Latest news with #Marx
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Britain is now too poor for even virtue-signalling socialism
We have told the private equity barons to get lost, and might take Thames Water back into public ownership. We have renationalised the railways, slashing fares and buying some new rolling stock at the same time. And we have pumped plenty of fresh 'investment' into the steel industry as we save it from the ravages of free market capitalism. In some alternative universe, Britain's Labour Government would be indulging in some high-profile virtue signalling this week. In this one, unfortunately, a very different narrative is unfolding. It turns out that we are now too poor for even socialism – we have already run out of 'other people's money'. This should have been the week for a Labour Government with a huge majority to indulge its Big State instincts. It is surely clear to everyone that Thames Water is now broken, and it will inevitably require some form of bail-out from the Government if the taps and the sewers in the capital are to keep operating. Whichever bright spark at Ofwat who decided to impose a massive fine on Thames Water only last week, and whichever civil servant who approved it, must be feeling a little sheepish now that the private equity giant KKR has pulled out of rescue talks. The Government might be expected to step in with a plan to take it into state ownership. The problem is the Treasury doesn't have the money, either to service its debts or to repair the pipes. Instead, it is scrabbling around for some other form of refinancing. Likewise, last week the Government should have been celebrating the return of South West Railways to public ownership. We should have expected some razzmatazz, with red flags fluttering on the platforms of Poole and Dorchester, free tea handed out in a Marx mug, and some flashy Tik Toks about the 'People's Railway'. It didn't happen. Instead, the very first 'public train' you could catch was a rail replacement bus running from Waterloo to Woking. True, there was a quickly repainted 'Great British Railways' logo, but that was where the budget ran out. As relaunches go, it was about as flat as a glass of warm prosecco on the delayed train to Cornwall. Meanwhile, the Government may soon be forced to take what remains of British Steel into public ownership as its Chinese owners grow tired of its mounting losses. But the Government doesn't have the cash to spend. Add it all up, and one point is clear: the UK is now too poor for virtue-signalling socialism. That national debt is close to hitting 100 per cent of GDP, and will almost certainly punch through that crucial barrier over the summer. Taxes are running at a 70-year high, but the budget deficit keeps getting wider and wider, with the Chancellor racking up an extra £20 billion of debt in April alone. Receipts are falling with entrepreneurs and nom-doms fleeing the country, and the growth the Starmer administration promised has failed to materialise. Mrs Thatcher once famously observed that: 'the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money'. Unfortunately for Sir Keir Starmer's Government, the money had already mostly run out before it took office, and what little was left in the kitty was immediately frittered away on higher public sector wages. We can all argue about whether it is better for the water industry, the railways, or steel manufacturing to be in the public or the private sector. And yet we could probably all agree on this point: Britain's crumbling infrastructure, and its shrinking manufacturing base, need more money spent on them. This should have been the perfect month to demonstrate what the public sector can do. Unfortunately, Britain is too poor to afford it any more – and until that changes, the virtue-signalling will have to remain on hold. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Star
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
Richard Marx to hold concert in Genting Highlands on Aug 16
Award-winning singer-songwriter Richard Marx will be entertaining fans in Malaysia with a one-night concert in Genting Highlands on Aug 16. Photo: Richard Marx/Instagram Renowned American singer-songwriter Richard Marx is set to perform in Malaysia on Aug 16. Scheduled to take place at the Arena of Stars, Resorts World Genting, the upcoming concert marks a celebration of Marx's illustrious career spanning over 35 years. It's also held in conjunction with Resorts World Genting's 60th anniversary. Fans can expect an unforgettable night of nostalgia as Marx, 61, takes the stage with timeless hits like Right Here Waiting , Now And Forever , Endless Summer Nights and more. It's worth noting that Marx is the only male artiste in history to have his first seven singles reach the top five of the Billboard charts. Over the course of his career, Marx has been nominated for five Grammy Awards. He clinched the Grammy for Song of the Year for Dance With My Father in 2003. Pre-sale tickets for Marx's August show are now available for Genting Rewards Card (GRC) Gold Members and above, as well as Visa cardholders. General sale tickets, priced between RM368 to RM1,188, will be available via from June 9, noon onwards.
