In this episode, we discuss Theodor Adorno’s essay “Free Time”, in which the critical theorist really lets his cantankerous old man flag fly. He argues that how our subjectivities are shaped by capitalist culture and work discipline makes it very difficult—maybe even impossible—to use o...
2024-11-18 10:03:17 +0000 UTC View PostOn Sunday October 27 we livestreamed our 100th episode, where we spent almost 2 whole hours answering fan questions!
Thanks so much for all your support. Here's to 100 more.
2024-10-28 21:17:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Some news! We are going to livestream our 100th episode recording session at 1pm Eastern / 12 noon standard time on Sunday October 27th on our YouTube channel.
We will be answering questions! There's a form on our website's home page where you can submit yours. Tell us what you want to hea...
In this episode, we discuss the philosopher of science Roy Bhaskar and his essays in Reclaiming Reality. We discuss whether it is possible for the human sciences to overcome the fact/value distinction, what role knowledge has in self-emancipation, and what to do about middle-class surbur...
2024-10-14 10:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we take on a Marxist classic, Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution,” in which she skewers Eduard Bernstein for being a feckless opportunist and for relinquishing the goal of socialism. Luxemburg takes on his argument that it’s possible for socialists to take increasing c...
2024-09-27 18:22:11 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode we take up the question: what is the State? With 1978’s State, Power, Socialism by Nicos Poulantzas as our guide, we talk about what it means to grasp the state as a historically specific form inseparable from the economy, find ourselves torn between the mutual dis...
2024-09-12 10:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we talk about the weird little unfinished utopian novel The New Atlantis, written by founding enlightenment figure Francis Bacon. We talk about his fetish for differential novelty, his understanding and valorization of knowledge production, and his ambivalent status as a ...
2024-08-28 04:43:46 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we discuss the educational philosophy of the American pragmatist John Dewey. Focusing on his 1938 treatise Experience & Education we explore questions concerning the ends of education, what it means to be an effective educator, and the relationship between experience...
2024-08-14 10:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we discuss the contributions of political theorist Norman Geras to socialist debates about revolutionary ethics, movement democracy, and justice. He argues for a right to revolution, but that there’s a difference between political and social revolution, and that this difference...
2024-08-02 10:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we talk about the late, great Charles Mills and his landmark book The Racial Contract. Forcefully arguing that the modern discourse of egalitarianism and freedom is underwritten by a tacit commitment to global white supremacy, Mills develops an immanent criticism of libe...
2024-07-16 17:16:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Lillian interviews Enzo Rossi to talk about the principles and politics surrounding free speech.
PS: Sorry that the audio is not as good as when Gil does it! Lillian...well, she tries.
Works cited:
Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance" in A Critique of...
2024-07-07 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we discuss Robert Nozick’s libertarian political philosophy as presented in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. We consider his challenges to leftist thought, especially the sort of left liberalism championed by the likes of John Rawls. We take seriously his dema...
2024-07-01 10:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we tackle the concept of violence as it appears in the revolutionary and anticolonial work of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Throughout the episode we link together Fanon’s endorsement of revolutionary violence against colonial domination with his work as ...
2024-06-11 09:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we are joined by Jeff Diamanti to discuss what it looks like to watch the climate change. Our conversation shifts from analytical, aesthetic, and political perspectives, as we turn our attention from critical raw materials to the future cartographies already being carved out. We ...
2024-05-27 09:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we discuss essays from throughout G.A. Cohen’s philosophical career. Cohen is known as one of the founders of Analytical Marxism, so we talk about what this tradition in Marxist thinking is about and how it handles the problems of political let-down and disillusionment that aff...
2024-05-14 20:01:49 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we are joined by Alberto Toscano to talk about his analysis of contemporary far-right movement and ideology. We discuss his new book Late Fascism and consider the strategic and rhetorical downsides of analogizing the present moment to past instantiations of fascist ...
2024-05-02 10:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we are joined by Ajay Chaudhary to discuss his book The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World and the political, economic, and affective sites of exhaustion reproduced through climate degradation. We examine the expanding colonial relations of what Chaudhar...
2024-04-17 10:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we are joined by Matt McManus to discuss his research into the history and philosophy of right-wing politics in his book The Political Right and Equality. We discuss the nature of conservatism as an irrationalist reaction to modernist ideas about human egalitarianism, th...
2024-04-02 10:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we delve into Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself, an illuminating book from 2005 that examines subject-formation and the relationship between the self, other people, and the normative social order. We reconstruct Butler’s efforts to ground a philosophical et...
2024-03-19 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we talk with Manon Garcia about the problem of women’s submissiveness in feminist philosophy. Then we discuss longstanding feminist criticisms of the concept of consent, what we want from consent in the first place, and what it could mean in the future. And we wonder if t...
2024-03-07 11:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we return to the work of Ernst Bloch and his theory concerning “aesthetic genius” and the possibility of the red sublime. Bloch attempts to construct a Marxist account of art that can explain how it is possible for aesthetic objects to provoke experiences of beauty and sublim...
2024-02-19 11:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we dig into the Doctrine of Right in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals to see what he has to say about the state. Turns out he’s a fan, because the state is what guarantees the possibility of justice and perpetual peace. Nice! But he also thinks that the state should be authorized...
2024-02-07 11:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we talk about David Harvey’s analysis of the urbanization process as a form of accumulated surplus capital expenditure and consider the built environment as a crucial site of class struggle. The physical constitution of the built environment in which we live mediates our forms ...
2024-01-22 11:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostIn this nonstandard episode, Gil and Owen are joined by Michael Peterson to talk about how dreadful utilitarianism is, consider some of the offers that folks have made to come guest on the show, and reflect on how deeply unimpressive LLMs are when it comes to actually taking a position. Just havi...
2024-01-05 11:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we are joined by George Washington University Associate Professor Vanessa Wills to discuss her article “What Could It Mean to Say, ‘Capitalism Causes Sexism and Racism’?” We try to figure out why critics badly understand the Marxist concept of causation as it concerns ide...
2023-12-18 11:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode we get the Perry Anderson treatment and ask if we philosophers are the problem with how Western Marxism has evolved over time. We discuss what Anderson calls the formal and thematic shifts that happened within this theoretical tradition once the philosophers got in the driver’s ...
2023-12-05 11:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostIn this inaugural episode of our new series on ecosocialism, we discuss some writings by ecological Marxist thinker John Bellamy Foster, whose main contribution to contemporary discourse is his elaboration of the theory of metabolic rift. We talk about how this concept is meant to explain why the...
2023-11-22 11:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostIn this patron-requested episode, we discuss the proposals for participatory planning and economics developed by Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert. They contend that socialists should want to organize social production and consumption neither through authoritarian centralized planning, nor through ...
2023-11-06 11:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we discuss the social theory of the Kantian critical theorist Rainer Forst in his book Normativity and Power. We work through how well his theory of the relationship between power and reason accounts for economic domination, why he thinks power and violence ought to be d...
2023-10-24 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode, we discuss E.P. Thompson’s amazing article “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” E.P. Thompson is the legendary Marxist historian and author of The Making of the English Working Class. How did time become money? And why can’t we just pass it away? L...
2023-10-02 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post