Tuesday, Sept 1, 8pm ET / 5pm PT

This week we’re working through Episode 394 - The Leviathan that Eats the World: AI's Hidden Hunger for Energy, Water & the Planet ft. fan fave Erald Kolasi, and the subject is what AI actually costs. Not the stock price. The real bill: the electricity, the water, the mines, the chip plants, the land that gets cleared, and the people whose labor and resources get burned through to keep the whole machine humming.

You don’t need a tech background for this one. Erald Kolasi and Jesse Damiani did the thing nobody in Silicon Valley wants done, which is add it all up start to finish instead of counting one data center’s water bill. The number they land on is four to five times higher than the estimates you’ve been reading.

A few things from the episode we might want to talk about:

• A failing shoe company announced it was pivoting to AI data centers and its stock went up 700 percent in a day. What does that tell you about what’s actually being invested in here?

• Steve sold network capacity to companies with zero customers during the dot-com bubble. Erald points out that every bubble in history pops the same way. Does this one look different to you?

• AI is cheap or free for most of us right now because Nvidia and the rest are eating the cost. Erald’s point lands hard: if the right people were in power, healthcare could be cheap. So who decided this is the thing that gets subsidized?

• SpaceX was saved by a NASA contract. Tesla was saved by a Department of Energy loan. Musk is a government leech, and both parties fed him. What does that do to the story about private innovation?

• A lot of the extraction is in sub-Saharan Africa, where the resources leave and the wealth doesn’t. But a lot of it is here too, in American copper mines and 80 gigawatts of new gas plants. Who in your life is paying for this and doesn’t know it yet?

• In a society where billions are being poured into data centers, how much is spent on housing, health care, child care, schools? Why are those the things our system can't provide?

This topic always generates lots of questions and insights. Hope you’ll join us!

TONIGHT
Tuesday Sept 1st at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

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** Tuesday night. Macro ‘n Chill. You are invited. Erald is invited. Bring your questions for him. September 1st at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. Use this link to register https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/NNn7Zfl2RPKQxpWSdLRAdw

Erald Kolasi returns to the podcast to remind us that AI doesn’t simply exist weightlessly in the ephemeral cloud. Drawing on his research into its global energy and emissions impact, Erald traces AI’s vast material infrastructure, from mining, semiconductors, water, energy, and logistics to data centers and power generation. His life-cycle analysis reveals a monster-sized ecological footprint, in contrast to conventional estimates that focus narrowly on electricity consumed at data centers.

But this goes deeper than technology. Steve and Erald examine AI through the dynamics of capital accumulation, monopoly power, financial speculation, imperialism, and the intimate relationship between corporations and the capitalist state. Its explosive growth reflects decisions about who controls society’s resources and what they are used for. The conversation closes by imagining a radically different trajectory: publicly controlled technology directed toward reducing necessary labor and meeting human needs rather than enriching private capital and accelerating ecological destruction. What kind of political economic system would this require?

AI is the subject, but capitalism is the story.

Erald Kolasi is a writer and researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016. You can find out more about Erald and his work at his website, eraldkolasi.com.

Subscribe to his Substack:

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Aug 25, 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Join us tonight for Macro ‘n Chill as we dig into Episode 393 - Money Manager Capitalism: Ponzi Finance in the Shadows, featuring Eric Tymoigne.

Hyman Minsky had a simple insight: the longer things go well, the more debt people take on, and the more fragile the whole system gets. Tymoigne takes that idea and points it at private credit and private equity, the corner of finance that does bank-type lending without being a bank or following bank rules.

This isn’t abstract. Look at what’s actually going on:

Loans that pay their own interest. Instead of a borrower sending a check every quarter, the interest gets tacked onto what they owe. The debt grows, nothing gets paid, and it looks fine on paper right up until it doesn’t.

Bundled corporate debt. Risky loans get packaged into securities and sold off, which is supposed to spread risk around but mostly just hides where it’s piled up.

Selling private markets to regular savers. Retirement money and small investors are being funneled into these funds. That new money helps keep asset prices up, which is very convenient for whoever got in early.

All of it depends on prices going up and credit staying easy. That’s the Ponzi part. And the rules we have were written for 1930s commercial banks, not for this.

The conversation goes back and forth between the technical stuff (who’s on the hook when everyone’s balance sheets are wired together) and the political stuff (what should markets decide, and what’s too important to leave to them). Tymoigne contrasts the New Deal, which wrote down debt and put money in people’s pockets, with 2008, which made the public eat the losses while bondholders got paid in full.

