The Progressive

This live recording of the 3rd Season’s final episode is a plenary roundtable discussion at the 10th International Degrowth and 15th European Society for Ecological

Rob Hawkes (@robbhawkes) and Scott Ferguson (@videotroph) kick off a new Superstructure series about money, modernism, and inflation by revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s widely-read novel, The Great Gatsby (1925).  

In this first episode of the series, Rob and Scott complicate orthodox notions of inflation that treat economic crises past and present as mechanical results of excess money printing. They do so by reconsidering modernist art and literature’s fraught relations with notions of austerity and excess. While inflation has been associated, by modernist writers and scholars alike, with a crisis of faith in representation, Rob and Scott problematize reductive narratives that link economic, literary, and aesthetic exuberance to the relativization and loss of all value, offering limitation and privation as the only routes to sustainable creativity. Such narratives, they argue, not only mischaracterize the generativity of modernist experimentation, but also dangerously undermine modernism’s transformative challenges to unjust social orders, including hierarchies of race, class, gender and sexuality.  

Working out a heterodox alternative, Rob and Scott turn to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, well-known for holding the exuberance of the jazz age and the relativising effects of its cubist narrative in tension with the deflationary impacts of the various crashes the novel thematizes and attempts to contain. In the past, scholars and critics have interpreted Gatsby as a cautionary tale, one that apparently warns against the extravagances of the Roaring Twenties and even foretells the coming Wall Street crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression. In Rob and Scott’s account, by contrast, Fritzgerald’s text unleashes rich experimental energies that point beyond the rigid austerity/excess binary through which it is frequently framed. They acknowledge how the book’s preoccupation with private persons and desires can abet “monetary silencing,” Jakob Feinig’s term for the repression of monetary knowledge and participation. At the same time, however, Rob and Scott contend that the way Gatsby implicitly connects credit issuance to social critique and creativity harbors urgent lessons for contemporary debates about money, inflation and culture. 

Stay tuned for the second installment in this series. 

Music: "Yum" from "This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening to Anyone but Me" EP by flirting.
flirtingfullstop.bandcamp.com/
Twitter: @actualflirting

Pan-African Marxist, underdevelopment theorist, guerrilla intellectual, father, husband, radical—these are all terms that we could use to describe Walter Rodney. You may know him from his classic text, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, you may know that he was assassinated at the age of 38 for his activism, or you may not know who he was at all—either way, his ideas and his influence have most likely reached you, if not directly, then indirectly, through the waves and ripples that his life and work created in the many intersecting liberation movements throughout the planet.

Described by some as decolonial Marxism, by others as Pan-African Marxism, or just as a continuation of Marxist theory as applied to the African continent and the African diaspora, Rodney's work has been monumental in advancing and applying scientific socialism to updated physical and temporal regions which were not covered extensively until Rodney. His theories on underdevelopment as part of global capitalism opened up new spaces for theorizing and understanding imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. His work in academia was imbued with a radical, guerrilla, fervor which resulted in institutions and states taking great measures to silence him, and the impact that he had was so monumental that he was tragically assassinated in his home country of Guyana almost 45 years ago.

We've been exploring many ideas on the show recently that are founded on much of Walter Rodney's work, and so an episode on his life and work are past-due. And we have brought on two guests who we could not be more excited to be having this conversation with.

D. Musa Springer is a cultural worker, community organizer, and journalist based in Georgia. They are the International Youth Representative for Cuba's Red Barrial Afrodescendiente and an organizer with The Black Alliance for Peace. They produced the documentary "Parchman Prison: Pain & Protest (2020)," and are the host of the Groundings podcast. They are currently working on a documentary project titled "Y Mis Negros Que?", and their book Alive & Paranoid was published in Spring, 2024 by Iskra Books.

Charisse Burden-Stelly is Associate Professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a member of The Black Alliance for Peace and Community Movement Builders, and author of Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, published by the University of Chicago Press. You may remember that Charisse was on the show last year to talk about Black Scare / Red Scare.

In this conversation, we introduce Walter Rodney biographically before we dive into his work applying scientific socialism to Africa, theorizing underdevelopment and capitalism as a world system, applying his work to events happening in the world right now in places like Palestine and Cuba, what Rodney had to say about education and academia, and much, much more.

