The Progressive

In which we are joined by Francis Tseng and Son La Pham, the creators of Half Earth Socialism, a game about socialist planning.

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Links:

• Half Earth Socialism, the game

Gabriel Winant talks with Kim about the decline of the industrial working class and the rise of the health care industry.

Gabriel is an assistant professor of History at the University of Chicago. His book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America, is recently out from Harvard University Press. You can read his recent article on the subject in The New York Times.

The Next Shift focuses on the working class in the American context and Pittsburgh in particular. In the full version of our conversation, Gabriel recommended Aaron Benanav’s book Automation and the Future of Work (Verso 2020), for an argument about the larger global economic structures of deindustrialization. He also talks a bit about James Boggs, as someone who was well positioned to notice the effects of deindustrialization. We found this article about Boggs worth reading.

The image for this episode is a photograph of the abandoned Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, taken by Thomas Hawk on 13 June 2010. The image is posted of Flickr under a creative commons attribution non-commercial license. Lauren Berlant describes gives this photograph as a bad image of neoliberalism, which allows our social theory to derive “its urgency and its reparative imaginary from spaces of catastrophe and risk where the exemplum represents structural failure” (“The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times” Society and Space 34 no. 3 (2016) p.395). But I like it. Saronik modified the original image.

Music used in promotional material: ‘Shadow of a Coal Mine’ by Linda Draper

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Dr. Daniel Negreiros Conceição developed an interest in economics at a young age, having experienced the consequences of inflationary crises during his formative years. After being entranced by the writings of MMT economists as an undergrad studying economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, he came to the US to do his graduate studies at UMKC where he became a friend and colleague of so many of our favorite guests on this podcast. He left determined to use what he learned to help his own country achieve its potential.

He spoke with us about the recent political and historical context for background into the broader political economic situation and the stances of the major political actors towards it. He pointed out the closely matching parallel track with our own political developments in the US and the economic underpinnings. He also discussed many similarities in the state of the discourse and misinformation in discussions of finance and government budgets.

He then explained the mechanics of the Brazilian currency, the real, and discussed how the central bank manages it. He discussed balance of payment and foreign exchange situations, and explained why the issue of “monetary sovereignty” is part of the story, but not the end of it. He spoke of a country with monetary sovereignty and abundant natural resources. A country whose government accidentally proved with a massive pandemic economic bailout of the financial sector that the government can indeed do big things and better the lives of its people, if it really wants to.

Daniel Negreiros Conceição is an associate professor at the Unicamp Institute of Economics. A professor at the Institute of Research and Urban and Regional Planning (IPPUR) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He is one of the authors of the book “Modern Monetary Theory: The Key to an Economy at the Service of People”. He is president of the executive board of Institute of Functional Finance for Development Brasil.

https://iffdbrasil.org

Follow Prof. Daniel Conceição on twitter @stopthelunacy

Annie and Paul join Kim Moody, a socialist and labor movement theorist and author of The Rank and File Strategy and Breaking the Impasse. We discuss Kim's political origins between the civil rights movement and labor unionism; his experience with unions and rank-and-file rebellion in the 1970s as a member of International Socialists; the history, purpose and achievements of Labor Notes, Kim's vision of political change through mass action, including his thoughts on the Amazon Labor Union, and what socialists today can learn from the work of him and his comrades.

Rudy joins Intan Suwandi, author of Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism and co-author of Covid-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism: Commodity Chains and Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic Crisis for a discussion on Global Commodity Chains. We discuss supply chains from a bird's eye, the theoretical development of the concept, and why they are so crucial to capitalist production and why they consolidate inequality and imperialism. We discuss how large companies use 'arms-length' contracting to discipline suppliers, and how that causes a race to the bottom that leaves very little benefits to the host countries. We continue by discussing why Covid-19 became such a catastrophe for supply chains, and what little changes have occurred to supply chains since the start of the pandemic. We finish by discussing what supply chains teach us about potential forms of struggle and alternative futures.

Workers at a division of games conglomerate Activision Blizzard shocked the industry by becoming one of the first collective bargaining units in U.S. gaming.

The post Belabored: Game Workers Unite and Win, with Emma Kinema appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

For this episode, we talk with Nina Eichacker, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island. We discuss her wide ranging work on green industrial policy, the politics of Eurozone monetary policy, and two pre-pandemic books about American socialism.

*** LINKS ***

Read more of Nina Eichacker's work on her web page: https://ninaephd.org/

Follow her on twitter: @nina_econ

"The Case for More Solyndras" https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/19/1012302/solyndra-climate-change-industrial-policy-opinion/

"Institutions, Liquidity Preference, and Reserve Asset Holding in the Eurozone Core and Periphery Before and After Crises: Some Stylized Facts" https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qprm3/

"A Political Economy of Fiscal Space: Political Structures, Bond Markets, and Monetary Accommodation of Government Spending Potential at Municipal, National, and International Levels" https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/yxjh5/

"Can America Truly Turn Socialist?" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05775132.2019.1694274

Although we did not discuss it, also be sure to check out her NOEMA article with Jason Oakes: "Fight Inflation with Surplus, not Scarcity" https://www.noemamag.com/fight-inflation-with-surplus-not-scarcity/

** Be sure to check out the transcript for each episode of this podcast on our website, where you will also find an “Extras” page with links to related resources. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast **

Robert Hockett drops into the Macro N Cheese clubhouse to talk to Steve about the usual stuff: inflation, monopoly capitalism, the massive scale of global inequality, and the climate crisis barreling down on us at an ever-faster speed. It is our ninth episode with Bob, this one spurred by his recent article, the alliterative “Prices, Preclusive Purchases, and Production: Some Forgotten Solutions to Forgotten Inflation Problems” (Forbes, 13 May 2022), which diagnoses the current inflation as three supply side dysfunctions – short, medium, and long term.

Folks like Larry Summers focus on labor costs, in hopes of encouraging a further clampdown on labor, while executives are boasting record profits and chortling about marking up prices under cover of inflation.

Isn’t this just the reality of capitalism? Can it be tamed – and if so, what would that look like? If we can’t yet get rid of capitalism, are there workarounds? Bob suggests identifying those products and services that are essential to leading decent, peaceful lives and removing them from the profit-maximizing system altogether. He goes into the history of public involvement in healthcare and home finance. Another area is food:

There has been a lot of talk about supply chains, which Bob welcomes, ironically, for including the word “supply,” because it has been missing from American economic discourse for quite some time.

Steve brings up the fact that exporting production means exporting pollution. In addition to exploiting cheap labor abroad, outsourcing production has allowed companies to evade US environmental regulations. The discussion leads to the need for a Green New Deal and the possibilities therein. They also talk about the IMF and World Bank and ask if the US is held to different standards. (It is.)

A Bob Hockett episode is as much a conversation as an interview. These two old friends don’t just look at problems, they peer down the path to solutions – some possible, some not. Whether you agree with either of them, it’s worth a listen. Tell us what you think.

Robert Hockett is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Adjunct Professor of Finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Senior Counsel at Westwood Capital, LLC.

@rch371

In this episode of Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, Prof. Harvey points to some hopeful changes in the political landscape of various countries: Columbia, Peru, Brazil, France. Drawing a parallel from Marx's argument of the 10-hour work day as a first step, he argues that, given the current US conditions, an anti-capitalist agenda should perhaps shift its focus to small, incremental changes and begin to mobilize around important issues like the right to decent housing, a decent wage.