Varn Vlog

C. Derick Varn

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis. 

  1. Wall Street Went To Homeroom And Stole The Whiteboard with David I Backer

    5 DAYS AGO

    Wall Street Went To Homeroom And Stole The Whiteboard with David I Backer

    What if the real story of American education isn’t test scores or culture wars, but air you can breathe, roofs that don’t leak, and the invisible money pipes that decide who gets both? We sit down with David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy and author of As Public as Possible, to follow the cash from property taxes to Wall Street and back again—and to sketch a better way forward. We start with how school finance became hyperlocal. Once, statewide property taxes aimed at broad access; over time, home rule and municipal boundaries pulled control downward. That shift tied school quality to real estate markets, creating districts that can tax less and spend more next to neighbors who tax more and get less. State aid helps unevenly, federal support is thin, and court victories often stall when legislatures refuse to act. Then there’s the four-trillion-dollar municipal bond market. Districts borrow for buildings, HVAC, security, and disaster repairs, paying fees and interest that quietly shape decisions about class sizes, salaries, and programs. Credit ratings become a cudgel, and information asymmetry leaves public officials outgunned by financial intermediaries. Facilities emerge as the missing protagonist. Decades of reform ignored basics like ventilation, temperature, and mold. Data shows over half of schools need significant repairs, and climate stress—from floods to heat to earthquakes—raises the stakes while schools double as community shelters. We explore how costs balloon through compliance, legal mandates, healthcare premiums, pension liabilities, and security measures, all while teachers shoulder unfunded social work. Against that backdrop, David outlines practical options: decarbonize and modernize buildings, revive low-cost public lending modeled on the Fed’s pandemic facility, reform Title I allocations, and create a national investment authority to finance public goods. We dig into tax-base sharing from the Twin Cities, regional joint authorities that share both revenue and debt risk, and even pension funds underwriting school bonds to keep value in public hands. This is a map for organizing as much as policy. Cross district lines, learn how the money actually moves, and translate moral urgency into precise demands that land where decisions are made. If schools mirror society, then changing the money can change what they reflect—safer, greener, and truly public. If this conversation sparked ideas, follow David at “School Daves,” share this episode, and leave us a review so more people can find it. Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    1hr 38min
  2. From Catechism To Class Consciousness: How Marxism Was Taught with Edward Barring

    23 MAR

    From Catechism To Class Consciousness: How Marxism Was Taught with Edward Barring

    What if the real engine of socialist history wasn’t just theory, but teaching? We sit down with historian Edward Baring to trace a vivid, often-misread story: Marxism as a mass educational project designed to turn scattered grievances into class consciousness. From best-selling primers that outsold Capital to study circles in factories and party schools, we unpack how organizers taught at scale—and why the word “vulgar” once critiqued bad teaching, not bad thinking. We map the fault line between Kautsky’s “teach the conclusions” approach and Lukács’s insistence on method and totality, and we ask the hard question: how do you teach complexity without losing people who work ten-hour days? Lenin’s What Is To Be Done and State and Revolution reveal the same tension, combining textual trench warfare with tactical clarity for a revolutionary moment. Hendrik de Man’s psychological critique raises a chilling possibility: if capitalism deforms worker experience, will the versions of Marxism that spread most easily become the most mechanical? Gramsci offers a different path. His organic intellectuals don’t deliver doctrine; they nurture a counter-hegemony by working inside communities’ common sense and everyday practice. Education becomes a two-way process that builds agency, not dependency. We follow this thread beyond Europe with Mariátegui, where translating Marxism for peasant contexts demanded creativity over orthodoxy—and exposed the classist edge to accusations of “vulgarity.” If you care about political education, labor organizing, or the history of socialist strategy, this conversation brings fresh clarity to how ideas travel, who carries them, and what actually changes minds. Subscribe, share with a comrade, and leave a review telling us: what’s the one teaching practice you think movements should revive today? Edward Baring is a Professor of History and Human Values at Princeton University. An expert in modern European intellectual history, he is the author of several award-winning books, including The Young Derrida and French Philosophy and Converts to the Real. Today, we focus on his book, Vulgar Marxism His latest research focuses on the intersection of revolutionary politics and pedagogy. Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    1hr 23min
  3. How Philosophy Lost Its Nerve And How Marx Put It Back To Work with Christoph Schuringa

