Episodes
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I’m pleased to welcome intellectual historian Edward Baring to the show for a conversation on the concept of “vulgar Marxism” and the different theories of worker education that Marxists have developed and debated over time. We discuss the origins of the accusation of "vulgar Marxism" and how it is juxtaposed with "genteel Marxism." We then dive into the world of Second International Marxism and the various theories of worker education that grew during this period from 1891–1931. This discussion is inspired by Baring's new book, Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education. This book has helped me a great deal in filing in some important context to this important period of history. Specifically, I was impressed with the way the debates over worker pedagogy, class consciousness and liberation were forged off of a Kautskyist source of influence.
Acquire a copy of Vulgar Marxism: https://bit.ly/4rZwNWM
Edward Baring is Professor of History and Human Values at Princeton and an intellectual historian specializing in twentieth-century Europe. He earned his BA in Mathematics and History at the University of Cambridge, and his PhD at Harvard University. Before coming to Princeton, he taught for a decade at Drew University. Baring has held fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the ACLS, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. At Princeton he holds a joint appointment with the University Center for Human Values.
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I'm joined by filmmaker and theorist Helen Rollins for a discussion on her new book on psychoanalysis and cinema, Psychocinema. In this book Helen argues there is a fundamental relationship between the structure of psychoanalysis and that of cinema. Cinema acts upon the viewer like psychoanalysis upon the analysand and can expose them to the universal lack inherent in their desire. This process undermines the unconscious logic of capitalism, which relies on a promise in fulfillment.
We also discuss Helen's experiences in the film industry, her many film projects (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7184276) in addition to the theoretical topics raised in Psychocinema.
Get a copy of Psychocinema here: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Psychocinema-p-9781509561155
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Missing episodes?
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How can we make sense of the logic behind Donald Trump and the spectacle of chaos that seems to follow him? What appears as disorder on the surface may in fact reveal deeper transformations within American politics and the structure of power itself.
I’m joined by American historian Paul Heideman for a critical discussion of Trump’s politics and a sober assessment of the dynamics shaping the second Trump presidency. In this episode of Emancipations, Heideman analyzes our present conjuncture by looking at the past 40 years of American bourgeois politics, with particular focus on how the Republican Party has transformed from the party of business into the party of chaos. We explore how today’s political disorder reflects the weakening of American political parties as institutions and the fracturing of the corporate elite. Along the way, we discuss the far right, the legacy of the John Birch Society, Newt Gingrich’s 1990s revolution in party politics, the consolidation of the capitalist class around the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, and the question of whether Trump should be understood as a fascist political figure.This conversation is inspired by Paul Heideman's excellent new book, Rogue Elephant: How the Republicans Went from the Party of Business to the Party of Chaos. Rogue Elephant traces the radicalization of the Republican Party over the past fifty years, arguing that its subordination to Donald Trump was not an anomaly, but rather the culmination of processes at work for decades. Providing a new perspective on figures from Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush to the Koch brothers and Donald Trump, it shows that the party’s lurch to the far right was the product of a volatile mix of a disorganized party structure and a divided and fractious class of American business owners.
Paul Heideman holds a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark. His work has appeared in publications such as Jacobin, Dissent, and In These Times. He works as a history teacher in New York City.
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Joining me for his second appearance, Philipp Felsch explores the life and thought of Jürgen Habermas, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era and Germany’s foremost living public intellectual. We trace Habermas's roots in the Marxist tradition, his role in the Frankfurt School, relationship to Adorno and Horkheimer, to his influential presence during the May 68 period across West Germany.
We discuss why Habermas’s theory of the public sphere has been so influential, and why he came to be so widely revered as a philosopher, especially within American academia. We then examine how Habermas abandoned Marxism in his turn to develop a comprehensive theory of communication. Habermas is known as an admonishing voice of reason, as the moral conscience of post-Holocaust German society but in the wake of October 7th and his uncritical position on the genocide in Gaza, Habermas's intellectual supremacy seems to be coming to an end today.
Learn more about Philipp's new book, The Philosopher: Habermas and Us (translated by Tony Crawford) https://bit.ly/4qjpFTC
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We discuss Pierre Bourdieu's legacy and its implications for understanding intellectuals. You can find C. Derick Varn at VarnVlog. In addition to going through some of Bourdieu's key categories, these are the primary readings we discuss:
Pascalian Meditations by Pierre Bourdieu Homo Academicus by Pierre Bourdieu The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger by Pierre Bourdieu "The Role of the Intellectual in the Modern World" by Pierre Bourdieu Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu -
My guest Yanis Iqbal is the author of The Sword and the Neck, a militant work of philosophy that insists Gaza must be approached not as a humanitarian "exception," but as a primary terrain of proletarian and anti-colonial struggle. Iqbal develops an incisive critique of contemporary leftwing philosophers Slavoj Žižek, Ètienne Balibar and the wider tradition of post-colonial thought in the wake of October 7th and the subsequent genocide in Gaza.
In this interview we discuss Iqbal's core ideas, the limits of post-colonial thought and the role of Marxist practice in the Palestinian liberation struggle. I encourage everyone to purchase Yanis Iqba's book The Sword and the Neck, published in 2025 with Iskra Books.
