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Showing posts from July 24, 2016
Globalisation and whose recovery? Yes, some of the so-called recovery is based on low-paid jobs. Some of it is based on precarious jobs.  A Bogus Concept?
The long depression Via Michael Roberts " Back in work, still out of pocket : Labour market recovery since the Great Recession - the jobs gap will not be closed until 2017 at the earliest AND the wages gap may never be closed. Some countries have real wages over 20% below where they would have been without the Great Recession and subsequent weak recovery. The UK scores worse than Greece on this relative measure . According to a study by the OECD, the labour market recovery in OECD countries has been steady but slow s ince the Great Recession. More worrying is the fate of wage growth over the same period.  The jobs recovery has been underway since the first quarter of 2010, when the OECD average employment rate reached its post-crisis trough, with only 58.6% of the population (ages 15-74 years) employed. This was 2.2% lower than the employment rate in 2007, corresponding to 20.3 million missing jobs. Despite the slow and uneven nature of the economic recovery, the jobs de...
"Marx the Moor" There is an interesting reading of Marx on Islam and Muslims in History of Islam in German Thought by Ian Almond “And without total abandonment of the law of the Koran [argues opposition MP Cobden], it was impossible to put the Christians of Turkey upon an equality with the Turks.” We may as well ask Mr Cobden whether, with the existing State Church and laws of England, it is possible to put her working-men upon an equality with the Cobdens and the Brights? —Marx, The Eastern Question , p. 260 
In 1993 Halim Barakat wrote:  "One may also suggest that the greater the socioeconomic inequalities in mosaic societies, the more the likelihood of uprisings. However, such uprisings are more likely to result in civil wars (in which one controlling elite is substituted for another), rather than popular revolutions (in which society is transformed, and the dominant order is replaced by a new order). The reverse pattern is more likely to emerge in relatively homogeneous societies. In the latter, the greater the inequalities, the greater the class solidarity, mobilization, and prospect of revolution. If these assumptions are correct, one should expect the first Arab popular revolution to take place in Egypt or Tunisia. This does not, however, exclude the possibility that revolutions may occur in more pluralistic societies as well."  — Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Societ, Culture and State , pp. 15-17, 1993.