Adam Tooze over at his substack, Chartbook:
2008 and the years that followed delivered a historic shock.
The vertiginous panic of the financial crisis, the protracted eurozone crisis that followed, the Occupy movement and the “inequality moment”, BLM, mounting anxiety about fascistoid politics, the radicalization of the climate crisis, escalating geopolitical tension, all this and more has led to a search for big, urgent, powerful frames of analysis. Anything less seems inadequate to the moment.
One of the responses on the progressive political side has been a return to what you might call classical foundations. For some this was Marxism. For others, myself included, it involved a return to Keynes, left Keynesianism and currents like MMT and the Green New Deal.
This turn was “necessary”. It has been intellectually and politically productive. But it also came at a price.
What I worry about is a double evasion of history, both “real” and intellectual, if such a distinction may be permitted:
a. In real terms: by anchoring critique in classical social theories that were shaped above all by the 1900-1950 moment, we risk underestimating the radicalism of the present. This is not to underestimate the dramas of the early 20th century – I hope I may be spared that accusation. But to insist on the novelty, unprecedented scale and pace of our current predicament.
More here.
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