Hello and welcome to a world to win, a podcast from Tribune magazine. I'm Grace Blakeley

bringing you your weekly dose of socialist news, theory and action from around the world.

This week I speak to Neil Vellili, author of Utilitarianism, neoliberalism and the production

of uselessness. We discuss the role of utilitarian thinking in the development of capitalism, how utilitarianism

has collapsed into futilitarianism and the impact of this pervasive sense of futility on our individual

and collective sense of well-being. Thank you so much as always to our brilliant Patrons,

who make the show possible. If you want access to the full hour-long episode of this show,

as well as full-length interviews with previous guests like Naomi Klein and Dr Cornel West,

please support us at patreon.com slash a world to win pod. There's a link in the description.

If you want to support the show in another way, please give us a rating on iTunes to keep us

up in the charts and share your favorite episodes on social media, tagging at a world to win pod

on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Another big thank you to Reverend and the Makers,

who have let us use their track Heavyweight Champion of the World as our intro and outro music.

And now here is Neil Velili on the concept of futilitarianism.

Hi Neil, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of a world to win. How are you today?

I'm good, thank you. Grace, thanks for having me.

Good, it's great to have you here. Today we're going to be talking about your book

futilitarianism. And I was wondering, what was the question that you were trying to answer with this book?

Oh, that's a very good opening question. I think the key question I was trying to ask was

kind of looking around at every point and the sense that everyone seems to be trying to

this idea of maximizing utility, trying to make themselves as useful as possible, trying to

you know, working endlessly or trying to get a job, the kind of lever of unemployment,

...