What is “fair” in capitalism? In 1881 Engels criticized the slogan “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”. The timid contemporary left returns to repeat it, using moral, humanitarian or even charitable considerations. Instead, the issue is about economics: the workers give to the capitalist their full day’s working power and, in exchange, they…

Enshittification, also known as platform decay,[1] is the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. Examples of enshittification include services and products provided by Big Tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft[2][3] and according to Doctorow, “absolutely everything”.[4] The term enshittification was coined by the writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022; the American Dialect Society selected it as its 2023 Word of the Year. History and definition[edit] The term enshittification was…

Tom Stevenson writes about Operation Iron Swords In the first three months​ of Israel’s attack on Gaza around 25,000 Palestinians were killed and around 60,000 wounded, 70 per cent of them women and children. Around 80 per cent of the population of Gaza has been displaced. The rate of killing has been higher than in most…

Pankaj Mishra speaks out about atrempts to shut down his @LRB lecture on Gaza: “saying a “pervasive sense of fear and panic” is closing down debate on the issue within cultural spaces. “I’m not surprised but it’s still shocking,” Mishra said. “The whole point of culture and the arts is to embrace diversity, different view…

Filed: Cuba  Reviews How the Workers’ Parliaments Saved the Cuban Revolution:Reviving Socialism after the Collapse of the Soviet UnionBy Pedro Ross288 pages / Paper US$ 27.00 / 978-1-58367-9784 Reviewed by Steve Cushion for New West Indian Guide The end of the USSR removed Cuba’s principal trading partner overnight, depriving the country of the main market for its sugar harvest, which had…