“To me, “the polycrisis” feels like a bit of a hedge, an idea careful not to say too much but also wanting to say everything at once, hesitant to make a confidant series of predictions or interpretations that could make one look mistaken or even foolish.”
I think the point of polycrisis, if taken seriously (which I’m not sure that I do), is that the only tenable prediction is the collapse of civilization. It’s not a philosophy of containers barely able to cope, as you put it, but the proposition that none of the containers we have, and indeed no container of which a human mind is able to conceive, are at all able to cope with the present and near-to-medium term future. The breadth and complexity of problems we face are beyond our ken, and we have little choice but to ride out the havoc they’ll wreak and hope some of us survive. This is of course an incredibly bleak worldview, and if Tooze and co are reluctant to spell it out it’s probably out of either fear of reckoning with what it really means or desire not to be accused of pointless doomerism. It’s a concept that’s probably been better fleshed out in science fiction than social theory (William Gibson’s model of the apocalypse as a series if overlapping crises that aren’t fully apprehended until it’s too late to stop them in The Peripheral is an example).
Does that amount to a Hegelian concept? Not my area at all, but to take a stab: if it feels like none of the assorted factions on the left, the liberals, or even the current right wing autocrats are confidently ascendant domestically or internationally, polycrisis would explain why: none of their programs are adequate to the current situation, and even achieving a Gramscian hegemony to seriously pursue one of them would be basically impossible.
I think you’re right to closely identify the concept with Keynesian liberal technocrats. I am one of those, and I and a lot of people I know have flirted with the polycrisis idea as a lot of the mechanisms of the machine we operate seem to break down. Is that just us catastrophizing as the world shifts away from a paradigm that favoured us? Probably, we’re not known for our sense of perspective. Anyway, I hope so.
This is very good. For me "polycrisis" has mostly been an acknowledgement that problems that were in some way foreseeable 30 years ago - conflict with Russia, climate disasters, pandemics, strains in the American constitutional structure, emergence of rival global powers - are now *here* in a way that they weren't 30 or 20 or even 10 years ago. Like, it's a way of imposing the structure of "prelude" up until 2016 or 2020 and then "thick of it" for the present. (I think this does imply, as another commenter says, that collapse has become much closer to us). So for me mostly a matter of convenience and perspective, situating the present in a narrative/arc (a crisis emerges and then resolves! Either in collapse or triumph. This resonates both with Tooze's Keynesianism and with the I think general sense that the intensity of the last few years is not totally sustainable). I honestly hadn't even really considered it as a concept so this is good to think about
Good article. The bit about bureaucratic/technocratic solutions to complex problems and the belief that the right "super-bureaucrat" would be capable of creating a solution, especially a single, over-arching solution to a complex problem, made me think about one of the great passions of the neoliberal or center-left intelligentsia today, the YIMBY movement. That's one area where there is still this incredibly dogmatic belief that zoning reform and the encouragement of development will lead to widespread housing affordability in cities. The more honest ones will admit zoning reform is no silver bullet, but any suggestion that the central dogma- that more supply = more affordability - is flawed in any way is met with incredible venom by those types. The patently obvious suggestion that the market isn't interested in creating affordability for truly low-income people because there is no profit incentive there, and hence no deregulation they can imagine will help those most impacted by extreme housing prices, is particularly offensive to them.
I know it's seen as a bit of a Twitter bugbear discourse but it is being taken seriously by serious bureaucrats. We've got a number of major-city mayors that are avowed YIMBYs. Basically, I would like to see Unpopular Front wade into the issue, because it seems like something that would interest Mr. Ganz- there is a WHOLE lot of ideologically-motivated thinking among neolibs going on in that area that would be interesting to see him unpack.
Feb 10, 2023·edited Feb 10, 2023Liked by John Ganz
It seems to me that when Tooze says people no longer attribute the polycrisis to a single cause like they used to, this is not quite true. How often do we see people on Twitter etc attributing everything wrong with the world to “Late Capitalism” or “neoliberalism” or “decadence”?
On the one hand, I think you're right that the concept is definitely a hedge, but might I offer a sort of clarificatory thought on Tooze's characterization? Perhaps if we're using "polycrisis" it's because we haven't really grasped the nature of the crisis before us, it has not become clear in the synthesis. That is, our current moment is just that turmoil of thought leading to a new concept.
