Beyond Marx with Marx

S A Hamed Hosseini

This podcast channel aims to contribute to critical reflections and conversations on Marx, with the purpose of expanding the Marxian paradigm and overcoming its limitations in the 21st century—the podcast channel is organized by "S A Hamed Hosseini" (PhD). #S_A_Hamed_Hosseini

  1. 1d ago

    The Jolly Roger Against Capital: Golden Age Piracy as Prefigurative Commoning

    The Jolly Roger Against Capital: Golden Age Piracy as Prefigurative Commoning Episode Description: Were Atlantic pirates merely lawless plunderers, or did their ships host radical experiments in post-capitalist democracy? In this episode, we unpack the compelling journal article, "The Jolly Roger Against Capital: Golden Age Piracy as a Prefigurative Commoning Movement" (published in Critical Sociology), authored by political scientist Aykut Örküp. Focusing on the Golden Age of Piracy (1716–1726), Örküp re-examines pirate ships not through romanticized myth or criminal condemnation, but as floating commons that directly disrupted the violence of early capitalist primitive accumulation and maritime labor exploitation. Through the lenses of prefigurative politics and commons theory, we explore how pirate crews enacted alternative, egalitarian ways of living in the "here and now." In this episode, we discuss: Reclaiming the Floating Commons: How pirate crews transformed ships from sites of brutal naval discipline and wage labor into collectively owned spaces operated for mutual subsistence rather than capital accumulation.The Abolition of Wage Labor: Replacing wages with democratic share systems and replacing alienated, abstract labor with shared "doing" and communal mutual aid.Radical Pirate Democracy: The function of written pirate articles, elected captains who could be deposed by majority vote, and the pirate council as an autonomous, horizontal governing body.New Subjectivities and Ethics: How pirating formed an inclusive, transnational commoner identity—often incorporating dispossessed sailors, escaped slaves, and indigenous people—that rejected the authority of sovereign states.Contradictions and Enduring Legacy: Confronting the historical complexities and limitations of piracy while drawing out its powerful lessons for contemporary struggles against enclosures and for post-capitalist futures.Hashtagged Keywords: #GoldenAgePiracy #AykutÖrküp #PrefigurativePolitics #TheCommons #Commoning #PrimitiveAccumulation #CriticalSociology #PostCapitalism #HistoryFromBelow #PoliticalEconomy #RadicalDemocracy #TheJollyRoger

  2. 1d ago

    The Transformative Capacities and Limitations of the Commons (S A Hamed Hosseini)

    Beyond Compensatory Localism: Commoning, Commonism, and the Conditions of Pluriversal Transformation Episode Description In this episode, we unpack "The Transformative Capacities and Limitations of the Commons: Commoning and Commonism as Alternatives to Capitalism, Coloniality, Developmentalism and Eurocentric Modernism" by S A Hamed Hosseini. Moving beyond celebratory accounts that treat any act of sharing as revolutionary, as well as dismissive claims that reduce the commons to a temporary survival strategy, we explore under what exact conditions commoning transforms society rather than merely softening the edges of existing power structures. Drawing on the commonist tendency framework, Hosseini examines how commoning can scale into a durable, civilization-level alternative across four distinct systemic fronts: The Four Antagonists: Assessing commoning's capacities and limitations against capitalism (expropriation and enclosure), coloniality (epistemic and jurisdictional hierarchy), developmentalism (growth teleology), and Eurocentric modernism (the single-path historical myth).Pathology & Disposition: Unpacking decommonization—the systemic conversion of life-sustaining capacities into inputs for dominant valuation—and contrasting compartmentalization (the structural fragmentation of ecology, economy, politics, and community) with compartmentality (the internalized separation of these domains by movement actors themselves).The Five Conditions of Transformative Commoning:Finally, we discuss how empirical measurements of movement compartmentality demonstrate that the primary obstacle to systemic alternative building is not excess diversity, but internalized separation—offering a roadmap for articulating dispersed commons into a unified, pluriversal commonist project. Source: "The Transformative Capacities and Limitations of the Commons: Commoning and Commonism as Alternatives to Capitalism, Coloniality, Developmentalism and Eurocentric Modernism"Author: S A Hamed Hosseini#Commons #Commoning #Commonism #HamedHosseini #Decommonization #Pluriverse #PostDevelopment #Compartmentalization #SocialTheory #ExplanatoryCritique #Decoloniality #SystemicTransformation

