Critical Encounters. Wolfgang Streeck

      First published by Verso 2020

      © Wolfgang Streeck 2020

      All rights reserved

      The moral rights of the author have been asserted

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Earlier versions of the following chapters were published as follows:

      1. ‘Through Unending Halls’, London Review of Books, 7 February 2019; 2. ‘The Fourth Power’, New Left Review, no. 110, March/April 2018; 3. Constellations, vol. 23, no. 4, 2016; 4. ILR Review, vol. 71, no. 2, 2018; 5. ‘Playing Catch Up’, London Review of Books, 4 May 2017; 6. ‘Greek to a Greek’, Inference, vol. 4, no. 3, 2019; 7. ‘The Politics of Exit’, New Left Review, no. 88, July/August 2014; 8. ‘Governance heißt das Zauberwort, das alle Konfusion beenden soll’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 March 2015; 9. ‘Sonderweg aus der Solidarität’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27 March 2017; 10. ‘Scenario for a Wonderful Tomorrow’, London Review of Books, 30 March 2016; 11. ‘Fighting the State’, Development and Change, vol. 50, no. 3, 2019; 12. ‘Sparen um jeden Preis’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 February 2015; 13. ‘You Need a Gun’, London Review of Books, 14 December 2017; 14. ‘What about Capitalism? Jürgen Habermas’s Project of a European Democracy’, European Political Science, vol. 16, no. 2, 2017; 15. ‘From Speciation to Specialization’, Social Research, vol. 85, no. 3, 2018; Chapters 8, 9 and 12 were translated from the German by Rodney Livingstone.

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      ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-874-3

      ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-875-0 (UK EBK)

      ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-876-7 (US EBK)

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

      Typeset in Garamond by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

      Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

      Contents

List of Books under Review

Preface

I. Capitalism

1. … the More They Stay the Same

2. The Fourth Power?

3. Chaotic Interregnum

       4. Modernizing Class Conflict

       5. The German Recipe

       II. Democracy

       6. The Custard and the Wall

       7. The Politics of Depoliticization

       8. The Magic Word to End All Confusion

       9. Neither Forwards Nor Sideways. Perhaps Back?

       10. Scenario for a Wonderful Tomorrow

       III. Ideas

       11. Fighting the State

       12. Wrong Ideas or Real Interests?

       13. You Need a Gun

       14. What about Capitalism?

       15. Two Worlds, Not One

       Letters from Europe

Books under Review, by Chapter

       1.Joshua B. Freeman, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World

       2.Joseph Vogl, The Ascendancy of Finance

       3.David M. Kotz, The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism

       4.Bruno Amable,Structural Crisis and Institutional Change in Modern Capitalism

       5.Werner Plumpe, German Economic and Business History in the 19th and 20th Centuries David B. Audretsch and Erik E. Lehmann, The Seven Secrets of Germany: Economic Resilience in an Era of Global Turbulence Franz-Josef Meiers, Germany’s Role in the Euro Crisis: Berlin’s Quest for a More Perfect Monetary Union

       6.Yanis Varoufakis,Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment

       7.Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy

       8.Helmut Willke,Demokratie in Zeiten der Konfusion [Democracy in an Age of Confusion]

       9.Johannes Becker and Clemens Fuest, Der Odysseus-Komplex: Ein pragmatischer Vorschlag zur Lösung der Eurokrise [The Odysseus Complex: A Pragmatic Proposal to Resolve the Euro Crisis]

      10.Martin Sandbu,Europe’s Orphan: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Debt

      11.Quinn Slobodian,Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

      12.Mark Blyth,Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

      13.Perry Anderson,The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony and The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci

      14.Jürgen Habermas,The Lure of Technocracy

      15.Charles Darwin,On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

Preface

      CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS is a collection of essays on political economy, stimulated by reading books for review. It is also a celebration of the book as a medium of communication among scholars and with a wider public. Book reviews are occasional productions, not outflows of a specific research project. Someone assumes that somebody else might have something to say about a book deemed important enough to merit extended comment, and if author, title, blurb raise sufficient curiosity, a deal is done. Different book reviews by the same author, as collected in this volume, are therefore only loosely connected: by accident of personal acquaintance, of time believed to be free, or of the reviewer’s sense of adventure.

      How to review a book that is worthy of being reviewed? For me it requires deep reading, beginning usually with the last chapter, then the introduction, then several expeditions into the interior. This takes time. During reading sessions, I highlight what I find remarkable and sketch my own emerging views in the margins, or on the last pages where the publisher advertises other, often related, books. When