Soundings’ ebook, Britain’s Broken Economy – and how to fix it, is an essential read for anyone interested in a left alternative to UK capitalism, says BEN TURLEY.

For political reasons, Britain’s Broken Economy does not touch on the structuraldeficit or engage with arguments about the sustainability of public expenditure. This is because the ebook wants [...]

Why Inequality Matters
A lecture by Professor Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level, in memory of Richard Brown (Dept of Sociology, Durham University 1966-1993).
Monday 8th November 2010, St John’s College (http://goo.gl/maps/wnDg) , South Bailey, Durham, 6:30pm – FREE
Drinks and nibbles will be provided.
The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, was [...]

STEVE THOMPSON commends the grassroots movements seeking alternatives to economic growth
The current edition of New Internationalist (NI434. July/August 2010) tackles what I consider  to be one of the most crucial problems we face today, perhaps the most crucial. Headlined ‘Life beyond growth’, it deals with the conundrum that economic growth is not environmentally sustainable and [...]

So this is the new politics. On 22 June chancellor George Osborne’s budget unveiled the government’s intention to cut public spending harder and faster than any time since the second world war.
Despite prime minister David Cameron’s claims that the budget would somehow “protect the poor”, and Osborne’s now infamous remark that “we’re all in this [...]

Radical sociologist DAVID HARVEY provides a clear and concise analysis of the recent financial crisis and asks if it’s time to look beyond capitalism to a new social order.
“Any sensible person now would join an anti-capitalist organisation,” he says. “We have a duty to change our mode of thinking.”
Click here for Harvey’s RSA lecture in [...]

We must reject the lies and misrepresentations in this phoniest of elections, says HUGO RADICE
This week’s major intervention in the election campaign has surely been the call by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the major parties to ‘come clean’ about their strategies for reducing the public sector debt, if elected. The IFS report has chimed [...]

Last year’s financial crisis presented an opportunity for fundamental reform, argues Will Brown. It’s one that’s already gone to waste.
It’s now over a year since the world’s financial system went into meltdown in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. At the time, there was much talk of a transformation of [...]

Across the continent, the left’s response to the recent economic crisis has been poor, verging on non-existent, just when the situation demanded a credible alternative to the dominant political and economic orthodoxy.
That’s the starting point for a Europe-wide online debate on the future of social democracy hosted by the Soundings and Social Europe websites.
“European social [...]

Gary Kent argues that the global financial crisis makes the case for a Tobin Tax even more compelling.
Some ideas are nurtured for decades before they shoot to prominence usually to the surprise of those who have long advocated them. This could be the fate of the Tobin Tax, originally devised by the American Nobel Laureate [...]

The annual conference in June of the journal Soundings, Politics after the Crash, provided a valuable and unostentatious forum for the left to discuss some of the key issues of our time. This short report by Barry Winter focuses on the contribution made by the opening speaker, Paul Mason, the economics editor of BBC Newsnight, [...]