  3. Oct 14

    Ecosocialism: Climate Change, Socialism and Democracy" by political scientist, mayor, and Belgian Socialist Party leader Paul Magnette

    Ecology Is the New Class Struggle: Decoding Paul Magnette’s "Ecosocialism" Episode Description: Can market mechanisms, carbon offsets, and technological fixes genuinely solve the ecological crisis, or does real climate action require dismantling the inequalities of global capitalism? In this episode, we explore the compelling book "Ecosocialism: Climate Change, Socialism and Democracy" by political scientist, mayor, and Belgian Socialist Party leader Paul Magnette (translated by Ashleigh Rose and published by Routledge). Magnette delivers an urgent, accessible political roadmap for a just green transition, demonstrating why mainstream appeals to individual consumer guilt and "green growth" decoupling fail to confront the biophysical realities of our planet. Instead, he reframes the climate crisis as an authentic social struggle, arguing that extreme wealth concentration and corporate power actively drive ecological destruction while leaving working-class communities to bear the heaviest burdens. In this episode, we unpack: Obstruction, Diversion, and Greenwashing: How fossil fuel and agro-industrial conglomerates delay decarbonisation, promote technocratic silver bullets, and commodify nature into speculative offset markets.The Climate Oligarchy: Why climate change is inextricably tied to class inequality, where the richest 1% generate more emissions than the poorest half of humanity.The Power of the Collective: Moving beyond moralising calls for personal austerity toward structural solutions, including universal public services, progressive wealth taxes, maximum wage caps, and shorter working weeks.Democratic Ecological Planning: Reclaiming planning from technocrats through citizen deliberation, workers' control, and public investment in vital commons like energy, water, and agroecology.Lessons from the Workers' Movement: How climate activists can harness concrete grievances, foster solidarity across diverse struggles, and turn anger into a shared, hopeful vision of post-capitalist flourishing.Whether you are an activist, student, or concerned citizen, this episode unpacks what it takes to align environmental limits with democratic socialism for a liveable future for all. Hashtagged Keywords: #Ecosocialism #PaulMagnette #ClimateDemocracy #ClimateJustice #JustTransition #PoliticalEconomy #EnvironmentalInequality #GreenCapitalism #DemocraticPlanning #SystemChange #SocialDemocracy

  4. Oct 5

    Chapter 2. Beneath the App: A Worked CVT-CR Case Study of Gig Worker Burnout and Exit

    Beneath the App: Algorithmic Despotism, Gig Worker Burnout, and Platform Value Regimes Description: In this episode of Beyond Marx with Marx, we take a deep dive into the underlying systemic structures of platform labor and the gig economy. Moving past surface-level symptoms like peak-window fatigue and silent departure, we unpack "Chapter 2. Beneath the App: A Worked CVT-CR Case Study of Gig Worker Burnout and Exit" by Dr S. A. Hamed Hosseini (building on the Critical Realist Commonist Value Theory agenda established in Chapter 1 alongside B. K. Gills). Through a contrastive study of app-based food delivery couriers across divergent regulatory environments—such as Houston's unregulated market versus New York City's minimum pay standard—this episode investigates how dynamic piece-rates, automated ratings, and deactivation threats assemble into a system of algorithmic despotism. Dr Hosseini demonstrates how the platform value regime draws down essential human capacities—liveability, creativity, conviviality, and alterity—and why couriers resort to "ghosting" (deleting the app) when channels for voice are systematically foreclosed. Join us to explore how code, contract law, and market forces intersect, and examine tiered policy levers ranging from pay floors to worker-owned platform cooperatives. (Note: This episode covers an early work-in-progress draft released to inform ongoing scholarly conversation and gather feedback.) Hashtags: #GigEconomy #PlatformLabor #AlgorithmicDespotism #CriticalRealism #CVTCR #Hosseini #LaborStudies #ResearchMethodology #PlatformCooperativism #BeyondMarxWithMarx

