The Chatterbox

Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons (Wesleyan UP, 2024) recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas—Haiti—as a nexus for cultural and political change in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In dialogue with the work of recent historians who have inverted traditional histories of Latin American and Caribbean independence by centering the influence of Haitian activists abroad, this work traces the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation.

Brassroots Democracy demonstrates how Black musicians infused participatory music practice with innovative forms of grassroots democracy. Late nineteenth-century Black brass bands and activists rehearsed these participatory models through collective performance that embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction. Termed "Brassroots Democracy," this fusion of political and musical spheres revolutionized both. Brassroots Democracy illuminates the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work theorizes the roots of the New Orleans brass band tradition in the social relations grown in maroon ecologies across the Americas. Their fruits contributed to the socio-sonic commons of the music we call jazz today

BENJAMIN BARSON is a historian, baritone saxophonist, and political activist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His work has been published in Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party (2020), Routledge Handbook on Jazz and Gender (2021) and Routledge Guide to Ecosocialism (2021).

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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Modern economics often credits Adam Smith as its cornerstone, but another key figure, David Ricardo, has shaped our world in ways we rarely examine. Ricardo, the wealthiest stock trader of his day, developed the theory of comparative advantage, a concept that helped justify globalisation but concealed deeper ties to power, empire and slavery.

In this episode, Jess Miles speaks to Nat Dyer, author of Ricardo's Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray. They unpack Ricardo’s legacy, from his famous theory involving English cloth and Portuguese wine to its surprising connections to the welfare state. They also explore why abstract economic models, despite their flaws and potential for manipulation, remain so dominant in shaping policies today.

Nat Dyer is a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRSLI). 

Find out more about the book at: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/ricardos-dream

The full transcript of the podcast is available here: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2024/11/19/podcast-how-economics-left-the-real-world-behind/

Timestamps:

01:12 - What's your background, and why did you write the book?

03:12 - Was David Ricardo, and what was his dream?

08:42 - What is the example of English cloth and Portuguese wine?

18:02 - How was his theory able to become so influential?

22:16 - What does having this idealised view of economics mean for individuals?

29:25 - What's the relationship between Ricardo's legacy and the welfare state?

33:29 - How have these abstract theories contributed to climate change?

37:22 - Why do we trust, and defend, these models?

40:11 - What ideas are coming through to challenge these models?

45:08 - How do you feel about David Ricardo?

47:30 - What are you working on now?

Intro music:

Cold by yoitrax | @yoitrax

Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com 

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As the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano put it in his book Upside Down: A Primer for a Looking Glass World, the terminology used in mainstream political discourse often describes precisely the opposite of reality. Cut-throat capitalism is free trade. Violence is law and order. Extraction of natural wealth from communities is increasing revenue.

So where does “border security” fit in to this? Part of the answer is that borders do not produce security but subordination. This point has been made for two decades now by sociologist Nandita Sharma (see the essay “Why No Borders?,” which she cowrote with Bridget Anderson and Cynthia Wright). The point of borders is not to keep people out but to keep them in line. Borders are foundational to a global system fraught with injustice.

The struggle for no borders, Sharma explains, is a practical political project.

Sharma is the author of two books, Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of “Migrant Workers” in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020). She teaches at the University of Hawai‘i.

During our conversation, I wondered aloud whether “no borders” is still a practical political project, now that Donald Trump will take office for a second term. She responded without hesitation, “It’s not only a viable step, it’s the only step.”

As we concluded, we discussed the provocative quote from Italian thinker, philosopher, and Marxist Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying. The new world is struggling to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

Those monsters are easy to identify with the incoming Trump administration and the nation-state it represents, along with increasing climate catastrophe. “This is the moment of solidarity,” Sharma said. “This is the moment for mutual support.” Indeed, she hinted, the moment has arrived to not only imagine but also to work for another possible world.

Josemaria Escriva founded Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative, high-demand, secretive Catholic organization in Madrid, Spain, after receiving a supposed vision from God in 1928. His small inner circle initially initiated university students into strict obedience, celibacy, medieval practices of self-flagellation, and deceptive recruitment techniques to convert their friends. 

