Literate Machine

Literate Machine explores media through the lens of culture, history, and politics, examining the ways capitalism, power, and ideology shape and are shaped by the stories we love. Written and performed by Eric Rosenfield, Literate Machine is available as blog entries, newsletter, podcast, and YouTube channel. Literate Machine is available on Apple Podcasts and finer podcast apps everywhere.

Ground News and the War on Truth 07/29/2026

25k Subcribers Q&A 07/13/2026

Why Infinite Growth is not Possible 06/21/2026

Anti-Life or How Capitalism Will Die (with Math) 05/26/2026

Mooks 04/30/2026

Anarchy and the Promise of Revolution (V for Vendetta) 03/24/2026

Superman and the Case for Open Borders 01/19/2026

Gaiman/Trump and the New Thought Behind the Abuse 09/20/2025

Our Coming Cyberpunk Dictatorship (Snow Crash) 04/13/2025

Gravity's Rainbow Over Palestine 11/11/2024

What Do We Do Now? 11/07/2024

10,000 Subscriber Q&A 09/24/2024

How Capitalism Becomes Feudalism (Severance and Technofeudalism) 06/25/2024

Elon Musk, Wokeness, and the Myth of Meritocracy 04/01/2024

Elon Musk, Wokeness, and the Myth of Meritocracy How Tony Stark, the myth of meritocracy, and our unspoken beliefs about genius explain Elon Musk and the (re)turn of eugenics to the right wing Blog version and information about podcast and mailing list: If you enjoyed this, please tell someone, as word-of-mouth is how projects like this grow. For as little as $1 an episode, you can get exclusive authors notes, excerpts, and early access to episodes by supporting me on Patreon at: Thanks to my current Patrons: Kathryn Carruthers, Gabi Ghita, Hristo Kolev, Kevin Cafferty, Ulysse Pence, Wilma Ezekowitz, IndustrialRobot, Not Invader Zim, Jason Quackenbush, Arthur Rosenfield, and Nancy S. Rosen Bibliography and Further Reading Interview with Stan Lee where he talks about the creation of Iron Man: How Albert Einstein was no "lone genius": The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn, 1962 How many filaments Edison tried in creating the lightbulb: Talented and Gifted programs and their legacy of Eugenics: On the creation of the IQ Test: Alfred Binet thought intellegence couldn't be reduced to a number: while Lewis Terman disagreed: Terman study subjects results more about socioeconomic status than intelligence: and the high performers and low performers had about the same IQ: The Bell Curve is based on junk, fraudulent "science": What Intelligence Tests Miss, Keith E. Stanovich, 2009 On "Gifted Kig Syndrome": Local education systems are funded by property taxes: DeSantis campaign says "woke" is awareness of systemic injustice: Someone working 40 hours a week at minimum wage is still below the poverty line: Why DEI was created: Study where resumes were sent out with stereotypically black and white names and their results: On the long, toxic history of "Cultural Marxism": Cultural Marxism and the "vast, Jewish conspiracy": The "Hyperloop" is an idea that can never work: and was just a ploy to disrupt the development of trains in California: Wired story from 2018 about Musk mistreating his employees: Some More News on Musk: Tesla cars fall apart in motion: Tesla cars suspected of turning off self-driving moments before a crash: Musk not interested in labor laws or regulations: More on Musk mistreating employees: Musk spreading lies on Twitter: Musk antisemitic tweets: Musk racist tweets about asylum-seekers: Musk the eugenicist: /episode/index/show/literatemachine/id/30622593

How Will Capitalism End? The Orville, Eduard Bernstein, and What is to Be Done? 11/16/2023

How Will Capitalism End? The Orville, Eduard Bernstein, and What is to Be Done? What does comedic science fiction television show The Orville tell us about how capitalism will end? How did Germany go from having the largest and most powerful socialist movement in the world to finding its movement gutted and its country given over to fascists? How did Eduard Bernstein, despite his best intentioned, upend the Marxist movement and provide cover for those who wanted to destroy it? And was he actually right all along? All this and more will be answered! The previous video, Star Trek into Socialism, is not necessary for appreciating this one, but the two inform each other: https://youtu.be/LJKDF0BwepI Also mentioned in this video: * Loki and How Conservatives Become Fascists: https://youtu.be/kBfTYUadGts * How the Hippies Became Yuppies: The Trial of the Chicago 7: https://youtu.be/LONtgVNaa7A?si=DvWznzsFnMZyYHR2 Not by me: Using Corporate Governance to Understand Socialism: https://youtu.be/MmeIGcI60oc Text of the episode and other ways in which you can access it at https://literatemachine.com/2023/11/16/how-will-capitalism-end-the-orville-eduard-bernstein-and-what-is-to-be-done/ Excerpts of deleted material on the Patreon at https://patron.com/ericrosenfield, which you can get access to for as little as $1 an episode, and also get exclusive author’s notes, draft excerpts, and early access to episodes. There’s also a whole thing I wanted to get into here about the role of identity politics in all this, but it was too complicated and too much of a digression from the main point, so I’ll probably talk about it there. Bibliography My primary literary sources were: - *The Preconditions of Socialism* by Eduard Bernstein, 1899, edited and translated by Henry Tudor, 1993 (originally published in English as *Evolutionary Socialism*) - *Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology*, edited and translated by Marius S. Ostrowski, 2021 - *The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism* by Manfred B. Steger, 1997 - *The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism* by Peter Gay, 1952 - *The German Revolution 1917-1923* by Pierre Broué, 1971 (translation 2005) - The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, 1848 - Capital Vol. 1 by Karl Marx, 1867 - Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx, 1875 - “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution” by Karl Marx, 1848 - “Speech to the International Workingman’s Association” by Karl Marx, 1863 - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engles - Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels, 1877 - Reform or Revolution? by Rosa Luxemburg - “The Russian Revolution” by Rosa Luxemburg, 1918 - *Capital in the 21st Century* by Thomas Piketty, 2014 More sources can be found at https://literatemachine.com/2023/11/16/how-will-capitalism-end-the-orville-eduard-bernstein-and-what-is-to-be-done/ /episode/index/show/literatemachine/id/28675068

Star Trek into Socialism: or Who Deserves the Future 04/12/2023

Star Trek into Socialism: or Who Deserves the Future Does Star Trek show us what socialism looks like? What would it look like if we organized society democratically instead of allowing a few people to control most of the resources? Bibliography and Further Reading * Obviously, the work of Marx and Engels is key to this piece. Particular texts I drew on here include The Civil War in France (1871) (modern editions contain the first draft and the address on the Civil War) and The Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). Marx's "La Liberte" speech (1872) is where he proposes that some countries might transition to communism peacefully: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm * One of my chief inspirations for this piece and in general is the book Socialism: Past and Future (1989) by Michael Harrington, founder of the Democratic Socialists of America. Socialism does a good job of summing up the history of socialism, the rise of democratic socialism, the problems we faced in the 20th century, and where we might go from here. * The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) (also published in English as Evolutionary Socialism) by Eduard Bernstein is a fascinating book by the father of the democratic socialist movement and the idea of achieving socialists goals through gradual reform. A controversial figure both in his time and today, both with orthodox Marxists and modern democratic socialists, his story is one I find endlessly fascinating. Much as during the Social Democratic period of the mid-20th century, when Preconditions was first published, it seemed as if gradual socialism was working in Bernstein's native Germany. Then of course the First World War brought Germany to its knees. Bernstein himself, who'd become a member of the Reichstag, would die three weeks before Hitler came to power, undid all the achievements of his party, executed its leaders, and most of the members of Bernstein's ethnic group. While researching this piece, I also drew on The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (1952) by Peter Gay, and the excellent introduction to the English translation of Preconditions from 1993 by translator Henry Tudor. * For the history of the Russian Revolution, I highly recommend China Mieville's October (2017), a highly readable retelling of the story of the revolution and the events around it. * I am highly indebted to the work of Richard Wolff, whose Democracy at Work (2012) and associated website and YouTube channel opened my eyes to the possibilities of worker cooperatives as a tool for workers to control the means of production within a capitalist society and so create a mechanism not only to improve the lives of workers in the near term, but to build up worker power and control in the long term. * I'm also indebted to the continued work of Cory Doctorow in and out of his Pluralistic project, with too many useful and informative pieces to list here. For example, Pluristic turned me onto how municipal broadband providers are the only ones with consistent customer satisfaction, or his piece in Boing Boing about how the notion of the "tragedy of the commons" is based on lies and fraud. Other important pieces include "What Comes After Neoliberalism" and "Excuseflation". * Carlos Maza's excellent video essay "The Pay for It Scam" is essential for understanding the ways in which only programs for the social good are ever asked "how will you pay for it", while corporate subsidies, tax cuts, and the military budget piles on the debt. * For more on the "primitive communism" of the Iroquois and other native tribes, I recommend The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber. * Most of my research on Gene Roddenberry comes from the book The Impossible Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek (2016) by Lance Parkin * More on how modern corporations actually show the power of a centralized economy, a piece inspired by the book The People's Republic of Walmart (2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRepEvmCCIg A larger bibliography can be found at: https://literatemachine.com/2023/04/11/star-trek-into-socialism/#paragraph /episode/index/show/literatemachine/id/26515836

Loki and How Conservatives Become Fascists 08/21/2022

Loki and How Conservatives Become Fascists Marvel's Loki shows us what fascism looks like, and how it comes to take root within innocuous conservatism. Corrections: • Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Bros are not Jewish. Actual examples of Jewish funders of the right include Sheldon Adelson and Ike Perlmutter. I may upload a revised version of this audio with the names changed. • Malthus never directly said that the poor and unskilled should be liquidated, but he did oppose aid to the poor on the theory that they should be allowed to naturally die out if they were of no use to society in order to preserve resources. Interstitial music: "I Can’t Stop" by Punch Deck | Music promoted by Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License Bibliography and Further Reading David Brooks article on the foundations of conservatism: George W. Bush says he looked in Putin's eyes and "saw his soul": Mussolini on Totalitarianism and Fascism: "Ur Fascism", Umberto Eco Rich Scott wants to raise taxes on the poorest: 10% of Americans own 89% of the stock market: Right-wing proposals to nationalize Facebook: Laura Ingraham on punishing Disney: Texas arresting parents of trans kids: Republicans allowed the Child Tax Credit to expire, throwing 3.7 million children into poverty: FDR achievements: Half of Americans are "not American in any meaningful sense": More than half of Republicans believe in Great Replacement Theory: 77% of drug traffickers are US citizens, and come through ports of call: The border is not a "war zone": Growing number of Republicans think Democracy is wrong for America: GOP seizing the election system: 401ks are a scam: America's disappearing middle class: Peter Thiel's essay on how democracy is not compatible with freedom: Republicans becoming anti-democratic in charts: More information on the Backfire Effect, where people dig into their beliefs when presented with contrary evidence: /episode/index/show/literatemachine/id/24120714

The Confused Ideology of Schitt's Creek 02/23/2022

Defund the Paw Patrol 10/12/2021

How the Hippies Became Yuppies: The Trial of the Chicago 7 07/03/2021

Pixar's Soul: Finding Yourself Under Capitalism 03/27/2021

Why Stories? Henry Fool and What the Artist is For 01/22/2021

Doom, Myst, and the War for the Soul of Video Games 11/20/2020

Cerebus: Misogyny and Madness 08/28/2020

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