    16 MAR

    How Philosophy Lost Its Nerve And How Marx Put It Back To Work with Christoph Schuringa

    A century ago, philosophy split its seams. Cambridge’s revolt against British Hegelianism promised “clarity,” Vienna’s scientific modernism tried to rebuild from scratch, and postwar America professionalized it all while quietly erasing the politics that once burned at the core. We invited Christoph Schuringa, editor of Hegel Bulletin and author of A Social History of Analytic Philosophy and Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy, to map the break—and to argue why Marx didn’t abandon philosophy so much as put it back to work. We start with Russell and Moore’s rebellion and the Bloomsbury circle that treated linguistic precision as a moral breakthrough. Then we step into Red Vienna, where the Unity of Science lived alongside adult education, social housing, and austro‑Marxist reform. Wittgenstein links both worlds: sanctified by the Vienna Circle, wary of their empiricism, mystical yet method-obsessed, and ultimately a catalyst for the linguistic turn that reshaped Anglo‑American departments. The Cold War’s shadow looms large here; McCarthyism and professional incentives sanded down the political edge of philosophy of science, leaving behind procedures without projects. From there, we pivot to Marx. Schuringa makes a provocative case: Capital is philosophical not because it states doctrines, but because it enacts dialectical thinking adequate to its object. Rather than a self‑contained logic applied to reality, Marx tracks how concrete oppositions ripen into contradictions—how specialization collides with labor mobility, how accumulation breeds crisis. Ethics reenters the frame too. Instead of rulebooks, we get the hard work of situated judgment and character, closer to Aristotle than to textbook deontology. Species‑being names our capacity for freedom and mutual recognition within social life; its glimpses are already here in imperfect forms, like care untethered from payment. If you’ve ever wondered why analytic philosophy persists, why Wittgenstein feels both central and strange, or how Marx can guide action without sanctifying dogma, this conversation connects the dots. Join us for a tour from Cambridge to Vienna to London and back to the workshop of history—and stay for a clear, practical case for philosophy that helps us think and act together. If this resonates, share it with a friend, leave a review, and tell us: what should philosophy dare to do next? Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    2h 24m
  4. Post-Liberalism’s Fade with Nicolas Villarreal

    9 MAR

    Post-Liberalism’s Fade with Nicolas Villarreal

    Politics keeps offering us drama in place of design. We sat down with Nicholas D. Vairo to chart how the post-liberal moment slid from grand promises into a Bonapartist reality: a leader-first spectacle with no plan to build or maintain the institutions that make a society work. The core insight isn’t just about ideology; it’s about capacity. Professional elites still run what functions, for better and worse, because no competing class has figured out how to reproduce competence at scale. We unpack why Yarvin-style CEO fantasies and Deneen’s mixed-constitution nostalgia mirror historical dead ends. The French parallels are illuminating: attempts to jury-rig monarchs and blended constitutions collapsed into Bonapartism, not renewal. That’s where we are now—big talk, weak statecraft, and a movement that confuses obedience with order. Meanwhile, liberalism struggles with the deeper wound: a crisis of socialization. Without strong civil society—churches, associations, unions, schools that do more than sort—people can’t generate shared meaning or stable norms. That vacuum breeds nihilism and brittle politics. We also go material. Neoliberal underinvestment hollowed America’s productive base, leaving the U.S. with high labor productivity but low capital intensity and a long productivity slump ahead. Tariffs and culture war won’t fix a capacity gap that took decades to create. China offers a counterexample—not as a model to copy, but as proof that disciplined investment and state competence matter more than performative revolt. On technology, we challenge fatalism: AI can de-skill or empower depending on the incentives and institutions wrapped around it. Design education for mastery and collaboration, and the tools raise the floor; design it for compliance and shortcuts, and skills atrophy. Where does that leave the left? With work to do. We argue for pro-factional, member-driven organizations that build beyond elections, tie back into unions and tenant power, and actually teach people to run things. Less content, more construction. If post-liberalism’s disillusion teaches anything, it’s that there’s no substitute for institutions that build meaning and capacity together. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who’s wrestling with these questions, and leave a review telling us which institution you think we must rebuild first. Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    1hr 31min
  5. Hellworld And The Broken Labor Map with Phil Neel

