Shareholder Democracy Is a Corporate Governance Myth That Won’t Die

In a new article, we challenge one of corporate law’s most persistent narratives: the concept of “shareholder democracy.” With people on opposing sides of recent high-profile battles at compa…

The Joy of Becoming Worthless…except to each other — Douglas Rushkoff

My last piece, The Intentional Collapse, seems to have agitated a few people. I know it came off a bit dark. I talked about how the Uber wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending and that there won’t be enough essential resources to go around, so they need to take control of as much money and stuff and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days.

Carlos E. Perez on Twitter / X

What exactly drives the late-stage capitalist US economy?https://t.co/ERU764NoC4— Carlos E. Perez (@IntuitMachine) May 28, 2026

Democratic Ownership Funds: Creating Shared Wealth and Power

Recent decades have seen a rapid and little-discussed transformation in corporate ownership structure, with vital consequences for company behaviour and inequality.

Cognitive Capitalism - Public Seminar

There are broadly three ways of thinking historically about capitalism. One draws on Marx’s value theory and pretty much treats...Read More

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History

A Financial Times Most Anticipated Book of 2025A sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics. At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system, Capitalism and Its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from the East India Company and Industrial Revolution to the di...

Hype, financial narratives, and self-fulfilling prophecies in surveillance capitalism

The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedented digital powers to extract monopoly rents – perhaps even heralding a new form of Feudalism. This paper draws on the literature on financial narratives to examine the role that such stories play within the form of capitalism that they describe, and what this suggests for the role of “hype” in contemporary capitalism. The same stories that for critical scholars appear as menacing threats of “technofeudalism” or “surveillance capitalism” for investors appear as optimistic stories of promising future returns. By driving financial investments, narratives afford platforms very real social and political powers, enabling them to function as a form of self-fulfilling prophecies. The paper argues for a cultural inflection to the political economy of Big Tech – viewing capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as an expression of a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. This suggests the need for a critical hype studies, geared at deconstructing the narratives undergirding the technological waves of capitalist pursuits, and examining the broader role of hype in coordinating and directing flows of capital within contemporary financialized capitalism.

The Player and the Played

In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable game, extreme reactionary ideas and politics are on the rise. The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Squid Gam...

1% for the People

Capitalism is the undisputed powerplant of global prosperity. Since Adam Smith first described the “invisible hand” that allows economies to be efficiently self-organizing and self-renewing, every attempt to supplant it with a competing system has failed spectacularly.

Le capitalisme de la finitude : pessimisme et bellicisme

Traduction française de « Capitalism of finitude: pessimism and bellicosity. Review of Arnaud Orain’s "Le Monde Confisqué" » de Branko Milanovic

Hope in Common

We seem to have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance appears scattered and incoherent; the global justice movement a shadow of its former self. There is good reason to believe that, in a generation […]

Will capitalism end capitalism? | Steve Loftus | The Critic Magazine

Imagine waking up one morning to discover your job still exists, but your services are no longer required. The work is being done, just not by you, not by anybody. Somewhere, a machine is doing it…

Capitalism | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

Le nouveau capitalisme (1/3)

Traduction de "New capitalism in America. Richest capitalists and richest workers are increasingly the same people" de Branko Milanovic