Notions of Progress

Marshall Madow
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The idea of progress — that humanity advances through time toward something better — has been a contested assumption throughout history. The question of whether we as a species, a nation, or as individuals are progressing is being interrogated with a renewed urgency that the present moment demands. Whether that advancement is real, illusory, unevenly distributed, or simply beside the point depends on who is asking, from where, and by what measure. Notions of Progress is a podcast that takes those questions seriously, tracing how the idea of progress has been understood, contested, and reimagined from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. The series moves from the ancient Greeks’ ambivalence about technological change, through the Enlightenment’s confidence in cumulative human reason, to the contemporary moment in which artificial intelligence has made the question of progress newly urgent. When machines appear to learn, create, and reason, the assumptions buried inside the word “progress” — about agency, direction, and human advancement — are no longer abstract. Tracing how those assumptions formed, and how they have been challenged across centuries, is the work of this podcast. Rather than prescribing a position, it surfaces the debates — examining how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, from Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, for whom, and by whose definition. The thread connecting Plato’s Academy to the age of artificial intelligence is not a straight line of accumulation — it is a recurring argument about whether progress is something driven by human agency, providence, or an artificial consciousness we project onto history rather than find in it. Host Marshall Madow brings an unusual dual formation to these questions. His MA in History from Cambridge University — where his thesis examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action — gave him a grounding in how belief systems about progress can function in place of rational thinking as historical forces. His MSc from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership, introduced him to the question from the other direction: how systems evolve, how change propagates through institutions, and why linear models of advancement are often insufficient in explaining complex phenomena. The two areas of study point toward the same problem from opposite ends. Notions of Progress is the inquiry that connects them. Marshall approaches the podcast as a scholar, researcher, and curator — seeking to surface a pluralistic and wide-ranging spectrum of ideas rather than prescribing or advocating one position over another. Contact: marshall@notionsofprogress.com Social: @notionsofprogress on Instagram · @NotionsProgress on X/Twitter Web: notionsofprogress.com

  1. 17h ago

    Is Capitalism Past Its Use-By Date? Michael Roberts on Three Futures About This Episode

    In this third and final part of the conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts brings the argument of his 2016 book The Long Depression into the present. He begins with the view that the system works as long as decisions are good, which he finds unconvincing: a system that produces for profit, he argues, delivers both vitality and grotesque inequality, and cannot continue as it is. He describes a generation now worse off than its parents and presents the postwar golden age as the exception, a period when profitability was high enough for capitalism to make concessions. Turning to the current cycle, Roberts considers whether the long depression that followed 2008 may be ending, whether AI could lift profitability for a time, and why he expects the law of profitability to reassert itself, possibly in the 2030s or later. He answers economist Robert J. Gordon on stagnation and Thomas Piketty on taxing billionaires, and closes on three futures: a renewed expansion, a longer stagnation, or, if working people do not change the system, fascist and military regimes and what he calls barbarism, drawing on the fall of Rome. About Our Guest Michael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for more than thirty years before retiring. He is the author of The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009) and The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; joint editor of The World in Crisis (2018); author of Marx 200: His Economics (2018) and Engels 200: His Economics (2020); and, with Guglielmo Carchedi, Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His next book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s, is expected in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com. Show Notes & Timestamps 00:00 Capitalism Fails People 01:17 Welcome and Recap 01:37 Financialization and Crisis Myths 03:02 How Capitalism Works 04:06 A Generation Worse Off 06:12 Golden Age Was Exception 08:19 Inflation and Profitability Shift 10:19 Another Expansion or New Slump 12:49 Who Benefits From Profits 13:49 Working Class Alternative 16:04 Reaction and Fascism Risk 17:01 Three Future Scenarios 21:06 Rome and Barbarism Warning 23:34 Closing Thanks and Wrap Key Concepts & Terms Law of Profitability — Roberts’s name for the pattern, set out in the earlier parts, by which the rate of profit falls over time. In Part Three he applies it to the present: the pandemic slump and technologies such as AI may create the conditions for a new level of profitability in some sectors, particularly in the United States, but on his account profitability would start to fall again if too much is invested in machines and AI relative to labor, which could bring a serious slump in the 2030s or a little later. The Golden Age — Roberts’s label for the postwar decades, when, as he remembers it, young people did better than their parents and housing, health, and education were expanding. He calls this the exception. On his account capitalism could make concessions then, such as the universal healthcare Britain has had since 1948, because profitability was high, and today’s struggle to raise living standards is the norm. Counter-Reforms — Roberts’s term for the period from the 1980s and 1990s onward in which, on his account, gains workers had won were rolled back: wages, trade union rights, state ownership through privatization, and welfare. He says calls to cut welfare continue because capitalists do not want to fund it when profitability is low, and remarks that arms spending is rarely named as an alternative. The Stagnation Thesis — The view Roberts attributes to the American economist Robert J. Gordon: that capitalism is doing badly, with productivity growth slowing right down and a stagnant economy as the result. Roberts treats stagnation as a possibility for a while longer, expects the economy to move either down or up, and says that in his view the stagnation is starting to come to an end. Fascinating Historical Insights A Reversal Since 2008 — Roberts observes that after the Second World War young people did better than their parents, and that since 2008 the pattern has run the other way. He says twenty years of depression amounts to a generation, and he points to Generation X and the millennials, who on his account will not match the living standards or the housing of his own generation, with problems across housing, roads, health, and education. Marx and the Materialist Conception of History — Roberts says that Marx described capitalism as the dominant system of the present, and that in Roberts’s view the next system will work only if it is socialist. He adds that Marx’s phrase, the materialist conception of history, did not mean an automatic passage from capitalism to socialism, and he warns of forces of reaction that seek to reverse workers’ gains and could bring fascist and military regimes. Who Is Utopian? — Roberts notes that Marxists are usually accused of being utopian for envisioning a socialist society, and turns the charge on Thomas Piketty. In Roberts’s account, Piketty holds that Marx was wrong and that inequality, not profitability, is now the central issue, and so proposes taxing the wealthy. Roberts has no objection to taxing billionaires heavily, but asks whether that can happen while billionaires control the means of production and the governments that support them. A program limited to taxation, he argues, leaves the big banks, energy companies, and tech firms untouched. Barbarism and the Fall of Rome — Roberts explains his use of the word barbarism through the Roman Empire. Writers after that period described a civilization of aqueducts and production that collapsed over a long time; from about 400 AD, on his account, roads and buildings deteriorated, small farming communities were left unable to maintain the system, and people were reduced to subsistence. He warns of a similar descent if working people cannot change the system in a further crisis. Resources & Further Reading Primary Sources Michael Roberts, The Long Depression (2016) — the book at the center of this conversation, in which Roberts says he shows the fall in profitability across the major economies in a graph.Michael Roberts, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s (forthcoming, December 2026) — the book in which Roberts says he raises the possibility of a renewed period of expansion. Works Discussed Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century — the book Roberts says made Piketty well known in the 2010s, and whose argument for taxing the wealthy he answers.Roberts names Piketty’s book by title only, and no edition or year is cited in this episode. He describes Robert J. Gordon’s argument and Marx’s materialist conception of history in his own words, without naming specific works, and refers to writers on the Roman Empire without naming them; none of these are listed here. Coming Up Next Next, “From Liberal to Liberalism: Helena Rosenblatt on the History of a Word” opens a three-part conversation with the historian Helena Rosenblatt, distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on her book The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century. Rosenblatt follows the word liberal from Cicero’s Rome, where she says the Latin liber meant both free and generous, through the Enlightenment and the circle around Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant after the Terror, where she places the origins of liberalism around 1813. Part One lands in two weeks. Listen & Subscribe Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Amazon Music Website — notionsofprogress.com Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the Show Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom. [EMBEDDED YOUTUBE VIDEO] — paste manually in Podpage after publishing. For full transcript, visit: notionsofprogress.com