Some things to chew on before we start:

• If a loan’s interest just gets added to the balance instead of paid, how is that different from a normal loan, and why should anyone care?

• What’s the difference between a scheme that survives by selling assets versus one that survives on actual income coming in?

• Opening private markets to small savers sounds like democratizing access. Who really benefits, and who ends up holding the bag?

• If the rules failed because they were built for banks and this isn’t banking, what would rules that actually fit look like?

• Tymoigne says markets are fine for picking ice cream flavors but not for deciding where a society’s long-term investment goes. Where would you draw that line?

Bring your own insights and questions - we look forward to seeing you for another fantastic, engaging, educational & community-building Chill.

TONIGHT
Tuesday August 25th at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

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Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

**Join us on Tuesday to discuss this episode in our online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. August 25, 8pm ET / 5pm PT. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/NGxWl6qMTaKXPhR51uHkwA

If public power repeatedly stands behind private finance when it fails, shouldn’t that same power be directed toward employment, productive capacity, and human need? So why isn’t it?

Economist Eric Tymoigne returns to the podcast to examine the rapid growth of private credit and private equity through Hyman Minsky’s theory of money manager capitalism. Eric argues that the expansion of payment-in-kind interest, securitization, layered leverage, and dependence on rising asset prices are signs that Ponzi finance is becoming increasingly embedded in private markets, making the financial system more fragile. He warns that efforts to “democratize” these markets by opening them to ordinary savers will broaden the pool of investors available to absorb risks and losses (which should really be borne by the wealthy.)

The conversation then moves from financial instability to political economy. Through an MMT lens, Eric explains the enormous potential capacity of a currency-issuing government to contain financial crises, sustain incomes, and direct investment toward public purposes. Again we must ask why it doesn’t happen. This raises the deeper question of whose purposes the state serves. Steve and Eric discuss public investment, community banking, the federal job guarantee, the influence of wealth on political decision-making, and the limits of electoral democracy in a capitalist system.

Eric Tymoigne is an Associate Professor of Economics at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon; and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His areas of teaching and research include macroeconomics, money and banking, and monetary economics.

Find him on Twitter @tymoignee

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Aug 18, 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Join us tonight for Macro ‘n Chill. We’re discussing MNC Episode 392 ft. Daniel Tutt and C. Derick Varn, authors of The People Are Not One: Socialist Strategy After Left Populism. We’ve invited both guests to join the event & take our questions.

For about a decade, the left’s big bet was populism: build the widest coalition you can around “the people versus the elite,” and win that way. Tutt and Varn point out that it didn’t just fail. It actively defused the fight it was supposed to win. When your side is “the people,” you never have to name the boss, so the conflict between workers and owners quietly drops out of the picture.

They show how we got here: theorists who taught the left that vague slogans were a feature and not a bug, a turn toward winning Democratic primaries, and underneath all of it, the closing of the plants and the pushing of millions of workers out of steady jobs into gig work, side hustles, and worse.

Their answer isn’t finding better candidates. It’s rebuilding the everyday places where working people meet, argue, learn, and act together, so that being angry at the system turns into understanding how it works and what to do about it.

Things to think about ahead of time:

• What’s the difference between teaming up with liberals against a common enemy and workers’ organizations cooperating while each keeps its own independence? Why does that distinction matter for organizing right now?

• Who are the managers, professionals, and credentialed gatekeepers who run things on capital’s behalf without owning any of it, and how much say do they have over what the rest of us are allowed to think?

• What would it take to rebuild real workers’ organizations in towns where the plant already closed?

• How do you get from “I know I’m getting screwed” to “I know why, and here’s the plan”? What kind of institutions actually do that work?

• If left populism is finished, what replaces it?

Bring your own questions for Daniel and Derick. This should be a fun one!

TONIGHT
Tuesday August 18th at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

Daniel Tutt and returning guest C. Derick Varn join Steve to discuss their new book, The People Are Not One: Socialist Strategy After Left Populism, whose title states its thesis outright. When the left speaks of a unified people confronting a corrupt elite, it conceals the real stratifications inside the working class and borrows a Manichean framework that functions identically on the right. Their argument: since 2008, from Occupy through Syriza, Podemos, Corbyn, and Sanders, left populism has served to extinguish the class antagonism at the center of socialism, operating as a new Popular Front in which liberalism holds the upper hand.

