selfishness | Pandaemonium

THE INVISIBILITY OF CLASS

December 20, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on solidarity and class, was published in the Observer on 17 December 2023 under the headline “The Reith lectures miss the point. Politics fails when it avoids the issue of class”. “Solidarity has to come through class.” So insisted Rollie, a member of the audience in the latest of the Reith lectures, given this year by political scientist Ben Ansell, professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford, His four Reith lectures, entitled “Our Democratic Future”, explore, respectively, issues of democracy, […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: ben ansell, class solidarity, identity politics, national identity, nationalism, reith lectures, self-interest, selfishness, solidarity, working class

CREATING INEQUALITY BEYOND THE PANDEMIC

August 31, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on inequality in the post-pandemic world, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 29 August 2021, under the headline “The rich nations’ take on the world post-pandemic? ‘I’m all right, Jack’”. Rich countries have administered more doses of Covid vaccine than the size of their populations – an average of 105 doses per 100 people. In low-income countries, that figure is just two per 100 people. It is a disparity that is likely to define the post-pandemic […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: africa, covax, covid 19, fortress europe, global inequality, immigration controls, immigration panics, immigration policy, inequality, offshoring, pandemic, selfishness, vaccination, vaccine nationalism

MOST PEOPLE ARE DECENT, BUT DECENCY IS NOT ENOUGH

March 31, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on decency and politics, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the mess that is the free speech debate.) It was published on 29 March 2020, under the headline ‘Our basic decency is clear. But a good society needs more than decency’. ‘It may seem a ridiculous idea but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.’ So says Dr Rieux, a central character in Albert Camus’s 1947 novel The […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: big state, camus, common good, coronavirus, selfishness, socialism, solidarity