When the individual liberty and freedom it promises is mediated through the institutional arrangements of private property and the market, as it is in both liberal theory and practice, then huge inequalities result

Now often referred to as 'the precariat' (to emphasise the floating and unstable character of their employment and lifestyles) these workers have always accounted for a large segment of the total labour force.

There are various broad fractious currents of thought on the left as to how to address the problems that now confront us.