Adam Tooze: American Power in the Long 20th Century

The history of American power, as it is commonly written, is a weighty subject, a matter of military and economic heft, of ‘throw-weight’, of resource mobilisation and material culture, of ‘boots on the ground’. In his lecture, Adam Tooze examines an alternative, counterintuitive vision of America, as a power defying gravity. This image gives us a less materialistic, more fantastical and more unstable vision of America’s role in the world.
Read more from Adam Tooze in the LRB: lrb.me/toozeyt
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[@makedredd299]

1:10 - Tim Geithner; U.S. Treasury person 5:50 - U.S. was the “gravity” of earth 🌎 11:07 - U.S. is now also subject to the “gravity” of earth 🌎 🌍 🌏 13:28 - 100 years of 9 historic U.S. events; Overview 14:44 - Adam Tooze; Historian “Ordering rather than Order, and the Disordering effects of efforts at Ordering.” 16:28 - Start at the beginning of 1800’s 17:12 - 1898 U.S. Imperialist power 17:50 - 1916 U.S. Globalist power 18:47 - Woodrow Wilson; U.S. President 22:46 - 1920s Republican domestic priority of Financial Austerity and Tax cuts. 🏦 🏛 ⭐️ 25:59 - Great American Financial shocks/panics; 1857, 1873, 1893, 1896, 1907, 1920, 1929 26:49 - 1920s Great Depression 27:18 - 1930s U.S. Hyper militaristic power 31:51 - World War 2; One World, One War (1942) 33:48 - Post World War 2, Bretton Woods economic conference. 🏦 🏛 ⭐️ 36:24 - Marshall Plan not the same as Bretton Woods... 41:10 - Cold War: Asia 43:30 - U.S. President Nixon abandons the Gold peg in 1971. Which results in inflation in G7 countries and Switzerland. 🏦 🏛 ⭐️ 44:10 - Keynesian era 50s to 60s. Start of Neoliberalism or the Paul Volcker shock 1979. 🏦 🏛 ⭐️ 45:07 - Cold War: Europe 1980s, Reagan & Gorbachev 🇺🇸 🇷🇺 47:13 - Concluding phase of the talk 1:01:56 - Challenges in 2019 and going forward; China and Climate Change 🇨🇳 ☀️ 🔥 1:03:20 - Q&A

[@meltingpoint97]

Thanks for the timestamps king

[@andreabowman-butler6130]

I guess I will be filing this one under difficult yet necessary conversations. 101:03. is by far the most important message to me. It’s derived from Americas original sin, Black Americans have lived in this country for 10 generations or more, collectively they are treated and regarded as second class citizens, by white Americans who’ve voluntarily come to this country to exchange European nationality for white American identity and the benefits it offers. Many of the newcomers, via Ellis Island, Refugees, and Evacuee status, are elevated to 1st class citizen within 1-2 generations. It’s the American way. This is precisely how a country over plays it’s hand, the crazy part is it’s on international display for the world to see. So each generation kicks the can down the road, for the next generation to address. Recent generations have a genius response to the question of how to respond to slavery, and racism, “it’s not my issue to contend with, “I never owned slaves” is what they say. To that I say, we know this, that’s what Juneteenth is all about, sadly it wasn’t taught in many of the American schools so it’s really no surprise that you don’t have the skills nor the historical reference to react with less defensive response. Many people are learning that, “many of us, have been lied to by people who loved us, because they thought that they were protecting us.” The larger question is whether or not you’ve benefited as a result whiteness in America, you see there can be no whiteness without blackness. If you’ve benefitted as a white American at the expense of blackness, then racism as a tool has paid off well. I’d argue if it did not, many White Americans arriving to the country over the last 3-5 generations might have left for a different country to call home. Structurally, systemically, and institutionally, you’d never have to own a slave, to benefit in a America as a White American. Kicking the can down the road may feel good today, but it should be obvious there is a dead end approaching, with diminishing road in site. The dynamics are as he stated, complex, the inevitabilities are magically and eerily poetic. A note about feminism. “The “what about me/ us” response aids and abets American racism.

[@executivedirector7467]

@@andreabowman-butler6130 Well said on all points. One of the real tragedies of US social change was the way the women's movement, which had been a key part of the anti-slavery movement, just walked away after 1865.

[@mcgilcol]

This guy's output is simply prodigious!

[@kamarijordy996]

Instablaster

[@adamfred]

@@kamarijordy996 Toozian levels of output

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

He's a very bright lad -- but is a victim of popular mythology about gold and the US dollar in this, as elsewhere.

[@TheSpiritOfTheTimes]

Here we go! Our main man Tooze!

[@londonreviewofbooks]

Enjoy!

