Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith, and Maxximilian Seijo are joined by historian Dan Berger to reflect on the political economy of abolitionism and its critical importance for the Left. Dan Berger (Twitter: @dnbrgr) is an Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington at Bothell. Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Nov 12, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith, and Maxximilian Seijo reflect on the importance of Modern Monetary Theory for the Left.
Oct 29, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Cohosts Will Beaman, Natalie Smith and Maxximilian Seijo discuss Maxx's recent article in the Journal of Environmental Media, titled “Governing media information through a Green New Deal: History, theory, practice." Featuring a special report by Australian Twitter Correspondent @moltopopulare from inside the Superstructure, and a surprise call-in from friend of the show, Liz Bruenig. Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. flirtingfullstop.ba...
Oct 04, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Will, Naty and Maxx are joined by @Moltopopulare to critique the hopeless aesthetic imagination of the Red Scare podcast and related films by Red Scare cohost Dasha Nekrasova.
Sep 16, 2020•1 hr 26 min
Joined once again by Natalie Smith (officially a cohost of Superstructure!), Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo discuss the work and legacy of Antonio Gramsci. Opening with a close reading of Amber A'Lee Frost's 2018 essay titled "Daddy Issues," Will, Naty and Maxx critique the exclusionary assumptions at the core of Gramsci's conceptual understanding of working class struggle as well as his understanding of the connection between education and populist politics. Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be ...
Sep 01, 2020•1 hr 11 min
Re-evaluating the left’s symptomatic preoccupations with the Epstein scandal, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo critique the atomizing and othering “Islands Discourse” that animates such responses. Will and Maxx begin with the island obsessions behind the TrueAnon podcast and Jacobin Magazine. They then historicize such desires through critical close readings of Gilles Deleuze’s Desert Islands and Karl Marx's analysis of Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. Music: “Yum” from “This Would...
Aug 13, 2020•1 hr 22 min
In this episode of Superstructure, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reflect on the shape of the post-Covid19 Left across the English speaking world with fellow MMTer and UK Labour activist William Sorenson. Reaching topics from the UK's Job Retention Scheme (JRS), to the US' Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF), to Scottish independence, as well as the broader horizon of possibility for a renewed and abundant left fiscal imagination, William S. sketches an analytical framework for a local...
Jul 30, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Maxx did a thing. Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Jul 23, 2020•2 hr 36 min
In this episode, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo discuss the abolitionist political vision with guest Maite Salazar (@MaiteSalazar4MO), progressive congressional candidate for Missouri's 5th Congressional District in Kansas City. Linking the movements for prison abolition to the long & evolving fight against institutions of slavery, Will, Maxx & Maite reflect on the ongoing activist-led approaches to social justice through Maite's particular experience in Kansas City organizing...
Jul 09, 2020•57 min
Cohosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo uncover the cultural and aesthetic foundations of popular histories of inflation. They discuss the 1930’s Weimar hyperinflation, 1970s American “stagflation”, and more. Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. https://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/ Twitter: @actualflirting
Jun 25, 2020•53 min
This week Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo are joined by their first guest, Natalie Smith, from Santiago, Chile. Together, they consider deep analogies between the 2019 Chilean uprising against Santiago’s transit infrastructure and the current wave of US protests against the infrastructure of violent policing. Drawing inspiration from Black abolitionism’s calls to reconstruct all forms of social infrastructure, Naty, Will and Maxx reflect on the necessity of an abolition framework for a modern ...
Jun 10, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo briefly address responses to “The Bellows (Part 1)”, before articulating a positive vision of a Left political praxis informed by the political economy framework of the late heterodox economist Frederic Lee and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Following a discussion of Lee’s “heterodox social surplus” approach and how it relates to discourses in critical theory, Will and Maxx connect their framework to the recent “Uni” proposal from the Modern Money Network f...
May 30, 2020•41 min
Evocative of burgeoning calls for left-right populism in the wake of Bernie’s loss, hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo name and critique the political vision of The Bellows, a new publication that has enjoyed recent support from prominent elements within the left wing media ecosystem. Leveraging MMT’s rejection of monetary scarcity, Will and Maxx link inclusive struggles over material production to the irrepressible realm of the symbolic in order to articulate a capacious intersectional pol...
May 23, 2020•51 min
Reviewing Michael Moore & Jeff Gibbs’ recent film Planet of the Humans, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reject and historicize the film’s advocacy for population control. By connecting reductive affirmations of scarcity in both Marxist ecological thinking and the film, with reference to Malthusianism, degrowth movements, Patricia MacCormack’s Ahuman Manifesto, and the late great heterodox microeconomist Fred Lee, they ultimately affirm a non-zero-sum environmental justice framework...
May 14, 2020•59 min
Linking the discussion to debates around social democracy and public money creation, hosts Will Beaman & Maxximilian Seijo reflect on the limits of a left media ecosystem that relies upon the disastrous myth of private property.
May 07, 2020•45 min
Embarking on a deep dive into intersections between the work of philosopher Giorgio Agamben and reductive Marxist discourses around capitalism and nature, hosts Will Beaman and Maxximilian Seijo trace a historical, political and economic lineage for the widely used COVID19 meme: 'Capitalism is the virus'.
Apr 30, 2020•1 hr 3 min
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 spectacle, damaging affirmations of scarcity and zero-sum politics as well as a burgeoning 'anti-woke' left-right coalition.
Apr 23, 2020•55 min
