As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, it’s worth remembering that his legacy was based firmly in the labor and the socialist movements of the 20th century. It takes nothing away from King to highlight how his work built on those movements and his voice was magnified by his association with them.
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The kids aren’t alright
When we talk about generations, we tend to talk as if history has always been divided up into them. But the idea of distinct eras of cohorts each defined by some unique spirit is not timeless. The notion of a generation was borne of a conception of history as a machine of progress—a claim central […]
‘On new terrain’—How Capital is reshaping the battleground of class war
Since the Great Recession there has been much debate on the nature of capitalism and the crisis of neoliberalism. Often this has resulted in theories which emphasise finance capital, precarious employment, and play to a generally left Keynesian politics, such as that being pursued within the Labour Party currently.
The U.S. role in turning countries into shitholes and provoking immigration
Since Trump is a racist, he thinks that countries get to have poor economic and security situations because of the race of the people that inhabit them. That is silly (and dangerous) as history and social science.
The feminist eagles
Long before the present resurrection of this emboldened feminist movement (forcing people to frantically Google the term), I sensed it coming as the teacher advisor of my high school’s feminist club, the Feminist Eagles.
Radical food politics: hunger is political
Mexie on the politics of food and hunger.
Safe spaces for colonial apologists
The recent controversies about Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar’s “Ethics and Empire” project and UK Universities Minister Jo Johnson’s attack on “safe space culture” have both been defended on freedom of speech grounds. However, they are better understood as retrenching colonial thinking in universities.
Trashing the planet for profit
Before I began this essay I read through some of my past forays that mentioned climate change and capitalism, the first I think, being in 2006 where I opined in a piece on the ‘War on Terror’.
The gender divide: tracking women’s state prison growth
The story of women’s prison growth has been obscured by overly broad discussions of the “total” prison population for too long. This report sheds more light on women in the era of mass incarceration by tracking prison population trends since 1978 for all 50 states.
Lula’s witch trial: who are the TRF4?
Some are calling it the Coup’s endgame, others the “final battle” for Brasil’s next decade.
The elephant in the world
The authors of the report confirm what Branko Milanovic and others had previously discovered: that a representation of the unequal gains in world economic growth in recent decades looks like an elephant. Thus, the real incomes of the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population (except the poorest, at the very bottom) have increased, the incomes […]
Which is more important – challenging class prejudice or promoting class struggle?
A study last year by London University academics highlighted the shocking disparities in pay between individuals from different backgrounds. Most other papers treated this as minor news or ignored it altogether. The Morning Star rightly put it on the front page under the headline Working Class? That’ll be Six Grand off your Salary (and it […]
Schumpeter’s two theories of imperialism
Schumpeter’s theory is interesting for several reasons. It was formulated at the same time as Lenin’s and Luxemburg’s and clearly with the knowledge of the two. It reacts to the exactly the same events as theirs. It is different though and it was held by Schumpeter throughout his life. The key text for Schumpeter’s theory […]
Advertising at the edge of the apocalypse
In this article I wish to make a simple claim: 20th century advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it. As it achieves this it will be responsible for the deaths […]
The next financial crisis will be even worse than the last one
We’ve made it through 2017. The first-season installment of presidential Tweetville is ending where it began, on the Palm Beach, Fla., golf course of Mar-a-Lago. Though we are no longer privy to all the footage behind the big white truck, we do know that, given the doubling of its membership fees, others on the course […]