Category Archives: Interventions

A New ‘Second Chamber’

I have in front of me Peter Allen’s The Political Class, which I read a while ago and which is about optimum forms of ‘democratic’ representation and decision-making in politics. It is not my intenton here to summarise his analysis of different options. I will rather summarise his characterisation of the extant ‘political class’, then… Read More »

Standing, ‘Precarity’ and Policy

Guy Standing is an innovative thinker and contributor to policy formation. He is best known for his concept of the ‘precariat’ and for championing a universal basic income. In a recent chapter in Economics for the Many (edited by John McDonnell) he introduces a few more novel concepts, and these are the focus of this… Read More »

Badiou, Corbyn and the New Communism

There has for some time, most particularly among French philosophers and commentators, been an interest in recovering the notion of communism: people like Badiou for example have espoused a ‘new communism’. The rationale for this is generally that throughout parliamentary or other forms of liberal/social democracies in the West the electoral choice is merely between… Read More »

Badiou, Trump and Communism

Alan Badiou gave a lecture at Tufts University, Boston, two weeks after the election of Trump during which he attempted to come to terms with this enigmatic and painful happening. His observations have a wider relevance, not least to UK post-Brexit. Badiou rightly sees Trump as a symptom of financialised capitalism, which he characterises in… Read More »

What I might have said if I was Corbyn …

It is sometimes difficult to get one’s voice heard above the background noise of today’s news outlets, whether TV or printed press. So I thought it might be timely to outline Labour’s ethos and plans even as another general election looms. The polls, always to be taken with a pinch of salt, suggest high rates… Read More »

The Outrageous Politics of Antisemitism

A little over a week ago I asked a question on twitter, curious as to how people would respond. I gave people a week to respond. The question and responses were as follows: ‘If a sociologist set out to study whether those identifying as Jewish are under- or over-represented among British elites, would this be… Read More »

Neoliberalism’s ‘Protective Belt’

Surprisingly often ideas advance, theses refined, by serendipitous means. So it is in this case. I have just finished Michiko Kakutani’s excellent The Death of Truth, a discourse on our present era, one which has been understandably characterized as ‘post-truth’. In most of my publications, and blogs too, I have short-changed culture, so keen have… Read More »

Unpalatable Truths

Blogs to my mind allow for an interlude of ‘thinking out loud’, so it is perhaps not so surprising that the blog I intended to write when I turned on my laptop has already been superceded. The reason for this is sheer frustration at the level of ineptitude and, far more seriously, of corruption in… Read More »

‘Does It Have To Be Like This?’ A Book Abandoned

 DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY?  Graham Scambler Introducing: Behind the Scenes This is a book of sociology that differs from many another. Most obviously it is not written with students of the discipline in mind. There already exists a plethora of textbooks within students’ reach and compass, many of which are excellent guides… Read More »

Albert Camus on Revolution

I recently read Camus’ The Fastidious Assassins, and I found myself reacting with the usual uneasy admix of judgement and feeling. Camus writes wonderfully well and with considerable subtlety and depth. Yet he refuses to ‘spells things out’. This is of course a strength as well as a weakness. Its strength is the avoidance of… Read More »