Josh Shepperd joins Money on the Left to discuss the research and activism that hastened the rise of public media in the United States. Assistant Professor of media studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Shepperd shows how public-interest broadcasting platforms like NPR and PBS exist in the U.S. today in large part as a consequence of hard-fought battles by committed scholars and advocates throughout the inter- and post-war periods. In particular, Shepperd traces the untold aftermath of ...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Maxximilian Seijo and Scott Ferguson join Naty Smith to flesh out a controversial proposition: capitalism does not exist. First broached by Scott in a short piece for Arcade and in the conclusion to his 2018 book , the claim is meant to de-naturalize the underlying logics and casual structures that mediate modern money economies and to resist defeatist leftist analyses that concede the horizon of possibilities to an austere and contradictory profit motive....
Feb 10, 2022•1 hr 35 min
Co-hosts Charlotte Tavan and Natalie Smith discuss: Melinda Cooper, the Kardashians Che Guevara at central banks technical mastery and politics Alan Partridge and his secretary the labor politics of flower shops budgets as spells Robin DG Kelley and the surreal Link to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Andrew Elrod joins Money on the Left to discuss the political economy of inflation and price controls, past and present. Elrod holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is presently Research Specialist at United Teachers Los Angeles, a 36,000-member labor union. In our conversation, Elrod overturns one of the most common understandings of a central plot point in our collective memory of the 1970s, and which continues to shape dramatic engagement with the probl...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith and Maxximilian Seijo are joined by Mitch Green (@drmitchpdx) to discuss the problems with “inflation” as a catch-all term for price changes. A heterodox economist by training who studied with the late Fred Lee, Mitch takes a disaggregated view of prices that opens up price-setting as a publicly allocated administrative power with no necessary relationship to profits or sound finance. Link to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure Music: “Yum” from “Thi...
Jan 31, 2022•1 hr 6 min
In this third installment of our Introduction to Theory series, Maxximilian Seijo explores the economic theory of Karl Marx. Specifically, Maxx investigates Marx's 1865 speech and posthumously published book Value, Price and Profit . This episode, drawn from Maxx's pedagogy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, interrogates the relationship between Marx's labour theory of value and the capitalist mode of production. Through close attention to Marx's theory of price, Maxx teases out (an...
Jan 17, 2022•54 min
Co-hosts Charlotte Tavan and Natalie Smith marinate in the complexity of the concept of femme: inheritance politics, fascist food, slaveholders, bell hooks, MMT & the household, oikos, labor discipline, gender play, analogical fun Real Housewives, dinner party politics women in Stem, radical craft, reply guys
Jan 16, 2022•51 min
In this second installment of our Introduction to Theory series, Scott Ferguson presents an introduction to psychoanalytic theory by exploring key theoretical writings by Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams (1899); Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905);& Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Drawn from a semester-long university course titled “Theory for Film & Media Studies,” the recorded lecture takes up three distinct texts in order explore continuities and divergence...
Jan 14, 2022•2 hr 40 min
Money on the Left discusses "vulnerability theory" with Martha Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University. Going beyond the politics of non-discrimination and formal equality that animate liberal politics and policies, Fineman underscores the human being’s embodied vulnerability throughout the life cycle in order to politicize, rather than pathologize prevailing structures of social dependence. Working primarily in the context of constitutional jurisprudence in The United S...
Jan 01, 2022•1 hr
Cohosts Natalie Smith and Will Beaman venture into Tucker Carlson's reactionary mediascape, connecting the neo-fascist rhetoric of his nightly Fox News show with the past iterations of American conservatism that preceded it. Natalie and Will trace the various rhetorical logics of the far right and offer a critique of left wing attacks on Tucker's populist bona fides that deny the possibility of reactionary populism. Link to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure Music: “Yum” from “This W...
Dec 21, 2021•2 hr 1 min
Will Beaman and Thomas Chaplin join Scott Ferguson on the Modern Movie Theory podcast series to discuss Bo Burnham’s Inside (2021). A musical comedy special written, directed and performed by Burnham for Netflix, Inside reckons with contemporary sociopolitical traumas and transformations through hysterical and frequently painful engagements with digital media culture. In the episode, Will, Thomas, and Scott contextualize Inside’ s complex mode of address, wherein Burnham dramatizes past struggle...