    Is Capitalism Past Its Use-By Date? Michael Roberts on Three Futures About This Episode

  2. Oct 5

    Two Depressions, One Cause? Michael Roberts on 1873, 1929, and the Rate of Profit

    In this second of a three-part conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts takes the central claim from Part One — that the 2008 crash opened a long depression — back to the two historical cases on which his 2016 book The Long Depression rests. He begins with the 1870s, answering the Austrian-school argument that no depression took place and a rival monetary explanation tied to the gold standard; his reply draws on the data for Britain, the hegemonic economy of the period. He then sets out the mechanism he takes from the third volume of Marx’s Capital: capitalists invest only when it is profitable, and competition drives them to invest ever more in machinery relative to labor, which Roberts argues pulls the rate of profit down over time, held back for a while by counteracting tendencies. The same pattern, on his account, ran beneath the stock-market boom of the late 1920s and the slump of the 1930s. The episode closes on the rival crisis theories Roberts contests — policy error, unregulated finance, underconsumption, and overproduction — and on his case for profitability as the driver of booms and slumps alike. About Our GuestMichael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for over 30 years before retiring. He is the author of several books: The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009); The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; World in Crisis (joint editor, 2018); Marx 200: His Economics (2018); and Engels 200: His Economics (2020). With Guglielmo Carchedi, he co-authored Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His new book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond, is forthcoming in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com. Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Profit Drives Capitalism 01:41 Setting Up Three Crises 02:38 1873 Depression Debates 05:22 Profitability Causes Slumps 07:22 Marx’s Law Explained 09:56 Organic Composition Basics 13:13 Counteracting Tendencies 15:07 Profit Waves Through History 18:32 From 1929 to War Economy 23:58 Competing Crisis Theories 28:06 Why Profit Matters Most Key Concepts & TermsOrganic Composition of Capital — Roberts’s term, following Marx, for the growing weight of investment in machinery and plant relative to labor as capitalists compete. Roberts credits this process with making capitalism dynamic, and locates its weak point in Marx’s view that value can come only from human labor: machines help workers create more value but produce none themselves, so a rising share of investment in machines pulls the rate of profit down over time. Counteracting Tendencies — The factors Roberts says Marx sets out in Volume 3 of Capital that slow the fall in the rate of profit: employing more workers, longer hours, more intense work, much cheaper machinery, and profit brought home through foreign trade and investment. On Roberts’s account each has limits, so the general law reasserts itself over a period of time. Underconsumption — One of the rival crisis theories Roberts contests: that workers’ wages are too low to buy all the goods capitalists produce. Roberts answers, citing Engels, that this is always the case and so cannot explain why booms give way to slumps; he adds that most sales take place between capitalists. Overproduction — The rival theory, as Roberts describes it, that capitalists keep producing without limit until the economy goes over a cliff. Roberts replies that a slump is overproduction, but that the theory does not say why growth runs smoothly and then suddenly collapses, or why booms return afterward. Fascinating Historical InsightsA Depression Engels Feared Would Lead to War — Roberts notes that Marx died in 1883, in the middle of the first long depression, and that his close colleague Engels wrote about it at length. On Roberts’s account, Engels saw something different from another round of boom and slump: a depression that might last, and one that could set the capitalist powers fighting over the available profits. Roberts credits Engels with predicting the First World War on this basis. Britain, the Hegemonic Economy — Roberts reminds listeners that in the late nineteenth century the leading economy was Britain, not the United States, with Germany and France rising. Against the claim that the 1870s saw no depression, he points to contemporaries in the 1870s and 1880s who were convinced one was under way, and to data showing Britain’s growth running at a lower trend than in the previous period, documented in detail by scholars he cites in the book. Euphoria on the Stock Market, Falling Profits Underneath — Roberts says the Roaring Twenties looked like an upswing, especially in the United States, while profitability was already falling beneath it. Investors borrowed heavily to buy stocks in a boom he likens to the present, and the mainstream economists of the time, by his account, expected no collapse. After the 1929 crash he describes a decade without recovery, with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as a portrait of the period, ended only when governments built a war economy. Engels’s Reply to Underconsumption — Roberts presents Engels’s answer to the argument that workers lack the wages to buy what capitalists produce: that is always the case, so it cannot explain booms and slumps. His illustration is the headphones used for the recording, tracing the separate capitalists who made the metal, the wires, and the sound system and sold to one another, to show that, on his account, most sales run between capitalists. Resources & Further ReadingPrimary Sources Michael Roberts, The Long Depression (2016) — the book at the center of this conversation, in which Roberts says he sets out the figures on profitability behind his argument.Works Discussed Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 3 — Roberts’s source for the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and for the counteracting tendencies.John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath — the novel Roberts cites as a portrait of the United States in the 1930s.Roberts characterizes Marx’s and Engels’s arguments in his own words, and no specific edition or page of Capital is cited in this episode. He also refers, without naming specific works, to the Austrian-school economists of the 1870s, to scholars of British industrial production and trade, and to Engels’s writings on the depression; none of these are listed here. Coming Up NextPart Three brings Roberts’s argument into the present: what it means for a generation earning less than their parents, what role AI might play going forward, and where he thinks capitalism goes from here. Part Three lands in two weeks. Listen & SubscribeApple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Amazon Music Website — notionsofprogress.com Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the ShowNotions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom.

