The Postmodern Labor Theory of Value and the Illusion of Exploitation
The US women’s soccer team has recently become the focus of a national debate over the apparent pay gap between the men’s and women’s teams. Many are pointing to this…
Politics
375 posts
Why Postcolonial Theory Is Not Helping Hong Kong
It was a scene that seemed anachronistic and perplexing to Western observers. For a few brief moments on July 1st 2019, the 22nd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong…
America’s Persistent Problem with Equality
One of the most significant developments of the late modern period (post–1750) has been the replacement of ordered hierarchy as a social and political value by equality. Equality can take…
A Preview of “What is Post-Modern Conservatism?: Essays on Our Hugely Tremendous Times.”
In 1989, a young scholar named Francis Fukuyama published an essay with the provocative title “The End of History?” in the National Interest. He argued that, with the fall of…
Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma: Identity Politics and Feminism
Although the ideology of identity politics remains hegemonic in the academy and in many social institutions, a growing—and arguably necessary—body of critique has been emerging. These critiques have emanated both…
The Crisis of White Identity. Book Review
“We need to talk about white identity. Not as a fabrication designed to maintain power, but as a set of myths and symbols to which people are attached: an ethnic…
Is Anti-Zionism a Form of Anti-Semitism?
A detailed look at the recent Intelligence Squared debate on the motion “Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism” can help illuminate some of the main points to be considered in examining this controversial…
Why We Need Whiteness Studies
Five years ago, the conservative Charles Murray and the liberal Robert Putnam agreed on something. Murray is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and is most widely known for…
What The Left Can Learn From Liberalism
Today, liberalism seems under greater threat than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Books with titles like Why Liberalism Failed have received laudations from both the…
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Book Review. Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. (Verso Books, 2019) Aaron Bastani, co-founder and public face of Novara Media, and public advocate for the Corbyn project, is…
Why Confrontation Is Not the Best Way to Effect Regime Change in China
Over the past week, protests once again shook the streets of Hong Kong, as tens of thousands occupied the region’s CBD. Many of them were university students like myself, and…
Censorship on Facebook and YouTube
Facebook is a private company: therefore, it can enforce its rules without having to ask anyone for permission. Changes in policies do enrage a few users, but, overall, Facebook has…
Beware of the Trojan Horse: A Critique of Social Justice
The public debates of those critical of Social Justice—the idea of correcting for unequal outcomes—tend to focus primarily on the illiberal attitudes and behaviours of today’s so-called Social Justice Warriors.…
Karl Marx: Man of Yesterday or of Tomorrow?
I was born a year before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which signified the end of the Cold War and our entry into the end of history. Capitalism was…
Bridging Our Political Divide: Uncivil Agreement by Lilliana Mason. Book Review.
Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to talk politics with people we disagree with. These conversations can swiftly become hostile beyond what would reasonably be expected…
Hindus Will Have Their Martin Niemöller Moment
On the balmy Saturday night of June 30th, 1934, Ernst Roehm and his lieutenants of the notorious Nazi SA Sturmabteilung, better known as the brown shirts, were sleeping soundly at…
Vox’s Double Standard For Hate
What rules govern the social acceptability of interactions between people that invoke immutable (race, gender etc.) or quasi-immutable (religion, class etc.) characteristics? How do these rules relate to serious expressions…
Don’t Let Environmentalism Turn into Anti-Capitalism (or Worse)
It’s evident that we have a problem with climate change and pollution. The world is heating up, we’re losing species, and plastics plague our oceans. These expansive problems are not…
