Jacobin Radio Folgen

David Harvey has taught Capital to huge numbers of people. Dan interviews him about his latest book, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason. Harvey explains why he thinks all three volumes are of Capital are key, why we’re still living under neoliberalism at least unless and until ethnonationalist autarchy pushes it aside, how capitalism might survive climate change via mass immiseration, and linking struggles over production and consumption in the fight to transform society toward socialism. And more.Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity.Register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org!And support this podcast with $$ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig.

Suzi speaks with David Graeber, whose earlier Debt: the First 5000 years was an international best-seller. From Adbusters to Occupy to the history of debt, Graeber has demonstrated his creative and provocative thinking. He takes on the biggest shibboleth — our very work — in his new book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. A recent UK poll found that 37 percent of full-time workers were sure that their jobs made no meaningful contribution to the world. Bullshit jobs are the pointless ones that could be erased — and their absence would hardly be noticed. Graeber points to the ubiquitous administrative layer that has ballooned even as joblessness has grown in the last decade, creating an entire sector in academia, health administration, human resources, public relations, financial services, telemarketing, and the like. Graeber suggests we can move from the "bullshitization" of jobs to caring jobs and a caring society, but is it possible under capitalism?

The US colony of Puerto Rico has been repeatedly shocked and Puerto Ricans are traumatized. That is precisely what successful shock doctrines like this one — which wants to remake the island into a utopia for rich Americans and crypto-bros and a dystopia for everyone else — depend upon.This is also the subject of Naomi Klein's new book from Haymarket, The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. Today, Klein returns to The Dig, and is joined by Mercedes Martínez, president of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman.Also, register for the upcoming Socialism 2018 conference at SocialismConference.org.Support this podcast with $ and get our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig!