Macro N Cheese

**Will we see you at Macro ‘n Chill on Tuesday? You’re invited to join our online gathering where we listen to the episode together and share our insights and questions. May 26 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/UHE6NoSDRbibqXYAeJJ8gQ Disinformation is neither an accident nor excess; it is the normal functioning of late capitalism’s media apparatus. Our friend Mickey Huff, executive director of Project Censored, talks with Steve about the machinery of modern propaganda, algorithmic control, and billionaire-owned media ecosystems. Their conversation highlights key tensions of a base and superstructure in decay. Mickey lays out the historical continuity of media manipulation, and they bring up surveillance as a class weapon and electoral distraction as a dead end. (Mickey may be the first guest to mention Gilens and Page before Steve does.)From Silicon Valley oligarchs and tech monopolies to the collapse of local journalism and the rise of curated realities, Ste

** This Tuesday, come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering. Bring your insights and questions about this episode. May 19 at 8pm ET/5pm PT Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/AIz56SKPT6Gfh0pXhs3PTwYou may know Luna Nguyen as Luna Oi, the YouTuber and member of the Non-Compete content collective who creates videos about culture, history, and politics in Vietnam, as well as panels and interviews with indigenous activists and comrades in the Global South.Steve asked her to come onto the podcast because, as a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist, she can take us beyond US propaganda and into the lived history of Vietnamese resistance. The conversation goes into Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary development, the application of Marxism-Leninism to Vietnam's reality, French colonialism and Japanese fascism, the 1945 famine and August Revolution, US betrayal after WWII, the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident, the nature of the "Resistance War Against Imperialist USA," and the post-war embargo and d

** This Tuesday, May 12, come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering where we listen to and discuss this episode. Bring your questions and insights. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rn_HAqgaSRGdj8W2UX9aKw Did you think we had abandoned MMT? Well, after a few weeks of tackling some rather prickly topics, we’re back to strictly non-controversial macroeconomics. Heh heh. Just kidding. Don’t get too comfortable.Our old friend Randy Wray is back, bringing his somewhat optimistic belief that a sound reality-based agenda might possibly succeed in the upcoming Congressional elections. But more on that later. First, he and Steve need to dissect Trump’s latest imperialist venture against Iran and expose the bipartisan lie that there are just enough of your tax dollars to pay for war; when it comes to affording social programs, the cupboard is bare.Claims of scarcity are pure ideology. MMT has taught us that the federal government faces no dollar constraints. The real c

** Macro ‘n Chill is our weekly online gathering where we listen to the podcast episode and talk about it among friends. This Tuesday, Jeremy of Proles Pod will be with us to answer questions. May 5 at 8pm ET/5pm PT Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/gCOXxGttQryRnQNq-A3NbAThis is Part 2 of Steve’s interview with Jeremy, co-host of Proles Pod, talking about their exhaustive series on the Stalin Eras. It's a nuanced, de-stigmatized discussion about Joseph Stalin and the political reality of the Soviet Union. They begin by dismantling Western misconceptions of dictatorship to explain the actual Leninist methodology of democratic centralism, contrasting it with Western parliamentary systems.Rather than asking whether Joseph Stalin was good or evil, the conversation reframes the question entirely. It situates the Soviet project within the pressures of counter-revolution, imperial encirclement, and internal struggle, while investigating how decisions were actually made inside a soci

** Come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online community gathering, where we listen to and discuss the current episode. This week, Jeremy of Proles Pod will be joining us. If you have questions for him, bring them! Tuesday, April 28th, at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/G7ijDSVmTcKeDc82AAs0XQLast year, Proles Pod completed a multi-part series on The Stalin Eras. Now Jeremy, one of the co-hosts, joins Steve for a conversation about it, resulting in a two-part dialectical excavation of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Project. The purpose of this exploration is neither to sanctify nor condemn, but to strip away bourgeois mythologies and ground the discussion in material conditions and collective processes.In Part One, Jeremy and Steve look at democratic centralism, where rigorous debate is followed by unified action, then contrast it with the false choice offered by US electoral politics. They draw on Rosa Luxemburg, Julius Nyerere, and materialist analysis of US history (slavery, sett

