Gangster Capitalism

the course

We have reached Apex Gangster Capitalism, which is why I think it might be a good time to offer a course that I taught in Winter of 2022, “Gangster Capitalism” as part of my day job. The course was a bumpy ride. I presented too much material to a group of students just emerging from COVID lockdowns. I am going to try it again here as a feature for paid subscribers of CLiuAnon.

I think we have to understand Trump’s gangsterism in the context of what happened to the world during the period of intensive globalization, managed by “progressive” bureaucrats against which local populations rebelled at the ballot box and in the harbors.

If you are interested in following along, please read Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Crime Empire of Naples Organized Crime System.

The series Gomorrah is loosely based on Saviano’s journalism. Gomorrah is an account of the global economy during the effervescent years of economic “globalization.” The crime system he describes is capitalism organized to adapt to free trade, with the port of Naples playing a critical role in the promotion of crime and trade.

This course will be offered in eight zoom meetings. The full syllabus will be posted soon, with a schedule of screenings and reading behind the paywall.

If you are interested in following this course, please read this short essay by Robert Warshow: The Gangster as Tragic Hero.

Here is the unedited course description.

Gangster Capitalism is a course that will focus on the gangster narrative genre, looking at the ways in which ideologies of violence, success and individualism in capitalism come into narrative crisis at specific moments of 20th and 21st century economic collapse. Beginning with the Great Depression, the 1970s and then concluding with the 2008 financial collapse, this course will look at the gangster narratives that each historical moment produced both as escapist entertainment and reflection on crisis and contradiction. Films to be screened and studied include Little Caesar, Scarface, both versions, Goodfellas, American Gangster, The Godfather Trilogy and prestige TV series, the Sopranos, and Gomorrah.