Money on the Left

Historian and philologist Brendan Cook joins Scott Ferguson for the second installment of their 3-part mini-series devoted to Plato’s Republic. (See Part 1, if you are new to the series.) In Part 2, Brendan and Scott turn their attention to the education of the guardian class that occupies Republic’s middle books in an effort to examine how the text’s zero-sum or “univocal” metaphysics of mediation variously undermine its commitments to abundant provisioning. Along the way, our co-hosts investigate Republic's elitist critique of democracy, contradictory endorsement of the so-called “noble lie,” and much-discussed analogies of the sun, divided line and cave.

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Mike Siegel and Mike Lewis join Money on the Left to discuss municipal currency politics. The conversation focuses, in particular, on our guests’ recent success in Austin, Texas, where they helped critically rewrite anti-public and anti-environmental crypto legislation to open fresh possibilities for public banking and payments that support local communities and ecologies. 

A former public school teacher, Mike Siegel is a civil rights attorney, a co-founder of the progressive non-profit Ground Game, and a former Democratic candidate to represent Texas’ 10th Congressional district in the US House of Representatives. Mike Lewis, meanwhile, served as communications director for Siegel’s 2020 campaign, works regularly to advance Ground Game’s commitment to progressive electoral politics, and remains a prolific advocate for public money. 

In early 2022, Siegel, Lewis and Money on the Left Collective member Andrés Bernal mobilized an effort to block the development of an official cryptocurrency in the City of Austin. Initially, they appealed to the Austin Chronicle opinion page to reshape public opinion. Next, Siegel, Lewis, and Bernal persuaded and then worked alongside Austin City Council members to amend recently-passed crypto legislation. Impressively, these amendments introduced new language into municipal law, warning against the eco-social dangers of crypto, on one hand, and articulating a broad-based need for robust public banking and payment systems, on the other. Woefully underreported in comparison to news about all things blockchain, the story of municipal money politics in Austin represents a powerful model for local public money action worldwide, particularly in light of the recent catastrophic crash in crypto markets.

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Music by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com

Catch up on the May 2022 episodes of Projections, a new series from the Money on the Left Editorial Collective hosted by Will Beaman (@agoingaccount). Projections offers short readings of current events that destabilize and contest mainstream conservative narratives on behalf of an inclusive progressive politics.

Tracklist:
1. Up for Grabs
2. The Calls Are From Inside the House
3. Grab-bags & Constellations
4. Cops Don’t Care

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Music: “Lilac” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting.
http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com
Twitter: @actualflirting

Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) draws out the ideological stakes of recent comparisons between teachers and police in the wake of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, TX.

Historian and philologist Brendan Cook joins Scott Ferguson for this special 3-part  Superstructure in which they examine a keystone of the Western philosophical tradition: Plato’s Republic. In Part 1 of their discussion, Brendan and Scott set up a critical consideration of the influential text’s fraught metaphysical commitments and political implications by situating The Republic within Fourth-Century (BCE) Athenian Democracy and teasing out its complex dialogical approach to the question of justice.   

Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure

This week, Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) offers critical reflection on recent statements by Jacobin Magazine's Matt Karp, in which he dismissed recent Democratic Party primary victories against establishment candidates as moving backwards to a "pre-Bernie era" of "vague constellations of grab-bag progressives."

Reflecting on recent protests outside of Brett Kavanaugh's home as well as a recent news story where police invaded the home of a 16 year old trans twitch streamer, Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) notes ways in which conservative narratives around household and parental identity are unstable and contested.

In this special episode of Superstructure, Cohost Natalie Tabb Smith (@orangeasm) is joined by Erica Robles-Anderson (@fstflofscholars) and Scott Ferguson (@videotroph) to discuss common interests between the Money on the Left Editorial Collective and the Oikos working group on kinship/economy. Naty, Erica and Scott reflect on households, financial forms, and reproductive politics in our contemporary political economy through the prism of Melinda Cooper’s 2017 text, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism.

Continuing their consideration of pleasure for a world of leftist struggle, co-hosts Charlotte Tavan (@moltopopulare) and Natalie Tabb Smith (@orangeasm) turn to a recently published Superstructure article co-authored by Erica Robles-Anderson and Scott Ferguson. Titled "The Visual Cliff: Eleanor Gibson and the Origins of Affordance," the essay critically locates the hidden history of contemporary user-experience design in a well-known psychological experiment. Conducted by Dr. Eleanor Gibson, the experiment placed babies alone atop a visual precipice in order to test their depth perception. Following the essay, Charlotte and Naty question the notion that we must remain frozen forever between false binaries, like babies staring over an impossible visual cliff. Doing so, their discussion weaves through thinkers as diverse as Lynne Segal, Adrienne Maree Brown, Lisa Duggan, Gayle Rubin, and more.

In this first episode of Projections, Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) reflects on some recent comments from US Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) suggesting Democrats should prioritize inflation over Roe v. Wade in their campaign messaging in the midterms.

Music: “Lilac” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting.
http://flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com
Twitter: @actualflirting