Episode 52: The TSSI in Latin America

Brendan and Andrew interview two young Mexican economists, Alan Deytha and Sebastián Hernández, about their discovery and promotion of the temporal single-system interpretation of Marx’s value theory (TSSI), and about their own research. Although (or because?) the TSSI eliminates the appearance of internal inconsistency in Marx’s original theory, it was not easy to discover this interpretation, as Alan and Sebastián recount. The existence of Marxian economics went unmentioned during their “neoliberal” university training, and leftist academics in Latin America are also hostile to the TSSI and routinely engage in censorship of it. Alan, Sebastián, and the co-hosts discuss the motives behind this censorship, as well as Sebastián’s efforts to break the blockade by translating numerous TSSI works into Spanish and publishing them, online and in forthcoming books. The interviewees also discuss their own research on topics such as profit maximization, work intensity, and the relation between inputs to production and output. In the current-events segment, the co-hosts discuss Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s bombshell revelations about how General Milley and Mike Pence responded to Trump’s drive to retain power after losing the 2020 election.