Class Unity

Welcome to another Class Unity event. We are joined today by Kshama Sawant. Kshama is a socialist politician and economist who served on the Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024. She is now running as an independent for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington’s 9th congressional district in the 2026 election. She was a member of Socialist Alternative (and was their only elected official) until January 2023, when she announced she would not seek re-election to the Seattle City Council to promote the “Workers Strike Back” unionization campaign. In 2024, she left Socialist Alternative to form the organization “Revolutionary Workers.” Why We’re Launching Revolutionary Workers & Leaving Socialist Alternative:https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25041448-why-were-launching-revolutionary-workers-leaving-socialist-alternative/ If you’d like to support Kshama Sawant’s campaign, see:NATIONAL RALLY — Send Kshama to Congress!Sunday, October 12, 20252:00 pm – 4:00 pmhttps://www.kshamasawant.org/events/3/ https://www.workersstrikeback.org https://www.kshamasawant.org/ Twitter/X: @cmkshama For donations, membership inquiries, and educational courses please visit http://classunity.org

Vijay Prashad talks with Class Unity about the politics and economics of imperialism as well as issues with the contemporary left. He is the author of many books, including: (2011) Marx’s Capital: An Introductory Reader. Contributed by Vijay Prashad, Venkatesh Athreya, Prasenjit Bose, Prabhat Patnaik, Jayati Ghosh, T. Jayaraman, R. Ramakumar. LeftWord.(2015) Letters to Palestine. Verso Books.(2017) Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Climate Change. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.(2019) Red Star Over the Third World. Pluto Press.(2020) Washington Bullets. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.(2022) Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, edited by Frank Barat. Haymarket Books.(2022) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power, with Noam Chomsky. The New Press.(2024) On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle, with Noam Chomsky. The New Press. You can find him at: https://thetricontinental.org/institutes/ You can find Class Unity here: https://classunity.org Please consider making a donation or joining today!

In this episode, we’re joined by writer and political analyst Alex Hochuli to discuss his recent essay in American Affairs, “Technofeudalism Versus Total Capitalism.” The conversation explores the rising popularity of the “technofeudalist” thesis — associated with thinkers like Yanis Varoufakis, Cédric Durand, and Jodi Dean — and the claim that capitalism is undergoing a structural mutation into a new mode marked by digital rent extraction, platform dominance, and fragmented sovereignty. We ask: – What is technofeudalism, really? – Has rent overtaken profit as capitalism’s core mechanism? – Are Big Tech and asset managers forming a new feudal elite? – What does this mean for politics, ideology, and the future of the left? – And are we just caught in another cycle of declaring new “ages” without structural transformation? Hochuli argues that what many read as a feudal regression is better understood as a deepening of capitalist modernity itself — marked by desocialization, the hollowing out of collective institutions, and the rise of algorithmic governance. The conversation also addresses the limits of post-ideological strategies, the political role of the state, and the importance of resisting the moralization of industrial capitalism. Hochuli is a writer and political analyst based in São Paulo. He is co-host of the @BungaCast podcast (Aufhebunga Bunga), a leading platform for critical discussion on global politics, post-liberalism, and ideological drift in the post-Cold War era. His work has appeared in American Affairs, Compact, UnHerd, Damage, and other venues. He is co-author of The End of the End of History (Zero Books, 2021), a critique of political stagnation in the neoliberal era and the rise of populist disruption. Links: Follow Hochuli on Twitter/X: @Alex__1789 Explore the podcast: @BungaCast / www.bungacast.com The End of the End of History – Available from Zero Books Hochuli, “Technofeudalism Versus Total Capitalism” (American Affairs, Summer 2025)

Members of Class Unity discuss the crises of capitalism, the political economy of war, and the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza with Professor Wolfgang Streeck. Wolfgang Streeck is Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. In addition to being director of that institute before his retirement, he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Cologne, and before that Professor of Sociology and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the political economy of modern capitalism. His many books include “How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System” (2016), “Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism” (2017), and “Taking Back Control? States and State Systems after Globalism” (2024). As a basis for this conversation we read  Streeck – A Dual Crisis I: Capitalism (chapter 5 of of “Taking Back Control”) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RE3SCd7NluhCa8fx1xbHec1_5XrJEQLs/view Streeck – Notes on the Political Economy of War https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nr-gBlaDoXy_v1dGxy3xetxX_57KoiJN/view Streeck – Engels’s Second Theory – Technology, Warfare, and the Growth of the State https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UjVD29yPjHzvF8TMGZgYHVBvmNvZr8dw/view

