postscript

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.

This is episode 3 of postscript, reflecting on the future of the left after the passing of twentieth century assumptions.

Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:04) - Childhood

(04:38) - Meeting CLR James

(09:06) - Trinidad and London

(13:27) - Jamesianism

(15:30) - A Woman's Place

(19:15) - The Second Sex

(20:08) - Against work

(23:13) - Middle class feminism

(24:11) - Wages for Housework

(30:18) - Against the state

(33:36) - Vietnam

(35:20) - Tanzania

(39:57) - Working class unity

(47:56) - Free time

(49:50) - AI

(51:10) - Palestine Action

(51:51) - Jewish Anti-Zionism

(55:01) - Organising strategies

(58:24) - Marx

(1:00:36) - Hope

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

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.

This is the inaugural episode of postscript, a new podcast from Tribune magazine. Barnaby and Adam start by setting out the project, asking why revolutionary transformation feels so hard to imagine today and how we can inherit radical ideas from lost worlds of the past.

Chapters :

(00:00) Introducing postscript

(01:59) Naming our crisis

(15:59) Keynesianism

(32:14) Neoliberalism

(35:11) Class struggle

(43:48) Green New Deals

(59:43) Degrowth

(1:04:15) Coalitions

(1:09:00) Lenin

(1:12:00) China

(1:25:57) Europe

(1:30:29) Gaza and the end of the West