The conversation lands directly on this show’s own history. Varn is blunt about his long-running argument with MMT advocates: he never disputed the nature of the currency, he disputed the analysis of power. They are not going to let you have a Job Guarantee, because it removes their ability to discipline workers. Steve agrees, describing his own path out of economism and the trap of thinking a basket of policies and a few more progressives in office adds up to a threat to capital.

On class consciousness, Varn is careful with a term he calls one of the most abused in socialist history. The reason to organize around the working class is not its victimhood. It is that the working class already possesses, collectively, the skills to reproduce society. The differences within the working class are resolvable. The difference between the working class and those who live off its labor is not.

They close on electoralism. Varn’s formulation: electoralism is a tactic, not a principle. Democracy is the principle. Tutt points to Lenin’s actual position, that ballots are justified only alongside extra-parliamentary means and on terms of strict class independence. The Popular Front let liberalism lead. The United Front did not.

If you’ve followed this show from Ep 218 – Beware! the Counter-Revolution with C. Derick Varn, through Ep 318 – The Death of the Left? with Simon Winlow & Steve Hall, Ep 371 – You Can’t Vote Away Colonialism with Fadhel Kaboub, and Ep 388 – From Theory to Praxis: Lenin’s Revolutionary Formula with Breht O’Shea, this episode is the strategic argument those conversations kept circling.

Daniel Tutt is the author of Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family and How to Read Like a Parasite. His writing has been featured in Jacobin, Current Affairs, Philosophy Now and Aeon Magazine. He is the host of the Emancipations podcast and study group collective. Find him on Twitter @TuttReal or his Substack:

Daniel's Journal

A journal of my writings on philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics and Marxism for our time.

By Daniel Tutt

C. Derick Varn is an author, poet, and educator, and host of the podcast Varn Vlog, where he publishes podcasts and series on the great thinkers, and interviews authors and academics. He is the author of Apocalyptics and Liberation and All That Bright Etc. He has been a union rep for the past six years. Find him on Twitter @TheRealVarnVlog or his podcast

https://varnvlog.buzzsprout.com/

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Aug 11, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Join us tonight for Macro ‘n Chill to discuss Steve’s recent conversation with Hamza Hamouchene on Palestinian liberation as anti-colonial struggle.

We’ll listen to and unpack Macro N Cheese Episode 391 together, exploring the historical roots of Zionism in European settler colonialism, how Israel functions as an imperial garrison protecting US interests, and why Palestinian resistance threatens the entire regional order of comprador states and normalization deals.

Hamza draws sharp parallels to Algeria’s war against French colonialism and argues for reviving Third Worldist solidarity.

Some questions to consider:

• How does understanding Palestine as a settler colonial project rather than a religious or ethnic conflict change our analysis of what liberation requires?

• What role do the Gulf monarchies and the Palestinian Authority play as comprador forces serving imperial interests against their own populations?

• Why does Palestinian steadfastness disrupt normalization deals like the Abraham Accords, and what does that tell us about the strategic importance of the struggle?

• What lessons can we draw from Algeria’s eight-year liberation war against France, and how do they apply to Palestine today?

• How is Palestinian liberation inseparable from broader Arab regional liberation and the global fight against imperialism and capitalism?

• What does it mean that “the oppressor dictates the nature of the struggle” and what are the implications for international solidarity?

As always, bring your own insights, thoughts and questions!

TONIGHT Tuesday August 11th at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

This week, Hamza Hamouchene returns to the podcast to talk about Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance and Solidarity, the new collection he co-edited with Abi Bae. Palestine, he argues, cannot be understood simply as a “conflict” or humanitarian crisis, but as a national liberation struggle against settler colonialism embedded in a larger system of Western imperialism and global capitalism.

Hamza traces Israel’s role within the imperial order, the class interests of Arab ruling elites, and the political economy of occupation and dispossession. Drawing connections to Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa, and other anti-colonial struggles, he emphasizes the revolutionary potential of international solidarity and the necessity of connecting struggles against colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.

Steve brings MMT into the discussion, arguing that an analysis of real resources is incomplete without confronting the imperial power and violence through which those resources are controlled. The conversation ultimately points beyond solidarity with Palestine toward a larger project of liberation. As Hamza wraps it up:

“We need to be in solidarity with movements that are fighting for their rights, fighting against land grabs, against extractivism, against neocolonial plunder. Be with the Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. Because what we want, Steve, is not just a liberated Palestine. We want a liberated Palestine in a liberated world.”

Too often, mainstream narratives on Palestine are narrowly focused on Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Solidarity is reduced to a matter of human rights and international law violations. Hamza stands firm in his refusal to treat Palestine as an exception to the global struggle against imperialism.

