This is a second blog arising out of my reading of Erik Olin Wright’s How to Be An Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century. While the first focused on general modes or strategies for resisting capitalism, this one summarises and comments on his listing of pragmatic interventions to this end. I have always found a tension… Read More »
Eric Olin Wright is sadly no longer with us, but we are fortunate to have his new book, How to Be an Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century, to remember him by and to work with. In this first of (maybe) two or three blogs, I consider briefly his typology of strategic logics in relation to… Read More »
I have argued now and again for a left strategy comprising: (1) ‘permanent reform’ and (2) ‘alliance formation’. In other words, a strategy that (re-1) commends the left to start – as boldly as possible – with what is achievable, and then builds on these reforms towards socialism, and (re-2) acknowledges the essential salience of… Read More »
I have in front of me Peter Allen’s The Political Class, which I read a while ago and which is about optimum forms of ‘democratic’ representation and decision-making in politics. It is not my intenton here to summarise his analysis of different options. I will rather summarise his characterisation of the extant ‘political class’, then… Read More »
Guy Standing is an innovative thinker and contributor to policy formation. He is best known for his concept of the ‘precariat’ and for championing a universal basic income. In a recent chapter in Economics for the Many (edited by John McDonnell) he introduces a few more novel concepts, and these are the focus of this… Read More »
There has for some time, most particularly among French philosophers and commentators, been an interest in recovering the notion of communism: people like Badiou for example have espoused a ‘new communism’. The rationale for this is generally that throughout parliamentary or other forms of liberal/social democracies in the West the electoral choice is merely between… Read More »
Alan Badiou gave a lecture at Tufts University, Boston, two weeks after the election of Trump during which he attempted to come to terms with this enigmatic and painful happening. His observations have a wider relevance, not least to UK post-Brexit. Badiou rightly sees Trump as a symptom of financialised capitalism, which he characterises in… Read More »
It is sometimes difficult to get one’s voice heard above the background noise of today’s news outlets, whether TV or printed press. So I thought it might be timely to outline Labour’s ethos and plans even as another general election looms. The polls, always to be taken with a pinch of salt, suggest high rates… Read More »
A little over a week ago I asked a question on twitter, curious as to how people would respond. I gave people a week to respond. The question and responses were as follows: ‘If a sociologist set out to study whether those identifying as Jewish are under- or over-represented among British elites, would this be… Read More »
Surprisingly often ideas advance, theses refined, by serendipitous means. So it is in this case. I have just finished Michiko Kakutani’s excellent The Death of Truth, a discourse on our present era, one which has been understandably characterized as ‘post-truth’. In most of my publications, and blogs too, I have short-changed culture, so keen have… Read More »