Tag Archives: immiseration

More numbers sleight of hand. It should perhaps come as no surprise that, as capitalism has been called into question and socialism generated increasing interest during the past decade, capitalism’s defenders have resorted to a long historical view. Look, they say, how capitalist growth has decreased poverty and led to improvements in people’s lives around the globe. Just stick with it and all will eventually be well. That’s why, as Jason Hickel points out, the above infographic, based on...

"Immiseration" has a nice quality to it and is less emotionally loaded than "exploitation," which is now associated with "Marxism" in the pejorative sense in capitalist countries like the US. It’s clear that, for decades now, American workers have been falling further and further behind. And there’s simply no justification for this sorry state of affairs—nothing that can rationalize or excuse the growing gap between the majority of people who work for a living and the tiny group at the...