The Efficiency Trap
Governments like to frame their cruellest policies as pragmatic necessities, but what they call ‘efficiency’ is always someone else’s suffering.
The rest of the blog
Governments like to frame their cruellest policies as pragmatic necessities, but what they call ‘efficiency’ is always someone else’s suffering.
The left’s long struggle against empire has often been distorted by its own blind spots, nowhere more so than in the contradictions of campism, where opposition to Western imperialism too often becomes an excuse for silence, or worse, complicity, in the face of other empires.
The presidency was already a sideshow in Trump’s first term, but his second has stripped it of any remaining dignity, turning the White House into just another stage for his brand of gaudy, transactional spectacle.
What if the greatest threat to your freedom wasn’t a government decree, a criminal act, or even a political ideology, but an algorithm? The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami’s chilling new novel, imagines a world in which surveillance capitalism governs not only what we do, but who we are allowed to be.
A masterful dissection of power, corruption, and the making of modern America, The Apprentice deserved to sweep the Oscars, but the Academy, as always, chose safety over truth.
Histories of 1914 and the start of the First World War continue to proliferate, yet few reflect on how those histories themselves have been shaped. Perry Anderson’s Disputing Disaster is a forensic examination of how the war’s origins have been written, but what does it omit?
The Labour Party’s hasty withdrawal of support for by-election candidate Azhar Ali over benign comments critical of Israel exemplifies a wider pattern of oversensitivity regarding any anti-Zionist perspectives in the post-Corbyn era.
Karl Marx’s controversial 1844 essay “On the Jewish Question” has sparked heated debate over whether it reflects antisemitism or offers insights into capitalism’s exploitative nature. This essay examines Marx’s inflammatory rhetoric and problematic stereotypes while also considering the enduring relevance of his critique of commodification and alienation.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas has sparked heated debate globally, with some accusing critics of Israel’s actions of being antisemitic. This argues for nuance in understanding the crisis, differentiating between legitimate critiques of state policies and bigotry, and calling for ethical consistency in advocating for human rights on both sides.