Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
By taking so long an historical view, Piketty is able to show that the thirty-five year period of the two world wars and the intervening world economic crash was a world-historical anomaly that interrupted a long-term secular process of growth and persistent inequality in the capitalist world. The enormous explosion of growth in the thirty years following that anomaly can be seen, through Piketty’s lens, not as the emergence of a new world order, more humane, more equal, less in thrall to inherited wealth, but as a quite natural recovery from the anomaly and re-establishment of a centuries-old pattern of extreme inequality in the ownership and control of society’s capital resources and the income from them.
Robert Paul Wolff on Capitalism in the Twentieth Century.
The Stone Mill
There is a pause in the noise, then a whirring: the building is catching its breath. I’m certain — it is reaching after speech! The walls turn into cheeks. Air stirs in the throat. There: the mill is inhaling slowly, its cartilage creaks. But it is only a resting breath; and if anything, the slight breath only distils this speechlessness.
A stone goes ‘”‹âœ±!”‹’
I watch pale dust clouds flickering through the entry-hatch — the rock’s ghost floats towards the light, drawn along a pathway of sun.
By Ed Cottrell.