Justice: what’s the right thing to do?

Is it just to tax the rich to help the poor? John Rawls says we should answer this question by asking what principles you would choose to govern the distribution of income and wealth if you did not know who you were, whether you grew up in privilege or in poverty. Continue reading Justice: what’s the right thing to do?

Taking notes 37: Meritocracy, repression and Piketty’s apocalyptic asymptote

by Sanjay Perera
Much has been said about Thomas Piketty’s important and much talked about book. But not enough has been said about his nuanced wit and jibes at a system of meritocratic capitalism that is starting to merge with the hereditary accumulation and growth of wealth termed as patrimonial capitalism. But then it can also get quite serious. Continue reading Taking notes 37: Meritocracy, repression and Piketty’s apocalyptic asymptote

Fighting neo-liberalism with education and activism

by Dave Hill This is a revolutionary period in world history. The collapse of finance capitalism, the bankers’ bailouts across the globe, the continuing bankers’ bonuses, and the intrinsic problems of finance capitalism have, under current `bourgeois’ parliamentarist rule, resulted in ordinary families, workers and communities,`paying for the crisis’. All this, while the national and international capitalist classes and organisations impose austerity capitalism on a reeling public and public educational, social, health and welfare systems. This `austerity capitalism’ has led to an eruption of discontent-against political, economic and financial dictatorship, through the Arab Spring, the indignados in Spain, the Occupy … Continue reading Fighting neo-liberalism with education and activism