One of the critical distinguishing features of the communist movement of the 19th century was its insistence, in the words of Marx, “that the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.” Where other movements were willing to advocate on behalf of the working class or other oppressed groups, the First International demanded that it be the oppressed who liberated themselves. It may seem a leap from that vision to the fact that all New Yorkers, in the next few years, will get childcare for their two-year-olds, and once that is established, perhaps their younger children as well. But I don’t think it is as much of a leap as we sometimes think. One year ago, […]
Today is the birthday of Thomas Mann, who was born exactly 150 years ago. In honor of Mann, I’m posting this essay I wrote, several years back, about him, The Magic Mountain, covid, the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel, and late capitalism. The essay never got published, and I’d forgotten about till I read the notification this morning from Lit Hub, that today is his birthday. I first read The Magic Mountain in the summer of 1990, a year after I graduated college and just before I was starting graduate school. I was house-sitting in New Haven and studying German. I didn’t know anyone, and back in those days, that kind of pervasive, seemingly permanent, solitude, made me anxious (nowadays, I struggle […]
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Categories
Economies, Literature, Political Theory, The Left
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Tags Ernest Mandel, late capitalism, Max Weber, The Magic Mountain, Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, Werner Sombart, Wolfgang Streeck
In his classic lecture, “Science as a Vocation,” which he delivered in Munich in November 1917, the sociologist Max Weber had this to say about the university scene in the United States: The American sees a teacher at the front of the room and thinks: This man is selling me his knowledge and methods for my father’s money, just like the woman in the grocery store sells my mother her vegetables. Fast forward a century, and it’s no longer students who think of professors as corner grocers; it’s the professors themselves. Here’s our old friend Columbia professor Brent Stockwell—last heard expressing terror in the NYT over the prospect of being reduced to the status of a community college instructor “teaching […]
I did a lot of writing this year. This is a brief list of some of my favorites. My book, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, came out. It got some pretty great reviews. You should buy it. I began writing for The New Yorker Online, which has been a joy. My first piece was on political converts, men and women who make the journey from one ideology to another, and why the move from left to right has mattered more, over the course of the last century, than the move from right to left. My second piece was on Eric Hobsbawm, a Communist and a historian, and how his failure at the first made possible his success at the second. […]
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Categories
Economies, Education, Law, Media, Race, The Left, The Right
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Tags Adam Smith, Alex Gourevitch, Clarence Thomas, Hayek, Jodi Dean, Max Weber, New Yorker, Obama, Vivian Gornick
From a thinker who knew a thing or two about realism: Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It requires passion as well as perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms—that man would not have achieved the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that, a man must be a leader, and more than a leader, he must be a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that resolve of heart which can brave even the failing of all hopes. This is necessary right now, otherwise we shall fail to attain that which it […]
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation: Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation [advanced degree], the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni speranza [abandon all hope, you who enter here]. But one must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: ‘Of course, I live only for my “calling.”‘ Yet, I have found that only a few men could endure this situation without coming to grief.