I do think that it can be used to just throw one's hands up (and I don't think you're saying Tooze is doing this, nor is he as I read him) but I think that if you're of a certain sort -- technocratic, inclined to understanding the world in that sort of way -- "polycrisis" offers a useful stand-in for that-which-comes-next. It is by itself not an analytical concept and shouldn't be understood as such, I think. Perhaps it's invoked too much, perhaps it's treated with too much seriousness as an analysis of our current state of affairs, perhaps we ought to just consider ourselves as living in history and that this is, really, a pretty precedented state of affairs (to be unable to grasp one's time in thought). But I do think it can serve a role in guiding our thinking about our times.
I am skeptical of any idea expressed as "in this world X is no longer true" where X is usually something people used to be very vocally confident about before being proven to be entirely wrong about it.
Much like Wile E. Coyote walking beyond a cliff, this formulation operates under the assumption that before we realized they were wrong, these ideas were somehow magically right.
Feb 10, 2023·edited Feb 10, 2023Liked by John Ganz
I wonder how much of this is captured in your third sentence, "...complexity theorist." Complexity theories do provide some insight into the dynamics of systems that are not easily modeled in a more deterministic way, but they do not, in and of themselves, have a straightforward relationship with any formal (or, I suppose, informal) theories of causation. I've come to think, analogous to what is considered AI today, that there is hope that something grounded in complex dynamics will do all the lifting and that the always pesky business of theory development can be pushed aside. I'm frequently wrong though.
"Adam Tooze is a Keynesian and the polycrisis is the Keynesianism of Despair." I think this is right on (as several others have noted here), making the polycrisis more of an existential angst for the well-meaning but never-quite-self-aware bureaucratic / managerial class. 'If we just had the tools an political will to fix this one thing....' But it's also hard to see how polycrisis takes us far past the 'things are way worse now because I'm living through the end of the world' trap we all stumble into. I like that you suggest Keynes' muddle as an analogy. Sure the muddle is different now, and it's not simply the expression of age-old contradictions etc., but...no kidding? The subjectivity of it all that you identify, though, may indeed be a product of our self-interested navel-gazing times.
A very good (and admirably short and concise) take on the subject, thank you John. I thought particularly the connection of the Polycisis-concept and the Keynesianism/bureaucratic managerialism world view is a very apt observation (and maybe as good an origin story for the concept as any). What I find striking though about the whole debate is that, contrary to the historic comparison Tooze opens, today, maybe for the first time in living memory, it seems to me that there is not an unclear multitude of problems, but a very obvious hierarchy of emergencies, with climate collapse as the one apparent and No 1 problem. Thus flattening it into a hazy field of poly-crisis seems to obscure more than to illuminate the problems of the present moment. On the other hand, of course it mirrors the very actions of our political system that can react to certain elements of sub-crisis quickly but seems to be utterly unable to politically address the climate emergency.
What do we call this clusterfuck of conflict where we find ourselves today?
My $0.02: the comparison to the Great Depression is apt. We are in world war times. We have competing visions for the values of humanity are being fought out by Great Powers for the first time in 75 years. It is happening and just because that is a difficult reality to face does not mean we should deny it. We need to stare into this abyss because winning is so important. But so many forces obscure the reality.
Democracy vs authoritarianism I think is fairly apt. But this is also about climate change and energy, although those interested in continuation of the status quo would like to frame it differently. Obviously its not particularly motivating to fight or vote for the side destroying the planet and ignoring human rights, so you get a lot of lies and propaganda and nonsense, culture wars.
Us Americans tend to view the US as being an absolute force for democracy- thats incorrect. The US’s governance has never been totally free of authoritarian impulse. But since WW2, the US and free world have explicitly rejected that impulse overtly, on rhetoric (until Trump), while upholding multinational institutions that apply rules and accountability.
Ever since EuroMaidan, Russia has waged war to exact change to that post ww2 world order. And since Russia’s military is non dominant and its spy services are some of the best in the world, its really leaned on this in order to corrupt us. Its working. The primary front of World war 3 is US politics and the prized turf are our elections. With an authoritarian like Trump ruling over the world’s dominant security force, Putin was not so threatened.
One normally thinks of a “crisis” as something that someone, somewhere actually *experiences*. Ukrainians experience the crisis of Russian artillery barrages. Amazonian Indians experience deforestation and being hunted by mercenaries. Battered women experience the terror of their partners. These are crises that have subjects and objects, agents and victims.
