Class Talk

Communications Unbound

Helen Davitt

• Publisher: Peter Lang Group
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781789975901
• eBook ISBN: 9781789975918
• Edition: 1

A mini source-book on the roots and prevailing features of the contemporary capitalist political economy, Class Talk – Communications Unbound outlines the alternative of economically viable, politically robust and socio-culturally inclusive democratic socialism fit for the 21st Century and beyond. Tracing politico-economic and socio-cultural exploitative behaviours to historical antecedents of feudalism, slavery and colonialism, it defines the age of capitalism, examines the dismantling of the Post-Second World War politico-economic consensus, outlines shareholder control of the corporate, banking and communications systems and details the global privatisation of public services and the worldwide burgeoning of commercial rentierism.
The book makes visible the web of connections between matters of immense public concern: climate catastrophe and capitalist profiteering, foreign policy and terrorism, the housing crises and the global banking cartel, education systems and politico-economic divisiveness. It signposts the discussions, debates, solidarity and organisational activism in which the poor and working-class majority must engage if societies are to be built and maintained for the common good.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Power, Force and Social Class
• Chapter 2: Competitive Production, Exploitation and Profiteering
• Chapter 3: Usurious Banking and the Great Depression
• Chapter 4: WWI, Fascism, WWII, the Cold War
• Chapter 5: Post-WWII Western Economic Growth, Offshoring, Privatisation, Deregulation of Banking and Finance
• Chapter 6: Twenty-first-century Resource Wars
• Chapter 7: Bank Racketeering
• Chapter 8: Big Technology, Agri-business, Big Pharma, Medical Profiteering, Blockchain
• Chapter 9: Trading Blocs
• Chapter 10: Battles for Justice, Quest for Peace
• Chapter 11: Propaganda
• Chapter 12: The Socio-biological Nature of Language Acquisition
• Chapter 13: The Socio-cultural Nature of Literacy Development
• Chapter 14: Sociopathy of Defective Hypotheses
• Chapter 15: Politics of Ego and Entitlement
• Chapter 16: Housing in the UK
• Chapter 17: Grenfell
• Chapter 18: Charities and Foreign Aid
• Chapter 19: Educational Apartheid
• Chapter 20: English National Curriculum and Key Stage Testing
• Chapter 21: Pre-privatisation of State Schools
• Chapter 22: Parliamentary Monitoring of State Education
• Chapter 23: Educational Technology
• Chapter 24: Office for Standards in Education
• Chapter 25: Battle for Critical, Political and Multi-functional Literacy
• Chapter 26: Workplace Democracy
• Chapter 27: Democratisation of Mass Media
• Chapter 28: Education for Democratic Socialism
• Chapter 29: Into the Future
• Chapter 30: Signposts
• Chapter 31: Pandemic Politics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Subject index