    Two Depressions, One Cause? Michael Roberts on 1873, 1929, and the Rate of Profit

  3. Sep 21

    A Marxist in the City of London: Michael Roberts on The Long Depression

    In this first of a three-part conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts joins Notions of Progress to lay out the central argument of his 2016 book The Long Depression: that the 2008 financial crash was not an ordinary recession, but the opening of a longer structural depression driven by capitalism’s own tendency toward falling profitability. Before getting there, Roberts traces his own path — from a Marxist conversion as a student to a three-decade career as an economist inside the City of London, a combination he treats as complementary rather than contradictory. He then lays out a materialist conception of history underlying his economics: social change driven by who owns and controls production, not by ideas or political leadership taken on their own. Capitalism, on his account, is real progress — rising productivity, rising living standards — and, at the same time, structurally exploitative and radically unequal. The episode closes on the specific technical definition of a “depression” that Parts Two and Three will test against the historical record: not simply a downturn, but one whose recovery never returns to the prior trend line. About Our GuestMichael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for over 30 years before retiring. He is the author of several books: The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009); The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; World in Crisis (joint editor, 2018); Marx 200: His Economics (2018); and Engels 200: His Economics (2020). With Guglielmo Carchedi, he co-authored Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His new book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond, is forthcoming in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com. Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Cold Open: The Contradictions of Capital 01:03 Welcome & Introduction 03:38 Michael’s Background 08:38 A Marxist in the City of London 11:03 The Nature of Capitalism 16:25 Inequality & Systemic Change 20:35 The Long Depression Thesis 28:31 Next Time: Historical Parallels Key Concepts & TermsMaterialist Conception of History — Roberts’s term, following Marx, for the view that social and historical change is driven primarily by a society’s economic foundations — who owns and controls production — rather than by political leadership or ideas considered on their own. Means of Production — The productive assets of an economy — factories, companies, capital — whose ownership Roberts identifies as the key dividing line of capitalist society: control over investment and employment decisions rests with those who own them. Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall — The Marxist thesis, central to Roberts’s economics, that capitalism’s drive to invest and compete generates a long-run downward pressure on profitability — the mechanism Roberts identifies behind the 2008 crash and the depression that followed it. Long Depression — Roberts’s working definition, distinct from an ordinary recession: a period of low growth and low investment whose recovery never returns the economy to its prior trend line — a category he applies to the 1870s, the 1930s, and, in this episode’s argument, the period after 2008. Fascinating Historical InsightsA Marxist Inside the City of London — Roberts describes becoming a Marxist as a university student in the late 1960s and early ’70s, after encountering the materialist conception of history in economic-history books whose authors, he later discovered, were Marxists — and then spending the next three decades working as an economist for major financial institutions and banks, a combination he frames as a productive vantage point rather than a contradiction. A Depression Capitalism Could Not Exit on Its Own — Roberts recounts the Great Depression of 1929–41/42 as roughly thirteen years in which employment, production, and investment collapsed and stayed collapsed — government stimulus and profitability measures included — until wartime state control of investment, financed partly through war bonds, finally broke the depression. Progress and Exploitation as a Single Argument — Roberts presents Marx’s assessment of capitalism as genuinely two-sided: it raised productivity and living standards far beyond feudal society, and it was, at the same time, built on the exclusion of most people from any control over the investment decisions shaping their lives. A Very Small Number of Decision-Makers — Roberts points to a concentration of ownership — by his account, roughly 0.01% of the U.S. population controlling the largest companies and assets — and extends the point explicitly to today’s dominant AI, technology, banking, and energy firms. Resources & Further ReadingPrimary Sources Michael Roberts, The Long Depression (2016) — the book at the center of this conversation.Works Discussed Michael Roberts, The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009)Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi (eds.), World in Crisis (2018)Michael Roberts, Marx 200: His Economics (2018)Michael Roberts, Engels 200: His Economics (2020)Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi, Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023)Michael Roberts, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond (forthcoming, December 2026)Marx’s own writings on the materialist conception of history and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall underlie this conversation throughout; Roberts characterizes them in his own words rather than through a specific cited edition, and no specific Marx title or page is cited in this episode. Coming Up NextPart Two goes back to where this pattern begins: the depression of the 1870s, traced forward through the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the rival explanations economists on the left and right have offered for both. Part Two lands in two weeks. Listen & SubscribeApple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Amazon Music Website — notionsofprogress.com Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the ShowNotions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom.

