Labour’s Alternative Economic Strategy, 40 Years On
That Option No Longer Exists: Britain 1974–76 by John Medhurst recalls a febrile period when the left came close to implementing a radical socialist economic strategy.
Economics
Labour’s radical soil
Scottish Labour needs to offer the kind of practical, transformative radicalism that helps people where they need it most.
Engineering utopia
Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty is not just any old history of post-war Soviet cybernetic mathematical modelling. This is an account of centrally administered resource allocation quite unlike any other.
European futures
Two new books written by very different authors, from very different worlds, argue that – despite everything – the EU still offers a credible framework for the advancement of progressive political purposes if critical design flaws in the mechanisms of the eurozone can be fixed, and its economic policy can be turned from austerity towards expansion.
Yes: The Radical Case for Independence
As Scotland’s independence referendum approaches I thought I would review some of the better books and essays I’ve read about it over the past few months. One of those is Yes: The Radical Case for Independence by James Foley and Pete Ramand.
Re-engineering politics: the promise and limits of digital solutionism
Moral and political issues are not engineering problems to be fixed, but expressions of differing, irreconcilable visions of the good that must be negotiated. Some notes on digital ‘solutionism’.