By Eric Rosenfield
5
44 ratings
The podcast currently has 19 episodes available.
This a Q&A episode in honor of the YouTube channel hitting 10,000 subscribers.
Topics include degrowth and socialism, private cities, anime, Loki Season 2, and my cat
In this video I say I couldn't think of a source talking about alienation, work, and mental health, but after I made it I came across this video that does a pretty good job at the basics: https://youtu.be/aNKiBJJFXZIsi=AoqtG4tl8niq3N4O
Thanks for listening! You can support me on Patreon at https://patreon.com/ericrosenfield and get early access to videos like this one, extra content, exclusive author's notes and more! You can also tip me at https://ko-fi.com/literatemachine
As commerce transforms around the new rent-extracting digital fiefdoms, algorithms and AI become a way to transform skilled labor into machine-learning piecework. In Severance, technology is used to "sever" people's working selves from their actual selves, creating the perfect, dehumanized work force.
Bibliography: https://literatemachine.com/2024/06/25/how-capitalism-becomes-feudalism-severance-and-technofuedalism/#bibliography
Blog version and links to the podcast and mailing list at https://literatemachine.com
You can support this project at Patreon.com/ericrosenfield where for as little as $1 an episode you can get exclusive authors notes, early access to episodes, and other goodies
Special thanks to all my Patrons: Kathryn Carruthers, Gabi Ghita, Hristo Kolev, Kevin Cafferty, Ulysse Pence, Wilma Ezekowitz, Mike Gillis, Christian Frost, IndustrialRobot, Not Invader Zim, Jason Quackenbush, Arthur Rosenfield, and Nancy S. Rosen
How Tony Stark, the myth of meritocracy, and our unspoken beliefs about genius explain Elon Musk and the (re)turn of eugenics to the right wing
Blog version and information about podcast and mailing list: https://literatemachine.com/2024/04/01/elon-musk-wokeness-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy
If you enjoyed this, please tell someone, as word-of-mouth is how projects like this grow.
For as little as $1 an episode, you can get exclusive authors notes, excerpts, and early access to episodes by supporting me on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ericrosenfield
Thanks to my current Patrons: Kathryn Carruthers, Gabi Ghita, Hristo Kolev, Kevin Cafferty, Ulysse Pence, Wilma Ezekowitz, IndustrialRobot, Not Invader Zim, Jason Quackenbush, Arthur Rosenfield, and Nancy S. Rosen
Bibliography and Further Reading
Interview with Stan Lee where he talks about the creation of Iron Man: https://screenrant.com/stan-lee-iron-man-unlikable-hero-creation-marvel/
How Albert Einstein was no "lone genius": https://www.nature.com/articles/527298a
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn, 1962
How many filaments Edison tried in creating the lightbulb: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-many-times-did-edison-fail-in.html
Talented and Gifted programs and their legacy of Eugenics: https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-forgotten-history-of-eugenics/
On the creation of the IQ Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bKaw2AJxs
Alfred Binet thought intellegence couldn't be reduced to a number: https://www.verywellmind.com/history-of-intelligence-testing-2795581 while Lewis Terman disagreed: https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-vexing-legacy-of-lewis-terman
Terman study subjects results more about socioeconomic status than intelligence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/200909/the-truth-about-the-termites and the high performers and low performers had about the same IQ: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/07/science/75-years-later-study-still-tracking-geniuses.html
The Bell Curve is based on junk, fraudulent "science": https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?si=UMJKOTiArp9qSnca
What Intelligence Tests Miss, Keith E. Stanovich, 2009
On "Gifted Kig Syndrome": https://thehowleronline.org/6490/viewpoint/former-gifted-child-syndrome/
Local education systems are funded by property taxes: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem
DeSantis campaign says "woke" is awareness of systemic injustice: https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/12/desantis-ron-woke-florida-officials/
Someone working 40 hours a week at minimum wage is still below the poverty line: https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_7e5bc7fa-1a5a-4c29-958f-53a07ac1b9ab#
Why DEI was created: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-reasons-support-affirmative-action-college-admissions/
Study where resumes were sent out with stereotypically black and white names and their results: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/mar/15/jalen-ross/black-name-resume-50-percent-less-likely-get-respo/
On the long, toxic history of "Cultural Marxism": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/opinion/cultural-marxism-anti-semitism.html
Cultural Marxism and the "vast, Jewish conspiracy": https://www.dailydot.com/debug/what-is-cultural-marxism/
The "Hyperloop" is an idea that can never work: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/elon-musk-hyperloop/ and was just a ploy to disrupt the development of trains in California: https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions/
Wired story from 2018 about Musk mistreating his employees: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/
Some More News on Musk: https://youtu.be/5pNL7MlUpmI?si=GNFvsKQQRpyfw-MH
Tesla cars fall apart in motion: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/
Tesla cars suspected of turning off self-driving moments before a crash: https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report
Musk not interested in labor laws or regulations: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-spacex-twitter-inc-technology-business-8912c2a2f282b395d3630b3589fa25bc
More on Musk mistreating employees: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-14/elon-musk-toxic-boss-timeline
Musk spreading lies on Twitter: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-black-students-low-iqs
Musk antisemitic tweets: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/16/elon-musk-antisemitic-tweet-adl
Musk racist tweets about asylum-seekers: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory-1234941337/
Musk the eugenicist: https://disconnect.blog/why-silicon-valley-is-bringing-eugenics/
What does comedic science fiction television show The Orville tell us about how capitalism will end? How did Germany go from having the largest and most powerful socialist movement in the world to finding its movement gutted and its country given over to fascists? How did Eduard Bernstein, despite his best intentioned, upend the Marxist movement and provide cover for those who wanted to destroy it? And was he actually right all along? All this and more will be answered!