Who is experiencing the “polycrisis”? Who or what are its subjects and objects? What are its objective features? Tooze’s description seems somewhat recursive - a polycrisis is what I experience emotionally when I am unable to process the sheer number of mono-crises I read about. That said, the Tooze passage you quoted about the “Aufhebung” put me in a crisis of doubt about whether I am actually able to understand the English language.
The notion of a technocratic class looking at political problems and wringing their hands is an interesting one. I wonder if there's something to be built on that? Like there is only so much administrators can do, some problems defy administration.
I hadn't heard "polycrisis" before, but I have been following the work of Daniel Schmachtenberger for a while, and he uses "metacrisis" for essentially the same idea — a set of interlocking, mutually reinforcing crises. As a side note, his "War on Sensemaking" series is very good.
I agree with you that polycrisis is a vague concept, and it seems to take different meanings at different times. In my readings of tooze, it's come across as a different way of defining complex system: specifically, modelling geopolitics as a complex system.
Following some of tooze's like-minded peers, particularly TimSahay (@70sBachchan on Twitter), I see them mainly try to untangle the various forces at play.
Reading your piece, I couldn't help but think of Fukuyama and the end of History. With no great ideological struggle, tooze is left with polycrisis, technocratic solutions, and endless frustration.
I have long mentally replaced “polycrisis” every time I read Tooze with Gibson’s “The Jackpot” - lots of things, hitting all at once. Probably because of that, I’ve always interpreted it as less about administration and more about many intertwined, complex, failing or transitioning, systems: climate, trade (both the politics and infrastructure of it), unipolar international relations (transitioning back to bi/tri-polar), liberal democracy (struggling mighty hard with fascism), the end of the (brief?) system of neutral-ish corporate media (Fox, the 24-hour news cycle), pandemic, machine learning-driven unemployment…
Perhaps both interpretations really are two sides of the same coin: what is intractable (the systems)/who we expect to make the systems tractable (administrators)? In either case, it’s the interaction of the complex, f(l)ailing systems that make them feel overwhelmingly intractable.
“To me, “the polycrisis” feels like a bit of a hedge, an idea careful not to say too much but also wanting to say everything at once, hesitant to make a confidant series of predictions or interpretations that could make one look mistaken or even foolish.”
I think the point of polycrisis, if taken seriously (which I’m not sure that I do), is that the only tenable prediction is the collapse of civilization. It’s not a philosophy of containers barely able to cope, as you put it, but the proposition that none of the containers we have, and indeed no container of which a human mind is able to conceive, are at all able to cope with the present and near-to-medium term future. The breadth and complexity of problems we face are beyond our ken, and we have little choice but to ride out the havoc they’ll wreak and hope some of us survive. This is of course an incredibly bleak worldview, and if Tooze and co are reluctant to spell it out it’s probably out of either fear of reckoning with what it really means or desire not to be accused of pointless doomerism. It’s a concept that’s probably been better fleshed out in science fiction than social theory (William Gibson’s model of the apocalypse as a series if overlapping crises that aren’t fully apprehended until it’s too late to stop them in The Peripheral is an example).
Does that amount to a Hegelian concept? Not my area at all, but to take a stab: if it feels like none of the assorted factions on the left, the liberals, or even the current right wing autocrats are confidently ascendant domestically or internationally, polycrisis would explain why: none of their programs are adequate to the current situation, and even achieving a Gramscian hegemony to seriously pursue one of them would be basically impossible.
I think you’re right to closely identify the concept with Keynesian liberal technocrats. I am one of those, and I and a lot of people I know have flirted with the polycrisis idea as a lot of the mechanisms of the machine we operate seem to break down. Is that just us catastrophizing as the world shifts away from a paradigm that favoured us? Probably, we’re not known for our sense of perspective. Anyway, I hope so.
