Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

/214/ The Leopard Lockdown pt2 ft. Adam Tooze (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-07 07:06:00
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Content

Our discussion with Adam Tooze about his book Shutdown continues.In this second part: is more dislocation necessary for politics to be reborn? Do global issues require global solutions – or do we need a return to national democratic politics first? And is the Covid crisis a preview of what's in store for us with climate change, and climate change policies?This is followed by the After Party, where Phil, George and Alex discuss some of the broader themes emerging from the interview.

Files

Comments

Sensible Captain

It was David Hume who showed the fallacy of deriving claims about what *ought* to be from that what merely *is*. Maybe Tooze should read some Hume. With some good luck he’ll find a revolutionary subject. Though I expect this is more a political strategy than a logical fallacy.

Davka Smolah Collective

I'll say this about Tooze's response re Italy crashing out: these arguments of crashing out being the greater evil sound just like the arguments against Brexit and in favor of Hillary Clinton. Italy will crash out because that is the unstable, chaotic, perverse thing to do, and those are the times we live in for now.

Eric Wheelis

OK! These are the only eggheads I'm paying for. Too sexy. Couldn't resist

skipmur

Anyone else having issues with comments disappearing on here?

Andrea

I am glad Tooze has understood how shitty it is to spend your twenties unemployed in Italy after staying here for a few days. Anyway, as much as I may disagree with his enamorment with technocratic savoir faire (and by the way, he speaks with a very different vocabulary with his high finance friends in other pods, also about environmental collapse, as Phil noted), I have to say I agree with him about Italy. Italy is not the UK, nor Greece. We do not have a national currency, nor are we in the unique position Greece was in 2015 (a left governement in power with a won referendum in their pockets and a comparatively small amount of money to be covered, and rumors of a bunch of international players ready to help -for their purposes yes, but still-). Things in Italy have been falling apart for a generation now, the health system was on the brink of collapse *before* covid and a lot of people live with very meagre subsidies. Family savings are being depleted and new jobs don't allow for social reproduction. The (shitty) NextGenEU plan, that grants Italy more money than any other country, is there for a reason, namely not making Italy collapse, even if those money will be used to help the moribund Italian capitalism. Financial disruption is not an option for working class people whose horizons have been stagnation for decades. It would mean immediate collapse of the systems on which millions of Italians rely on, today, to survive, that are on the verge of breaking down. We agree that the EU is a major player and responsible for this situation, and that it is not reformable in a socialist way. And that we should break away from it. But as you guys said, there is no political subject that can do that, least of all in Italy. Italy has less of a left than the US or the UK now. Leaving the EU would mean giving it to the disgusting Italian middle bourgeoisie (cause confindustria, the big industrialists, is pro-European) and leaving millions of people to live the worse effects. Who's plans should we follow? There is no realistic way of doing it now. We can talk about it and convince etc., but the consequences of a rightwing exit would *not* be good also for the left as a springboard for democratization or mobilizations from the left as one could say for the UK. I am more and more convinced there can be no forwarding of history in Italy in this conjuncture. Anyway, this was a great episode! I always like to listen to (or reading) Tooze even if I hate his neglect of class.

Paul Brewer

Tooze makes an important point in this series about the difficulty of decisions for actual policy-makers. There are real human costs to policies, and the dislocations created by radical changes can be severe. Imagine if Syriza had Grexited. We would not know the cost of remaining in the EuroZone, which is demonstrably not worse than the cure. But what forces might have come to the forefront of public antagonism towards that policy? Meanwhile, in another conversation Tooze played out a thought-experiment of Bernie winning the nomination and the election (as he would have done). That plausibly sounded like a much darker timeline than the one we are in, given what we know of what followed a Biden victory.

Henry

One of the most engaged interviews of Tooze I‘ve heard, his respect for your own work and prowess really shone through. Pretty cool.