In this new episode of the This Machine Kills podcast, co-hosts Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr. interview Aaron Benanav about the theoretical foundations of his proposal for a multi-criterial socialist economy. This is the first episode of a two-parter on the topic.
A summary can be found below:
We’re joined by Aaron Benanav to get into his magisterial essays laying out a vision of society beyond capitalism. In part 1 of our conversation, we lay out his incisive analysis of how capitalism is a powerful system built on the obsessive, relentless optimization of one criteria: production for profit maximization. All other criteria are subordinated to this logic to the detriment of all priorities, values, or goals that we could pursue. The failures of previous alternatives to capitalism can be traced to a failure to change the goals, not just the tools of the system. Any real alternative must go beyond simply swapping in new means — the ways we achieve the optimization of economic efficiency — while maintaining the same purpose. They must change the ends of the system: from one criterion to rule them all to the flourishing of a multi-criterial economy.
You can listen to this episode here.
You can read Aaron Benanav’s two papers outlining his proposal for a multi-criterial socialist economy here and here.