Okay, so this episode was initially going to cover an area Weeks identifies as failures of Productivist Marxism; Socialist Modernization and Socialist Humanism, but we're going to be addressing the latter in the next episode. This one ran long enough as is. We're also going to be taking a minute to address, and correct, a mistake I made in the last episode as regards the conservative, capitalist approach to the if, then clause regarding waged work and profit maximazation that has some surprising implications, and we'll take look down the rabit hole of progressive taxation and the Trump tax cuts. We've, um, got a lot to go over.

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Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Klein, Ezra, and Derek Thompson, Abundance. Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2025.

Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Second edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. P.538

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links:

"Current Population Reports; Consumer Income” U.S. Department of Commerce. May 1953

"Historical U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates & Brackets, 1862-2021” 8/24/2021. Tax Foundation

Fry, Richard. “Are You in the American Middle Class? Find out with Our Income Calculator.” Pew Research Center, September 16, 2024.

Picci, Aimee. “Do you know what you pay in taxes? Here's who pays the most and least to the IRS.” 4/15/2025

York, Erica. “Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2024 Update.” 3/13/2024. Tax Foundation

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Hey all, welcome back. There's a ton to go over from what's been going on on my end lately, what's been happening with the economy, we talk a little about 'where have all the Leftists gone?' (queue Paula Cole), and, for the bulk of the episode, we return to Kathi Weeks' The Problem with Work. For part 3, we're focusing on Weber's primitive construction of subjectivities, what the structures of Capitalism and the Work Ethic do, the antinomy of systems of inclusion and exclusion, and we start digging a little into Marx' Capital to help explain the significance of sacrifice and exchange in the system of waged labor, that identifies this movement from being made subject to being made victim. I hope you're up for a long episode!

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Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Dictionary of Untranslatables : A Philosophical Lexicon. . Translated by Steven Rendall. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lawlor, Leonard, and John Nale, eds. “Subjectification.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, 496–502. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. P.496

Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. "Capital, Volume One."The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton, 1978. p.321., also “Wage, Labor, and Capital.” Pp.204-5. My emphasis.

Weber, Max. 2012. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Lexington, Ky.: Renaissance Classics.

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links to check out:

“FACT SHEET the HISTORY of the TIPPED MINIMUM WAGE a Civil Rights Issue.” Oct. 2018.

Sacrifice and Prostitution. Etymonline.

Schmidtz, David and Peter Boettke, "Friedrich Hayek", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.)

#Work #Commodities #Feminism #SexWork #Trump #Hayek #Marx #Weber #Sacrifice #Exchange #Victim #WorkEthic #Feminism #FarLeft #Leftism #Progressive #Socialism #Existentialism #BadFaith #Capitalism #Structuralism #Democrats #Neoliberalism #PrivateEquity

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Okay, it feels a little strange to be getting here over 20 episodes in, but let’s talk about the work ethic. Now, I know I said this episode was going to be about my reading of Weeks and what I propose is this movement from subject to victim of work, but, surprise, we’re not there yet. Today we’re looking at the background theory and the move from the Traditionalist to Protestant work ethic.

I mentioned last episode that we need to perform a genealogy of the work ethic if we’re to understand the problem and have any hopes of overcoming it. To keep to the text though, Weeks notes that Weber’s analysis provides an “archeology” of the ethic. So, I guess the first question is, is this just a semantic difference? Well, no.

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Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Berardi, Franco. “Anatomy of Autonomy.” Semiotext(e), translated by Jared Becker et al., vol. 3, no. 3, 1980, pp. 148–71.

Karim, Muzaffar. “Understanding Foucault: The Shift from Archaeology to Genealogy.” Quest Journals. Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science. Volume 9 ~ Issue 9 (2021) pp: 72-75

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1910. The Gay Science. Dover ed. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Weber, Max. 2012. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Lexington, Ky.: Renaissance Classics.

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links to check out:

For Work /Against Work

Vogt, Katja. “Seneca.”

Wicks, Robert. “Arthur Schopenhauer.”

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And so it begins, the final arc in this section on Utopia: a short series on Kathi Weeks' 2011 The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. If you couldn’t guess it from the title, we’ve got a lot to unpack here, and there’s no way this is all going to fit in one episode. I’m going to be breaking this down into two sections, over several episodes. Following Weeks, I’m breaking these sections into what she calls the Refusal, the diagnostic and deconstructive dimension of a critical theory of work, and the Demand, for remedies and for the imagining of alternative futures.

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links to check out:

Exploring Feminist Theory: Angela Davis to Housework Obsolescence

Sung Ho Kim. “Max Weber.”

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Moving right along with No More Work; Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea by James Livingston, part two. Again, fair warning, there are going to be a lot of ‘f-bombs’ in this episode, we're really getting into Livingston's F! Work argument now.

In this Episode? Neoliberalism, Keynesian economics, productivism, capital and labor inputs, Nixon, the FAP, and, well, Trump.

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Livingston, James. 2016. No More Work : Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Related links:

Acid Horizon, "Data is Dead Labour"

Smith, Tyler. “Assessing the Effects of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act”

Tax Policy Center, "How Did The TCJA Affect The Federal Budget Outlook?"

Weaver, Warren Jr. The New York Times. "HOUSE UNIT VOTES WELFARE REFORM FAVORED BY NIXON."

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Aaaand… we’re back! Welcome to the first episode of 2025, a year that I’m sure will prove, um, noteworthy? Today we’re moving on to another, and even smaller book (literally, it’s like 5 by 7 inches and only a hundred and seven pages, including the acknowledgements), No More Work; Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea by James Livingston, University of North Carolina Press, 2016. And fair warning, there are going to be a lot of ‘f-bombs’ in this episode - and the next, to be honest.

In this Episode? Work and Labor; Classicial Philosophy, history, economics; Aristotle, Marx, Arendt, and much more.

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

“Question concerning Technology.” in Heidegger, Martin, David Farrell Krell, and Taylor Carman. 1977. Basic Writings : From Being and Time (1927) to the Task of Thinking (1964). Rev. and expanded ed. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought.
Livingston, James. 2016. No More Work : Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Links to check out:

PHILOSOPHY - The Good Life: Aristotle
HAC Bard. "Arendt on Resentment."
The Noble Leisure Project. “Aristotle on Work vs. Leisure.”
libcom.org "Socially Necessary Labor Time"

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Well, we've made it to the end of 2024 and the end of our run on Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. In this episode, we unpack these last two ideas, talk about Stalinist Bureaucracy and why it's relevant to talking about work today, some updates on this podcast, and some thoughts on the recent UHC CEO shooting. So, grab a holiday-themed emotional support beverage, enjoy, and have a happy new year!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism : Is There No Alternative? Winchester, UK: Zero Books
Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/index.htm

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In this episode, we're still on challenges to Utopia and getting back to Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternaitve? We're also taking our first little foray in Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze as far as Sovereign, Disciplinary, and Control Socities; some contemporary economic-political issues; and a tiny digression into the auto industry, religion, and ancient Rome.

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October. Vol. 59 (Winter, 1992), pp. 3-7. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/778828) (also here)
Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism : Is There No Alternative? Winchester, UK: Zero Books
Foucault, Michel. 1984. The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. Vintage books edition. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House Inc.
Morris, Georgina. “Miners' strike 1984: Why UK miners walked out and how it ended.” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-68244762

"Disciplinary societies and Societies of control" Course Compendium (github)
"It's Happening Again" Bravos Research (YouTube)

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