By Alex Christian After working for less than a year in fashion retail, Sarah secured an e-commerce assistant role in the head office of a global luxury brand. In both jobs, she was surrounded by like-minded twenty-somethings, all of whom wanted to succeed in the fashion world. “It’s like any creative industry: young people always… Read More The companies that churn through young workers
Tim Barker A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism by Jairus Banaji (2020) Capitalism is either eternal or it isn’t. There are people who defend the first view, or something close to it – the 2014 multivolume Cambridge History of Capitalism opens in Babylonia, circa 1000 BCE – but it is much more plausible that capitalism, like most… Read More Transition Theory
Chirayu Jain The BJP’s new labor reforms, the construction industry, and the mounting challenges for India’s trade unions Like the tax and agrarian legislation, the four new Labour Codes—the Labour Code on Wages of 2019, the Labour Code on Industrial Relations of 2020, Labour Code on Social Security of 2020 and Occupational Safety, Health and… Read More A New Labor Regime
openDemocracy’s new film BOOMERANG, exploring the legacies of empire through Liverpool’s docks, is available online Kojo Koram Lenin’s famous quote that “there are weeks where decades happen” would be a suitable epitaph for the tombstone of the Liz Truss premiership. As commentators focus on her obvious personal limitations as a politician to explain her spectacular… Read More Empire not only made the colonies. It made the unequal Britain we see today
Bharat Bhushan Contrary to popular perception, Hindutva forces have not endorsed Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY). However, such a public perception prompted Union Home Minister Amit Shah to announce that the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple at Ayodhya would be ready on January 1, 2024. Champat Rai, Vice President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and… Read More Ayodhya ‘endorsements’ of Rahul compel BJP to grab credit for Ram Temple
Jairus Banaji The evolution of India’s corporate sector from 2000 to 2020 “The systemic, long-term nexus between the political elites and big business will not go away anytime soon,” wrote journalist M. K. Venu in 2015. Writing in the aftermath of Obama’s second visit to India, Venu suggested that “crony capitalism” had to be grasped in… Read More Indian Big Business
Monopoly pricing and corporate greed are destroying healthcare systems in the UK and globally Tarun Gidwani Imagine a disability almost disappearing if you flew out of the Global South. I have severe haemophilia, a genetic condition that interferes with the body’s ability to clot after bleeding. When left untreated, anything – even a bruise or… Read More Big Pharma’s obscene profits
J.J. Charlesworth Capitalism is making us mentally ill because we’ve all accepted its new message – that our freedom can be found in our constant self-realisation, which turns out to be our never- ending self-exploitation. That’s the driving message of Byung-Chul Han’s newly translated extended essay (it’s 130 pages long), but its bleak diagnosis of… Read More Topology of Violence, by Byung-Chul Han
Trent Zimmerman As we farewell 2022, many of the world’s citizens will be hoping for a better new year. It is hard to look back on the past year – indeed couple of years – without a high degree of angst about the direction of our global community. We have been battered by a pandemic… Read More I find hope in people who show the best of humanity
By Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn / CounterPunch All through the 1980s and 1990s, professorial mountebanks like James Q. Wilson and Charles Murray grew plump from best sellers about the criminal, probably innate, propensities of the “underclass,” about the pathology of poverty, the teen predators, the collapse of morals, the irresponsibility of teen moms. There… Read More Neoliberalism and Its Discontents
After the truth-shower 