257 - The Alibi of Capital (feat. Timothy Mitchell)

It's World Cup season and so your co-hosts deliver their first ever sports corner. And then (9:38) drum roll please, we welcome the one and only Tim Mitchell back to the podcast to talk about his latest masterpiece, The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow (Verso, 2026). We start with Tim's model of the shareholder corporation as a machine built to produce present wealth at the expense of future encumbrances. Encumbering the future is also key to how Tim is rethinking the dynamics of economic growth since his earlier work, Carbon Democracy. We talk about how growth is really an alibi of capital, one that deeply misdirects language and knowledge and entraps us in a belief that capitalist growth delivers a public good. Tim argues that both the Industrial Revolution and Keynesianism can be better understood as strategic pivots within this long run process of capitalization and future capture. We turn from there to infrastructure as a strategy of capture via delay and deferral and the critical role that technology plays in promoting misunderstanding of our relationship to the future. Finally we turn toward the climate crisis and how it exemplifies the dynamics Tim outlines in the book. Hang in there, everyone, peace and love.