[@etbadaboum]

@@londonreviewofbooks Thanks LRB

[@soapbxprod]

Says someone with 34 subscribers and no content in 13 years. LMAO

[@robertortiz-wilson1588]

​@London Review of Books (LRB) he's awful. Here he's acting as nothing more than a panicking WEF narcissistic stooge.

[@arfanr8228]

Thank you for uploading

[@Eris123451]

An interesting and compelling narrative, one with which I'm largely in agreement and some excellent questions, well worth watching

[@IslamicRageBoy]

Awesome 👏🏻

[@maxheadrom3088]

52:00 I understand he's oversimplyfing for time but I think there are some mistakes there (not sure, to be clear)

[@adamfred]

Entertaining and predictive Now that all critique has been distilled down to the astronaut with a gun meme the next challenge is to work out why it "always has been"

[@eoliver437]

This guy is impressive

[@robertortiz-wilson1588]

No he isn't.

[@anderb9311]

nice ....

[@maxheadrom3088]

30:00 Interestingly, it was the Japanese who first noticed the importance of air force after a demonstration by a non mainstream American military person. After WWI, as part of the effort to reduce arms races there was a treaty to reduce war ship numbers. Roosevelt, before becomeing president, had a high ranking position in the US Navy. (sorry for the lack of precision!)

[@executivedirector7467]

Roosevelt was undersecretary of the Navy in WW1. Sort of the number two civilian in the department.

[@executivedirector7467]

The US Army was a world leader in early aviation. In fact the first person to die in an airplane accident was a US Army Signal Corps lieutenant.

[@roniquebreauxjordan1302]

Understanding the last 25 years

[@dhruvsharma1145]

The characterization of Wilson seems a little off. It isn't as if Wilson didn't want to participate in the war. He really did. The public was in fact not willing to go to war. Maybe I have missed something..

[@---jc7pi]

You are just wrong. He really didn't he thought a neutral america would have the largest power. And in fact large part of the public did, read Michael Neiberg book on WW1 in America.

[@quincy8093]

His interpretations of the wilson presidency are a bit mote fleshed out in The Deluge, if ya wanna read that

[@soapbxprod]

Wilson was a racist collectivist fascist elitist dick.

[@williamfrancis5367]

@@soapbxprod. He wasn't a fascist.

[@christopherdennis4280]

Did he say a truly Napoleonic figure!?

[@executivedirector7467]

Magnificent

[@robertortiz-wilson1588]

*idiotic

[@AlbertSchram]

Excellent and simulating talk. As an economic historian, however, I found it a bit too focused on the short-term political developments and personalities of elected leaders to my taste. Globalisation should also be seen as a UK-US hegemon supported long-term process of increase in trade, migration and international financial transactions. The heydays were the second quarter of the 19th century when the UK was hegemon, and the 1950s and 1960s for the US was hegemon. The other decades, globalisation is puttering along, but never really going back to a world of isolated polities that do not trade. China or Russia are not ahping the world in a similar fashion.

[@yttean98]

When do you compare Tooze's thinking and writings against those from Ferguson's, any comments anyone?

[@yttean98]

I understand Historians love to talk and most of the contents are overly extended that is padded(not concise), this talk is in a similar vein, ie the talk could easily fit into less than 30-40min.

[@DebatingWombat]

So, what do you suggest be cut?

[@DebatingWombat]

Assuming you mean Niall Ferguson, I would say that Ferguson is the prime exponent of conservative authoritarian imperialism whose reputation was initially built on British Empire nostalgia and City of London capitalist euphoria in the UK, then translated into neoconservative and Wall Street think tank backed writing in the US. In short, Ferguson may be fun to read for his provocative counter factuals (eg. arguing in favour of a German victory in WWI as “the lesser evil”), but is mostly useful as a view of the mentality of US neoliberal imperialism with its revisionist, rosy view of the British Empire and how they think the US should fill a similar role (basically, being the court historian of the post 9/11 Bush era). In this view, the US “mission civilicatrice” is twofold: To enforce radical capitalism of the Wall Street variety and to ensure that no other power arise to threaten either the premier US position or to defy US geopolitical aims in various regions (especially in the Middle East), i.e. US global and regional hegemony. Whereas Ferguson has long ago transitioned into almost pure, partisan polemics, Tooze is more of a mainstream academic economic historian.

[@d.mavridopoulos66]

I think that one major difference between them, is that Tooze seriously engages with the writings of thinkers such as Lenin, Trotsky, Habermas, Foucault and the Frankfurt school, while Ferguson avoids them on principle. Also because of his avowed and outspoken endorsement of the US empire, he is less inclined to comment on it's less attractive aspects. I think Ferguson is a riveting and excellent writer, but hasn't come close to producing anything as good as 'Deluge'.

