Throughout history, whenever new technologies have emerged that change our means of production and ability to communicate they have tended to transform society. The rapid technological development of the…
Syriza, now on the verge of a historic election victory in Greece, has risen dramatically as an electoral force on the back of a plan to write off debt and end austerity. However, talk of the party introducing…
Women are paid less than men for the same work, despite the Equal Pay Act in the UK. These are statistics that we are familiar with. Women earn 85p for every £1 a man earns. But, adding insult to injury…
While the idea that history is written by the victors is frequently quoted, it fails to sufficiently inform our cultural understanding of our past. History ought to be the story, not just of the winners…
This article was published in 2014. An updated version was published in 2017 Foundation essay: This article was part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays…
Pope Francis has emerged as one of the most important voices on the global stage about the need for a stronger moral dimension in economic policies. This has caused some upset in business and financial…
Naomi Klein’s third attack on capitalism, This Changes Everything, has put the urgency of climate change front and centre. As ever for Klein, unrestrained capitalism is the root problem and has to be dealt…
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has proposed a plan to stop companies from avoiding billions of dollars in taxes. As we know from the scandals surrounding Amazon, Starbucks, Vodafone…
The argument that strong employment rights are incompatible with economic growth has long exerted a strong influence on the minds of politicians. The relentless economic difficulties in the EU since 2008…
British prisoners are increasingly being asked to work for profit-making companies while serving their time, without receiving much in return. But, far from resenting such apparent exploitation, research…
As the World Cup reaches its climax, with Brazil, Germany, Argentina and the Netherlands to fight it out for a spot in the final, can we explain why some countries have been successful at the highest level…
Recent weeks have been all about elections and broken promises: from early April to mid-May, half-a-billion Indians went to the polls in what many described an astonishing display of democratic prowess…
Everyone is talking about inequality and capitalism nowadays. That’s great, but before we all jump on the bandwagon to “fix” capitalism, let’s talk about which capitalism(s) we wish to fix and how we intend…
Thomas Piketty’s bestselling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows that in a selection of developed countries the stock of capital is growing faster than economic output, causing disturbing increases…
The Conversation is running a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. Here, Andrew Self examines how class operates on a global scale, and whether or not…
In the past week, violence has hit several industrial areas in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where hundreds of thousands garment workers started protesting against unfair working conditions. They are demanding…
Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.