Thx Michael P: Exactly right, that was the article-interview I meant. Thx for dredging it up - At least I got the ‘China’ connection right!
I think it is a very telling interview-response. What it tells us is about both him and about Perry Anderson. Actually it is a bit in my opinion, like the pot calling the kettle black…. So I think - & perhaps I thought then, although in truth I cannot clearly recall that - one key statement of Tooze is this: "I don’t start from the premise that I already know what the structure is, because I think that’s an open question—history is still unfolding in dramatic ways”…. Hence his "medias res”. Anderson has always had this love of throwing up abstruse words, the more abstruse the better. He at times appears to have gobbled up for breakfast the last 50 pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. At least Tooze does semi-defines it as “in the midst of things." So he justifies being in the middle of things as “how can anyone who considers themselves a Marxist intellectual believe that they think and act in anything other than in medias res?“ I mean really - who has argued that we are not in the middle of things…? I confess I do not understand, maybe someone can enlighten us. More self justification: "I don’t start from the premise that I already know what the structure is, because I think that’s an open question—history is still unfolding in dramatic ways”... Ultimately I guess my response is - really? What more do you need other than know about the structure of Capital at its core? He goes on to say that his essential position is that he is in the game, trying to make a difference. This is better than what he calls "a degenerate academic Marxism that imagines itself perched in some ivory tower” does. Isn't this a strange choice to present - either sitting in an academic ivory tower in the UK (as presumably Anderson now emeritus from I think it was Los Angeles) and Tooze in Columbia…? Is this the *only* choice he can see….? What “media res” did Marx and Engels live in as they saw the end of the 1848 revolutions; and then the end of the First International… ? They were surely in a ‘downturn’ of the revolution as well. Tooze's rationale for all this hand waving is that others are not achieving much other than a “cosplay”: "So, very little is gained for understanding present-day politics by engaging in a historical Disneyland where we cosplay as Lenin, Trotsky, Wilson, imagining who we would have been and what we would have done. That’s playing at history. It’s the kind of boyish stuff people play on computers. We need to grow up. There’s too much at stake in the world right now. Things are too urgent. We need to be in the present, as best we can, fully engaged in medias res." Well he got something right: ""This engagement comes with heavy responsibility. The Biden stimulus experiment may not end well." Enough time on Adam Tooze for me anyway! I shall still read him… but wondering who in the IMF he has passed it by, perhaps his friend Christine... H -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40785): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40785 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117927517/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