Michael Hudson is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, and the author of many books and papers on political economy, the history of economics, economic history, finance, and imperialism.  Dirk Bezemer is a Dutch economist who is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen. His work addresses the financial sector, credit creation, credit cycles, monetary policy, and the cause of economic crises.  In a September 2009 opinion piece in the Financial Times he wrote that a dozen economists whom he listed had predicted the 2008 financial crisis but were ignored. For membership inquiries, donations, and educational courses, please visit http://www.classunity.org

Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and is currently serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College. He is also an organizer with the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute’s Medicare for All – South Carolina initiative. Reed is widely known for his writings on race, class, and American politics; his two most recent books are “The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives” and, with Walter Benn Michaels, “No Politics But Class Politics”, both from 2022. He is currently completing a book titled “When Compromises Come Home to Roost: The Decline and Transformation of the U.S. Left” From Verso, and a good part of our discussion focusses on an article drawn from one of its chapters (link below). In addition, he is the co-author, with Kenneth Warren, of “Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality: The Farce this Time”(https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003569947/black-studies-cultural-politics-evasion-inequality-adolph-reed-jr-kenneth-warren?refId=222811c552-74b8-4258-8fa4-3ebd2edae170context=ubx_, about to be published by Routledge. Reed is also a regular contributor to the “Class Matters podcast”(https://classmatterspodcast.org/podcast_category/episodes/) produced by the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute. The articles that framed our discussion:“Looking Backward to Counter Mysticism and Despair”(https://nonsite.org/looking-backward-to-counter-mysticism-and-despair/) (June 16th, 2025)“Going Forward from the Edge of the Abyss”(https://nonsite.org/going-forward-from-the-edge-of-the-abyss/) (November 11th, 2024) For membership inquiries, donations, and educational courses, please visit http://www.classunity.org

Members of Class Unity discuss the return of military Keynesianism, the work of the Polish Marxian economist Michał Kalecki, and the current crisis of international politics with Professor Jan Toporowski. Jan Toporowski is Visiting Professor of Economics in the department of International Development at King’s College London. He recently retired from the position of Professor of Economics and Finance at SOAS University of London. His research is concentrated on monetary theory and policy, finance, macroeconomics, and development economics. He is also the literary executor to Michał Kalecki, who died in 1970. Professor Toporowski has published two volumes of biography of Kalecki, and over 350 books, articles, and papers on economics and finance. Before becoming an academic he worked in fund management and international banking. He has been a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Professor Toporowski studied economics at Birkbeck College, the University of London, and the University of Birmingham, in the UK. He has held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge and the Bank of Finland. His most recent books are “Interest and Capital: The Monetary Economics of Michał Kalecki” (Oxford University Press 2022) and “Polish Marxism After Luxemburg” (Emerald Press 2022). Reading list: Toporowski – Multilateralism and Military Keynesianism – Completing the Analysis Toporowski – The War in Ukraine and the Revival of Military Keynesianism Kalecki – Economic Aspects of German Rearmament Twitter/X: @JMToporowski For info on Prof. Toporowski: https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff30980.ph For more info about becoming a member of Class Unity, go to: http://www.classunity.org

In our latest speaker series, Class Unity discusses class, capitalism and higher education with Mitch Hernandez and Adam Rensch. Mitch Hernandez is a doctoral candidate in the cultural studies and comparative literature department of the University of Minnesota. His general interests include the history of neoliberalism and the development of  subjectivity in its regimes. His dissertation focuses on the university as a site of clandestine social reproduction.  Adam Rensch received his PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He writes for the Brooklyn Rail on class politics and inequality. His current book project traces the historical relationship between the university creative writing programs and the decline of working class literature.  Links to the articles discussed in the video: Hernandez — Managerialism, Debt, and the Class Composition of the University Rensch — Academic Serfdom & the End of Higher Education For more info about becoming a member of Class Unity, go to https//classunity.org 

The discussion highlights Trump’s waning support from his core base and the rise of right populism. Iran's nuclear threats and shifting U.S. foreign policy take center stage, along with the complexities of U.S.-Iran-Israel relations. Political dynamics reveal a factional shift within the Republican Party, while a populist movement emerges in the Democratic primary. The potential impact of local political changes, like the NYC mayoral election, emphasizes class interests and economic concerns, urging a coalition approach to tackle inequalities.

Class Unity speaks with Warren Mosler, a leading voice and theorist of Modern Monetary Theory. He spent much of his career in the business world as entrepreneur and investor, founding and operating a successful hedge fund. Later he became an author on economics and along with others founded a new school of economic thought that we now know as Modern Monetary Theory or MMT. “Soft Currency Economics” https://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/soft-currency-economics/ “The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy.” https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Seven-Deadly-Innocent-Frauds-of-Warren-Mosler.pdf https://moslereconomics.com Twitter/X @wbmosler For more info go to https//classunity.org