The previous video, Star Trek into Socialism, is not necessary for appreciating this one, but the two inform each other: https://youtu.be/LJKDF0BwepI
Also mentioned in this video: * Loki and How Conservatives Become Fascists: https://youtu.be/kBfTYUadGts * How the Hippies Became Yuppies: The Trial of the Chicago 7: https://youtu.be/LONtgVNaa7A?si=DvWznzsFnMZyYHR2
Not by me: Using Corporate Governance to Understand Socialism: https://youtu.be/MmeIGcI60oc
Text of the episode and other ways in which you can access it at https://literatemachine.com/2023/11/16/how-will-capitalism-end-the-orville-eduard-bernstein-and-what-is-to-be-done/
Excerpts of deleted material on the Patreon at https://patron.com/ericrosenfield, which you can get access to for as little as $1 an episode, and also get exclusive author’s notes, draft excerpts, and early access to episodes. There’s also a whole thing I wanted to get into here about the role of identity politics in all this, but it was too complicated and too much of a digression from the main point, so I’ll probably talk about it there.
Bibliography My primary literary sources were:
- *The Preconditions of Socialism* by Eduard Bernstein, 1899, edited and translated by Henry Tudor, 1993 (originally published in English as *Evolutionary Socialism*) - *Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology*, edited and translated by Marius S. Ostrowski, 2021 - *The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism* by Manfred B. Steger, 1997 - *The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism* by Peter Gay, 1952 - *The German Revolution 1917-1923* by Pierre Broué, 1971 (translation 2005) - The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, 1848 - Capital Vol. 1 by Karl Marx, 1867 - Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx, 1875 - “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution” by Karl Marx, 1848 - “Speech to the International Workingman’s Association” by Karl Marx, 1863 - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engles - Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels, 1877 - Reform or Revolution? by Rosa Luxemburg - “The Russian Revolution” by Rosa Luxemburg, 1918 - *Capital in the 21st Century* by Thomas Piketty, 2014
More sources can be found at https://literatemachine.com/2023/11/16/how-will-capitalism-end-the-orville-eduard-bernstein-and-what-is-to-be-done/
Does Star Trek show us what socialism looks like? What would it look like if we organized society democratically instead of allowing a few people to control most of the resources?
Bibliography and Further Reading
* Obviously, the work of Marx and Engels is key to this piece. Particular texts I drew on here include The Civil War in France (1871) (modern editions contain the first draft and the address on the Civil War) and The Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). Marx's "La Liberte" speech (1872) is where he proposes that some countries might transition to communism peacefully: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm
* One of my chief inspirations for this piece and in general is the book Socialism: Past and Future (1989) by Michael Harrington, founder of the Democratic Socialists of America. Socialism does a good job of summing up the history of socialism, the rise of democratic socialism, the problems we faced in the 20th century, and where we might go from here.
* The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) (also published in English as Evolutionary Socialism) by Eduard Bernstein is a fascinating book by the father of the democratic socialist movement and the idea of achieving socialists goals through gradual reform. A controversial figure both in his time and today, both with orthodox Marxists and modern democratic socialists, his story is one I find endlessly fascinating. Much as during the Social Democratic period of the mid-20th century, when Preconditions was first published, it seemed as if gradual socialism was working in Bernstein's native Germany. Then of course the First World War brought Germany to its knees. Bernstein himself, who'd become a member of the Reichstag, would die three weeks before Hitler came to power, undid all the achievements of his party, executed its leaders, and most of the members of Bernstein's ethnic group. While researching this piece, I also drew on The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (1952) by Peter Gay, and the excellent introduction to the English translation of Preconditions from 1993 by translator Henry Tudor.
* For the history of the Russian Revolution, I highly recommend China Mieville's October (2017), a highly readable retelling of the story of the revolution and the events around it.
* I am highly indebted to the work of Richard Wolff, whose Democracy at Work (2012) and associated website and YouTube channel opened my eyes to the possibilities of worker cooperatives as a tool for workers to control the means of production within a capitalist society and so create a mechanism not only to improve the lives of workers in the near term, but to build up worker power and control in the long term.
