Bungacast22 Jul 2025

/500/ Disrupt, Decline, Decay

We celebrate 500 episodes of Aufhebunga Bunga with a cold, hard look at the decay around us.

Alex and George plus contributing editors Lee Jones and Alex Gourevitch wrangle with four principal questions:

What does it mean to say our era is one of decay or decline?
How does this relate to the non-death of neoliberalism – its intellectual destitution, its practical weakening, but also its mutation and perpetuation?
How does neoliberal decay relate to the decline of a unipolar world under total US hegemony, and the decline of the liberal globalist order?
To what extent is the decay of representative democracy cause or consequence of the above?

And finally, as we have been asking since we started this podcast in 2017: what comes next?

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Readings:

Geopolitics at the End of the End of History, Lee Jones, The Northern Star
Technofeudalism vs Total Capitalism, Alex Hochuli, American Affairs
Regime Change in the West, Perry Anderson, London Review of Books
Changing the Regime, Building the Nation, Phil Cunliffe, The Northern Star
An Audacious Book, Roberto Schwarz (review of Robert Kurz's 1991 Collapse of Modernisation), Meditations Journal
The new historical simultaneity, Robert Kurz, Libcom

Past landmark episodes

100: What was the end of history?
200: Which country crystallises world-history from 1900-2020?
300: The threat of nuclear annihilation
400: The political oppositions of the next decade

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Episoder(400)

/551/ Reading Club: Mythologies ft. Catherine Liu

On Roland Barthes' Mythologies. Alex, George, and contributing editor Catherine Liu delve into Barthes' 1957 classic to understand the form of ideology critique it proposes – and particularly as it re...

26 Mai 31min

/550/ The New Dollar Imperialism ft. Costas Lapavitsas

On world money and war. Costas Lapavitsas, professor of economics at SOAS, London, talks to George and Alex about financialisation, arrested development, and the Strait of Hormuz. What is the state-...

19 Mai 1h 14min

History’s back, baby! (Event in London)

History’s back, baby! Thu 28 May, Verdurin, London Tickets: https://verdur.in/store/historys-back-baby-admission/ It is obvious today that the “end of history”, postulated by Francis Fukuyama in 19...

15 Mai 1min

/549/ Why Has Politics Genderised? ft. Ashley Frawley

On angry young women. Ashley Frawley, sociologist and senior editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to delve more deeply into young people's political polarisation on gender lines. Why is there a ...

12 Mai 32min

/548/ Post-Legitimate Society ft. Will Charles

On the gig economy, big tech, and ideology. Sociologist Will Charles talks to Alex about a form of social organisation that has stopped trying to justify itself. How should the gig economy work and ...

5 Mai 36min

/547/ What Are the Politics of Stagnation? ft. Dylan Riley

On political capitalism and divided workers. Sociology professor at UC Berkeley, Dylan Riley, talks to Alex and Lee about economic stagnation, the state propping up capitalism, and class politics. W...

28 Apr 1h 20min

/546/ Reading Club: Are We All Post-Liberal Now? ft. Geoff Shullenberger

On postliberalism, MacIntyre and Gray. How was the 1950s "end of ideology" (Bell, Lipset) different from the Fukuyaman 1990s "end of history"? Is John Gray correct in his characterisation of Alasd...

21 Apr 38min

/545/ Orbanism without Orban: the New European Centre? ft. Szilard Pap

On Hungary's elections. Hungarian political analyst and editor of Partizan, Szilard Pap, talks to Alex about the end of 16 years of Fidesz in government. What is the scale of Fidesz’s wipeout? Who...

15 Apr 51min