Andrew Gamble and Jon Cruddas are two of the speakers who will feature in the Sheffield-based School of Democratic Socialism’s new lecture series called ‘There has to be a better way’....
Is a better capitalism possible?
Will Hutton has been delivering a series of well-attended lectures on developing a ‘good capitalism’ out of the crisis of ‘bad capitalism’. BARRY WINTER summarises a lecture Hutton gave in Manchester, and comments on what Hutton is saying....
A Tale of Two Cities
MAURICE GLASMAN traces the history of the City and asks, 'Whatever happened to London?' For the first 1500 years of its civic life, London conformed to the European pattern of urban development as a self-governing city, free from feudal Lordship and hospitable to the civic virtues of legality, trade, democratic self-government and professional association....
Debt and Democracy: National Economic Institutions in a Global Order
MAURICE GLASMAN argues that institutional renewal of banks, corporate governance and land are vital to a new political economy for Labour....
Lessons of the May Day Manifesto
The British New Left had a critical approach towards neoliberal and authoritarian models of modernisation, ideas shared by more recent political trends, says MICHAEL RUSTIN in this his talk to the British New Left and Labour seminar held in London in June 2012....
Crisis, Markets and Protest
Today capitalism is news. Talk about capitalist crisis is widespread in ways that have not been heard for decades. Yet, it is the forces of the right that continue to dominate politically, even though the system they most strongly espouse is facing severe upheavals. Often discredited, social democratic parties are struggling to get a...
Turbulent Times and the Politics of Interdependence
In the 18th century the US produced a Declaration of Independence. Today we need to declare our interdependence, says BARRY WINTER, and this should be a guiding feature of the world we live in....
Markets, Movements and Morals
BARRY WINTER reviews Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land, and finds the late academic’s fascinating account “both right and wrong” in its lament for social democracy. Born in London in 1948, Tony Judt taught at several British and American Universities. At New York University in 1995, he established an institute for the study of European...
The Road from Ruin?
PAUL SALTONSTALL reports from a recent seminar on how to reform capitalism from the inside The talk was given by Michael Green, one of the authors of The Road from Ruin: A new capitalism for the Big Society, and the host was the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). This was one of their...
Crises of capitalism
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...
Debating democracy
WILL BROWN examines two welcome contributions to debates on democratic renewal and progressive social change The need to extend democratic practices within society, beyond the confines of the parliamentary system, has been widely recognised on the political left for some time. However, in a context of rising political apathy and a perceived ‘crisis’ of...
Critical times in a back to front world
BARRY WINTER went to the Critical Politics conference in November, and found a Left still confused about how to respond to new times. Organised by the Signs of the Times collective, the intellectual heirs of Marxism Today, this conference was really back to front. It concluded where it might, more usefully, have begun, with...