The 1930s Are Back: Austerity, Rearmament, and Why War Pays | Adam Tooze

Political economy doesn't pause for war — it accelerates. Class struggle, austerity, and the upward transfer of wealth keep grinding forward, often under cover of "emergency" and the language of technocratic expertise.

In this conversation, economist Clara Mattei sits down with historian Adam Tooze (Columbia University; author of Wages of Destruction, Crashed, and Shutdown) to examine how war and economic restructuring move together. From reconstruction plans being drawn up in the middle east, to neoliberal "reform" pushed onto wartime Ukraine, to Europe's pivot from a green industrial vision to a hard-militarist one — the same playbook keeps appearing.

Drawing on the long arc of the 20th century, Tooze and Mattei trace how settler colonial projects, technocratic "expertise," and austerity politics have repeatedly served the interests of capital while disciplining working populations. The conversation closes on what European rearmament — and the lifting of fiscal brakes for military spending while social spending stays starved — tells us about whose interests austerity has always actually served.

This is a rereleased excerpt from a longer conversation with Adam Tooze. Watch the full episode here

🎧 Topics covered:

- Why "primitive accumulation" still explains how modern wars reshape land and capital

- The three tiers of interest driving the current moment: settler politics, tech capital, and grand strategy

- Ukraine as a live experiment in wartime neoliberal restructuring

- Why scorn for public institutions becomes policy during emergencies

- The Wages of Destruction parallel: how interwar austerity fed militarization

- Europe's rearmament turn and the abandonment of the green transition

- Why austerity has never really been about balancing budgets

GUEST BIO:

Adam Tooze is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University and Director of the European Institute. He is the author of Wages of Destruction, The Deluge, Crashed, Shutdown, and the Chartbook newsletter. He co-hosts the podcast Ones and Tooze.

📚 Adam Tooze's Chartbook

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