This is very good. For me "polycrisis" has mostly been an acknowledgement that problems that were in some way foreseeable 30 years ago - conflict with Russia, climate disasters, pandemics, strains in the American constitutional structure, emergence of rival global powers - are now *here* in a way that they weren't 30 or 20 or even 10 years ago. Like, it's a way of imposing the structure of "prelude" up until 2016 or 2020 and then "thick of it" for the present. (I think this does imply, as another commenter says, that collapse has become much closer to us). So for me mostly a matter of convenience and perspective, situating the present in a narrative/arc (a crisis emerges and then resolves! Either in collapse or triumph. This resonates both with Tooze's Keynesianism and with the I think general sense that the intensity of the last few years is not totally sustainable). I honestly hadn't even really considered it as a concept so this is good to think about
Good article. The bit about bureaucratic/technocratic solutions to complex problems and the belief that the right "super-bureaucrat" would be capable of creating a solution, especially a single, over-arching solution to a complex problem, made me think about one of the great passions of the neoliberal or center-left intelligentsia today, the YIMBY movement. That's one area where there is still this incredibly dogmatic belief that zoning reform and the encouragement of development will lead to widespread housing affordability in cities. The more honest ones will admit zoning reform is no silver bullet, but any suggestion that the central dogma- that more supply = more affordability - is flawed in any way is met with incredible venom by those types. The patently obvious suggestion that the market isn't interested in creating affordability for truly low-income people because there is no profit incentive there, and hence no deregulation they can imagine will help those most impacted by extreme housing prices, is particularly offensive to them.
I know it's seen as a bit of a Twitter bugbear discourse but it is being taken seriously by serious bureaucrats. We've got a number of major-city mayors that are avowed YIMBYs. Basically, I would like to see Unpopular Front wade into the issue, because it seems like something that would interest Mr. Ganz- there is a WHOLE lot of ideologically-motivated thinking among neolibs going on in that area that would be interesting to see him unpack.
It seems to me that when Tooze says people no longer attribute the polycrisis to a single cause like they used to, this is not quite true. How often do we see people on Twitter etc attributing everything wrong with the world to “Late Capitalism” or “neoliberalism” or “decadence”?
On the one hand, I think you're right that the concept is definitely a hedge, but might I offer a sort of clarificatory thought on Tooze's characterization? Perhaps if we're using "polycrisis" it's because we haven't really grasped the nature of the crisis before us, it has not become clear in the synthesis. That is, our current moment is just that turmoil of thought leading to a new concept.
I do think that it can be used to just throw one's hands up (and I don't think you're saying Tooze is doing this, nor is he as I read him) but I think that if you're of a certain sort -- technocratic, inclined to understanding the world in that sort of way -- "polycrisis" offers a useful stand-in for that-which-comes-next. It is by itself not an analytical concept and shouldn't be understood as such, I think. Perhaps it's invoked too much, perhaps it's treated with too much seriousness as an analysis of our current state of affairs, perhaps we ought to just consider ourselves as living in history and that this is, really, a pretty precedented state of affairs (to be unable to grasp one's time in thought). But I do think it can serve a role in guiding our thinking about our times.
I am skeptical of any idea expressed as "in this world X is no longer true" where X is usually something people used to be very vocally confident about before being proven to be entirely wrong about it.
Much like Wile E. Coyote walking beyond a cliff, this formulation operates under the assumption that before we realized they were wrong, these ideas were somehow magically right.
I wonder how much of this is captured in your third sentence, "...complexity theorist." Complexity theories do provide some insight into the dynamics of systems that are not easily modeled in a more deterministic way, but they do not, in and of themselves, have a straightforward relationship with any formal (or, I suppose, informal) theories of causation. I've come to think, analogous to what is considered AI today, that there is hope that something grounded in complex dynamics will do all the lifting and that the always pesky business of theory development can be pushed aside. I'm frequently wrong though.
"Adam Tooze is a Keynesian and the polycrisis is the Keynesianism of Despair." I think this is right on (as several others have noted here), making the polycrisis more of an existential angst for the well-meaning but never-quite-self-aware bureaucratic / managerial class. 'If we just had the tools an political will to fix this one thing....' But it's also hard to see how polycrisis takes us far past the 'things are way worse now because I'm living through the end of the world' trap we all stumble into. I like that you suggest Keynes' muddle as an analogy. Sure the muddle is different now, and it's not simply the expression of age-old contradictions etc., but...no kidding? The subjectivity of it all that you identify, though, may indeed be a product of our self-interested navel-gazing times.