** Questions about MMT? Thoughts about the episode? Come to our online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. Tuesday, April 21, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/RkspaP0RSNajdc69bqUmkAJim Byrne of MMT101 is back for a conversation that moves beyond the technical mechanics of Modern Monetary Theory to ask the tough questions. While affirming MMT’s core insight that a currency-issuing government doesn’t face financial constraint, only real resource limits, they argue that this knowledge is politically neutered by the structures of capitalism.Jim lays out a clear, accessible primer on how money actually works and breaks down the scarcity myth. But the real question isn’t can governments act, it’s who they serve when they do.Looking at the failure of bourgeois democracy, they talk about cultural hegemony and neoliberal ideology as well as class struggle vs. gradualism. The discussion touches on Scotland as a colony of Westminster and the limits of referendums under an imperia

** This week’s Macro ‘n Chill might shake us up. Some of us, at least. Come discuss the episode with the community. Tues, April 14, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PIf2VnjBS-mwX-Bd4BwWYQIn a solo episode, Steve sets out to describe and explain some of the shifts in direction for Real Progressives and the podcast, mirroring his own changing perspective. He reflects on a decade or more of championing Modern Monetary Theory, while grappling with a dawning realization. Despite MMT’s crystal clear insights into sovereign currency with the potential for popular federal programs and public investment, the political system itself is a scam.He describes a journey of discovery (yeah, we know that sounds corny) peeling away the layers to explain the Gilens and Page study and global events. Gaza, US foreign policy, austerity, racism, empire, ramping up of brutal law enforcement within the US... each question leads to another. Weekly guests for Macro N Cheese help provide

Join our community on Tuesday evening as we listen to and discuss this episode. April 7th at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/nkkVRy2JQbW2Eh4VDtcNHQClara Mattei and her first book, The Capital Order, were hugely important to Real Progressives as we began to expand our focus from Modern Monetary Theory and investigate the political economy of the capitalist system.Now she joins Steve to talk about her new book, Escape from Capitalism. They discuss how capitalism maintains itself through market dependence, exploitation, and austerity, and why escaping it requires building alternative institutions rather than relying on elections or reforms within the capitalist state.Steve and Clara are largely aligned in their critique of the system, but there are some disagreements. They debate aspects of MMT, including how interest rates, state spending, and monetary sovereignty function across different contexts. Their differences open up a deeper discussion about the limits

** Have you been coming to Macro ‘n Chill on Tuesday evenings? It’s the online gathering where we listen to and discuss our latest episode in a relaxed atmosphere. Bring your questions and insights and help build the community. March 31 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/OhW98SYfRN64vCaX2NVITA  Carlos García Hernández, author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism Through Modern Monetary Theory, joins Steve to revisit their discussion of topics covered in his earlier visits to the podcast. Their dialogue wrestles with a deceptively 

** Tuesday evening, March 24, we’ll be listening to and discussing this episode in our online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DeGM2oAyRt2O-Xsj1nc4IQThomas Fazi joins Steve to dissect the geopolitical and ideological structures that have rendered Europe strategically subordinate to the United States. Thomas argues that NATO’s true purpose, from its inception, was not to defend Europe but to ensure its vassalization by keeping "the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down." He contends that the war in Ukraine was a deliberately provoked conflict designed by US planners to sever Europe’s economic and energy ties with Russia, forcing the EU into deeper dependency on American energy and military infrastructure.The conversation goes into the weaponization of media narratives and the management of dissent through censorship and “acceptable” politics, connecting the cultural Cold War to today’s crisis of hegemony. Ukraine, Greenland, and Europe’s energy s

