MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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Embrace the differences
MARJORIE MAYO recommends a punchy demonstration of the the way class politics are being fragmented by the right
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New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Minority Rule: Adventures in the culture war
Ash Sarkar, Bloomsbury, £18.99
MINORITY RULE sets out to explore the ways in which class politics are being fragmented: the way the right has been weakening working-class power through processes of “divide and rule.”
Marx and Engels identified the ways in which capitalism produces extreme wealth for the very few and impoverishment for everyone else — accompanied by environmental degradation on a global scale. But resistance to capitalism has been diminished as a result of divisions within and between different sections of the working class.
Sarkar focuses on the ways in which identity politics have been weaponised to exacerbate these divisions, steering resentment away from the underlying causes of poverty and inequality. Right-wing pundits have been peddling the notion that majority interests are being threatened by minorities (however defined) effectively reinforcing the real threat — of minority rule by financial elites.
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