A very good (and admirably short and concise) take on the subject, thank you John. I thought particularly the connection of the Polycisis-concept and the Keynesianism/bureaucratic managerialism world view is a very apt observation (and maybe as good an origin story for the concept as any). What I find striking though about the whole debate is that, contrary to the historic comparison Tooze opens, today, maybe for the first time in living memory, it seems to me that there is not an unclear multitude of problems, but a very obvious hierarchy of emergencies, with climate collapse as the one apparent and No 1 problem. Thus flattening it into a hazy field of poly-crisis seems to obscure more than to illuminate the problems of the present moment. On the other hand, of course it mirrors the very actions of our political system that can react to certain elements of sub-crisis quickly but seems to be utterly unable to politically address the climate emergency.
Fascinating piece! Thank you.
What do we call this clusterfuck of conflict where we find ourselves today?
My $0.02: the comparison to the Great Depression is apt. We are in world war times. We have competing visions for the values of humanity are being fought out by Great Powers for the first time in 75 years. It is happening and just because that is a difficult reality to face does not mean we should deny it. We need to stare into this abyss because winning is so important. But so many forces obscure the reality.
Democracy vs authoritarianism I think is fairly apt. But this is also about climate change and energy, although those interested in continuation of the status quo would like to frame it differently. Obviously its not particularly motivating to fight or vote for the side destroying the planet and ignoring human rights, so you get a lot of lies and propaganda and nonsense, culture wars.
Us Americans tend to view the US as being an absolute force for democracy- thats incorrect. The US’s governance has never been totally free of authoritarian impulse. But since WW2, the US and free world have explicitly rejected that impulse overtly, on rhetoric (until Trump), while upholding multinational institutions that apply rules and accountability.
Ever since EuroMaidan, Russia has waged war to exact change to that post ww2 world order. And since Russia’s military is non dominant and its spy services are some of the best in the world, its really leaned on this in order to corrupt us. Its working. The primary front of World war 3 is US politics and the prized turf are our elections. With an authoritarian like Trump ruling over the world’s dominant security force, Putin was not so threatened.
https://radmod.substack.com/p/clearly-defining-putins-hybrid-wwiii
It’s so hard to be on the dating market in Portland these days, every single person on the apps is actually just in a polycrises
One normally thinks of a “crisis” as something that someone, somewhere actually *experiences*. Ukrainians experience the crisis of Russian artillery barrages. Amazonian Indians experience deforestation and being hunted by mercenaries. Battered women experience the terror of their partners. These are crises that have subjects and objects, agents and victims.
Who is experiencing the “polycrisis”? Who or what are its subjects and objects? What are its objective features? Tooze’s description seems somewhat recursive - a polycrisis is what I experience emotionally when I am unable to process the sheer number of mono-crises I read about. That said, the Tooze passage you quoted about the “Aufhebung” put me in a crisis of doubt about whether I am actually able to understand the English language.
The notion of a technocratic class looking at political problems and wringing their hands is an interesting one. I wonder if there's something to be built on that? Like there is only so much administrators can do, some problems defy administration.
I hadn't heard "polycrisis" before, but I have been following the work of Daniel Schmachtenberger for a while, and he uses "metacrisis" for essentially the same idea — a set of interlocking, mutually reinforcing crises. As a side note, his "War on Sensemaking" series is very good.
I agree with you that polycrisis is a vague concept, and it seems to take different meanings at different times. In my readings of tooze, it's come across as a different way of defining complex system: specifically, modelling geopolitics as a complex system.
Following some of tooze's like-minded peers, particularly TimSahay (@70sBachchan on Twitter), I see them mainly try to untangle the various forces at play.
Reading your piece, I couldn't help but think of Fukuyama and the end of History. With no great ideological struggle, tooze is left with polycrisis, technocratic solutions, and endless frustration.
I have long mentally replaced “polycrisis” every time I read Tooze with Gibson’s “The Jackpot” - lots of things, hitting all at once. Probably because of that, I’ve always interpreted it as less about administration and more about many intertwined, complex, failing or transitioning, systems: climate, trade (both the politics and infrastructure of it), unipolar international relations (transitioning back to bi/tri-polar), liberal democracy (struggling mighty hard with fascism), the end of the (brief?) system of neutral-ish corporate media (Fox, the 24-hour news cycle), pandemic, machine learning-driven unemployment…
Perhaps both interpretations really are two sides of the same coin: what is intractable (the systems)/who we expect to make the systems tractable (administrators)? In either case, it’s the interaction of the complex, f(l)ailing systems that make them feel overwhelmingly intractable.