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Aug 4, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Curious about China but not sure where to start? Come join the conversation.

No prerequisites. No jargon policing. Just working people trying to understand how the world actually works and what alternatives exist beyond the capitalist framework we’re told is inevitable.

This week we’re discussing Ep 390 - China’s Green Development Is Both Anit-Imperialist & Socialist, ft. Ashwin Shantha. Not as propaganda. Not as cheerleading. As a case study in what happens when a state asserts sovereignty over capital instead of the other way around.

• How does China’s “dual-credit policy” scale EV production without waiting for market demand?

• What does it mean to “prioritize use value over exchange value?”

• Why does energy sovereignty matter for preventing unequal exchange?

• How do state-owned enterprises function differently than private corporations when building renewable infrastructure?

These aren’t abstract questions. They’re about understanding different development models, why the Global South pays attention to China’s trajectory, and what climate action looks like when it’s not trapped inside neoliberal logic.

Bring your questions. Bring your skepticism. Bring your curiosity about how economies can be organized around human need instead of profit extraction.

TONIGHT Tuesday August 4th at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

** Do you want to talk about this episode with us? Come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering. Tuesday, August 4, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/nLks4k8gQWKQzTAn0CEsoA

Ashwin Shantha joins Steve for a discussion challenging Western narratives on China – particularly the all-too-common opinions that dismiss its socialist character. This episode makes the case that China is a genuine socialist project where the state disciplines capital rather than being governed by it.

Ashwin illustrates how China’s green industrial revolution—driven by rapid progress in electric vehicles and renewable energy—marks a qualitative break from capitalist development paths. Unlike the Global North’s extractive model, China’s centrally planned approach prioritizes use-value objectives (clean air, energy self-reliance, and technological independence) over exchange-value maximization. The state constructs markets strategically, using mechanisms like the dual-credit policy to force both domestic and foreign automakers toward sustainable production targets.

While the episode isn’t focused on MMT, it highlights how China’s monetary sovereignty enables fiscal space for long-term industrial planning. The nation’s ability to issue its own currency and direct credit toward clean development highlights a crucial distinction from Global South countries trapped in IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs. This self-determined policy space, which is denied to nations like India and much of Africa, allows Beijing to absorb neoliberal shocks while maintaining state control over the economy.

China’s sustainable growth model is anti-imperialist in two key ways. First, energy independence reduces reliance on imported fossil fuels that expose the country to geopolitical leverage through choke points like the Malacca Strait. Second, technological autonomy focuses on developing indigenous productive forces that break the Western monopoly over clean technology.

By keeping private capital subordinate to state priorities, China shows that socialist modernization offers a workable alternative for the Global South, avoiding the de-development and resource plunder that characterizes Western industrialization.

China’s model may still have some contradictions, but it continues to show what is possible when state power is wielded in the interests of the working class.

Ashwin Shantha (they/them) is a doctoral student whose research focuses broadly on the political economy of sovereign development in the global South, focusing specifically on China and South Asia. Some of their existing work has researched South-South development cooperation between China and Pakistan through the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as, more recently, China’s state-led green industrial revolution in the electric vehicles and renewable energy sectors. Ashwin is also the host of the International Solidarity Podcast, which focuses on the politics of anti-imperialism and socialism in the global South.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@journalofintlsolidarity

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/journalofintlsolidarity

Substack:

Journal of International Solidarity

Exploring current affairs and history relating to imperialism, the global south, gender, political economy, and people-to-people ties

By A. Shantha

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Jul 28, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT

RP’s weekly online gathering where we listen to our latest podcast and discuss it. Chill is a relaxed environment for exchanging ideas & learning together.

#389 Voices of Political Economy & Struggle, ft Will Thomson

In this episode, Will Thomson, host of Scotland’s Political Economy, and Steve Grumbine, host of Macro N Cheese, talk about their favorite guests and the conversations that shaped their political and economic thinking. They debate the evolution of Modern Monetary Theory into a broader analysis of political economy, and discuss how class power, imperialism, colonialism, and historical materialism transformed their understanding of capitalism.

TONIGHT

Tuesday July 21 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

This week we’re releasing an episode from Scotland‘s Political Economy podcast. Host William Thomson invited Steve to join him to compare and reflect on their favorite interviews and the thinkers who most shaped their worldviews – from Clara Mattei and Fadhel Kaboub to Bill Mitchell, Jason Hickel, and Marxist-Leninist thinkers. They explore the limits of MMT without class analysis, the capture of academic and political institutions by oligarchic interests, and the importance of historical materialism, Gramsci, and Lenin in understanding how power truly operates.

The episode looks at the evolution of the two independent podcasters, their intellectual awakenings, and their shared conviction that the fight is not for better policy within capitalism, but for a fundamental transformation of the system itself. And for listeners to Macro N Cheese, it provides insight into Steve’ seven-year journey, taking the podcast from a strict MMT focus to a broader political economic analysis rooted in class struggle, revolutionary theory, and a critical view of electoral politics.

William Thomson is a political economist focused on the political economy of Scotland. His work considers how the economy actually operates, how decisions are made, and how power, institutions, and policy shape outcomes across Scotland.

Support his work at patreon.com/Scotlandspoliticaleconomy

@Williamgallus on X

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

by Steven D. Grumbine

Money, Class, and the Capitalist State

Few phrases have done more damage to public understanding of economics than the claim that the government must first “find the money” before it can spend. The image is deliberately primitive: politicians supposedly crank up a printing press, flood society with worthless paper, and irresponsibly squander money that belongs to taxpayers.

This story is not merely economically mistaken. It performs an ideological function.

It teaches workers to view the public treasury as something naturally scarce while treating the private accumulation of capital as limitless, legitimate, and beyond democratic interference. It tells society that healthcare, housing, education, infrastructure, ecological repair, and full employment are prohibitively expensive, even while the capitalist state mobilizes staggering financial resources for war, bank rescues, corporate subsidies, police power, and the protection of private property.

The question is therefore not simply whether the government can create money. It plainly can. The deeper question is who controls that capacity, which class benefits from its use, and what social relations the monetary system is organized to reproduce.

A currency-issuing government does not ordinarily collect dollars from taxpayers and then redistribute those same dollars through spending. When the federal government spends, it authorizes payments that result in bank accounts being credited. New state money enters the economy. When federal taxes are paid, money is removed from private accounts and extinguished as part of the settlement process. Spending adds dollars to the nongovernment sector; taxation subtracts them.

Money does not circulate through the federal government like coins passing through a household jar. Federal spending and taxation form parts of a monetary circuit. Calling public expenditure “printing money” while refusing to describe taxation as “unprinting money” is not serious analysis. It is a political morality tale disguised as accounting.

That distinction matters because the capitalist state is not financially constrained in the same way as a worker, household, business, municipality, or currency-using government. Those entities must obtain dollars before they can spend them. The issuer of the dollar operates differently. It cannot involuntarily run out of the unit of account that its own institutions create.

This does not mean the government possesses unlimited productive power. It means its limits are not primarily financial.

The real limits are labor, technology, raw materials, energy, infrastructure, ecological boundaries, productive knowledge, and the organizational capacity of society. A government can authorize any dollar payment denominated in its own currency. It cannot purchase resources that do not exist, command skills that have not been developed, or consume beyond ecological limits without consequences.

The phrase “How will we pay for it?” therefore conceals the questions that actually matter: Do we possess the workers, factories, hospitals, materials, energy systems, and technological capacity required to accomplish the task? Who currently controls those resources? What production would have to be expanded, redirected, or reduced? Which class would gain power, and which class would lose it?

Under capitalism, these are explosive questions because production is socially carried out but privately controlled.

Millions of workers collectively produce society’s wealth, yet the decisive means of production remain concentrated in the hands of a relatively small capitalist class. Investment is directed not according to human need but according to profitability. A hospital may be desperately needed and still remain unbuilt. Housing may be scarce while construction workers sit unemployed. Food may exist while people go hungry. Renewable energy systems may be technologically possible while fossil fuels continue poisoning the planet.

The barrier is not necessarily a shortage of money. The barrier is capitalist ownership and the power it gives one class to decide what will be produced, where investment will flow, and whose needs will be recognized.

Private banks also create money when they issue loans, but bank credit is structurally different from state spending. A bank loan creates both a deposit and a corresponding debt. The borrower receives purchasing power but also assumes an obligation that must be repaid with interest. Across the private sector, the financial asset is accompanied by a liability.

Government deficit spending can add net financial assets to the nongovernment sector without imposing an equivalent private repayment obligation. This is one reason public deficits cannot honestly be analyzed as though they were simply enormous household debts. The government’s deficit is, by accounting identity, the financial surplus of some other part of the economy.

Yet even this description remains politically incomplete until we ask who receives those assets.