    2 MAR

    Hellworld And The Broken Labor Map with Phil Neel

    What if “reindustrialization” delivers fabs, data centers, and subsidies—but not the jobs? We sit down with Marxist geographer Phil Neel to unpack Hell World, a sweeping account of how deindustrialization, gigified services, and AI deskilling have rewired the global labor map. Drawing on years of on-the-ground research and a panoramic read of supply chains, Neel explains why factories employ far fewer people, why service work resists productivity gains, and how rents—especially real estate—shape cities and politics more than we admit. We follow the trail from Foxconn’s peaks to muted booms in Vietnam and India, from “Chinese investment” myths in East Africa to the very real power of trade networks, wholesale warehouses, and e-commerce hubs. Along the way, Neel dismantles comforting periodizations—neoliberalism, monopoly capital, neo-feudalism—that blur structural continuities in accumulation. The state is growing, but not as a cure: military contracts, healthcare complexes, and subsidized tech now anchor a reindustrialization that largely bypasses wage earners. So where does strategy live? Neel argues for a Promethean, developmental communism that treats production and complexity as political terrain. That means credible plans for electrification, clean water, durable housing, and transit—paired with the organizational muscle to win space: assemblies, strike capacity, and the willingness to cross today’s legal tripwires that have long neutralized labor. Electoral wins can blunt repression at the margins, but they won’t substitute for power built in services, logistics, and the everyday circuits where value and control actually move. If your city’s future looks like a shiny battery plant and an even larger rent bill, this conversation offers a sharper map. We trace commodities back to ports and smelters, expose the limits of jobless growth, and sketch a politics that aims higher than nostalgic compacts and faster than the next subsidy cycle. Listen, share with a friend, and tell us: where would you place power to make material gains possible today? Subscribe for more deep dives and leave a review to help others find the show. About Phil Neel Phil A. Neel is an author and researcher known for his "communist geography." Raised in the rural Siskiyou Mountains, his work is grounded in the material realities of the American hinterland and the global logistics industry. He is the author of Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict and Hellworld: The Human Species and the Planetary Factory. Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    2h 22m
  6. From Mills To World-Systems: Tracing Wallerstein’s Path with Sam Chian

    23 FEB

    From Mills To World-Systems: Tracing Wallerstein’s Path with Sam Chian

    What if the most consequential “Marxist” of a generation refused to call himself one—and was more consistent for it? We dive into Immanuel Wallerstein’s intellectual journey, from C. Wright Mills’s classrooms to African political movements and a close reading of Fanon, to the long durée horizons inspired by Fernand Braudel. Along the way, we unpack how world‑systems analysis took shape against modernization theory, challenged neat stages of growth, and rejected methodological nationalism without abandoning struggles for national liberation. We trace Wallerstein’s friendships and frictions with the thinkers often grouped as the world‑systems “gang of four”—Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, and Andre Gunder Frank—and the Maoist currents that pulled many left intellectuals in the 1960s and 70s. Then we explore where they parted: Frank’s ancient world system, Arrighi’s China‑as‑hegemon thesis, and Wallerstein’s claim that capitalism entered structural crisis in the 1970s, foreclosing any stable successor hegemon. We also revisit Monthly Review’s influence (underdevelopment, unequal exchange) and what Wallerstein rejected (monopoly capital as a “stage,” stagist history, and nation‑bound strategies). If you’ve heard core, periphery, and semi‑periphery tossed around like a simple map, this conversation resets the frame: these are world‑systemic relations that cut within and across states. We highlight why Wallerstein’s absolute immiseration thesis matters now, how his optimism lived in the transition—50 percent chance for a better system, 50 percent for worse—and why internationalism is the missing key when national victories stall out. From techno‑feudalism chatter to BRICS and the Belt and Road, we ask whether we’re seeing a new phase or an old system failing, and what agency looks like on the far side of decay. Listen for a clear, historically grounded tour through Wallerstein’s ideas, the debates they shaped, and the stakes they raise for today’s left. If the road ahead isn’t automatic progress, it’s strategy and solidarity. Subscribe, share with a friend, and tell us: is socialism or barbarism more likely where you live? About Sam Chian Sam Chian is an educator based in Oslo, Norway, where he teaches Economics and Social Studies at the upper secondary level. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). As a researcher, he has contributed to the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), specifically investigating the career and intellectual development of Immanuel Wallerstein. Relevant Links & Resources: doi.org/10.62191/ROAPE-2025-0001  doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2025.1304  doi.org/10.1007/s12108-025-09671-5 Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    1hr 43min
  7. Popular Or United Fronts Explained with Brandon Lightly

