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.