In this episode, we discuss the work of brilliant heterodox economist Karl Polanyi. We talk about his criticisms of neoclassical orthodoxy, his arguments against the commodification of land, labor, and money, and his critique of the dominance of markets in theory and in practice. Put markets in their place and regulate the hell out of them! We also consider his influence on recent leftist economic thought, and talk through what’s at stake in the difference between Marxist and Polanyian approaches to history and politics. We think there are limits to the Polanyi line, but it’s hard not to love an authentically humanist fellow traveler!

leftofphilosophy.com

References:

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).

Karl Polanyi, For a New West: Essays, 1919-1958, eds. Giorgio Resta and Mariavittoria Catanzariti (Malden: Polity Press, 2014).

Fred Block, “Karl Polanyi and the Writing of ‘The Great Transformation’”, Theory and Society 32:3 (2003), 275-306.

Music:

“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

In this episode, we discuss the work of the late, great Fredric Jameson. Basing ourselves on his Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, and Archaeologies of the Future, we talk about the notion that history is only accessible in narrative form, the concept of social totality, the tension between poststructuralist criticism and historical materialist thought, and the problems plaguing the increasingly specialized and alienated intellectual division of labor in our times. What do we want from cultural studies, and what do we want from the social sciences, in twenty-first century Marxist thought? It’s a spicy one.

This is just a short teaser. To hear the full episode, please subscribe to us on Patreon:

patreon.com/leftofphilosophy

References:

Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: 20th Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)

Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Cornell University Press, 1982)

Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso, 2005)

Music:

“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Black Reconstruction, and The Black Jacobins. What do these three texts have in common? They all aim to make a historical moment legible as a drama. In doing so, Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, and C.L.R. James seem to show that history has a structure of repetition. But what could repetition mean? In this episode, we discuss an essay by the Japanese Marxist Kojin Karatani on Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire. We explore Karatani’s theory for why representative democracies seem condemned to degenerating into authoritarian crisis, what a Marxist concept of repetition could mean, and the relationships between political crises and economic crises. Come join us as we ring in a new year that has made it possible for “a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.”

References:

Kojin Karatani, “On The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, trans. Seiji M. Lippit, in History and Repetition, ed. Seiji M. Lippit (Columbia University Press, 2012).

leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil | @leftofphilosophy.bsky.social

music:

“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN