Show Notes
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 ⚑ Gr
More from Notions of Progress
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
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
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
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.
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.