Weimar Futurities with Engelbert Stockhammer

Engelbert Stockhammer joins Money on the Left to discuss the political and economic debates that shaped and ultimately devastated Weimar-era Germany. Professor Stockhammer is professor of political economy in the department of European and International Studies at King’s College London and has published widely on financial instability and Post-Keynesian economics. In this episode, we focus specifically on Stockhammer’s recent working paper, “Hilferding, Woytinsky, and the Fiscal Orthodoxy of Interwar Social Democracy,” published by the Post-Keynesian Economics Society in Fall 2021.

In the essay, Stockhammer reconsiders the so-called “WTB Plan,” a union-backed public works program, which was tragically rejected by the Social Democratic Party (or “SPD”) on seemingly Marxist grounds. During our conversation, we explore the biographies and arguments of two key players in this historical drama: Vladmir Woytinksy, the Russian-born socialist economist responsible for drafting the WTB plan and Rudolf Hilferding, the Austrian-Marxist theorist and politician who turned the SPD against it. Along the way, we consider the stakes and fate of Weimar-era fiscal politics in light of a hegemonic gold standard that ruled across Europe and the United States, growing unemployment and suffering, and the German fascist movement that rose to answer such problems in violent and genocidal ways. Finally, we ponder how unrealized Weimar futurities in the past can help inform the struggle for public full employment today.

Read Stockhammer’s paper here: http://www.postkeynesian.net/downloads/working-papers/PKWP2118.pdf

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Music by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com