Adam Tooze responds to listener's questions
Added 2023-08-31 05:00:08 +0000 UTCAdam Tooze returns to PTO to respond to the many excellent questions sent in by listeners. We talked about Perry Anderson's take on Adam's work in the New Left Review, why Adam - despite his engagement with Marxist thought and frequent appearances in left media and events - defines himself as a left liberal rather than a socialist. We also talked about his view of the significance of the US inflation reduction act, and the dire state of the UK economy. We went on to talk about the economic and social crisis in Lebanon and why Adam thinks the situation in the country and the broader region does not get the attention it deserves.
Thank you to everyone who sent in a question and to all of you for your continued support for the show.
Comments
thanks for this Lisa. I'll pass on your comments to Adam.
Politics Theory Other
2023-09-01 12:14:06 +0000 UTCThanks Adam for your thoughtful answer to the question as to why you refer to yourself as a "left liberal rather than a socialist" –– I am myself a German cultural historian at a pricy private university and I refer to myself as a socialist, but I am writing in large part because I was almost entirely compelled by your answer. Indeed, I share your . . . disgust is too strong, but distaste for the (online) performance of "socialism" by full professors who want to virtue signal or build a brand as a particular kind of public intellectual, where "socialism" is just configured as an affect or "identity" but one that is totally abstract. And it is indeed monstrous when these types claim a kind of breezy identity with, per the listener's original question, service workers in Argentina who are overcoming the challenges of illiteracy. It's tacky, we are indeed not the same and no one is helped by pretending. I would however ask you to consider this: it seems like you are claiming that you are structurally positioned within a hierarchy and those conditions matter, but that fact is also linked to a lifetime's ambition to establish yourself in his hierarchy. Gently: you must be aware that you share a profession, a field, and likely a copier in your department, with any number of people who are not and will never achieve your positionality within this hierarchy, who position themselves (and struggle!) as workers. And your role in that struggle is not irrelevant. I am NTT faculty at a private institution that has been decisively hostile to organizing attempts among adjunct and grad students––this is typical, and not only because such schools pay large sums to consultants to undermine unionization efforts. It is also simply the case that far too many colleagues who share your rank within an academic hierarchy are discomforted by the labor actions of their younger and more precarious colleagues insofar as they have fully internalized the idea that their success is owed to a value accrued through merit. And it is not at all tacky to foreground (rather than obscure) your "identity" with your grad student and adjuncts, who perhaps only really differ from you because their ambition is and will be stymied by our rather wretched 21st conditions. And when it comes to what you call yourself, it maybe doesn't matter––but in my experience, it is far more likely, when I am looking for allies among tenure folks for labor related organizing at my institution, that the ones that call themself "socialists" are far more inclined than the ones that call themselves "liberals."
Lisa
2023-08-31 22:34:58 +0000 UTC