A deficit created through public employment, universal healthcare, social housing, free education, pensions, and ecological reconstruction would have a different class character from a deficit created through military contracts, bank bailouts, tax reductions for the wealthy, privatization schemes, and corporate subsidies. Both may increase government spending, but they do not redistribute power in the same direction.

Money is not merely a neutral token exchanged among formally equal individuals. It is a social relation embedded within a definite system of property, production, and state authority.

The dollar functions partly because the United States imposes obligations, especially taxes, that must be settled in dollars. People need the state’s currency because the state demands payment in that currency. Taxation helps create demand for the monetary unit and establishes the state’s authority at the center of the monetary system.

But taxation is not only a mechanism for supporting demand for the currency. It is also an instrument of class policy. Taxes could, in theory, reduce inflationary pressure, discourage harmful behavior, regulate concentrations of wealth, and release real resources for public use. They can also be designed regressively, shifting burdens downward while protecting accumulated property.

The issue is not whether taxes mechanically “fund” federal spending. The issue is what taxes do to distribution, demand, resource use, and class power.

This is where liberal presentations of monetary sovereignty frequently stop too soon. They reveal that the state has greater fiscal capacity than conventional economics admits, but they often treat the state as though it were a neutral administrative machine waiting to be given better instructions.

Marxism-Leninism begins where that illusion ends.

The state is not suspended above society. Under capitalism, it is shaped by capitalist property relations and organized to preserve the conditions necessary for accumulation. Elections may change personnel, policies, and the intensity of exploitation, but the permanent institutions of the capitalist state remain deeply entangled with corporate ownership, finance, military power, bureaucracy, and the legal defense of private property.

The capitalist state can spend without first collecting taxes. It routinely demonstrates its monetary capacity when ruling-class interests are threatened. Banks can be rescued. Wars can be financed. Weapons can be produced. Financial markets can be stabilized. Corporations can be subsidized. The supposed fiscal constraints that paralyze social policy evaporate the moment capital requires assistance.

Scarcity is preached to the working class and suspended for the ruling class.

Austerity must therefore be understood not merely as an economic error but as a weapon of class rule. Chronic unemployment weakens labor, suppresses wage demands, disciplines workers, and makes people more dependent on employers. Cuts to social programs force households deeper into markets and debt. Privatization transfers public assets into private hands. Underfunded services are presented as proof that public institutions do not work.

This is not accidental incompetence. Austerity reorganizes society in favor of capital.

Unemployment is especially useful to the capitalist class because it maintains a reserve army of labor. Workers who fear joblessness are easier to discipline. They are less likely to organize, strike, demand higher wages, reject abusive conditions, or challenge managerial authority. What orthodox economists describe as a necessary level of unemployment is, from the standpoint of capital, a mechanism for maintaining domination at the point of production.

Inflation is not caused by government spending in the abstract. It emerges when nominal demand exceeds the economy’s ability to produce, when essential resources become scarce, when supply systems break down, or when firms with market power raise prices to defend profits. The proper response depends on the material cause.

If additional spending mobilizes unemployed workers and idle productive capacity, it can increase output rather than prices. If the economy has reached real limits, further spending may intensify competition for resources. At that point, the solution is not ritualistic deficit reduction. It is the deliberate reorganization of production and consumption.

The United States dollar is not domestically viable simply because oil is traded in dollars, nor does every federal expenditure depend mechanically upon military coercion or foreign demand for Treasury securities. The federal government’s capacity to spend dollars arises from its position as the issuer of the currency and from the institutional structure through which dollar payments and obligations are settled.

But a Marxist-Leninist analysis cannot ignore imperialism.

The dollar’s global reach is reinforced by the size of the American economy, the depth of its financial markets, international dollar-denominated debt, geopolitical alliances, unequal trade relations, sanctioning power, military domination, and the architecture of global finance. These factors are not required for the United States government to create dollars, but they profoundly affect what those dollars can command internationally and how the costs of the imperial system are distributed across nations.

Domestic monetary sovereignty and international monetary hierarchy are related, but they are not identical.

Understanding modern money therefore does not eliminate the need for class struggle. It makes the stakes clearer.

The United States possesses the monetary and productive capacity to provide universal healthcare, rebuild infrastructure, eliminate involuntary unemployment, cancel student debt, expand public education, transform its energy system, and guarantee material security. US society does not lack the dollars to do these things, but doing so would threaten profitable industries, strengthen labor, reduce dependence on employers, expand the public sphere, and weaken the authority of capital over everyday life.