If you download the PDF for free, please make a contribution to Iskra as gratitude for their work. I wrote the Preface to this very fine work where I address a number of important questions that the book raises.
Yanis Iqbal is studying political science at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of the book 'Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia' and 'The Sword and the Neck.'
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We discuss the roots of anti-intellectualism in American life for the first episode in a four-part series co-created and presented with C. Derick Varn, "The Problem of Intellectuals."
Learn more about C. Derick Varn by checking out his show "VarnVlog" https://www.patreon.com/c/varnvlog/posts
These are the primary readings we discuss:
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard HofstadterThe American Intellectual Elite by Charles Kadushin The New Radicalism in America: The Intellectual as Social Type by Christopher Lasch The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class by Alvin Gouldner "The Missing Generation: Academics and the Communist Party from the Depression to the Cold War" by Ellen Schrecker -
I am joined by Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University and Concurrent Professor of Marxism with Jiangsu’s top thinktank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a critical discussion and analysis of Marxism in China and the tradition of Chinese Marxism.
We examine the ideological differences within the Chinese Communist Party from the time of Mao to the present, the main differences between Soviet and Chinese forms of Marxism, the core of Xi Jinping's thought, the impact of the "reform and opening up" period since Deng Xiaoping, to the status of class struggle in contemporary China.
Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney is Professor of Politics and International Relations and Doctoral Supervisor (政治与国际关系教授、博士生导师) at East China Normal University (ECNU/华东师范大学); Founder and Director of the Center for Ecological Civilization (主任, 政治与国际关系学院生态文明研究中心); Vice Dean for the Institute of Singularity Politics (奇点政治研究院副院长); Associate Editor, US-based Journal of Chinese Political Science (SSCI and ranked first in the field according to JCR); and Co-Editor, ECNU Review. He also serves as a Concurrent Professor of Marxism (马克思主义兼职教授) and Senior Research Fellow (资深研究员) with Jiangsu’s top thinktank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (中国特色社会主义发展研究院)—based at Southeast University (东南大学) in Nanjing.
He’s consulted regularly on matters related to governance and international affairs by the China’s central government, the Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu governments, and foreign diplomats. One of China’s most-recognized international key opinion leaders, Dr. Mahoney has more 200 publications and appears frequently on global broadcasts (1000+), including Xinhua, CGTN, CCTV, BBC, RT International and TRT World, and is a regular contributor to China Radio International’s The Beijing Hour and The World Today and RTHK’s Backchat (Hong Kong). He writes, produces and performs high-level documentaries for BRTV, one winning First Prize (一等奖 in the category of International Communication (等奖, 国际传播) per the 第35届中国新闻奖 (2025).
He frequently publishes in the South China Morning Post, China Daily, Beijing Review, and writes for the CPC Central Committee’s foreign policy platform, China Diplomacy, among others. Previously he was a member of the Chinese team that translated Jiang Zemin’s Selected Works into English and subsequently a Senior Researcher with Beijing’s leading think-tank, the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (中共中央编译局), under the CPC Central Committee.
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My guests Mikey Downs, Nance and Grady Page are all accelerationists. We discuss the curious return of accelerationism in today's political moment and what it signals. We debate the politics in the philosophy of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. My guests find Land's thought to be generative and important, and they insist that Land is not a fascist thinker. We debate that precise point and dive into the core of what my guests find so incisive in the wider accelerationist movement.
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If you benefit from my work please consider a donation: paypal.me/danieltutt1
You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations
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With guest co-host Benji Schoendorff, I sit down with Dr. Ali Kadri, a leading Marxist political economist and scholar of the Arab world to discuss his important new book The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction (2023). In this interview we discuss Kadri's critique of Western Marxism, the question of revolutionary consciousness today, class issues, imperialism and its status and dynamics, the role of the anti-imperialist struggle and Dr. Kadri discusses his influences in contemporary Marxism.
In his book The Accumulation of Waste, Kadri traces how capitalism, especially in the Global South, increasingly accumulates waste not only in discarded commodities, but in wasted lives, labor, and entire nations rendered disposable by imperial extraction. Through his incisive critique of “Western Marxism” and its retreat from anti-imperialist struggle, Kadri argues that Marxism today must re-anchor itself in the lived realities of colonial domination, military intervention, and financial subjugation.
This conversation explores why imperialism remains central to capitalist reproduction and why any Marxism that cannot think anti-imperialism is destined to fail politically and theoretically. Co-host Benji Schoendorff is a clinical psychologist and podcast host of "Resistance is Fertile" (https://bit.ly/3KIRiGH).
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Grady Page joins me for a philosophy salon on how accelerationist ideas influence contemporary struggles over technology, capitalism & the left. Read this Substack about the event: https://revolpress.substack.com/cp/180530252
If you benefit from my work please consider a donation: paypal.me/danieltutt1 You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations
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I'm joined by Tony Chamas, aka "Tony of @1Dimee" for a discussion on the philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa's theory of liberalism. Liberalism requires a unity between its economic and its cultural imperatives in order to remain intact as a ruling political ideology. What role does the left play in keeping this unity intact? We will argue that when the left becomes the stewards of cultural liberalism they participate in the pacification of class struggle politics and this prevents the left from remaining true to a socialist vision of politics. We discuss and debate how to best address this fundamental double bind, how it might be overcome and what the prospects are for socialist politics once this hostage situation is undone.