[@soapbxprod]

@@d.mavridopoulos66 All mass murderers and postmodernist psychotics. You're a troll with 0 subscribers in 9 years. Enjoy your life of insignificance.

[@username5475]

Pissing out rather than pissing in.

[@Aubury]

A tour de force...

[@twogsds]

The last few moments when Adam spoke about the reality of climate change and China and India blew my mind! I have always believed that it is essential that we need to share technology to speed up the move towards reduction of climate changing emissions, such a disappointment that this is still a sticking point!

[@timblackburn1593]

It is falsely modest of this biased perspective to suggest Anglo-Iranian, Chevron, RDS, Exon their shareholders and directors were and are the spectator

[@lukalisjak2106]

0:58 He's on to something but he's wrong. In 1968, Nixon failed to capture the South, all southern states voted for Carter in 1976, Clinton won many of them in 1992 and 1996. Also, just look at the map of congressional elections: the South remains firmly in Democratic hands until the 1990s. The real game changer is Newt Gingrich's revolution, and the platform is not xenophobia but rather religious values. Still, the culture wars shift does create the sort of tension Tooze describes. A party of the business elite, rooted in the more poorer areas of the Union, that has to appease the voters by shifting their attention towards identity issues. But you have sth similar happening in the Democratic party too.

[@thisprojectisretired1055]

Very interesting

[@mjxw]

I think very highly of Tooze's book, "The Deluge" but I must say I found this talk unconvincing. He continually ascribes agency, planning, and an overarching narrative to things that seem to me episodic and spontaneous. So long as the United States was committed to free movement of capital - and unless the democracy were to abandon core tenets of its emphasis on individual rights I don't see how it could have been abandoned - much of the "ordering" he discusses was simply the result of market forces. Namely, the supply and demand for capital, which American markets both provided and were receptive to in previously-unseen quantities. And as a corollary, I think that's why the spectre of Trump was so unsettling to him. If post-war prosperity and stability in the West was the result of conscientious American policymakers, then an irresponsible loose cannon in the White House is indeed cause for concern! But if it was actually the result of infinite individual market participants operating in their own interest, then short of destroying the market itself, it doesn't really matter who sits at the Resolute desk.

[@safardebon9720]

Don't be so naive ... it is ordering at the point of a gun that naive people think of as market forces, as the last 50 yrs of US behaviour has shown

[@Rnankn]

Markets are political creations, possible only because of state power. Hence, people who believe in markets are unsettled by loose cannons with political power. Markets don’t self regulate because they are an aspirational idealism.

[@jefjelten9684]

He is ignorant on the issue of emissions in stating that the US is only a small %. The US owns a large part of CHina, India and the rest of the worlds emissions when we outsource all production to them we outsource OUR waste stream.

[@DebatingWombat]

Yeah, and even discounting the outsourced manufacturing, the US remains at a clear second place in total world CO2 emissions (not to speak of per capita...). Sure, what China does will have a huge impact, but it’s unlikely that it will be possible to limit the rising global temperatures without meaningful US action as well. This is particularly concerning, given that climate change denial remains politically viable (and popular) within the US and has unfortunately become a part of the culture wars, meaning that simply acknowledging it almost automatically places you in the “liberal/leftist” category, and hence that climate change denial has basically become a litmus test for US “conservatives”.

[@DARKXASSASINS]

I think his point has more to do with future emissions. If countries like India and Nigeria (etc) develop in a similar fashion to how the U.S. and China did then their emissions will be so great that any action the U.S. itself has taken on its own will be marginal.

[@DebatingWombat]

That may be true, but it ends up sounding as an argument for the US not doing much or anything at all, based on a hypothetical future in which less developed countries’ CO2 emissions increase at a level nullifying US initiatives. Considering the wealth and technology prowess of the richest parts of the world (basically the US and Europe if we take a per capita view) this is where solutions have to be developed and employed first. Considering the prevalence of climate change denial in the US, it becomes even more problematic to get the US political system to take action, if you start out with an attitude that postulates that US actions don’t matter (and again: If the US doesn’t take action the global results will definitely not be enough). This defeatist attitude actually forms the final step on the “sliding scale” of climate change denial, which goes something like this: 1) Climate change isn’t real. 2) Okay, climate change is real, but has nothing to do with human activity. 3) Yes, climate change is real and human activity is a main part of it, but the results won’t be serious. 4) Well, climate change is real, man made and serious, but we can mitigate the effects with “tech fixes” as they appear or by using climate/geo-engineering. 5) Right, climate change is real, man made, serious and can’t be easily mitigated once it has set in, but it’s too late and expensive to do anything about it and others probably won’t do anything either, so any actions taken by us will be pointless anyway. In addition, there is the moral argument that of the current CO2 in the atmosphere originating from human caused emissions, the vast majority have been emitted either directly or indirectly by the US and Europe, meaning that the countries in these areas already “owe a global CO2 debt”.

