Stay ConnectedA podcast about technology and political economy /// Agitprop against innovation and capital /// Hosted by Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr., Produced by Jereme Brown /// Hello friends and enemies
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We are joined by Quinn Slobodian — author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy — to discuss the libertarian extremism that forms the intellectual foundation for right-wing movements. We can see how the fringe beliefs of anarcho-capitalists — like Murray Rothbard (neo-confederate secessionist) and David Friedman (medieval LARPer) — are gaining broader influence, even becoming mainstream. On one hand, they are raving lunatics, ideological zealots, and explicit racists. On the other hand, the utopias they desire can be found manifested in the zones and policies — like gated communities and gutted education systems — that have been surging for decades. ••• Quinn’s book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250753892/crackupcapitalism ••• Quinn’s twitter: https://twitter.com/zeithistoriker Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We discuss chapter two – Power and Marxism – which offers a survey of how Marxist theories of power have largely been caught between the two poles of violence and ideology. With power-as-violence, the focus has been on the changing roles of the state, its relationship with capital, and the ways it physically controls people. With power-as-ideology, the focus has been on the role of institutions and culture in shaping how people think, thus exercising forms of mental control over people. While both these traditions are valuable and necessary, as Mau argues, they offer a duality of power, rather than a trinity. That missing link? Mute compulsion. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We are joined by one of our favorite friends — Meredith Whittaker — for a giant discussion that bridges her two latest articles. First a historical analysis of Charles Babbage and the smoking gun that directly links plantation logics of control with the industrial design of computation. Then a political economy of “open” AI and the material power that dominates the entire stack for these systems. ••• Follow Meredith: https://twitter.com/mer__edith ••• Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control | Meredith Whittaker https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/ ••• Open (For Business): Big Tech, Concentrated Power, and the Political Economy of Open AI | David Gray Widder, Meredith Whittaker, Sarah Myers West https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4543807 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We start with news about the latest attempt to build a smart city from scratch as a collection of venture capitalists have been secretly buying huge amounts of land near San Francisco to finally realize a dream that will never die. We connect this logic of the capitalist zone to an expansive analysis of Saudi Arabia’s global investments, geopolitical partnerships, and giant ambitions for a future where the world is a zone. Stuff we reference: ••• The Silicon Valley Elite Who Want to Build a City From Scratch https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/land-purchases-solano-county.html ••• How Saudi Arabia is buying the world https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2023/07/saudi-arabia-capitalsim-buying-world ••• How Saudi money returned to Silicon Valley https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/5/1/23702451/silicon-valley-saudi-money-khashoggi Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We are joined by Tamara Nopper and Eve Zelickson —— from the Data & Society Research Institute —— to discuss their excellent primer on Wellness Capitalism. This is the pure ideal of TMK crossovers as we lay out how an intricate tangle of things —— the organization of social reproduction by capital, the power dynamics of labor-boss relations, the cultures of personal responsibility and behavioral choices, the technocratic authority of baroque administrative systems, the actuarial governance regime of risk management —— all come together to control access to, and degrade the quality of, essential services for human life and society. ••• Wellness Capitalism: Employee Health, the Benefits Maze, and Worker Control | Tamara Nopper, Eve Zelickson https://datasociety.net/library/wellness-capitalism-employee-health-the-benefits-maze-and-worker-control/ ••• Follow Tamara: https://twitter.com/tamaranopper ••• Follow Eve: https://twitter.com/zel_eve Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We discuss chapter one – Conceptualising Power and Capital – which lays the groundwork for analyzing these two fundamental concepts and their relation. Mau goes through mainstream social and political theories of power, showing how they are all deficient in various ways and what features a theory of power must possess. Then he lays out what it means to understand capital as a social logic and how this logic can exercise power in ways that are meaningful and material. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
[We are unlocking the intro episode for the new book club. The first taste is free, find the rest on the premium feed.] We kick off the TMK book club with the excellent new book – Mute Compulsion by Søren Mau – which offers a foundational analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. Mau’s book is written with a real analytical clarity that advances our critical, theoretical understanding of the relations and operations of those things in society and our lives. We set the context for the book and our approach before discussing the Introduction chapter, which established the book’s motivating questions and overarching argument about the need to pay special attention to the economic power of capital. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion ••• Communism is Freedom – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
In another instalment of What the Fuck is Happening in America, we talk about how sports betting has totally saturated society since the Supreme Court overturned a ban in 2018, then we discuss the next wild frontier of online casinos driven by gambling platforms and megastar streamers, then finally we gaze into the dark abyss of The Machine Zone. Stuff we reference ••• The dark side of the US sports betting boom https://www.ft.com/content/2e1a235a-8a46-47f3-b040-5ca21a04ebf4 ••• Cigars, Booze, Money: How a Lobbying Blitz Made Sports Betting Ubiquitous https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-betting-lobbying-kansas.html ••• Twitch’s Gambling Boom Is Luring Gamers Into Crypto Casinos https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-04/twitch-s-gambling-boom-is-luring-gamers-into-crypto-casinos ••• A Nation of the Walking Dead https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-nation-of-the-walking-dead/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We start with a visit to that smart city we all love, New Orleans, and see how the police department’s facial recognition surveillance is going. Then we revisit China, this time to lay out the broader conditions of its zombie economy and attempts by the state to reassert its power over capital by enforcing discipline on the tech and real estate sector, and giving them strong guidance about how they can work to better serve the state’s interest. We discuss this further in the context of China’s antitrust crackdown on tech companies—we might be envious of the means, but we should be wary of the goals. Stuff we reference ••• NOPD use of facial recognition leads to zero arrests in nine months https://veritenews.org/2023/07/26/nopd-use-of-facial-recognition-leads-to-zero-arrests-in-nine-months/ ••• Zombie Economy https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/zombie-economy ••• Why Is China’s Economy Stumbling? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/opinion/china-economy-decline.html ••• What Comes Next as China’s Tech Crackdown Winds Down https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-24/what-s-next-as-china-s-tech-crackdown-winds-down#xj4y7vzkg Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We kick off the TMK book club with the excellent new book – Mute Compulsion by Søren Mau – which offers a foundational analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. Mau’s book is written with a real analytical clarity that advances our critical, theoretical understanding of the relations and operations of those things in society and our lives. We set the context for the book and our approach before discussing the Introduction chapter, which established the book’s motivating questions and overarching argument about the need to pay special attention to the economic power of capital. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion ••• Communism is Freedom – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
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