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 [...]
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 [...]
The Compass lecture given by Jon Cruddas attracted a lot of coverage last week. But there was a familiar hole in the heart of his plan for the left, says Matthew Brown
Whatever else you might say about Compass, the Labour left pressure group, those people certainly know which way is north when it comes to [...]
Will Brown looks at the foreign policy agenda facing the Obama administration.
The vitriolic healthcare debate in the US and ongoing economic problems may dominate President Obama’s current agenda but the first nine months of this administration have also put into sharp focus an exceptionally difficult range of US foreign policy problems.
The inauguration of Barack Obama [...]
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 [...]
Barry Winter examines how capitalism went from boom to bust and where it leaves us
Introduction
I begin this introduction with what may seem like a diversion. I want to take us briefly back to the horrors of the First World War in which often enthusiastic, armies of young men across Europe were sent into battle by [...]
