System Attrition

Adam Tooze is Director of the European Institute & Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University. In this interview with Andrew Keen, he discusses the past relationship between capitalism and liberal democracy and how the development of the two went hand-in-hand in the modern era towards a high-point, in large part due to the wars of the 20th century. Our crises today are also formative, but not in the same way as back then, Tooze argues. It is yet to be seen, he says, how crises of our time, such as COVID-19 and economic inequality, will shape our societies in this century, but the system that has combined capitalism and liberal democracy is facing serious attrition.