Asia Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Asia Times
Karl Marx is back—and he thinks you Americans are clowns
Karl Marx is having a moment—again. Not a polite classroom cameo. Not a dusty citation buried in a syllabus. No, we're talking prime-time revival, with publishers, podcasters and politicos all vying to resurrect the bearded prophet of class war. Princeton just dropped a new translation of ' Capital ' —the first in 50 years. Bernie Sanders remains the most famous living socialist on Earth. TikTok teens quote 'seize the means' between lip-syncs and thirst traps. And MAGA diehards bark 'Marxist!' at everything from school libraries to seatbelt laws. Welcome to the fourth Marx boom, as historian Andrew Hartman calls it. But let's get one thing clear: most people talking about Marx—left, right or libertarian—have no idea what they're actually invoking. Because Marx, the man, the theorist, the firestarter, has become less a thinker and more a Rorschach test. A ghost conjured by the Left for moral clarity and by the Right for moral panic. And yet, buried beneath the hysteria, is something worth looking at. Not because Marx offers the answers but because he was asking the right questions. And America—bloated, twitchy, unequal—is finally in a position to understand them. Marx wasn't about equality. He was about power. This is the first mistake people make. They think Marx was some utopian, frothing about 'fairness' or 'equity' like a modern DEI consultant. He wasn't. Marx was a power analyst. His lens wasn't moral—it was mechanical. You either owned the means of production, or you didn't. Everything else—religion, culture, law—was scaffolding. Set dressing. A way to keep the underclass sedated. Marx never said capitalism made people mean. He said it made them replaceable . A system that turns humans into units of labor, not out of malice, but efficiency. And if you don't see that reality in Uber drivers, Amazon warehouses or AI ghostwriters cannibalizing creative work, you're blind. Why Marx appeals to America's lost generation Marx is back in fashion because America, in many ways, is more Marxist in condition than it has ever been. Not ideologically but structurally. A bloated elite hoards wealth and real estate. The middle class is evaporating faster than coastal cities. Work offers no security, only subscriptions. And even the fantasy of upward mobility has been repossessed. Enter a generation saddled with debt, raised on screens, priced out of housing and force-fed bootstraps ideology while watching billionaires LARP as demigods. These young Americans don't want communism, but they're furious at capitalism. Marx didn't give them hope. He gave them blame . And blame is power's most dangerous counterforce. The irony of the American Marxist boom The deeper irony? Marx wouldn't have recognized most of today's 'Marxists.' Cultural obsessives more focused on pronouns than property. Tenured radicals clinging to academia like landlords to rent checks. Corporate HR departments using DEI training as a smokescreen for crushing union talk. Marx believed in material struggle, not identity kabuki. To him, class wasn't just one axis among many—it was the engine room. Everything else, including race and gender, flowed from the economic base. The modern Left has flipped that model inside out, often without realizing it. That's not Marxism. That's mood-board activism. The 2025 translation of ' Capital ' by Princeton is being billed as 'Marx for the twenty-first century.' But that phrase is more revealing than it intends. Because it's not about updating Marx—it's about updating us . It's about whether we're finally ready to read him not as a revolutionary or relic, but as a systems analyst. A brutal, unsentimental one. He didn't want your virtue. He wanted your audit. He wanted to know who owned the factory, and why. Who owned the newspaper? Who funded the revolution? And who pretended they didn't? What the Right Gets wrong Conservatives love to shout 'Marxist!' like it's a spell that makes your enemies disappear. But what they often miss is that capitalism itself has become post-capitalist in structure. The free market is a museum piece. What we have now is something closer to algorithmic feudalism, where tech oligarchs own the infrastructure of communication, culture and commerce. Not factories—servers. Not railroads—data. Marx saw feudalism mutate into capitalism. What he didn't live long enough to see was capitalism mutate into platform monopolies. If the lords once controlled land, and the industrialists controlled labor, today's