Dec 18, 2021•2 hr 7 min
Fleshing out the themes of Part 1 , Part 2 of the Medium: Femme pilot develops the metaphor of the constant garden. Pondering migration, care, maintenance, and coordination at a distance, Naty & Charlotte envision a politics of constant gardening that makes space for everyone. "Our hearts," says Mathew Forstater, "are never unemployed."
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Co-hosted by Natalie Smith & Charlotte Tavan, Medium: Femme explores under-appreciated feminine and queer modes of knowing in left culture and political economy, carrying the broader project of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective into quotidian relations, meanings, and practices.
Dec 12, 2021•53 min
This Money on the Left/Superstructure teaser previews both our tenth and eleventh premium releases 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 a...
Dec 05, 2021•9 min
Paolo Quattrone (@PaoloQuattrone) joins Money on the Left to discuss the metaphysics of accounting and the significance of accounting’s repressed history for political economy today. Professor of Accounting, Governance & Society at The University of Manchester, Quattrone insists that, while often seen as a positivist and merely technical skill for recording extant data, accounting in truth represents a rhetorical and quite generative engagement with the “mystery of value.” This mystery, Quat...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 20 min
In this podcast, Scott Ferguson presents an introduction to key theoretical writings by Karl Marx: Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ; Manifesto of the Communist Party ; and Capital, Volume 1 . Drawn from a semester-long university course titled “Theory for Film & Media Studies,” the recorded lecture takes up three distinct texts in order explore continuities and divergences in Marx’s complex contributions to modern thought and politics. Framed as an advanced introduction that...
Nov 21, 2021•2 hr 24 min
Mat Forstater joins Money on the Left to discuss the origins of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the vicissitudes of heterodox economics, and the challenges of building alternative institutions in and beyond the academy. As one of the principal architects of MMT, as well as teacher and advisor to many of the more recognized MMT scholars and advocates today, Forstater is perhaps the best equipped heterodox economist to give us the details on the innovative assumptions and arguments that created the ...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 40 min
A guided meditation you can do with your Tungsten Cube.
Oct 22, 2021•12 min
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 (2...
Oct 20, 2021•1 hr 52 min
In this bonus episode, Rohan Grey speaks with Philip Diehl about #MintTheCoin in the wake of this season’s debt limit showdown. Director of the United States Mint under President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000, Diehl is best known today as the person most responsible for 31 U.S. Code 5112(k). The law permits the Treasury Secretary to “mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscripti...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 24 min
We are thrilled to present the very first Superstructure episode rereleased with a brand new transcript, brought to you by the generous effort of friend-of-the-show, Mike Lewis. 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...
Oct 10, 2021•55 min
Anna Kornbluh joins Money on the Left to discuss the politics of form and literary realism as theorized in her provocative book, The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (University of Chicago Press, 2019). In The Order of Forms , Kornbluh lays bare the problematic “anarcho-vitalist” underpinnings of neoliberal discourse which, she argues, also inform much critical theory and left critique. In contrast, she upholds the necessity, malleability, and contestability of social form. F...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr 12 min
In this special episode, Rohan Grey joins Billy Saas to discuss the latest episode in the #MinttheCoin saga. Rohan Grey is Assistant Professor of Law in the College of Law at Willamette University. Read his article on the trillion-dollar coin in the Kentucky Law Journal titled “Administering Money: Coinage, Debt Crises, and the Future of Fiscal Policy” here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3536440 John Stewart on the trillion-dollar coin in 2013: https://www.cc.com/video/t24p...
Sep 28, 2021•48 min
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...
Sep 19, 2021•2 hr 3 min
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 Br...
Sep 16, 2021•56 min
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...
Sep 03, 2021•1 hr 40 min
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 sovereignt...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 34 min
Graham Hubbs speaks with Scott Ferguson and Andrés Bernal about the relationship between Modern Monetary Theory and philosophy. Associate Professor & Chair of the Department of Politics & Philosophy at the University of Idaho, Hubbs convened a conference panel on Modern Monetary Theory at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association in January 2021. He invited Editorial Collective members Bernal and Ferguson to join him on the panel, where they shared and discussed his or...
Sep 01, 2021•1 hr 50 min
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 possibi...
Aug 28, 2021•1 hr 29 min
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 Desc...
Aug 23, 2021•2 hr 14 min