    A Marxist in the City of London: Michael Roberts on The Long Depression

  4. Sep 7

    Nothing About This Is Inevitable: Gavin Mueller on Automation, AI, and a Different Future

    This episode closes out a three-part conversation with Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam), author of Breaking Things at Work. In Part 2, Mueller traced Marx's own ambivalence toward machinery through the split between orthodox and heterodox Marxism, Frederick Taylor's theory of workplace control, the Technocracy Movement, and Norbert Wiener's early warnings to organized labor about automation. In this final part, Mueller brings that history into the present. The conversation moves from Shoshana Zuboff's early sociological research inside computerized factories to her later, better-known work on surveillance capitalism, and from there into Mueller's own reading of artificial intelligence: the argument that AI systems depend on training data gathered without most people's consent, the concept of cognitive offloading, and the rapidly growing, cross-partisan resistance movement against AI data centers. Mueller closes with what he calls Luddism's real legacy — not a rejection of the future, but the insistence that a different one is still possible. About Our GuestGavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches Marxist Theory for the Critical Studies MA at the Sandberg Instituut. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin, and sits on the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine. He is the author of two books. Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021) — the book at the center of this three-part conversation — argues that machine-breaking has functioned throughout history as a rational form of labor politics rather than an irrational reflex against progress. Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019) examines how piracy operates from within the media industries it disrupts, rather than simply against them. Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Introduction 02:21 Shoshana Zuboff and Computerized Labor 05:18 AI and the Automation of Work 07:50 Training Data Without Consent 09:54 Cognitive Offloading and Social Degradation 14:30 Resistance and Data Center Opposition 18:03 The Good Life and Luddism's Legacy 23:01 Next Time on Notions of Progress Key Concepts & Terms– Surveillance Capitalism — Zuboff's term for an economic model built on extracting human behavioral data and converting it into predictive products sold in new markets. – Cognitive Offloading — Mueller's term for the practice of handing routine thinking over to an AI tool, with the risk that independent judgment weakens from disuse. – Luddism — in Mueller's argument, drawing on historian Eric Hobsbawm, a rational labor tradition of resisting how new machinery gets deployed against workers, rather than a blanket rejection of technology itself. Fascinating Historical InsightsBefore Surveillance Capitalism, There Was the Factory FloorLong before she became known for her work on surveillance capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff was a sociologist studying early computerized factories — workplaces where embodied labor was already being translated into displays, buzzers, and lights, a shift Mueller connects back to the same managerial goals Taylor pursued decades earlier. A Debate About ConsentMueller points to the Anthropic author settlement as a concrete instance of the training-data question he raises: a case in which an AI company's use of copyrighted material became the subject of a formal legal resolution, rather than remaining an abstract argument about data ethics. A Resistance Movement That Crosses Party LinesMueller describes local opposition to AI data centers — driven by concerns over electricity and water use — as a movement that has drawn support across the political spectrum, making it, in his account, one of the more unusual coalitions to form around technology policy in recent memory. The Word “Luddite” Doesn't Mean What Most People ThinkAs established across this three-part conversation, historian Eric Hobsbawm's rehabilitation of the Luddites reframed their machine-breaking as organized labor strategy rather than blind technophobia — the historical throughline Mueller carries into his reading of AI in this closing part. Coming Up NextEconomist Michael Roberts (author of The Long Depression) joins Notions of Progress to lay out his Marxist account of capitalism's boom-and-slump cycles and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Listen & SubscribeApple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Amazon Music Website — notionsofprogress.com Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the ShowNotions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom.

    Nothing About This Is Inevitable: Gavin Mueller on Automation, AI, and a Different Future

  5. Aug 24

    Theorizing the Machine: Gavin Mueller on Marxism, Taylorism, and Cybernetics Interview pt 2 of 3

