Making sense of this crazy world

Having looked at the English Revolution, the civil war and its aftermath, this week I’m going to look at the political thinking that came in its aftermath. It shows the depth at which people were thinking about the business of governing in the seventeenth century and, in line with the purpose of this humble podcast, its had a profound impact on our world today. So, it's going to worth our time.

In a nutshell, England had been governed for eleven years, from 1629 to 1640, without a Parliament; for another eleven years, from 1649 to 1660, it would be governed without a monarchy. England, and by default, Britain had sorted out a democratic future for itself slap bang in the middle of the seventeenth century. Only to regret what it had done and bring the monarchy back. But of course, there w...

Last week I looked at what led England to civil war. This week I’m going to focus on how things on the Parliamentary side of that civil war really radicalised.

The English Revolution, that took place in England in the seventeenth century, is often overlooked. But it’s important in establishing the principle of parliamentary democracy and so, it’s certainly worth our time taking a look at it. And it was a revolution, even if that’s something we English are not famous for: not only did a king lose his head but the monarchy itself was overthrown and with it...

Covering more than a thousand years of history, my focus will be on power and how it set up the conditions that led to the English and French revolutions as well as influencing the American revolution too. I

If we look carefully at it, ancient Rome stands in contrast to Greece because whereas we can say that Greece, for a period of time, was indeed a democracy, Rome wrapped a democratic cloak around itself, but in fact was an oligarchy of the wealthy. And for us today, we need to be aware that it is the Roman republic that has had a greater influence on the democracies of the eighteenth, nineteenth an...

George Bernard Shaw said that democracy is the form of government that gives its citizens what they deserve. And that's where I want to turn my attention to: the way in which we are governed in democracies (probably with diversions to alternative ways of governing). Where has democracy come from? What lessons does the past have for us today? What do we mean by democracy? Should we be satisfied wit...

Having taken us from America in the 1920s to America today, last week I looked at the state of the capitalist system and the state of the richest 0.1%, 1%, 10%. Well, today, I’m going to end our look at America by focussing on the 90%, right up to Trump's current administration.  

Having made the link between the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2009, in other words between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Financial Crisis or Subprime Crisis of 2008, let’s take a look at how the capitalist system works in America today.

In this episode I’m going to make the worrying link between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Financial Crisis or Subprime Crisis of 2008, between the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2009.

There were those who criticised Roosevelt for not doing more, but it is the criticisms from the capitalists who complained he was doing too much, interfering in the economy too much, that I want to focus on. We’ve touched on it from time to time in the last two episodes, but I want to shine a spotlight on it because their determination to undo what he had achieved would, eventually, lead to the fi...

Roosevelt's Second New Deal was different in character. Its emphasis was on reform: reforming the capitalist system that had failed Americans; indeed, had failed itself. And providing for a fairer society with protection for workers and better pay and work conditions, and welfare support for the wider population. 

Roosevelt's package of new laws and initiatives that together constituted his New Deal for America, offered three things: Relief, Recovery and Reform. It set out to save Americans from the Great Depression and to save capitalism from itself.

I think it’s important to focus on 1932 in the Great Depression because it shows the depth of the impact the depression had on people’s lives, it shows how choices are important in history as they are in life, and it shows how democracy can work to stabilise a state that’s in deep trouble.

I’m going to begin this week with a song. But don’t worry – I’m not going to sing it! The song depicts how men who had contributed to America’s economic well-being and who had fought for their country were now left begging for small change. Because this week, we’re looking at the impact of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that followed in its wake.

A tragic tale of how badly things can go wrong when capitalism is unregulated.

If radicals and newer immigrants faced American intolerance, so too did a group of people who had been in America much longer, had not asked to be there but who, as a consequence, had already suffered in ways no human being should have had to endure: African Americans.

Last week we were looking at divisions in American society, well America was not only divided, it was a remarkably prejudiced, intolerant society. Examples are many but I will focus this week on immigrants and the ‘Red Scare’, and particularly on the trial of two Italian-born immigrants: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

We can see divisions in American society on a number of fronts: politically, racially, between the poor and the rich, but America was no more split than it was between the city and the countryside. Rural America was ill at ease with the apparent self-indulgence, materialism and the looser morals that they saw in city life. They were concerned that Christian values seemed to be breaking down, and w...

I’ve been looking at industrial revolutions and the development of capitalism. First, in Britain, the world’s first industrial revolution, and then moving across the Atlantic to America and this week I want to dig a little deeper into the kind of society that developed in America in the 1920s.

Last week I gave you the positive spin on the way capitalism developed in America in the 1920s. Well, this week we’ll be looking at the worrying side, the dark side even. It shows that there are always, or nearly always, two ways to look at things, and it also shows the shortcomings, even the danger, of capitalism  

Herbert Hoover, in accepting the Republican nomination to run for president in 1928, said ‘One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human activities has been the abolition of poverty … we in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of our land.’ And that’s what were setting off to look at next: capitalism in America.     Intro and outro music c...

This week, I'm going to take a deeper look at capitalism and present a sweeping history of it from the first industrial revolution in nineteenth-century Britain to today. And I'll leave you with a question: should capitalism be controlled by government?

The focus for this, and the next episode will be the economic and political system that formed the basis for the first industrial revolution in Britain and looks ahead to the development of Western economies: capitalism and the profit motive.

The industrial revolution created a new class: the working class, with its own experiences, its own culture and its own needs. It is a class that has come a long, long way since that first industrial revolution in Britain and this episode sets out to sketch that journey.