    16 FEB

    Popular Or United Fronts Explained with Brandon Lightly

    Coalitions promise power, but what if they mostly deliver blame? We dig into the sharp difference between a United Front and a Popular Front, trace their roots from the Second International through the Comintern, and confront the hard history behind antifascist coalitions in France, Italy, and Spain. Along the way, we separate romance from results: Allied armies defeated fascism; Popular Front cabinets rarely did. That sobering fact reframes what “winning” looked like—and why so many movements grew fast, entered government, and then unraveled. From there, we bring the analysis home. The United States isn’t Europe: our parties are private duopoly machines, election law is fractured across states, and governing power is fenced in by bond markets, courts, and bureaucratic veto points. That’s why the CPUSA’s most significant advances—interracial union drives, Southern organizing, voting rights fights—came through oppositional power, not shared ministries. We examine how the postwar purge erased that base, why ministry-without-hegemony plagued South Africa’s tripartite deal, and how today’s left populism keeps rediscovering the same brick wall in city halls and Congress. We also tackle China’s “United Front,” New Democracy, and why that path depended on peasant majorities and civil war conditions absent in developed economies. The throughline is clear: coalitions without control invite contradictions. United Front tactics—independence, coordinated action, refusal to co-govern without command—were built to avoid that trap. Popular Fronts trade clarity for breadth; breadth without hegemony turns victories into boomerangs. If you care about socialist strategy, labor power, and actually shifting policy, this conversation offers a sharper, historically grounded map for what to build, when to join, and when to say no. If this challenged your priors or clarified some foggy distinctions, share it with a comrade, hit follow, and leave a review telling us where you stand on coalition strategy. About Brandon Lightly Brandon Lightly is a policy researcher with a background in International Affairs and History. His work focuses on investigating the intersection of ideology and contemporary global crises, providing deep-dive analysis into the historical roots of today’s political challenges. Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    2h 16m
  8. Crisis As Decision In German Thought with Timothy Schatz

    9 FEB

    Crisis As Decision In German Thought with Timothy Schatz

    Crisis didn’t always mean endless catastrophe. In German thought, it once meant a turning point—a judgment that forces choice. We dig into why that word saturated late 19th‑century philosophy and how it connected national unification, scientific ambition, and the search for values that could survive modernity’s shocks. We start with the idealists: Kant’s “critical” epoch set the mood for Hegel’s self‑clarifying history and the historicists’ hunt for inner laws of culture. From there, we follow the political tremors—Napoleon to Bismarck, unification to Weimar—to see how crisis moved from battlefield to spirit. Nietzsche then flips the frame. With God declared dead, he treats crisis as the baseline. The “last man” laughs, while creativity becomes obligation. Whether you read eternal return as metaphysics or a test, the question remains: can you affirm life without borrowed certainties? Enter Husserl with a different alarm. The sciences aren’t failing; they’re succeeding so thoroughly that they forget their ground. His method—the epoché and phenomenological description—recenters evidence in the lifeworld, the shared, embodied world where things show up with sense before theory. That doesn’t undercut physics or math; it anchors them. We talk through demarcation debates, the limits of positivism, and how probability and incompleteness humbled simple falsification stories. Along the way we revisit Marx’s crises as forks, not fate, and unpack how “krisis” in Greek names decision at its root. If crisis is judgment, not doom, then it asks something of us: to test idols with Nietzsche’s courage and to pause with Husserl’s discipline before deciding what to affirm. We close with practical stakes—why method matters for public reason, how translation shapes concepts, and where philosophy still helps when hot takes run out. Enjoy the conversation? Follow the show, share it with a friend who loves big ideas, and leave a review so more curious people can find us. Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake Support the show Crew: Host: C. Derick Varn Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake. Intro Video Design: Jason Myles Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn Links and Social Media: twitter: @varnvlog blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social You can find the additional streams on Youtube Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

    1hr 23min
See All (387)

4.8
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis. 

Information

  • Creator
    C. Derick Varn
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    387
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Varn Vlog
  • Show Website
    Varn Vlog

You Might Also Like