  5. Oct 5

    Chapter 1: Unlocking the Social World through CVT-CR

    Unlocking the Social World: Beyond Positivism and Interpretivism with CVT-CR Description: In this episode, we unpack a revolutionary approach to social research that bridges the long-standing divide between numbers-driven positivism and meaning-focused interpretivism. Exploring the framework of Critical Realism enhanced by Commonist Value Theory (CVT-CR), we examine how social phenomena can be investigated at their deepest, structural levels. Drawing directly from "Chapter 1: Unlocking the Social World through CVT-CR" by Dr S. A. Hamed Hosseini (developed alongside the broader work of Hosseini, and drawing upon foundational realists Roy Bhaskar and Margaret Archer), this episode breaks down the core concepts of stratified ontology—the Real, the Actual, and the Empirical. We discuss how generative mechanisms, morphogenetic cycles, and dominant value regimes interact to produce everyday social realities and systemic crises. Whether you are a thesis student navigating research design or a scholar seeking genuine explanatory power, join us to discover why the fundamental question of social inquiry isn't merely what is happening, but what makes it possible. Hashtags: #CriticalRealism #CommonistValueTheory #CVTCR #SocialResearch #ResearchMethodology #StratifiedOntology #GenerativeMechanisms #Hosseini #SocialTheory

  6. Sep 24

    Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century

    The Political Principle of the Common: Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval on 21st-Century Revolution Description: In this episode, we explore one of the most significant works of contemporary political philosophy: Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century, co-authored by French philosopher Pierre Dardot and sociologist Christian Laval (translated by Matthew MacLellan). Faced with the compounding crises of neoliberal globalization, environmental destruction, and the erosion of democratic institutions, Dardot and Laval argue that we can no longer rely on 19th-century recipes or 20th-century state models. Instead, they propose a radical, rigorous foundation for emancipation centered on a single, transformative concept: the common as a political principle. We trace the authors' sweeping intellectual archaeology, dismantling long-held assumptions across political economy, law, and social theory: The Common vs. The Commons: Why "the common" (singular) is not merely a resource, a commodity, or a shared piece of property (the "commons"), but a fundamental political principle. Drawing from the Latin root munus (signifying shared duty and participation), Dardot and Laval define the common as a rule of co-obligation emerging directly from co-activity—the moral and legal norm created whenever people engage collectively in a shared task.Critique of Past Paradigms: How the book systematically critiques three historical pitfalls: the bureaucratic capture of the common under state communism; the reification of "common goods" in neo-classical economics and Elinor Ostrom’s institutionalism; and the spontaneism of post-Autonomist theories (such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of cognitive capitalism), which assume that capital automatically generates its own communist transcendence.Law Against Law and Unappropriability: The authors' revolutionary legal thesis that the common is not a new form of property, but the radical negation of property itself. By replacing absolute property rights with use rights, society can establish that certain realms—nature, knowledge, healthcare, and social life—are fundamentally unappropriable.Instituent Praxis and the 21st-Century Revolution: A look at how political transformation occurs through "instituent praxis"—the active, conscious creation of self-governing institutions from below. We examine the authors' nine political propositions, ranging from democratizing workplaces and transforming public services into civic commons, to building a global federation of autonomous municipalities.Join us as we unpack this landmark text and discover how reclaiming the common provides a concrete, non-statist roadmap for building a post-capitalist future. #TheCommon #PierreDardot #ChristianLaval #OnRevolution #PoliticalPhilosophy #PostCapitalism #InstituentPraxis #TheCommons #Unappropriability #SocialDemocracy #Federalism #DirectDemocracy #Commoning #EconomicDemocracy

  7. Sep 18

    Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy by peer-to-peer theorists Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens

    Beyond Cognitive Capitalism: Four Future Scenarios for the Collaborative Economy Description: Are peer-to-peer networks and digital platforms laying the groundwork for a post-capitalist world, or are they simply birthing a new, techno-feudal era of hyper-exploitation? In this episode, we explore the groundbreaking book Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy by peer-to-peer theorists Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens. Grounded in Carlota Perez’s theory of techno-economic paradigm shifts, the authors argue that the current information and communication technology (ICT) paradigm has reached a historical turning point in the wake of major financial bubbles. As industrial proprietary capitalism declines, two new value models are competing for dominance: cognitive capitalism and mature peer production. We map out Kostakis and Bauwens’ seminal four-quadrant matrix of future economic scenarios: Netarchical Capitalism: Proprietary platforms like Facebook, Google, and Airbnb that enable peer-to-peer social interaction on the front-end, but centralize data ownership, platform design, and monetization on the back-end—extracting exchange value from unpaid user cooperation.Distributed Capitalism: Market-driven, libertarian P2P infrastructures like Bitcoin and Kickstarter that distribute technological control, operating on the premise that "everyone can become an independent capitalist," while frequently recreating new financial oligarchies and scarcity.Resilient Communities: Localized, commons-oriented "lifeboat strategies" like Transition Towns, permaculture, and the degrowth movement that focus on community self-sufficiency and ecological resilience in the face of resource constraints.Global Commons: Transnational commons-based peer production (CBPP) exemplars like Wikipedia, Linux, Open Source Ecology, and Wikispeed that combine globally shared knowledge, open designs, and local micro-factory production to create sustainable abundance.Finally, we discuss the authors' transformative transition proposals for a post-capitalist society, including the Partner State Approach (where the state de-bureaucratizes and empowers civic value creation), Open Cooperativism, and reciprocity-based frameworks like the Peer Production License (PPL) designed to retain surplus value within the commons. #NetworkSociety #CollaborativeEconomy #VasilisKostakis #MichelBauwens #P2PFoundation #CommonsBasedPeerProduction #NetarchicalCapitalism #CognitiveCapitalism #GlobalCommons #PartnerState #OpenCooperativism #PostCapitalism #PeerProductionLicense #TechnoEconomicParadigms

