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Capitalism and the Self

Barnaby Raine

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Guest Introduction

In this conversation, intellectual historian Barnaby Raine joins me in a wide-ranging, encyclopedic, and wonderful conversation about capitalism and the self.

Barnaby is working on his PhD at Columbia, where he studies the end of capitalism in social & political thought since Marx, with a focus on 'the problem of transition': the challenge of seeking to move beyond a system upon which our lives still depend.

Barnaby is also a teacher at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where he taught a course on "Capitalism and the Self", which I took and loved, the content of which is the topic of our conversation today.

Our basic question is this: how has capitalism, throughout its history, produced not only goods and services, but our subjective experience, our sense of what the self is and how we relate to other people?

Barnaby walks us through the intellectual history of this question, from Rousseau, to Dukheim, Lukács, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Foucault, Fanon, and finally, into the present.

This is a long (3 hrs) conversation. It's wonderful in its entirety, but if you'd prefer to jump to specific topics, there is a detailed time map below that can point you to specific segments.

Thinkers Covered

  • Rousseau (17:30) – Freedom as a condition that produces different kinds of individuals
  • Durkheim (33:30) – Anomie as failure of social solidarity and gap between goals and abilities
  • Lukács (46:00) – How capitalism expands and remakes society in its image
  • Adorno & Horkheimer (1:07:50) – Culture industry simultaneously creates and destroys individuality
  • Marcuse (1:32:00) – Possibility of less repressive societies through transformed social relations
  • Foucault (1:52:15) – Neoliberalism remakes the self through "homo economicus" and human capital
  • Fanon (2:18:00) – Universal freedom requires liberation of all groups equally

Key Takeaways

The discussion explores how "social structure produces particular kinds of agency" while maintaining that agency remains "deeply powerful and meaningful." The podcast argues for expanding what counts as "political" beyond state power to all social institutions.

Duration: 3 hours

Links from the Conversation

Referenced Works