for unions and community organizers to demand direct credit creation by universities to fully provision themselves as critical public infrastructure.
Evocative of burgeoning calls for left-right populism in the wake of Bernie’s loss, hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo name and critique the political vision of The Bellows, a new publication that has enjoyed recent support from prominent elements within the left wing media ecosystem. Leveraging MMT’s rejection of monetary scarcity, Will and Maxx link inclusive struggles over material production to the irrepressible realm of the symbolic in order to articulate a capacious intersectional politics.
Reviewing Michael Moore & Jeff Gibbs’ recent film Planet of the Humans, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reject and historicize the film’s advocacy for population control. By connecting reductive affirmations of scarcity in both Marxist ecological thinking and the film, with reference to Malthusianism, degrowth movements, Patricia MacCormack’s Ahuman Manifesto, and the late great heterodox microeconomist Fred Lee, they ultimately affirm a non-zero-sum environmental justice framework of social reproduction that centers agency at all levels of human-environmental relation.
Linking the discussion to debates around social democracy and public money creation, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reflect on the limits of a left media ecosystem that relies upon the disastrous myth of private property.
Embarking on a deep dive into intersections between the work of philosopher Giorgio Agamben and reductive Marxist discourses around capitalism and nature, hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo trace a historical, political and economic lineage for the widely used COVID19 meme: 'Capitalism is the virus'.
Framed by a cold open from Chapo Trap House's recent Bernie retrospective, hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo inaugurate the Superstructure podcast with a discussion of the failures of a reified left wing imagination. To chart a path forward for an MMT-informed leftist praxis, they critique reductive castigations of spectacle, damaging affirmations of scarcity and zero-sum politics as well as a burgeoning 'anti-woke' left-right coalition.