  8. Sep 5

    The Root Causes of the Climate Crisis in Marxian Theory: A Critical Review from Classical Marxism to Degrowth Communism - with S A Hamed Hosseini

    Is the climate crisis merely a "market failure" that can be patched over with carbon taxes and green technology, or is it deeply baked into the very DNA of capitalist accumulation? In this episode, we explore the structural roots of our planetary emergency by walking through the comprehensive, integrative review paper, "The Root Causes of the Climate Crisis in Marxian Theory: A Critical Review from Classical Marxism to Degrowth Communism" by political economist and sociologist S. A. Hamed Hosseini. Hosseini takes us on a sweeping intellectual journey across two centuries of radical ecological thought, mapping how thinkers have diagnosed capital's relationship with the biosphere through five distinct historical phases: The Classical Foundations: We return to Karl Marx’s agrarian-inspired metabolic analysis of the "irreparable rift" in nutrient cycles, Friedrich Engels' warnings about nature's revenge, and the early spatial geographies of imperial extraction mapped by Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin.Mid-Century Critiques: We look at how the Frankfurt School expanded the critique to the civilizational "domination of nature", Murray Bookchin’s diagnosis of the capitalistic "grow-or-die" imperative, and the foundational insights of socialist ecofeminism regarding the exploitation of unpaid reproductive and subsistence labor.The Birth of Eco-Marxism: We unpack James O'Connor’s highly influential "second contradiction of capitalism"—the idea that capital structurally erodes its own biophysical conditions of production—and Paul Burkett’s crucial value-form rejoinder, which shows how capital's monetization of nature's "free gifts" is the core driver of ecological irrationality.The Metabolic Rift Renaissance: We trace John Bellamy Foster’s reconstruction of Marx's social-ecological materialism alongside empirical models of "ecologically unequal exchange," showing how wealthy nations systematically appropriate resources, land, and labor from the Global South.The Capitalocene and Degrowth Controversies: We dive into the live battleground of contemporary theory, contrasting Andreas Malm's "fossil capital" thesis with Jason W. Moore’s "world-ecology" framework, and examining Kōhei Saitō’s radical call for "degrowth communism" against the Promethean counter-currents on the left. Most importantly, we highlight the four propositions of durable consensus that Hosseini identifies across the entire Marxist tradition: first, that the climate crisis is internal to capitalist accumulation, not an external policy slip-up; second, that capitalist growth cannot deliver a climate-safe "absolute decoupling" of GDP from physical materials; third, that carbon responsibility is radically unequal along imperial lines; and fourth, that market-based instruments like carbon pricing only commodify the atmosphere without solving the problem. This episode is an essential guide to the single most important strategic cleavage of our time: the debate between ecological contraction and re-socialized growth, and the urgent task of constructing a post-capitalist metabolism before it is too late. #ClimateCrisis #EcoMarxism #HamedHosseini #Capitalocene #MetabolicRift #DegrowthCommunism #FossilCapital #EnvironmentalSociology #PoliticalEconomy #LimitsToGrowth #UnequalExchange #SocialReproduction #ClimateJustice

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About

This podcast channel aims to contribute to critical reflections and conversations on Marx, with the purpose of expanding the Marxian paradigm and overcoming its limitations in the 21st century—the podcast channel is organized by "S A Hamed Hosseini" (PhD). #S_A_Hamed_Hosseini

Information

  • Creator
    S A Hamed Hosseini
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    47
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © S A Hamed Hosseini
  • Show Website
    Beyond Marx with Marx