ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT delve into the technicalities of famine classification to reveal a worldview in tatters

WRITING in 1918, Lenin reflected on the “rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism.”
In the same text he wrote also of bourgeois democracy being “a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited” — The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.
While of course Lenin knew nothing of Covid-19, the wisdom of both observations has been brutally exposed by the pandemic, as badly exploited workers have been failed by the state, with their trade unions increasingly both marginalised and vilified.



