working class

Early photo of Maurice and Nick Broomfield, both holding cameras.

Progressive British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield has produced a beautiful film chronicling the life, times and work of his father, industrial photographer Maurice Broomfield, reviewed by Barry Healy.

Racism is not fundamentally about individual behaviour – although often that’s how people experience it. Lavanya Thavaraja argues that it is central to the institutions of Australian capitalism.

Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus takes a look at five new books for ecosocialists.

β€œBrexit” and the recent US presidential election are symptoms of the crisis capitalism has wrought. People are hurting and it has become obvious that instead of β€œtrickle down” we have, in Arundhati Roy’s words, β€œgush up”. Even mainstream media carry articles suggesting neoliberalism has had its day.

Last month I read an article that first appeared in the Huffington Post titled "X Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here". It explains how real wages in the US shadowed growth in productivity in the years after World War II. But in the mid-1970s wages growth completely stalled. If wages had continued to shadow productivity growth they would now be double what they are today. This explains a lot about contemporary US society: all the gains of increased productivity have been absorbed by the rich.