    In Episode 17, Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam) traced the Luddites back to the guild economy of England's Midlands. In this second installment of a three-part conversation, Mueller follows that struggle into the twentieth century: Karl Marx's own ambivalence toward machinery, and the split between Karl Kautsky's “orthodox” Marxism — which treated capitalist technology as a scientifically inevitable path to socialism — and the workers' movements that resisted that framing directly on the shop floor. Mueller traces Frederick Winslow Taylor's “scientific management” as, above all, a theory of control rather than efficiency; the short-lived but influential Technocracy Movement's vision of automation as an unstoppable social force; and mathematician Norbert Wiener's cybernetics, including his largely unheeded 1949 letter warning UAW president Walter Reuther that automation posed a genuine threat to organized labor. The episode closes on how that warning intersected with civil rights-era debates about automation's disproportionate impact on Black workers. As with the whole series, the through-line is not a settled verdict on technology and progress, but the recurring argument over whether machines serve human ends or reshape them. About Our GuestGavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches Marxist Theory for the Critical Studies MA at the Sandberg Instituut. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. He is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin and a member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine. He is the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021), the book at the center of this three-part conversation, and Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019). Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Welcome Back: Picking Up the Conversation 01:31 Mueller's Project: Connecting Luddites and Marxism 05:38 Marx's Own Ambivalence Toward Machinery 10:41 Bridging Back to the Luddites 16:35 Orthodox and Heterodox Marxism 23:57 Taylorism as a Theory of Control 31:43 The Technocracy Movement 36:30 Cybernetics and Norbert Wiener 41:25 Contemporary Echoes: From the '60s to Now Key Concepts & Terms Cybernetics — the science of control and communication in machines and living thingsCoined by mathematician Norbert Wiener, cybernetics derives from the Greek kybernetes (“steersman”) and describes systems that regulate themselves through feedback. Wiener applied the concept first to anti-aircraft targeting, then — as Mueller discusses — to a broader warning about automation's threat to industrial labor. Scientific Management (Taylorism) — a system for controlling how factory work gets doneDeveloped by Frederick Winslow Taylor and built on time-and-motion study of workers' individual tasks. Mueller argues, following historian Harry Braverman, that its real function was less about efficiency than about transferring control of the production process from workers to management. Kautsky — the theorist behind “orthodox” MarxismKarl Kautsky, the leading theoretician of the German Social Democratic Party, held that socialism would emerge automatically from the development of capitalist productive forces. Mueller treats Kautsky's determinism as the dominant — and, in his account, mistaken — current within the early twentieth-century workers' movement. The Technocracy Movement — a 1930s proposal for engineer-led economic ruleA short-lived American movement centered on Howard Scott's Committee on Technocracy at Columbia University, which argued that trained engineers, not elected politicians or capitalists, should administer the economy through “energy accounting.” Mueller treats its rapid rise and fall as an early instance of automation panic detached from any actual working-class movement. Fascinating Historical InsightsThe Stopwatch That Started a StrikeOn August 11, 1911, molders at the Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts walked off the job the moment Taylor's stopwatch appeared on the shop floor. The dispute escalated all the way to a congressional hearing in January 1912 — and Congress sided with the workers, discontinuing the Taylor system at Watertown and reinstating the fired molder. The Warning Walter Reuther Never Acted OnIn August 1949, Norbert Wiener wrote directly to UAW president Walter Reuther, warning that automation could unleash “disastrous” unemployment and offering to help labor secure a share of the resulting profits. Reuther eventually invited Wiener to address a UAW conference in 1952 — but Wiener, in poor health at the time, never gave the talk. A “Bloodless Revolution” That Lasted Barely a YearAt its 1930s peak, the Technocracy Movement drew crowds eager for its promise that trained engineers, not politicians, could administer the economy through “energy accounting.” Its influence was, by most accounts, a genuine media sensation — one that collapsed almost as quickly as it rose, leaving behind a movement even its own former members increasingly described as cultish. Automation and the Fight for Civil RightsBy the 1960s, automation's disproportionate toll on Black workers had become a live civil rights issue. Malcolm X argued that the threat of job loss to automation justified a separatist political strategy — a markedly different framing from other prominent civil rights voices of the era. Resources & Further Reading Primary Sources– Taylor, Frederick W. The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper & Brothers, [1911] 1913. Taylor's own account of the system at the center of this episode's shop-floor conflicts. – Wiener, Norbert. Letter to UAW President Walter Reuther, August 13, 1949. Available at libcom.org. The full text of the warning discussed in the episode. – Spellman, A.B. “Interview with Malcolm X.” Monthly Review 16:1, May 1964. The interview in which Malcolm X connects automation to his separatist political argument. Works Discussed– Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital. Monthly Review Press, 1974. Braverman's analysis of Taylorism as a system of control, cited directly in Mueller's account. – Kautsky, Karl. The Class Struggle. Charles H. Kerr & Co., [1892] 1910. The foundational statement of the “orthodox Marxist” position Mueller traces through the Second International. – Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press, 1965. Wiener's founding text of the discipline discussed in the episode's second half. – Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Houghton Mifflin, 1950. Wiener's popular-audience extension of cybernetics into social and labor questions. – Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. Basic Books, 1995. The standard biography of Reuther, source for the UAW context around Wiener's letter. Coming Up NextPart 3 of this conversation with Gavin Mueller closes the arc: Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism, and what a century of arguments about machinery, control, and labor power has to say about artificial intelligence today. Listen & SubscribeApple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/notions-of-progress/id1837506445 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5WgTlVMBfFzrIQwqkqhiD9 YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@notionsofprogress Amazon Music https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8991b97b-91cb-4cb5-918a-5db9d11a6140/notions-of-progress Website — notionsofprogress.com Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the ShowNotions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom. Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com Website: notionsofprogress.com

    Theorizing the Machine: Gavin Mueller on Marxism, Taylorism, and Cybernetics Interview pt 2 of 3

  6. Aug 14

    Breaking Things at Work: Gavin Mueller on the Luddites and Labor Resistance pt 1 of 3