[@williamfrancis5367]

Unless the US decides to go full autarky and cause East Asia into economic collapse, it really is up to China to decarbonise.

[@jefjelten9684]

@@williamfrancis5367 So you think China (India too) should continue to manufacture over 80% of what we consume but do it without releasing carbon? That is not even remotely possible. The problem is infinite consumption of resources on a FINITE planet. America is less than 5% of the population and consumes over a quarter of all resources. Figure it out man. This also explains US wars and sanctions in case you didn't know.

[@scottscottsdale7868]

His praise of Geitner is effusive. I Stealy hope someone speaks so glowingly about the public health officials battling against COVID and facing 1,000 deaths a day in NY in March/April 2020. And don’t forget those around the world. THAT WAS TRULY HEROIC. And in the face of the monster in the WH.

[@SuperMookles]

Bit of an odd comment, given that this lecture was delivered well before the pandemic.

[@scottscottsdale7868]

Not an odd comment at all. My point is the pandemic is way worse than the economic crises of 2018. Thise having to deal with it deserve huge praise. That was my point.

[@Keithlfpieterse]

Please be so kind as to say: new-clear and not New-queue-ler! The word is nuclear not "knew-queue-ler".

[@J-SH06]

The panic with the race and feminism questions came up. Cringe. 🥴

[@MrDXRamirez]

Fortunately, the rest of the world does not have to suffer from the fall of the American empire. The decline of the US as a world power is a pretty fast process and faster when its own house is in disorder, chaos and disarray. The US taxpayer should be the beneficiary from the dividend in less military spending as the empire folds up and goes home. That will be up to the democrats and republicans who are likely to use that dividend to cushion the wrong social class from the pain of a dying empire on the American working class. In 45 years while the US built up its military and consequently ballooned its internal police force into a standing army, the rest of the world was busy making advances in many fields that the US has become less significant than it was coming out of the war in 1945 and stands really far behind nations that were then enslaved colonies are today technology whizzes and rare earth material refinishers and suppliers for the biggest markets in the world.

[@250txc]

Who cares on these people personality ..

[@SBCBears]

"American genocide"-- you need a broad definition of "genocide" to conclude that.

[@quincy8093]

According to the UN: Article II In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. So yeah it does in fact apply here

[@SBCBears]

@@quincy8093 I've read it. See how broad it is? Now tell me, how would the following NOT fit: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJnVXqd5r6imbbs

[@robertortiz-wilson1588]

​@@quincy8093 And one of the dumbest definitions out there. It's so broad it's actually hilarious. Killing isis members in their native homeland across the middle east would fall under that stupid definition of genocide. That UN is a joke.

[@Otto72ish]

Some interesting stuff, but far too verbose. A better presenter could cover the same ground in 30 minutes, and with more clarity. The Q&A is the best part.

[@michaelsladnick5482]

Maybe you have ADHD.

[@sebastianaguiarbrunemeier9192]

A lot of flowery academic language around unoriginal ideas. You could have said this in 15 minutes if you got to the damn point.

[@clivestegosaurus4136]

Sometimes additional context is interesting

[@robertortiz-wilson1588]

​@@clivestegosaurus4136 he's an egotistical WEF Globalist, insecure and upset about his club's power and influence being threatened.

[@drugilbert2447]

Tooze conviently omits who financed the Japanese and German military, not to mention the Bolshevik coup in Russia.

[@nickbrodziak611]

Great point. Hes a creature of the deep state and big banks

[@afoose]

That's just the tip of the iceberg - emphasis on the "berg"

[@williamfrancis5367]

@@nickbrodziak611. You forgot to use your triple parentheses.

[@williamfrancis5367]

Aliens? Who else would arm fascists and communists at the same time.

[@devilprooftiger]

'The Wages of Destruction'. ...He wrote the book on it.

[@henalihenali]

This is intellectual masturbation. People who truly understand, explain their concepts in simple and elegant terms without over complex terminology.

[@joeedh]

No historian can actually tell the history of the past 50 years, so this guy just goes with what was the liberal consensus (we lost primary elections in the 70s and 80s and 90s and general elections in the 2010s cause Racist White Dudes). I guarantee that he did not believe any of it. You can see it in how he tries to flesh out his narrative in the Q&A. This is a man who feared for his job if he told the truth. We're talking a truth that, in the grand scheme of things, is not particularly radical: the U.S. is a large diverse democracy (even the hated white men are diverse) and over the past 50 years racial and class conflict had varying influences over events.

[@soapbxprod]

This is total nonsense.