So I got pulled into this fascinating email exchange with Brian McLaren about Kojin Karatani's The Structure of World History, and it turns out there's this whole crew of organizers and academics who've been quietly working with these ideas to rethink everything from social movements to economic theory. My guest Guillermo Bervejillo—who went from being a disillusioned neoclassical economist to writing his dissertation on Chinese imperialism using Karatani's framework—breaks down this mind-bending approach to history that shifts from Marx's "modes of production" to "modes of exchange." We're talking about how gift-giving nomads, tribute-paying states, commodity markets, and the possibility of free exchange (think: exile Judaism, early Christianity) have shaped literally everything about how power works. It's one of those conversations where suddenly all these questions you've been carrying around about why organizing feels so hard, why capitalism feels so totalizing, and what actual alternatives might look like start clicking into place. Plus, we barely scratched the surface on Jesus, which means we definitely need a follow-up.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Guillermo Bervejillo is an economic geographer and community organizer who bridges critical theory and social movement practice. After earning his PhD in Economic Geography from Ohio State University, where he studied dependency theory and Chinese imperialism through the lens of Kojin Karatani's modes of exchange framework, Guillermo has dedicated his work to translating complex theoretical insights into tools for grassroots organizing.

You can find the YouTube playlist of videos outlining Karatani’s work here.

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