Latest editorial
Despite Andy Burnham’s declaration defending the continued partition of the island, all major international and internal trends are converging to make Irish reunification inevitable
MANY of our Christmas traditions have unusual roots, but perhaps the most surprising are those of the board game Monopoly, which you may find yourself playing over the holidays.
Monopoly is the perfect symbol of capitalism — to the extent that the game was banned in East Germany until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which Monopoly championships were held in Berlin.
Hasbro, the brand’s owners, will tell you that Charles Darrow invented the game during the Great Depression, single-handedly creating what he called a “real estate trading game” with property names taken from Atlantic City.
Renewed illusions in social democratic reformism are sprouting as a result of Andy Burnham’s rhetoric, but material conditions are already intruding into the debate, argues NICK WRIGHT
Britain’s culture of ‘effortless’ wealth is built on someone else's labour. Challenging that system means talking about class again, says MATT KERR
ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity
In Part 4 of her look at the Chinese revolution JENNY CLEGG addresses the relationship between the Peasant Movement and the National Movement