Many contemporary political trends are focussed on the negative. That is, a fight to prevent neoliberal measure. The anti-austerity movement, for example, is focussed on fighting cuts to public services…
5 things I learnt while skipping yesterday
It’s the end of an academic year, and undergraduate students have been busying themselves packing to go home. But after filling the car full of all sorts of accumulations, the…
Decolonising Development – thoughts on John Hilary’s Poverty of Capitalism
Policies. Theories. Models. Ideologies. It is fascinating how abstracted our politics have become from real life experiences. A couple of months ago, John Hilary caused quite a stir by calling…
Get over your fear. Dare to live!
It’s not easy accepting the truth – or at least the-truth-as-you-see-it-now. My life has always been a bit of a roller coaster, with sudden points of realisation that wash away…
The system doesn’t work. Then why are we fighting to save it?
“In the Cold War,” the academic stated excitedly, “at least we had an alternative we could fight for! Now, when the cuts come, we have nothing.” It’s strange how we…
The Economy Game
In his study of Governmentality, in amongst many other points of analysis, Foucault points to the de-estabilishment of the economy from the family framework as the turning point to our…
Is this the end of Europe?
When we speak of a place, we don’t mean its “real” geography, but the idea of it. In this sense we comprehend it by it being lived in, our understandings…
Marx: out of date with Globalisation?
This is the first part of a series on the end of the left & right. Feel free to submit your own by emailing me. Unlike many of my political…
Costing employment: regulation, high pay and redistribution
Shutters are shut, graffitti scrawled over the surface. Windows display vacant rooms. Old signs have letters falling off. It’s nearly Christmas, but the streets are empty – except at the…
Neocolonialism: the blind spot of the West
It’s been a few months since I read Samir Amin’s Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism? but one of the key chapters remains a thought through everything I…