I have been running a series of extracts from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (the previous extracts are here and here). One of the great novels of the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of one family, the Joads, tenant farmers from Oklahoma, who are forced off their land by the banks, pushed into migrating to the promised land of California, and the even greater wretchedness they find in their Utopia. In this third extract, the Joads […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: america, capitalism, great dedpression, john steinbeck, the grapes of wrath, working class

Globalization and neoliberalism. They’ve become the explanations du jour for the decimation of industries and the devastation of lives, for falling wages and slashed public spending. And there is, of course, truth to the claim. But capitalism was chewing up and spitting out its victims long before the market was globalised or liberalism became neo’d. One of the great novels of the Great Depression, of the wretchedness of poverty in 1930s America, was written half a century before those words […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: america, capitalism, great dedpression, john steinbeck, the grapes of wrath, working class