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/295/ Aufhebonus Bonus: October (Patreon)

Published:
2022-10-11 06:01:00
Imported:
2026-06
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[Patreon Exclusive]

On who is responsible for prolonging the Ukraine War + your questions & criticisms

We start off by discussing whether the Zelensky tail is wagging the NATO dog, and what possible exits to conflict there might be. 

Then, in the main section, we respond to listener comments: we talk about the possibility of a "Chinese Dream", what the point of economic growth is, the monarchy and modernisation, and whether 'fascism' is an appropriate term for the far right today.

Files

Comments

Kenneth Smith

Why is Phil so weird about the queen? Like I guess if you go by the kind of supposedly working class person who responds to polls asking their opinion on the queen, I can buy those folks “love” her. But his assertion of supposed classism on part of people who are sick of the pablum is ridiculous

Elias B

I think Phil's positions on supporting Ukrainian sovereignty/opposing a proxy war are coherent theoretically, but imo the question this avoids is, what that would have led to? It's quite plausible to say that the Russians would've taken Kiev - in any case they would've advanced much more. I'm sympathetic to Phil's position theoretically but can't reconcile myself with the consequences, even taking into account NATO/the US's role in provoking the war. And re: the carpet, I think Alex said something about the Queen holding the room together which I interpreted as a Big Lebowski reference - not sure if it was intentional or not PS: Phil is definitely right on green infrastructure spending boosting growth, government spending enters into GDP - the only counterargument is assuming like the neoclassicals that it would crowd out private investment. PPS: One last point on Italy. The existing forces are indeed all integrated into the EU system, but I'm not sure that means that a sovereigntist movement would disintegrate the Italian political system. The fact that many movements have arisen trying to do that but failed miserably suggests to me that there are structural factors - elite cohesion, economic dependence, the euro, the Italian constitution - which make it much more difficult to achieve an Italexit than it was to achieve Brexit. The Italian political system, despite its constant chaos and seeming fragility, is much more resilient than it seems. Same goes for much of the rest of the EU. I think the differences between continental EU states and the UK, especially membership of the Eurozone, mean that the political space for a Brexit-like movement is much narrower there than in the UK (Thompson's book is very good on this). This is reflected in anti-EU currents being much weaker and those that do exist always being too afraid of really implementing what their rhetoric implies. This is a kind of rambling point but the long and short of it is that you guys underestimate the resilience of the EU system outside the UK.

Richard R

The disaster had already happened before fascism emerged in Europe. The stakes seem to be wrongly measured here. Migrants are being killed and caged under liberals. Leftwing leaders in the US are in line with imperialism. The problem isn't what to call it, or whether or not to be so alarmed that you act stupidly. The point is, how are people living?

Davka Smolah Collective

Ok, so actually a coherent thought on the question of an aspirational "Chinese Dream". I think the CCP is caught in a bit of a trap that Marxist-Leninist states tend to run into, which is why they can't offer a "Chinese Dream" or a communist vision of freedom. The traditional Marxist vision of freedom is free time, the "realm of freedom" outside the daily labor of reproducing yourself and your society. But your traditional Leninist state pretty much views unapproved, non-conforming civil society activities as imperialist threats, almost by definition. You wind up with a vision of freedom in which the growth in the forces of production generates more and more leisure time that can then be spent conforming to the party-state's vision of the good life and is otherwise considered a threat to society. A contradiction within the "Communist" program. So eventually you can either require the "new communist man" to be a pathological altruist whose primary goal in life is to uphold the communist society and Communist Party, or, as most ML parties eventually do, you switch from offering a vision of freedom to a vision of ethical living and virtue.

Alex McAuliffe

As I’ve been catching up on the past month’s episodes, it is a bit funny how much angrier Phil sounds on each subsequent appearance… hope he’s doing alright