* I'm also indebted to the continued work of Cory Doctorow in and out of his Pluralistic project, with too many useful and informative pieces to list here. For example, Pluristic turned me onto how municipal broadband providers are the only ones with consistent customer satisfaction, or his piece in Boing Boing about how the notion of the "tragedy of the commons" is based on lies and fraud. Other important pieces include "What Comes After Neoliberalism" and "Excuseflation".
* Carlos Maza's excellent video essay "The Pay for It Scam" is essential for understanding the ways in which only programs for the social good are ever asked "how will you pay for it", while corporate subsidies, tax cuts, and the military budget piles on the debt.
* For more on the "primitive communism" of the Iroquois and other native tribes, I recommend The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber.
* Most of my research on Gene Roddenberry comes from the book The Impossible Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek (2016) by Lance Parkin
* More on how modern corporations actually show the power of a centralized economy, a piece inspired by the book The People's Republic of Walmart (2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRepEvmCCIg
A larger bibliography can be found at: https://literatemachine.com/2023/04/11/star-trek-into-socialism/#paragraph
Marvel's Loki shows us what fascism looks like, and how it comes to take root within innocuous conservatism.
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Corrections:
• Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Bros are not Jewish. Actual examples of Jewish funders of the right include Sheldon Adelson and Ike Perlmutter. I may upload a revised version of this audio with the names changed.
• Malthus never directly said that the poor and unskilled should be liquidated, but he did oppose aid to the poor on the theory that they should be allowed to naturally die out if they were of no use to society in order to preserve resources.
Interstitial music:
"I Can’t Stop" by Punch Deck | https://soundcloud.com/punch-deck
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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
Bibliography and Further Reading
Support the show on Patreon and get early access to episodes and exclusive Authors Notes: https://patreon.com/ericrosenfield
Text of the show and more information about other formats it's available can be found at: https://literatemachine.com
Bibliography and Further Reading
- Hallmark Christmas movie montage sourced from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vu6GlstKl8
- On the urban-rural divide of Christmas movies: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-24/the-urban-rural-divide-of-tv-christmas-movies
- The TV Tropes entry for From New York to Nowhere: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FromNewYorkToNowhere
- Ted Koppel's piece on The Andy Griffith Show and modern politics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/12/29/ted-koppel-mayberry-cbs-sunday-morning/
- A fascinating video that explains how the ethos of "personal responsibility" leads naturally to white nationalism: https://youtu.be/jmT7nLDinhY
- How and why small towns are in decline: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/14/opinion/rural-america-trump-decline.html
- How teen birth rates are higher in rural areas: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/teen-birth-rate-higher-rural-areas
- On the myth of welfare dependency: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/
Is the Paw Patrol an unintentional conservative utopia? What can the show tell us about how the political spectrum views the police, its purpose, and its funding.
For as little as $1 an episode (going forward) you can get early access to episodes, as well as exclusive author’s notes at Patreon.com/ericrosenfield.
More information about the show and other formats in which it's available, including YouTube, can be found at https://literatemachine.com
Bibliography and Further Reading
How Aaron Sorkin whitewashes the story of hippy activism, and how the hippy activists whitewashed themselves.
Text and video version of this episode, as well as how to get it in your inbox, can be found at: https://literatemachine.com
**Bibliography and Further Reading** * Abbie Hoffman testimony at the Chicago 7 trial: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/Hoffman.html * Differences between the film and what really happened: https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/trial-of-the-chicago-7/
* Wikipedia page about COINTELPRO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO * _Do It!_ (1970), Jerry Rubin * _Growing Up at 37_ (1976), Jerry Rubin * A profile of Jerry Rubin from the 1980s: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/10/18/jerry-rubin/beb88e6b-ba7e-4839-80ac-4442f6d47809/ * Abbie Hoffman’s debate with Jerry Rubin in 1985, “Yippie vs. Yuppie” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOFBAJ8BlJs&t=913s, and another time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P1x9u-466A * NY Times obituary of Jerry Rubin: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/30/obituaries/jerry-rubin-56-flashy-60-s-radical-dies-yippies-founder-and-chicago-7-defendant.html * “The ‘Me’ Decade”, Tom Wolfe: https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/
Pete Doctor takes us into the meaning of life, but is there something hollow at its center of it?
Bibliography and Further Reading
* Soul using uncomfortable blackface: https://noripatterson.medium.com/whats-wrong-with-pixar-s-soul-animation-racism-and-blackface-c9a7709cd50f * Tom Wolfe’s famous article declaring the 70s the “me decade”: https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/ * Google ngram of the term “personal fulfillment” showing its rise in the 1960s and 70s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Personal+fulfillment&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2CPersonal%20fulfillment%3B%2Cc0 * How distrust of the government among the hippy movement led them to embrace Libertarianism: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/may/19/comment * Twitter thread about conservative’s using the “money can’t buy happiness” slogan to say we don’t need to raise the minimum wage: https://twitter.com/cons_owned/status/1372670714201968641/photo/1
The podcast currently has 19 episodes available.