Further resources:

• Charisse Burden-Stelly
• Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, by Charisse Burden-Stelly
• Alive and Paranoid, by D. Musa Springer
• The Walter Rodney Foundation

Related episodes:

• Upstream: Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly
• Upstream: [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel

Intermission music: "A Song for Walter Rodney" by Bocaflojay

Cover artwork: B. Mure

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Joe Biden still has six months left in his presidency, but it’s not too early to size up his economic legacy. Adam and Cameron dig in.

And here's an announcement: Adam and Cameron will be recording a live show in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17 at the historic Sixth & I building. Follow the link below for tickets. Don’t wait! Other Ones & Tooze live shows have sold out quickly.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/foreign-policys-ones-and-tooze-live-tickets-949344052617?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Forward Guidance is sponsored by VanEck. Learn more about the VanEck Morningstar Wide MOAT ETF (MOAT) at https://vaneck.com/MOATFG.

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Recent writings by Michael Pettis:

“Which Country Should Design U.S. Industrial Policy?”: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2024/07/which-country-should-design-us-industrial-policy?lang=en

“Trade and the Manufacturing Share”: https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/trade-and-the-manufacturing-share/

“Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace”: https://www.amazon.com/Trade-Wars-Are-Class-International/dp/0300244177

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:18) The Problem With China's Investment-Driven Growth Model

(09:52) Why Increasing China's Consumption Is So Hard

(17:36) China's Plan To Reignite Economic Growth In China

(20:43) Why China Will Follow Similar Path To Japan In Its Economic Decline In 1990s

(24:03) Impact That Trade Surplus Countries (China, Germany, etc.) Have on Trade Deficit Countries (U.S., U.K., etc.)

(28:06) VanEck Ad

(28:46) Interview Continues

(36:59) The Fall of The "Trade Is Always Good" Consensus Among Economists

(49:58) Permissionless Ad

(50:57) Is China "Cheating At Trade"?

(57:19) The Three Things The U.S. Can Do To Respond To Its Role As "Global Consumer Of Last Resort"

(01:01:53) Why U.S. Capital Controls Are Necessary To Truly Fix The American Trade Deficit

(01:06:35) Both Trump and Biden Factions Are Determined To Resolve U.S.' Trade Imbalances

(01:08:36) China's Move From Real Estate To Manufacturing Is Exacerbating Its Trade Surplus With The Rest Of The World

(01:14:53) Chinese Real Estate Crisis Unlikely To Imperil The Chinese Banking System, Argues Pettis (Because The Government Is In Control)

(01:18:58) What About The Chinese Shadow Banking System?

(01:21:13) How Pettis Sees This All Playing Out

(01:25:09) How Falling Real Estate Prices (And Stock Markets) Impact Sentiment In China

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Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

In Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Jonathan Connolly traces the normalization of indenture from its controversial beginnings to its widespread adoption across the British Empire during the nineteenth century. Initially viewed as a covert revival of slavery, indenture caused a scandal in Britain and India. But over time, economic conflict in the colonies altered public perceptions of indenture, now increasingly viewed as a legitimate form of free labor and a means of preserving the promise of abolition. Connolly explains how the large-scale, state-sponsored migration of Indian subjects to work on sugar plantations across Mauritius, British Guiana, and Trinidad transformed both the notion of post-slavery free labor and the political economy of emancipation. Excavating legal and public debates and tracing practical applications of the law, Connolly carefully reconstructs how the categories of free and unfree labor were made and remade to suit the interests of capital and empire, showing that emancipation was not simply a triumphal event but, rather, a deeply contested process. In so doing, he advances an original interpretation of how indenture changed the meaning of “freedom” in a post-abolition world.

Jonathan Connolly is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois Chicago. Connolly is a historian of the British empire with transnational interests in migration, the history of emancipation, and legal history. His research primarily concerns abolition and emancipation, imperial political and legal culture, and the category of free labor in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. 

Your host for this episode is Mahishan Gnanaseharan, a PhD student in the Department of History at Stanford University. Mahishan studies the social, political, and intellectual histories of South Asian migrants across the Indian Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries.

