Historically there have been many reasons why the reduction of labour time and even the abolition of wage labour itself has been seen not only in a positive light but as an achievable concrete goal. In 1930 John Maynard Keynes in his famous paper ‘Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren’, wrote: I draw the conclusion that, assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not-if we look into the future-the permanent problem of the human race....
In a recent television spot the economist, Mariana Mazzucato briefly touched on something which whilst hugely important is often left out of the public debate on economics. Whilst, unfortunately, she was unable to create the space to expound on it fully at 31:00 the following exchange takes place Jo Coburn: What don’t we value enough? Mariana Mazzucato: Well, first of all, we confuse price with value, it used to be that there were big debates about value and that turned into the theory of price, we only put into GDP things that have a price, if you marry your cleaner GDP will go down,...
I recently finished reading Goodwin and Eatwell’s work of political theory ‘National Populism: A Revolt Against Liberal Democracy’ which attempts to breakdown the roots of recent populist movements from Trump’s victory in 2016, to gains made by the likes of Fidesz in Hungary, National Rally in France and of course Brexit and subsequent successes The Brexit Party. Among their observations, they identify four principal causes for the rise of populism deprivation, destruction, de-alignment and distrust. However, when charting a course forward for post-populism they suggest, as indeed some parties have done, adopting certain ideas from populist parties. I, however, identify...