Operating outside of the mainstream church, Opus Dei rose to prominence under Spain's authoritarian dictator, Francisco Franco. Escriva was eventually canonized as a saint while the group amassed enormous wealth and influence around the world. 

Today, their reactionary religious and political mission has established a foothold in Washington DC through the Catholic Information Center—the tabernacle closest to the White House.Bill Barr, Leonard Leo, and Project 2025 mastermind, Kevin Roberts, all visit for spiritual guidance. Meanwhile, scandals and lawsuits involving child sex abuse, money laundering, and human trafficking plague Opus Dei's reputation. Gareth Gore joins us to discuss his controversial new book on the past and present of this secretive organization, Opus.

Show Notes

Pew Research Center: America’s News Influencers

How Opus Dei Converted DC

Gareth Gore Author page for his book, Opus

Opus Dei Paid $900K to Settle Sexual Misconduct Claim

Argentine Prosecutors Accuse Opus Dei of Human Trafficking

Maria del Carmen Tapia Book Summary on Opus Dei

Financial Times on Opus 

Biblical omen uncovered in aftermath of Hurricane Helene | Daily Mail Online

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What links an ancient shipwreck to the textile mills of Northern England? Both contained forerunners of the computing we use today. Computer language and software also have a long history, featuring military research and the repurposing of early programs widely used in manufacturing. This lecture will delve far back into the archives of processing, prediction, difference, and analytical engines, to discover who really made them work.

This lecture was recorded by Victoria Baines on 24th September 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Victoria is IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology.

Victoria is a Senior Research Associate of the Intellectual Forum at Jesus College, Cambridge, a Senior Research Fellow of the British Foreign Policy Group, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. She is also Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University’s School of Computing, a former Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University, and was a guest lecturer at Stanford University in 2019 and 2020. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford and holds a doctorate from the University of Nottingham. She serves on the Safety Advisory Board of Snapchat, the Advisory Board of cybersecurity provider Reliance Cyber, and is a trustee of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/history-computers

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How should we understand the relationship between capitalists, big and small, and the Republican and Democratic parties — especially in the wake of Trump’s return to power? Stephen Maher discusses the sectors of capital that support and oppose him. He traces the rise of the MAGA Right to forces set in motion by the global economic crisis. And he discusses under what circumstances big business, much of which currently is wary of Trump, might throw its support behind authoritarian rule.

Resources:

Scott Aquanno and Stephen Maher, The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock Verso, 2024

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

The post Capital, the State, and Trump appeared first on KPFA.

In a timely challenge to the potent political role of digital technology, Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology argues that right-wing ideology was built into both the technical and social construction of the digital world from the start. Leveraging more than a decade of research, David Golumbia, who passed away in 2023, traced how digital evangelism has driven a worldwide shift toward the political right, concealing inequality, xenophobia, dishonesty, and massive corporate concentrations of wealth and power beneath the idealistic presumption of digital technology as an inherent social good. George Justice wrote the foreword to Cyberlibertarianism, and is joined in conversation with Frank Pasquale.

George Justice is professor of English literature and provost at the University of Tulsa.

Frank Pasquale is professor of law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School.

David Golumbia (1963–2023) was associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology; The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism; and The Cultural Logic of Computation.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Tim Wu

Lawrence Lessig

Wikileaks

David E. Pozen: Transparency’s Ideological Drift https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/10354

Stefanos Geroulanos / Transparency in Postwar France

#CreateDontScrape

David Golumbia / ChatGPT Should Not Exist (article)

M. T. Anderson / Feed

Jonathan Crary / Scorched Earth

"If you want to understand the origins of our information hellscape with its vast new inequalities, corrupt information, algorithmic control, population-scale behavioral manipulation, and wholesale destruction of privacy, then begin here."
—Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

"Cyberlibertarianism is essential for understanding the contemporary moment and the recent past that got us here. It stands as a monumental magnum opus from a meticulous thinker and sharp social critic who is sorely missed."
—Sarah T. Roberts, director, Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, UCLA

Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology is available from University of Minnesota Press.