Joseph Kay's blog

With recent strikes, occupations, and violent repression, the university is becoming a battleground. What does this mean for university staff and students?

Ha-Joon Chang argues that higher wages are good for workers and businesses alike. He's wrong.

When we limit ourselves to reasoned critique we cut ourselves off from the everyday experiences of life under capitalism from which any revolutionary rupture must grow.

Some tweets on left parliamentary aspirations and Keynesian welfare state mythology.

Some quick comments on the latest 'shit Dawkins says on Twitter' row.

Three reasons why laughing at the EDL is counter-productive, and what we should do instead.

A follow-up to my blog on the 'housing shortage', originally posted as an overly-long facebook status and reposted here now that the scheme to house people in shipping containers has been approved.

A short blog inspired by a long banner.

ALL MUST WORK! declares the cabinet of millionaires. 'Workers not shirkers!', they implore. 'Strivers not skivers!' The divide-and-rule rhetoric trying to pit those in work against those without is as relentless as it is transparent. But what's so good about work anyway?

The Guardian today reports a rise in homelessness. This is a predictable (and predicted) consequence of benefits cuts, but it has nothing to do with a shortage of homes.

Some further thoughts on capitalism and climate change.

Blog post in which I pass off 140-character bursts from Twitter as enigmatic libertarian communist analysis.

There's been several articles posted lately critical of identity politics from a class struggle perspective. This blog addresses some of the pitfalls of the class unity v identity politics debate.

This is a short blog inspired by the news that the UK is officially in ‘double-dip’ recession (as predicted by pretty much everyone on the left).

This is a short blog prompted by recent events in Brighton, as well as wider discussions I’ve been having about the (possible) relationship of austerity to gendered violence and oppression.

Workfare isn’t just an austerity measure, it’s part of a longer term restructuring of the labour market. That makes it all the more important to kill it while we still can.

I finally finished this book after reading it on and off for months. First, I'll say this is a very unsettling book. By this, I mean it makes you think again about things you thought you knew already, and can't be easily assimilated into an existing worldview. For that reason alone, it's worth reading.

Does the failure to reach an agreement to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees celsius prove that capitalism has no answer to man-made climate change?

I remember when I first Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch I liked its synthesis of autonomist Marxist emphasis on class struggle and Foucauldian 'politics of the body', situating the womens struggles as a site of class conflict. But I also had some nagging doubts about elements of the historical narrative.

The news that graduates are now paying to work for free just adds to the feeling that something has to give.