A population with guaranteed employment, healthcare, education, housing, and retirement security is harder to discipline through fear.

That is why the mythology of fiscal scarcity is defended so fiercely.

The ruling class does not require every worker to understand banking operations. It only requires workers to believe that their suffering is financially unavoidable. Once people accept that there is “no money,” every social demand can be dismissed before the struggle begins.

There is always enough money to purchase what society is capable of producing. The real battle concerns what society will produce, who will control production, and for whose benefit its capacities will be mobilized.

We are not confronting an empty treasury. We are confronting a system of class power.

The printing press is a distraction. The ownership of the factory, the control of the state, and the organization of the working class are the real story.

This version moves beyond explaining monetary operations and makes the central contradiction explicit: fiscal capacity exists, but under capitalism its deployment remains conditioned by class rule.

Find more of Steve’s writing on our website.

Tuesday, Jul 21, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT

You are invited to Macro ‘n Chill, the weekly online gathering where we listen to and talk about an episode of our podcast. Tonight:

Episode #388, From Theory to Praxis: Lenin’s Revolutionary Formula, ft. Breht O’Shea

Tonight we’re listening to the second half of Steve’s podcast conversation with Breht O’Shea of Rev Left Radio and Red Menace on Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, a work that is probably more often quoted than carefully understood. For some on the left, this text has become a justification for participation in bourgeois electoral politics.

Breht will be joining us for the conversation, so bring your questions, your disagreements, and your curiosity. We learn best by thinking together.

TONIGHT

Tuesday July 21 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

TUESDAY 8pm ET/5pm PT

Special Alert!

On Tuesday evening we’ll be changing it up for our online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. We’re going to continue listening to and discussing the episode we started last week – #388, From Theory to Praxis: Lenin’s Revolutionary Formula, ft Breht O’Shea.

Breht will be with us in person (er, on Zoom). You don’t want to miss it.

If you weren’t at last week’s Chill, we suggest you listen to at least half of the episode before the webinar. That way, we’ll all be on the same page.

Tuesday July 21 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

Money is not a commodity. It is a legal relationship that reflects the organization of society itself.

This week we’re directing our listeners to an episode from the Macro N Cheese archives: a foundational conversation with Rohan Grey from the first year of the podcast.

As political players and media continue to debate and obfuscate questions of government spending, the Federal Reserve, inflation, and public investment, Rohan’s explanation of the legal nature of money remains as relevant as ever. If we don’t understand what money is and who has the power to create it, it’s impossible to see through the myths that constrain our political imagination. This interview remains one of the clearest introductions to the MMT perspective and an invaluable starting point for anyone interested in the relationship between money, law, and class power.

Rohan Grey is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, where he teaches contracts, business associations, financial institutions, and a seminar on law, money and technology.

Find his work and an expanded bio at rohangrey.net

@rohangrey on Twitter

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Jul 14, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT

You are invited to Macro ‘n Chill, the weekly online gathering where we listen to and talk about an episode of our podcast. Tonight:

Episode #388, From Theory to Praxis: Lenin’s Revolutionary Formula, ft. Breht O’Shea

We always find valuable wisdom in Lenin’s ability to cut through confusion with a dialectical approach grounded in concrete reality. The tricky part is applying those lessons today. After all, he was writing during a specific historical period, facing specific material conditions. We need to communicate with a 21st century populace, beaten down in different ways by a monster empire whose power and sophistication would have been almost unimaginable a century ago.

Macro ‘n Chill is our weekly online gathering where we wrestle with exactly these questions. The podcast is our jumping-off point for conversation. We listen together, compare ideas, ask questions, and sharpen our understanding. The interview guests bring deep expertise and often different political perspectives. Sometimes their analysis aligns with our own, and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, the goal isn’t agreement for its own sake. It’s developing a richer understanding through thoughtful discussion.

Tonight we’re listening to Steve’s podcast conversation with Breht O’Shea of Rev Left Radio and Red Menace on Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, a work that is probably more often quoted than carefully understood. For some on the left, this text has become a justification for participation in bourgeois electoral politics. Breht argues that Lenin was making a far more subtle and demanding point: revolutionaries must avoid both sectarian isolation and opportunist adaptation while staying rooted in the real struggles of working people. The conversation explores what disciplined organization, political education, and revolutionary strategy might actually look like today.

Whether you’re new to Marxism-Leninism or you’ve read Left-Wing Communism several times, this discussion offers plenty to think about. Bring your questions, your disagreements, and your curiosity. We learn best by thinking together.

