Aziz Rana: The Cold War’s Late Demise

The Dig

Daniel Denvir

News, Politics

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2018

⏱️ 143 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the Cold War only just ended in November 2016, as Donald Trump grotesquely encircled and then captured the presidency, finding it, to his surprise, unguarded? The Cold War proper, of course, ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Aziz Rana, making his second Dig appearance, argues that it was a lot more than the conflict with the Evil Empire. It was a domestic order that, he writes in the latest issue of n+1, “concerned everything from the genius of America’s domestic institutions to the indispensability of its global role. These judgments gave coherence to the country’s national identity—allowing both Barack Obama and Bill Kristol to wax poetic about America’s special destiny as a global hegemon—and legitimacy to its economic policy. But with the 2016 election, the cold-war paradigm finally shattered.” Check out Aziz’s article here https://nplusonemag.com/issue-30/politics/goodbye-cold-war/. Thanks to our supporters at Verso and University of California Press Check out The New Spirit of Capitalism versobooks.com/books/2513-the-new-spirit-of-capitalism andAmerican Islamophobia ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520297791!

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on patreon.com and by Verso Books,
0:07.0	which has tons of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.
0:13.0	One that you might like is The New Spirit of Capitalism by Luke Bultanski and Eve Chippello,
0:19.6	a new edition translated by Gregory Elliott. In this major work,
0:24.6	sociologist Luke Baltansky and Eve Chippello go to the heart of the changes in contemporary
0:29.8	capitalism. Via an unprecedented analysis of the latest management texts that have formed the
0:36.4	thinking of employers in their reorganization of business.
0:39.3	The authors trace the contours of a new spirit of capitalism.
0:43.3	They argue that from the middle of the 1970s onwards, capitalism abandoned the hierarchical Fordist work structure
0:51.3	and developed a new network-based form of organization that was
0:55.8	founded on employee initiative and autonomy in the workplace, a freedom that came at the cost of
1:02.9	material and psychological security. The authors connect this new spirit with the children of the
1:10.0	libertarian and romantic currents of the late 1960s,
1:14.0	as epitomized by dressed down cool capitalists like Bill Gates and Ben and Jerry,
1:20.0	arguing that they practice a more successful and subtle form of exploitation.
1:25.4	Now a classic work charting the sociological structure of neoliberalism,
1:30.4	Baltansky and Chippello show how the new spirit triumphed thanks to a remarkable recuperation
1:36.3	of the left's critique of the alienation of everyday life that simultaneously undermined their social
1:42.7	critique. In this new edition, the two authors reflect on the reception of the book
1:48.2	and the debates that it has stimulated.
1:51.0	The New Spirit of Capitalism by Luke Baltansky and Eve Chappello.
1:55.6	Out now from Jacobin Magazine. My name is Daniel Denver,
	...

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