    They've been remembered as machine-smashers who tried to stop the future with a hammer — but historian Eric Hobsbawm called what they were doing “collective bargaining by riot.” In this episode, Prof. Gavin Mueller (University of Amsterdam), author of Breaking Things at Work, walks through who the Luddites actually were: skilled textile workers in England's Midlands, organized under the mythical banner of King Ludd, fighting to preserve their wages, their working conditions, and the quality of their craft against machines introduced without negotiation. Mueller makes the case that this was a rational response to an existential threat, not an irrational rejection of progress — a reading that places the Luddites' resistance inside the history of the idea of progress rather than outside it. This episode is the first of a three-part conversation with Mueller drawn from a single recorded interview. Episode 18 turns to Marx and the theorists who followed him; Episode 19 carries the argument through to Shoshana Zuboff and today's debates about artificial intelligence. About Our GuestGavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches Marxist Theory for the Critical Studies MA at the Sandberg Instituut. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. He is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin and a member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine. He is the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021), the book at the center of this episode, and Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019). Show Notes & Timestamps- Introduction — 0:13 - Guest Introduction: Gavin Mueller — 1:13 - About the Book: Breaking Things at Work — 1:50 - Why the Luddites? — 8:44 - The Luddite Movement — 11:36 - Guilds vs. Unions — 21:36 - Hobsbawm & Rehabilitating the Luddites — 25:49 - Outro & What's Next — 32:27 Key Concepts & Terms LudditeEarly-1800s English textile workers who organized to resist machines introduced into their trade without negotiation, named for the mythical figure Ned Ludd. The word is now often used as an insult for anyone who resists technology — a meaning that differs from the historical movement's actual grievances. GuildA trade association of skilled workers that set standards for wages, training, and the quality of goods produced. Guilds structured England's textile trade before industrialization reorganized it around factory-owned machinery. Combination ActsLaws passed by the British Parliament in 1799 and 1800 that made it illegal for workers to organize collectively to negotiate wages or conditions, closing off legal routes to the kind of bargaining unions would later provide. Gig MillA mechanized cloth-finishing machine, along with the stocking frame, at the center of the Luddite disputes. These machines could produce goods faster and with less-skilled labor, undercutting the wages and standards guild-trained workers had maintained. Fascinating Historical Insights Collective Bargaining by RiotHistorian Eric Hobsbawm's phrase, discussed in this episode, reframed Luddite machine-breaking as a form of negotiation rather than mindless destruction — a strategy workers turned to precisely because the Combination Acts had closed off legal organizing. A Mythical LeaderThe Luddites organized under the banner of a fictional figure, “King Ludd” or “Ned Ludd.” Letters and proclamations were issued in his name rather than any real leader's — a structure that let the movement act without a leader who could be arrested and used to dismantle it. Guilds vs. UnionsGuilds regulated an entire trade's standards and training; unions, illegal until decades later, organized workers within a single employer relationship to bargain collectively. The two represent different structures of worker power, not simply an older and newer version of the same thing. Not Anti-ProgressThe Luddites' documented demands centered on wages, working conditions, and product quality. Their resistance sits inside a debate about who progress serves, not outside the idea of progress altogether. Resources & Further Reading Primary SourcesGavin Mueller, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021) — the book at the center of this episode. Works DiscussedE.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966). Eric J. Hobsbawm, “The Machine Breakers,” Past and Present 1 (February 1952). Kevin Binfield, Writings of the Luddites (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). Peter Linebaugh, Ned Ludd and Queen Mab: Machine-Breaking, Romanticism, and the Several Commons of 1811–12 (Oakland: PM Press, 2012). Coming Up NextIn Episode 18, “Theorizing the Machine,” the conversation with Gavin Mueller continues from Marx through the cyberneticists who followed him. Listen & SubscribeApple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Amazon Music Website — notionsofprogress.com Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the ShowNotions of Progress traces ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of AI. Each episode examines how thinkers across history have conceived of human advancement — and what those conceptions reveal about the assumptions of their time and ours. Hosted by Marshall, the show operates as a scholarly curation: surfacing the debates and the scholarship rather than prescribing which position is correct. Marshall holds an MA in History from Cambridge University, where his thesis examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action, and an MSc from Oxford University's Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership. Host: Marshall | Contact: marshall@notionsofprogress.com | Website: notionsofprogress.com Full transcript available at: https://youtu.be/FrsMuLriAWA]

    Breaking Things at Work: Gavin Mueller on the Luddites and Labor Resistance pt 1 of 3