** Join our community-building online gathering where we listen to the episode together and discuss it in a relaxed, supportive atmosphere. Tuesday, March 17, at 8pm ET/5pm PT. https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/o3miFIPmSAC2d46Vh14iBAOne of our favorite guests is back to talk about the central problem facing much of the Global South. It is not simply bad policy or weak leadership, but the persistence of colonial economic structures. He explains that many countries, especially in Africa, remain trapped in roles designed by empire: exporters of cheap raw materials, importers of finished goods, and sites for low-value production. Political independence did not end these structures, and debt, IMF intervention, and external pressure have only deepened the trap."Colonialism and its economic structures were not designed for development, they were not designed for democracy, they were not designed for justice, they were not designed to produce a just transition or human rights or any of these things. If anythin

** We’ll discuss this episode on Tuesday, March 10th (8 pm ET/5 pm PT) in our online community gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. We’ve invited Erald Kolasi to join us. So bring your questions. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/hvkv5uyKQkG8DvgUMCckcwErald Kolasi is back to attack the bourgeois narrative on immigration, which reduces it to a series of individual choices. He and Steve dig into the material roots of migration, showing how empire, land theft, war, labor exploitation, and capitalist crisis have shaped global migration flows for centuries.They ground the discussion in Wallerstein's world-systems theory, defining an empire not by its internal politics but by its extractive external relations, and trace the concrete historical processes of this extraction. The "migration boomerang" from US destabilization in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador – driven by the needs of capital like the United Fruit Company – demonstrates the dialectic in action.The empire's domination creates the displ

While we’re being distracted by chatbots and AI gimmicks, Silicon Valley is quietly embedding its products into surveillance systems, border enforcement, battlefield logistics, and even nuclear command-and-control. The real money isn’t in selfies with AI. It’s in Pentagon contracts and permanent war footing.Investigative reporter Peter Byrne is back to talk with Steve about his 10-part Military AI Watch series at Project Censored. It’s a chilling and materialist analysis of the military-industrial-AI complex.Naming names and following the funding trails, Peter reveals how firms tied to Palantir, Google, and other tech giants are positioning AI as indispensable to “national security.” Meanwhile, the systems themselves remain prone to hallucination, data poisoning, and catastrophic error.War games escalate to nuclear exchange. (Does anyone remember War Games, the movie? Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy play a teenage nerd and a popular girl who save the world from the nuclear destruction they almost launched.

“...Some are dancing, some are drowning, but in the end everybody’s going to go under.”Dr. Ali Kadri (Sun Yat-sen University), author of the Unmaking of Arab Socialism, joins Steve to talk about imperialism, development, and why the Arab world keeps getting put through the capitalist meat grinder. Ali argues that capitalism isn’t just markets and greed. It’s a destructive social relationship. Once you look at it that way, many of the world’s mysteries stop being mysterious: war, austerity, pollution, and mass deaths aren’t accidents that occasionally happen to capitalism. They are outcomes to be monetized.The conversation moves to imperialism as capitalism in its concentrated, caffeinated, and brutal form, especially under finance-dominance. Ali describes genocide as both direct (bombs, occupation, ethnic cleansing) and structural (avoidable hunger, disease, debt-driven collapse). He frames the destruction of Arab socialist and anti-colonial projects as strategic for empire: control of oil, geography, and the

** Tuesday evening we’ll be listening to and discussing this episode of the podcast in our virtual community gathering. All are invited to Macro ‘n Chill, February at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Find the registration link at the top of our website: realprogressives.orgCan Marxists and MMTers find common ground, or are they doomed to be strategic enemies?Steve’s guest is Australian labor historian and organizer Owen Bennett, who founded the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union in 2015, and more recently, Unionists for a Job Guarantee in 2024. He and Steve explore how to tackle the deep divide between Modern Monetary Theory and the Marxist left. Owen argues that the left's current dismissal of full-employment policy is a historic break from a time when communists and unionists successfully fought for – and won – some major concessions under capitalism. We should look to establish that kind of unity.If the state is a tool of the oligarchs, is fighting for a policy like the Job Guarantee a distraction from revolution, or is i

