Show Notes
This introduction to the life and work of Paul Gilroy concentrates on his changing engagement with Marxism and the shape of his anti-racist, anti-nationalist commitment to universal human freedom from the "long 1970s" to the present. Asking what resources of hope we can find in a world scarred by violence, Paul moves from a discussion of shame and guilt to the promise of humanism. This is episode 2 of postscript, reflecting on the future of the left after the passing of twentieth century assumptions.
Chapters: (00:39) Parents (9:42) First music (15:30) School struggles (16:18) Oz trial (20:56) Gillian Rose (23:35) To Birmingham (28:15) Cultural Studies (32:10) EP Thompson (37:28) Stuart Hall (38:56) Nationalism (40:34) White guilt (46:19) Reparations (47:47) Shame (51:33 Dissident Marxisms (1:00:30) Cedric Robinson (1:01:59) CLR James + Race Today (1:05:25) Music + freedom (1:08:28) Andre Gorz (1:09:25) Marx's Jamaica (1:10:44) Green post-Marxism (1:16:29) Humanism (1:23:35) Zionism (1:29:00) Optimism
More from postscript
Continuing our series on new ways of understanding British history, this episode concentrates on working class experience. What could a new class politics mean, beyond nostalgia for industry and empire? The conversation starts with Brexit's divisions and the changing experience of urban space in big cities and smaller towns. We then narrate the contradictions of the welfare state after 1945, the seismic counter-revolution against its radical workers and a new way of understanding the era from Thatcher to the present beyond ideas of decline. The last half hour asks, 'what is to be done?' How should we think about left horizons and strategies beyond twentieth century assumptions, including the pervasive celebration of work? Chapters : (00:00) Intro (02:35) Brexit (07:55)Gentrification Radical 1970s (15:54) Productivism (27:30) Social democracy: a global view (29:20) Disorganised abandonment (34:44) Britain in decline? (38:28) Capitalism makes us sick (42:13) Reindustrialise? (44:43) Shit politicians (47:15) Post-work socialism? (50:27) Strategies (53:01) Class politics now (55:33) Waiting for revolution? (1:08:10)
Across the West, people now worry about decline. How to restore lost glories? In Britain, this question is not new. But one of the country's leading historians has spent years arguing that it's the wrong question. Puncturing popular illusions from the socialist spirit of 1945 to the chaos of the 1970s, from optimism about AI to the need for more defence spending, David Edgerton guides us through a different map for understanding where we are now and how we got here.
At 95, Selma James is a voice from another world. Born to working-class Jewish parents in Brooklyn, she married the Caribbean revolutionary CLR James and shared his anti-colonial, libertarian Marxism. She was a founder of the Wages for Housework campaign in the 1970s, and remains active with Global Women's Strike, the Crossroads Women's Centre in north London and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. In conversation with Barnaby Raine and her son Sam Weinstein, she recalls her influences — from Trinidad to Tanzania to Italian feminism — and her anti-state, anti-work, anti-vanguardist conception of socialism. We offer this interview as part of the historical record of a tradition on the left.
How did we get into this mess, and what politics do we need to get out of it? A Marxist debates with his liberal friend to find answers. Host Barnaby Raine and historian Adam Tooze discuss Marx, Lenin, Keynes and Mao. They talk about how neoliberalism got made, climate politics now from Green New Deals to degrowth, the rise of China and the future of Europe -- before disagreeing on whether genocide in Gaza condemns the whole project of Western civilisation.