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As the U.S. presidential election draws closer, hosts Cameron Abadi and Adam Tooze look at how the current climate of elevated inflation and economic discontent translates into political instability. They focus their attention by comparing these times to Weimar Germany, an era that lasted between World War I and the rise of the Nazi dictatorship. That brief democratic period also famously had high inflation and eventually collapsed into outright dictatorship. In this episode, the two dig into the economics of Weimar Germany and consider where exactly the analogy with the United States lines up and where it doesn’t.

Special thanks to listener Nick Page for the idea for this episode.

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Climate change is increasingly at the forefront of domestic and international policy priorities, and solutions are urgently needed. The expansion of global trade and the increasing integration of global value chains raise questions about how trade and the environment interact and how one can harness the benefits of trade with minimum impact on the environment. In this episode of All Things Policy, Rohan Pai and Anisree Suresh analyse how trade openness can be a solution to emerging environmental concerns.

All Things Policy is a daily podcast on public policy brought to you by the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru. Find out more on our research and other work here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://takshashila.org.in/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Check out our public policy courses here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://school.takshashila.org.in/⁠

People before Markets:: An Alternative Casebook (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents twenty comparative case studies of important global questions, such as 'Where should our food come from?' 'What should we do about climate change?' and 'Where should innovation come from?' A variety of solutions are proposed and compared, including market-based, economic, and neoliberal approaches, as well as those determined by humane values and ethical and socially responsible perspectives. Drawing on original research, its chapters show that more responsible solutions are very often both more effective and better aligned with human values. Providing an important counterpoint to the standard capitalist thinking propounded in business school education, People Before Markets reveals the problematic assumptions of incumbent frameworks for solving global problems and inspires the next generation of business and social science students to pursue more effective and human-centered solutions.

Robin Steiner is an economic anthropologist based in Miami, FL. His published work explores economic development, labor, and citizenship in Oman and the Arab Gulf. He teaches in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. Robin can be reached at [email protected]. 

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Dependency Theory provides a crucial framework for understanding the persistent inequalities shaping our global society which extend beyond borders, influence global conflicts, financial systems, and work at the intersections of gendered and racialised oppression. In this episode, Dr Felipe Antunes de Oliveira (Queen Mary University of London) is in conversation with host Judith Koch (University of Sussex) to discuss Dependency Theory which is rooted in Latin American thought. Felipe's unique dual perspective as a scholar of Latin American Political Economy and International Relations Theory on the one hand, and as a career diplomat on the other hand deeply informs his critical approach to development discourses. Felipe worked at the Department of South American Politics of the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations from 2012 until 2014, he acted as advisor to the Brazilian Executive Director at the IMF from 2019 to 2020, and is currently on a secondment to the Brazilian Ministry of Finance working as Coordinator General of International Economic Cooperation. His latest book, "Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias" (2024, University of Pittsburgh Press) proposes a way to overcome the problematic binary distinction between development and underdevelopment. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation!

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe (2024). Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina. A Critique of Market and State Utopias. Pittsburg, University of Pittsburgh Press.

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe (2024): Dependency And Crisis In Brazil And Argentina. Progress in Political Economy (PPE), July 9, 2024.

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe & Kvangraven, Ingrid H. (2023). Back to Dakar: Decolonizing international political economy through dependency theory. Review of International Political Economy, 30(5), 1676–1700. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2023.2169322

Reis, Nadine, & Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe (2021). Peripheral financialization and the transformation of dependency: a view from Latin America. Review of International Political Economy, 30(2), 511–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2021.2013290

Antunes de Oliveira, F. (2020). Development for whom? Beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. J Int Relat Dev 23, 924–946. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-019-00173-9

Fajardo, M. 2021. The world that Latin America created: The United Nations economic commission for Latin America in the development era (Vol. 192). Harvard University Press.

Marini, Ruy Mauro (2022): The Dialectics of Dependency.edt. by Amanda Latimer and Jaime Osorio.Translated by Amanda Latimer. NY, Monthly Review Press.

Villegas Plá, B. (2023): Dependency theory meets feminist economics: a research agenda. Third World Quarterly, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2292176