TONIGHT

Tuesday July 14 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

**We’ll be listening to and discussing this episode on Tuesday, July 14 at 8pm ET/5pm PT, in our online gathering Macro ‘n Chill. We’ve invited Breht to join us, so bring your questions. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PXkazv5WTWW7b7kMExA8uw

“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” Steve’s guest, Breht O’Shea of Rev Left Radio and Red Menace podcast, believes that dedicating one’s life to fighting for this vision, even without knowing the outcome, is more meaningful than pursuing capital’s vision of wealth and status.

Steve invited Breht to help tackle one of the most misunderstood and weaponized texts in Marxist theory: Vladimir Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, a book sometimes misused as a cudgel to pressure leftists into voting for the Democratic Party.

To set the record straight, Breht places the 1920 pamphlet in its proper historical context. It was written after the successful Bolshevik Revolution to advise European socialist movements on how to avoid fatal mistakes.

Together, Breht and Steve break down Lenin’s dual critique: the ultra-left “infantile” error of purity-spiraled sectarianism, and the right-wing “opportunist” error of liquidating the revolutionary movement into bourgeois liberal politics. Lenin’s strategic genius lies in maintaining firm revolutionary principles while remaining tactically flexible.

The discussion extends beyond the text to cover the necessity of organization and discipline (democratic centralism), the constant threat of counter-revolution, the failure of social democracy, and how fascism functions as capitalism’s immune response to left-wing threats.

Breht O’Shea is the host of Rev Left Radio, the co-host of the Red Menace podcast, and author of the upcoming book “Letters to a Young Revolutionary” published by Iskra Books. Breht is also a longtime organizer in Omaha, Nebraska, a union electrician, and married father of three.

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.

Tuesday, Jul 7, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT

You are invited to Macro ‘n Chill, the weekly online gathering where we listen to and talk about an episode of our podcast. Tonight:

Episode #387, Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture, ft Allison Butler

We often refer to Antonio Gramsci in our discussions because he understood how cultural institutions manufacture “common sense” narratives that pollute our analysis. Steve’s interview with media scholar Allison Butler looks at the ways in which the bourgeois media serves to create social and political division along gender lines.

The interview presents specific cases of identity-based distractions wielded as weapons to divide and conquer. Coverage of women candidates, for example, criticize their clothing and style but ignore the criminality of their policies.

Allison contrasts this with media silence on cases of violence and murder of poor and working class women, rendering them virtually invisible.

Meanwhile the bourgeoisie continues to consolidate power.

What do you think of Allison’s analysis? Does it go far enough?

In Macro ‘n Chill we’ve created a relaxed environment for exchanging ideas and learning together. Bring your insights and questions!

TONIGHT

Tuesday July 7 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT

REGISTER HERE

Register separately each week. The link can be found on social media and at the top of our website.

Look for it after the weekend release of each new podcast episode. As a Substack subscriber, you’ll receive it in your inbox on Tuesday, in time for the event!

Macro ‘n Chill will be conducted on Zoom. After registering you will receive an email with the link to the meeting.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization and are funded solely by your contributions. One time donations are appreciated as are monthly contributions. We do not charge for any of our content or webinars, so we rely on those who feel like our work is worth the investment.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you each week!!! 

Media scholar Allison Butler talks to Steve about her book, Judgment of Gender, exposing how patriarchal power and capitalist media institutions weaponize pop culture and construct narratives that fixate on appearance, personality, and scandal while obscuring questions of class and power. The conversation reveals a core dialectical contradiction: women are centered in media only to be silenced. Their personhood is reduced to superficial tropes.

The critiques of political candidates Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and even Nikki Haley, focus on pantsuits, headbands, voice, and age instead of their actual policies, their service to capital, and their imperialist actions (hello? Clinton’s role in Libya? “We came, we saw, he died.”) The media’s obsession with superficiality silences substantive class-based critique.

Allison highlights the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. This is critical. It is not a fringe issue but a stark example of state-sanctioned violence and the super-exploitation of the most oppressed. That the legacy media’s silence on this horror renders these lives invisible is a feature, not a bug, of a system that treats Indigenous lives as disposable.

Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer, Associate Chair, and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy and representations of education in the media. She serves as Vice President on the board of the Media Freedom Foundation. She is the author of numerous articles and books on media literacy, and she is a co-author of multiple practical resources for media literacy education.

IG: @atbutler5

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-butler-190882108/

Project Censored IG, X, Facebook: @projectcensored

Click here to find the episode player & full transcript with extras links on our website.