Tony Chamas is a political theorist and author of the forthcoming book "Freedom to Change Nothing: The Spectrum of Managed Democracy and What Makes the US Different." Chamas is also a video essayist known for his YouTube channel, 1Dime and his podcast, 1Dime Radio. His most notable videos include "The Deficit Myth" and "China's Cultural Revolution: The Full Story" (Documentary).
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I am joined by Lacanian philosophers Nadia Bou Ali and Surti Singh to discuss the concept of "Extimacy" in the work of Jacques Lacan. In 1960, Lacan coined the neologism extimité (extimacy) to denote a structure of subjectivity in which the most intimate, internal core is already external, thus complicating the traditional philosophical dualisms and binaries that have informed traditional notions of subjectivity. We discuss what this idea helps us to think in terms of philosophy, culture and politics. This conversation is based on a new collection of essays co-edited by Nadia and Surti entitled Extimacy, a book that is the first sustained interrogation of the concept.
Nadia Bou Ali is an associate professor and director of the Critical Humanities Program for the Liberal Arts at the American University of Beirut. She is the coeditor of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, and Politics and the author of Hall of Mirrors: Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic. Bou Ali is a candidate analyst at the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in the Bay Area.
Surti Singh is an associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University.
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I've have hosted a number of interviews, symposiums, lectures and study groups this year. This is a Q & A session where I answer questions from patrons, listeners and supporters. If you benefit from my work please consider a donation to help defray the costs of organizing all of these events: paypal.me/danieltutt1 You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations
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In our latest episode of The Archimedean Point, we turn to Edward Said's theory of Orientalism and address its shortcomings from a Marxist perspective. We focus on Disney's Aladdin from the early 1990s as an example of pop-Orientalism, and we argue that Aladdin offers an allegory for the remaking of Middle Eastern society by capitalism.
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If you benefit from my work please consider a donation: paypal.me/danieltutt1
You can also become a Patron to gain early access to all of my interviews and videos: www.patreon.com/emancipations
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We are joined by philosopher Cadell Last, the host of Philosophy Portal to discuss his new article "No Marxism Without Žižek", (https://bit.ly/46c4gnj) a review of Flowers for Marx.
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I am joined by philosopher Alex Taek-Gwang Lee for a critical analysis and discussion on the legacy of Gilles Deleuze's thought, its influence on the existing left and the ways that the concepts Deleuze developed have interacted with the wider Marxist tradition. This conversation will consider Dr. Lee's recent book Communism After Deleuze, published with Bloomsbury https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/communism-after-deleuze-9781350474048.
Please support me on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations
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My guest is Ross Wolfe, a socialist historian and writer. In a recently published three-part essay entitled, "Against Losurdo" (https://newintermag.com/against-losurdo) Wolfe argues that Losurdo's work represents the re-introduction of Stalinism in contemporary Marxism. We discuss and debate Losurdo's work, with a focus on his book Western Marxism and his works on Hegel and Nietzsche.
To watch the study sessions we hosted on Losurdo's Western Marxism, please go here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE03jn2k3GYCRd7dnBOAKBN-H-F-wGzYa&si=zkRb8GeYoi_Nc2Gv
Support my work on Patreon by becoming a paid member: https://www.patreon.com/c/emancipations
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I am joined by political theorist Benjamin Studebaker to discuss the retreat of the political and the concomitant rise in despair. How do we theorize this despair, and how does it differ from spiritual despair?
Please read Studebaker's article which is the focus of this discussion: "Political Despair and Moral Injunctions" https://bit.ly/469EqkQ
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My guest is Michael C. Behrent, a historian of French intellectual history and a leading scholar of Michel Foucault. Behrent has been at the forefront of an important debate about the legacy of Foucault's thought, and specifically his political influence on the contemporary left and the rise of neoliberalism. Behrent is also working on the thought of Michel Clouscard, the most important French Marxist from the 20th century you have likely never heard about. The second half of this conversation is a discussion on Clouscard's work, his critique of the wider ecosystem of French philosophy from the 60s and 70s and specifically his analysis of the ideology of "liberal libertarianism."
Michael C. Behrent is a professor of History at Appalachian State University. His scholarship has sought to historicize the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. This work evaluates the political significance of Foucault's reflections on free-market economics by situating his work in the shifting ideological landscape of France in the 1970s. And his current project seeks to show how Foucault’s thought was (to a significant degree) rooted in his upbringing in Poitiers, France from the 1920s to the 1940s. Behrent is also developing a project that seeks to reconstruct the thought of the “young Foucault” (spanning 1949 through to the mid-1960s). Behrent also writes about American politics and culture for several French publications, notably Esprit as well as Dissent, Foreign Policy, and Oxford University Press blog.
Read his article on Michel Clouscard here, "Michel Clouscard vs. the Hipster Left" https://bit.ly/3Kn6jO0
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