Welcome to another Class Unity speaker event. Today we will be joined by authors Vijay Prashad and Michael Hudson to discuss hyper-imperialism, imperialism, and the state of global politics.

Michael Hudson is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, and the author of many books and papers on political economy, the history of economics, economic history, finance, and imperialism.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian author, journalist, political commentator, and Marxist. He is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.

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Members of class unity discuss recent events in domestic and geopolitics: Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Denmark, Bulgaria, NATO, ICE, the Fed, Powell, Trump

Welcome to Episode 20 of Class Unity: Transmissions. For this episode, Nick is joined by Class Unity member Dave for a wide-ranging conversation with Philip Cunliffe on the question of the national interest. Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at University College London, author of The National Interest: Politics After Globalization, and co-founder and contributing editor of Aufhebunga Bunga.

The discussion centers on Cunliffe’s argument that the “national interest”—long treated with suspicion on both the left and the libertarian right—has returned not as a coherent doctrine, but as a symptom of the collapse of globalization and liberal internationalism. Cunliffe defends a sovereigntist, rather than nationalist, conception of politics, insisting that the national interest should be understood as a democratic process of contestation defined by citizens rather than insulated elites. Nick and Dave press Cunliffe on whether appeals to global problems and global governance have allowed ruling classes to evade democratic accountability, and whether it is possible to retain global awareness while re-anchoring politics at the level of the nation state.

The episode also digs into the book’s historical and theoretical core. Cunliffe discusses classical realism, liberal internationalism, and the Cold War transformation of the national interest into a technocratic and national security–state project. Nick and Dave challenge Cunliffe on whether realism genuinely reflected mass politics or instead replaced aristocratic judgment with expert management, and whether liberal internationalism restrained power or dissolved political responsibility by moralizing foreign policy. Throughout, the conversation returns to a central tension: how to avoid reifying the national interest while still treating it as a necessary framework for democratic struggle.

Recorded on December 15, 2025, the episode also serves as a kind of end-of-year reflection on contemporary politics. From Israel and Gaza to the advent of a second Trump administration, MAGA fragmentation, and competing claims over what counts as “America First,” the discussion explores whether renewed appeals to the national interest can meaningfully hold elites accountable—or whether they risk being captured once again by narrow sectional interests and the national security state. Cunliffe reflects on the limits of optimism, arguing that while democratic contestation offers no guarantees of good outcomes, abandoning the national interest altogether leaves politics empty, moralized, and unaccountable.

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In today’s episode, we’re joined by Professor Ingo Schmidt for a wide-ranging discussion on economic theory and left politics. Dr. Schmidt is a Professor of Labour Studies at Athabasca University in British Columbia, Canada. His PhD research focused on trade unions and Keynesianism, and his work has placed him at the center of critical debates in political economy. Originally from Germany, Schmidt is a blacklisted economist there and has long been active in peace and international solidarity movements.

He has authored or edited several books and collections including:
Market populism, its right-wing offspring and left alternatives. (Policy Press, 2021)
Reading Capital Today: Marx After 150 Years (Pluto, 2017)
The Three Worlds of Social Democracy: A Global View (Pluto, 2015)

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In this episode, we are joined by political theorist Clyde W. Barrow to revisit the classic debates in Marxist state theory and to consider their renewed relevance in the present conjuncture. Barrow was a guest speaker in the CU “State Theory” course that ran earlier this year, and we thought we’d invite him back for a more detailed discussion—and to explore how these debates might help guide the left through its current impasse.

The conversation begins with the Poulantzas–Miliband debate of the 1960s and 1970s, situating it against the crisis of postwar Fordist–Keynesian capitalism and the broader effort by Marxists to move beyond instrumental or reductionist accounts of the capitalist state. Barrow explains why the debate remains foundational, what is often misunderstood about Miliband’s position, and why Marxist politics cannot afford to treat the state as a secondary or merely epiphenomenal problem.

From there, the discussion turns to globalization and contemporary political economy, drawing on Barrow’s book Toward a Critical Theory of States: The Poulantzas–Miliband Debate after Globalization. Rejecting the idea that globalization has rendered states powerless, Barrow emphasizes the central role played by states—particularly the U.S. state—in constructing and managing global capitalism. We then examine how Marxist state theory helps illuminate recent developments in trade policy under the Trump administration, including the structural constraints that capitalist states face when they pursue policies that run counter to dominant class interests, and what this may signal about the future of the global trade regime.

The latter part of the episode moves a bit more “into the weeds,” engaging debates over Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the long-standing question of what a socialist theory of government might look like. Barrow reflects on the limits of romanticized models such as the Paris Commune, the enduring tensions between democracy and state power in socialist strategy, and the usefulness of Poulantzas’s concept of authoritarian statism for understanding contemporary right-wing governments. The conversation concludes with a discussion of what Marxist state theory can tell us about the challenges facing democratic socialist governance today, using the case of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani to explore the structural and political limits confronting left projects within capitalist states.

Biographical note: In recent months, Barrow has also been a prominent public critic of managerial governance and political interference in higher education and has faced disciplinary action related to his speech and public commentary. While this episode focuses on theory rather than biography, his situation has made him an important contemporary reference point in ongoing debates over academic freedom and freedom of expression in U.S. universities.

Additional background: Clyde W. Barrow earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently Professor of Political Science at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and previously taught for many years at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Barrow is widely known for his contributions to Marxist state theory, political sociology, and the political economy of higher education. His major books include Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894–1928; Toward a Critical Theory of States: The Poulantzas–Miliband Debate after Globalization; The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat; and A Critique of Political Science: A History of the Caucus for a New Political Science (forthcoming), along with numerous influential articles on state power, class relations, and academic governance.

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Benjamin Studebaker talks with Class Unity about his new book, “The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut” (2023).

You can find him here: https://benjaminstudebaker.com/about/

And his book here: https://www.amazon.com/Chronic-Crisis-American-Democracy-Shut/dp/3031282094

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Please consider donating or joining today!

Vivek Chibber discusses his latest book, “The Class Matrix” (2022), as well as the so-called “cultural turn”, with Class Unity.

You can find his book here: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674245136

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Gary Roth talks to Class Unity about class, higher education, and consciousness. Gary teaches Sociology at Rutgers University. He is the author of “The Educated Underclass” (Pluto, 2019) and “Marxism in a Lost Century: A Biography of Paul Mattick” (Brill/Haymarket Books, 2015).

For a sample of his work, see his essay “The Overproduction of Intelligence” at the Brooklyn Rail (https://brooklynrail.org/2015/10/field-notes/the-overproduction-of-intelligence-the-reshaping-of-social-classes-in-the-united-states)

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