** Every Tuesday evening, we host an online gathering of friends and newcomers, listening to and discussing our podcast. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Join us! After the episode drops, you’ll find the registration link at the top of our website: realprogressives.orgThis week Steve invited Gabriel Rockhill to talk about his new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? Vol 1 of The Intellectual World War. The war on communism is about protecting imperial super-profits, keeping cheap labor and resources flowing from the Global South to the imperial core. It has never been about lofty values and freedom fries. So why does the empire care about books, grants, and academic careers?Gabriel’s investigation begins with a potent symbol: the legacy of Che Guevara. We know the CIA hunted and executed him. Less known is their parallel mission to assassinate the legacy of his thoughts. By seizing and editing his Bolivian diaries, US intelligence and its media assets would control the narrative of his struggle. It’s a microcosm of a v

Funding white supremacy is a core, not incidental, function of the modern capitalist state in the U.S. It is also the title of economist Robert B. Williams’ 2025 book, Funding White Supremacy: Federal Wealth Policies and the Modern Racial Wealth Gap.Bob and Steve share the fundamental position that capitalism doesn’t just produce inequality by accident, it builds durable ladders for some and trapdoors for others. Wealth, not income, is the key instrument because it is power that reproduces itself across generations.Bob lays out the major policy mechanism of stealth wealth-building: how the federal government subsidizes asset accumulation through the tax code, especially via “tax expenditures” (deductions, exclusions, preferential treatment) that provide vast benefits to the wealthy.From an MMT perspective, the conversation underlines a crucial point: the state’s problem is not “finding the money,” it’s choosing who gets the public subsidy. A system that claims scarcity around public goods reliably mobilizes m

We’ve made the case before, but it bears repeating: MMT is a politically neutral, descriptive lens explaining the operational realities of a sovereign fiat currency system where the availability of real resources, not money, are the constraint. And Marxism is an analytical framework for understanding class relations and production. The two are not inherently opposed. It’s a mistake to dismiss MMT as capitalist apologetics.Steve’s guest is Dr. Anthony Anastasi, an economist teaching at the Sino-British College, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. They talk about Anthony’s paper: Marxism and MMT: How Modern Monetary Theory Can Enrich the Debate Amongst Marxists.They dismantle the all-too-common Marxist critiques of MMT, which claim that the state can’t control money’s value, and that MMT lacks a theory of value. (However, the ubiquitous “taxpayer money” framing that feeds austerity myths, is not limited to Marxists.) The discussion reframes the state's monetary capacity as a tool for class strugg

** Further questions about this episode? You’re in luck. Tuesday evening, January 20th, Ricardo Vaz will be with us during Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering. Find the registration link at the top of our website: realprogressives.orgSteve opens in a subdued mood brought on by the dizzying speed of ‘current events.’ For this episode he’s stepping back and looking at Venezuela. News reports are working hard to create confusion. On social media US citizens claim that kidnapping a sitting president is justified if you don’t like him. Or if he’s socialist.To understand a situation, it must be considered historically, materially, and as a connected process. With that in mind, Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis, joins Steve to talk about what the Bolivarian Revolution actually was – on the ground – beyond the familiar US media caricatures. Ricardo walks through key turning points in the Chávez era and the social gains that reshaped everyday life. But there’s a bigger question that haunts every revolutionary project.

** We’ll be discussing this episode on Tuesday, January 13th (8 pm ET/5 pm PT) in our online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill. We’ve invited Erald Kolasi to join us. So bring your questions. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/aYopZXEIQ9SPN9gQL2ajXQSteve welcomes back Erald Kolasi, physicist-economist, author, and friend of the podcast. Erald is here to do a demolition job on “institutional” development fables like Acemoglu & Robinson’s Why Nations Fail. He argues that by treating good institutions as the master key (inclusive vs. extractive) they smuggle in a liberal moral scoreboard while dodging the real motors of history: power, class struggle, imperial systems, and material constraints like energy, trade dependence, war, and ecological shocks.To “steelman” Acemoglu and Robinson’s position, Erald uses their favorite showcase case – North vs. South Korea. He lays out their comparison of the “tyrannical dictatorship” vs the “open” society and presents their explanation for these differences