  7. Jul 27

    After Alexander: Diogenes, the Cynics, and a City With No Walls

    What happens to an ethics built on belonging to a city once that city stops being able to protect anyone? This episode opens the Hellenistic arc of Notions of Progress by tracing how Philip and Alexander's conquests brought organized Greek political independence to an end, and how philosophy responded once the polis could no longer guarantee anyone's flourishing. At the center of that response is Diogenes of Sinope, a philosopher who lived in a discarded wine jar, told Alexander the Great to step out of his sunlight, and built an entire idea of progress on needing nothing from the city at all. Historian F. W. Walbank's account of the shift toward personal, unaccountable Macedonian rule sets the political stage; classicists John Moles, A. A. Long, and R. Bracht Branham then help unpack what Diogenes and the Cynics actually stood for — not mere rejection, but a substantive alternative: kosmopolitēs, citizenship of the cosmos. The episode closes by tracing that idea forward, through Crates of Thebes, to a young Zeno of Citium, the future founder of the Stoics. Show Notes & Timestamps - Introduction — 0:34 - The Collapse of the Polis — 1:10 - Alexander's Conquest — 3:05 - Philosophical Responses — 5:31 - Diogenes and the Cynics — 6:21 - Cynic Philosophy and Cosmopolitanism — 10:45 - Aristotle vs. Diogenes — 17:26 - Looking Ahead — 18:16 Key Concepts & Terms Kosmopolitēs (koz-moh-poh-lee-TAYS) "Citizen of the cosmos." Diogenes' term for himself — read by classicist John Moles as a substantive alternative to civic belonging, not just a denial of it: citizenship relocated from one city to the whole of humanity. Autarkeia (ow-tar-KAY-uh) Self-sufficiency. Classicist A. A. Long traces the Cynic case for autarkeia to deliberate training — the same discipline that lets an athlete or a flutist earn a skill. Parrhēsia (par-hay-SEE-uh) Freedom to speak the truth to anyone, regardless of rank. R. Bracht Branham identifies this as the virtue behind both Diogenes' confrontation with Plato and his confrontation with Alexander. Physis / Nomos (FOO-sis / NOH-mos) Nature versus convention. Diogenes' governing distinction: natural functions, he argued, are proper and should be done openly, without shame — the way a dog does them, the origin of the term "Cynic" (kynikos, "dog-like"). Fascinating Historical Insights "Here Is Plato's Man" When Plato reportedly defined the human being as a "featherless biped," Diogenes is said to have plucked a chicken, carried it into Plato's lecture, and announced, "Here is Plato's man." "Step Out of My Light" When Alexander the Great offered Diogenes anything he wanted, Diogenes is reported to have asked only that Alexander step out of his sunlight. Alexander reportedly walked away remarking, "Had I not been Alexander, I would have liked to have been Diogenes." A Goal Assigned After Death Ancient critics faulted the Cynics for having no stated telos, or ultimate goal. According to classicists Branham and Goulet-Cazé, it was a later Stoic, Apollodorus, who retroactively assigned the Cynics one — "living in accordance with virtue" — decades after Diogenes had already died. "Written on the Dog's Tail" Historian Peter Green reports that Zeno of Citium's Republic was so thoroughly shaped by Cynic thinking that it was joked to have been "written on the dog's tail" — a direct reference to Diogenes, whose nickname was "the Dog." Resources & Further Reading Primary Sources - Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Loeb Classical Library Vol. II, trans. R. D. Hicks Works Discussed - F. W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World - Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age - A. A. Long, essays on Diogenes and Cynic self-sufficiency (autarkeia) - R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (eds.), The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy - John Moles, on Cynic cosmopolitanism and kosmopolitēs Further Context - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry on Cynicism ⚑ Green, Walbank, and Branham & Goulet-Cazé remain ⚑ VERIFY in your reading-list tracking, though the recorded transcript quotes all three directly — resolve formally before FINAL, per the Ferrari Rule. Related Episodes - Ep. 14: Aristotle Pt. 1 — the account of flourishing and the polis that this episode's Cynic argument directly answers. https://youtu.be/Q7jAurvRX9M - Ep. 15: Aristotle Pt. 2 — five contemporary perspectives on Aristotle, immediately preceding this episode's turn to his student's conquest and its aftermath. ⚑ E15's YouTube URL isn't yet recorded in this project's memory — supply it if you'd like it linked here rather than titled only. Coming Up Next Notions of Progress turns to "The Machine Breakers," a conversation with Prof. Gavin Mueller of the University of Amsterdam, author of Breaking Things at Work. The interview traces Luddism as a coherent political stance against capital's use of technology to deskill and control workers — and asks whether the Luddites' claim to collective progress holds up against the philosophical questions this arc has been tracing since Aristotle. Listen & Subscribe Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/notions-of-progress/id1837506445 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WgTlVMBfFzrIQwqkqhiD9 YouTube: https://youtu.be/97G7QI7ZeOg Website: https://www.notionsofprogress.com Substack: https://notionsofprogress.substack.com Instagram: @notionsofprogress ✉️ Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com About the Show Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing how the idea of progress has been understood, contested, and reimagined from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Marshall Madow, an independent researcher and the show's host and scholar-curator, holds an MA in History from Cambridge University, where his thesis examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action, and an MSc from Oxford University's Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership. Rather than prescribing a position, the podcast surfaces scholarly debate — examining how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, from Plato to contemporary philosophers of technology, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, for whom, and by whose definition. Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com Website: notionsofprogress.com Transcript For full transcript visit: https://www.notionsofprogress.com

