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In 2009, in the hope of boosting the economy in the wake of the financial crash, the British government spent £300 million on stimulating sales of new cars. Under its scrappage scheme, if car owners traded in their old vehicles for new ones, the government, with the help of manufacturers, knocked £…

According to party folklore, in 1975, a few months after Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservatives in the United Kingdom, she was chairing a meeting at which one of her colleagues explained what he saw as the core beliefs of Conservativism. She snapped open her handbag, pulled out a dog-…

Defined by the market, defined as a market, human society should be run in every respect as if it were a business, its social relations reimagined as commercial transactions, people redesignated as human capital. The aim and purpose of society is to maximise profits.

Attempts to limit competitio…

The now well-known point is that the market is a fantastic information exchange. Changing prices are signals of shortage and surplus. Furthermore, the capitalist market gives people an incentive to respond to these signals in the search to maximize profits (private vices, public virtues again). Tak…

So the labour theory of value does not explain the source of profit. Consequently the law of the declining rate of profit fails too, for that starts from the assumption that only labour can create value. Does it also follow that workers are not even exploited? Here opinions differ. Some have argued…