Aufhebunga Bunga
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/59/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 3 ft. Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski
🕑 Added 2024-03-31 12:00:06 +0000 UTCOn democratic planning.
[An old episode from January 2019 – we're re-uploading it because it's good, and also to complete our new 'Collections' on Patreon]
Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski propose we look at Walmart and other giant corporations as sites of planning, not of markets -- and that this fact proves planning works. Rather than rely on markets and market actors to manage production and distribution, we should it ourselves. Do advances in computing mean that the old problems of planning have been overcome? Does planning lead to authoritarianism -- or does authoritarianism lead to bad planning? Can we overcome the age of Capitalist Übermenschen?
Readings:
People's Republic of Walmart (Verso, March 2019)
Planning the Good Anthropocene, Leigh & Michal in Jacobin
Pt. III of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels
Bunga theme music: Jonny Mundey
Bunga design: ramune.io
Comments
Justin O’Connor
Yet 6 out of the ten largest global corporations distribute and often produce this culture. The podcast talks of Amazon. What would a socialist planning for culture mean. The anarchy of the market has long been seen as a crucial element of culture - 9 out of 10 products fail. Yet looking at the Netflix glut and the massive overproduction of culture generally, how to refigure this to produce a culture produced for need. As Leigh and Michal reject localism I'd reject this for culture too. The Left, as they say, might be too cultural, but from my point of view it needs a cultural materialism - workers self-management and all - if it is to think what culture and socialism might mean outside of arid identity politics.
Justin O’Connor
Great episode and I'm sorry I missed it first time around. At one point Alex contrasts the accepted "planable" sectors (steel, water, electricity) with the bight, shiny coloured stuff that nobody wants the grey planners to get their hands on. The perfect example is culture (art, entertainment, media etc) which in the 1980s (whatever its culture-oppositional content) came to stand for capitalism ability to cate to our every desire.