    After Alexander: Diogenes, the Cynics, and a City With No Walls

  8. Jul 17

    Aristotle on Human Nature — Blueprint vs. Destiny

    Aristotle claimed that human beings have a built-in purpose — but is that idea a foundation for a good life, or a blueprint for control? This episode, the second half of a two-part look at Aristotle, brings five thinkers into the conversation across twenty-five centuries of philosophy. Karl Popper, writing in the shadow of the Second World War, warns that a fixed idea of human purpose can curdle into political destiny when scaled up from a person to a nation. Alasdair MacIntyre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippa Foot each answer that worry on different grounds — through practices and internal goods, through practical judgment exercised case by case, and through a naturalist argument about what genuinely counts as good for a living creature. Finally, philosopher of technology Shannon Vallor carries the same question directly into the debate over artificial intelligence, arguing that practical wisdom — phronesis — is exactly what current AI narratives are trying to convince us we no longer need. Five serious perspectives, one shared question, five different answers — and a closing turn toward the instability that follows Aristotle's world, setting up the series' next arc: the Hellenistic philosophers. 2. Show Notes & Timestamps — Aristotle's Big Question — 00:00 — Five Thinkers Setup — 01:16 — Key Terms: Telos & Phronesis — 02:35 — Popper Against Historicism — 03:24 — MacIntyre: Practices & Virtue — 06:35 — Foot: Natural Goodness — 15:17 — Vallor: Aristotle Meets AI — 18:53 — Recap: Five Perspectives — 26:07 — What Comes Next — 28:54 — Sources and Farewell — 29:59 3. Key Concepts & Terms Telos (TEH-los) A thing's built-in purpose — for a living creature, the end its nature is directed toward. Phronesis (froh-NEE-sis) Practical wisdom — not a rule that can be memorized and applied the same way every time, but the skill of judging what a particular situation actually calls for, right now. Eudaimonia (yoo-dye-MOH-nee-uh) Human flourishing — a life lived well by doing what a human being is actually for, rather than simply feeling good in the moment. Epieikeia (eh-pee-ay-KAY-ah) Equity — a judge's correction of the strict letter of the law when applying it in full would be wrong in a specific case. Aristotle treats this as a correction of the law, not a departure from it. 4. Fascinating Historical Insights Popper's Postwar Target Karl Popper published The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. His historicism critique takes direct aim at Hegel's later use of Aristotle's ideas — Popper is explicit that Aristotle's own biology, considered on its own terms, is not his target. A Child, a Chessboard, and Candy Alasdair MacIntyre's account of virtue turns on a simple example: a child taught to play chess for candy has every reason to cheat, right up until the point they come to value the internal rewards of the game itself — at which point cheating stops making sense at all. The Most Alarming Person in the Room Aristotle has a specific word, deinos, for someone with real natural gift for practical judgment and no virtue guiding it. Following Aristotle, Gadamer argues this person is more alarming than someone simply incompetent — brilliant talent turned toward evil, rather than a lack of skill. A Senate Room and a Distorting Mirror In November 2023, Shannon Vallor testified before the U.S. Senate that current AI narratives risk convincing people that phronesis — the virtue Aristotle called practical wisdom — is an outdated relic. A year later, in The AI Mirror, she opened her book with the story of a Google engineer who claimed the company's AI had become conscious, treating the episode as a symptom of the very confusion her testimony warned against. 5. Resources & Further Reading Primary Sources — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Works Discussed — Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1945), Ch. 11, pp. 220–226 — Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, 2007), Ch. 9, pp. 109–120, and Ch. 14, pp. 187–190 and 196–197 — Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 313–320 — Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), Introduction and Ch. 1 — Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford, 2016), Sections 2.1 and 5.2 — Shannon Vallor, The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford, 2024), Introduction and Ch. 1 Further Context — Shannon Vallor, Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, November 8, 2023 6. Related Episodes — Episode 14: Aristotle, Telos, and the Good Life — What Human Flourishing Actually Means (Part 1) — the foundation this episode builds on — Episodes 11–13: Interview with Matt Ehret — Aristotle at the Academy, and the open/closed systems framing this arc extends 7. Coming Up Next The Aristotle arc closes on a fault line: his picture of a good life assumes a stable community to grow up inside of — what he called a polis — and that stability did not survive him for long. Episode 16 turns to the Hellenistic Rupture, tracing how the Stoics and Epicureans emerged directly from the polis's collapse after Alexander's conquests. 8. Listen & Subscribe ???? Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/notions-of-progress/id1837506445 ???? Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/5WgTlVMBfFzrIQwqkqhiD9 ???? YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@notionsofprogress ???? Amazon Music — https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8991b97b-91cb-4cb5-918a-5db9d11a6140/notions-of-progress ???? Website — https://www.notionsofprogress.com ✉️ Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com 9. About the Show Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of AI. The series moves from the ancient Greeks' ambivalence about technological change, through the Enlightenment's confidence in cumulative human reason, to the contemporary moment in which artificial intelligence has made the question newly urgent. Rather than prescribing a position, the show surfaces the debates — examining how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, from Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, for whom, and by whose definition. Marshall Madow is an independent researcher and the host and scholar-curator of Notions of Progress. His MA in History from Cambridge examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action. His MSc from Oxford's Saïd Business School, in Complexity Science and Leadership, introduced him to the same question from the other direction — how systems evolve and why linear models of advancement are often insufficient to explain complex phenomena. Marshall approaches the podcast as a scholar, researcher, and curator — surfacing a pluralistic and wide-ranging spectrum of ideas rather than prescribing or advocating one position over another.

    Aristotle on Human Nature — Blueprint vs. Destiny
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The idea of progress — that humanity advances through time toward something better — has been a contested assumption throughout history. The question of whether we as a species, a nation, or as individuals are progressing is being interrogated with a renewed urgency that the present moment demands. Whether that advancement is real, illusory, unevenly distributed, or simply beside the point depends on who is asking, from where, and by what measure. Notions of Progress is a podcast that takes those questions seriously, tracing how the idea of progress has been understood, contested, and reimagined from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. The series moves from the ancient Greeks’ ambivalence about technological change, through the Enlightenment’s confidence in cumulative human reason, to the contemporary moment in which artificial intelligence has made the question of progress newly urgent. When machines appear to learn, create, and reason, the assumptions buried inside the word “progress” — about agency, direction, and human advancement — are no longer abstract. Tracing how those assumptions formed, and how they have been challenged across centuries, is the work of this podcast. Rather than prescribing a position, it surfaces the debates — examining how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, from Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, for whom, and by whose definition. The thread connecting Plato’s Academy to the age of artificial intelligence is not a straight line of accumulation — it is a recurring argument about whether progress is something driven by human agency, providence, or an artificial consciousness we project onto history rather than find in it. Host Marshall Madow brings an unusual dual formation to these questions. His MA in History from Cambridge University — where his thesis examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action — gave him a grounding in how belief systems about progress can function in place of rational thinking as historical forces. His MSc from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership, introduced him to the question from the other direction: how systems evolve, how change propagates through institutions, and why linear models of advancement are often insufficient in explaining complex phenomena. The two areas of study point toward the same problem from opposite ends. Notions of Progress is the inquiry that connects them. Marshall approaches the podcast as a scholar, researcher, and curator — seeking to surface a pluralistic and wide-ranging spectrum of ideas rather than prescribing or advocating one position over another. Contact: marshall@notionsofprogress.com Social: @notionsofprogress on Instagram · @NotionsProgress on X/Twitter Web: notionsofprogress.com

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  • Creator
    Marshall Madow
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    23
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Copyright 2026 Notions of Progress
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    Notions of Progress