titans control the interface. And when you control the interface, you don't need to own the worker. You just own their access to work. What the Left gets wrong The Left romanticizes Marx but forgets he was diagnosing disease, not prescribing utopia. He didn't tell you what to build—he just showed you what would collapse. Every time someone waves a hammer-and-sickle flag while sipping Starbucks and tweeting about revolution, a ghost in Highgate Cemetery rolls its eyes. The real tragedy is that the Left, by abandoning class for cultural abstraction, has forfeited the very tools Marx gave them. They're trying to cut steel with slogans. They've replaced critique with vibes. And the ruling class couldn't be more thrilled. Marx doesn't need to be right, just useful. Of course, Marx got many things wrong. He underestimated capitalism's plasticity. He misunderstood the role of the middle class. And he didn't see how consumerism would morph exploitation into entertainment. But he understood cycles. He saw how inequality, left unchecked, hollows out empires. He saw how narratives are used to justify hierarchies. And he saw that the people most confident in their system are usually the ones who benefit most from not questioning it. Sound familiar? You don't have to be a Marxist to read Marx. You just have to be awake. Because for all the noise, what's unfolding in America isn't a cultural revolution—it's a class reckoning. And if you look past the hashtags and hysteria, you'll see that Marx isn't returning as a prophet. He's returning as a mirror. And America, bloated and broken and blindfolded by its own exceptionalism, is finally starting to look.
The Citizen
2 days ago
- Sport
- The Citizen
Malcolm Marx extends Japanese stay
Malcolm Marx has reportedly penned a new deal with the Kubota Spears, which will see the two-time Springbok world champion continue to power the Japanese club until June 2027. The 30-year-old, who missed out on winning a second title in Japan following Sunday's League One final defeat by Toshiba Brave Lupus, has made more than 30 appearances for the Spears since 2021. #BREAKING Malcolm Marx has extended his contract with Kubota Spears until June 2027#rugbyjp — (@rugbyjpcom) June 2, 2025 He linked up with the Frans Ludeke-coached outfit in 2020 from fellow Japanese outfit NTT Shining Arcs, who the hulking front-ranker joined after five years with the Lions in South Africa. SAFFAS ABROAD: Pollard powers Tigers to playoffs One of the original members of the Bomb Squad that helped South Africa win the 2019 world cup, Marx wrestled the Bok No 2 jumper away from Bongi Mbonambi in 2023 before a serious knee injury in a pool clash against Scotland ruled him out for the rest of the tournament. Marx is widely considered the best hooker on the planet, and is as good as any specialist fetcher over the ball as well as a threat on attack – the Germiston-born rake is the top try-scorer among forwards in Bok history (21 tries in 76 Tests). The post Marx extends Japanese stay appeared first on SA Rugby magazine. Breaking news at your fingertips… Follow Caxton Network News on Facebook and join our WhatsApp channel. Nuus wat saakmaak. Volg Caxton Netwerk-nuus op Facebook en sluit aan by ons WhatsApp-kanaal.
The Sun
3 days ago
- Sport
- The Sun
Mo'unga shrugs off broken hand to win Japanese title
FORMER All Black Richie Mo'unga shrugged off a broken hand to extend his remarkable title-winning streak after leading Toshiba Brave Lupus to their second straight Japanese championship on Sunday. The fly-half has finished every season in top-level domestic rugby since 2017 with a winner's medal and he picked up another as Toshiba beat Kubota Spears 18-13 in the Japan Rugby League One final. He had to do it the hard way after breaking his right hand in the closing stages of last week's semi-final win, with coach Todd Blackadder expecting his star man was '70-30' to miss the final. Mo'unga said he spent three days in an oxygen chamber in the build-up to the game and 'knew all along that I was going to play'. 'I knew it wasn't impossible to play this weekend, and obviously a final, it's a no-brainer really,' said the 31-year-old. 'You want to give yourself the best chance to be part of something special.' Mo'unga joined Toshiba on a three-year deal after helping New Zealand reach the 2023 World Cup final, where they lost to South Africa. He gave another playmaking masterclass in front of more than 50,000 fans at Tokyo's National Stadium. Mo'unga scored his team's first try with less than 10 minutes on the clock and set up their second with a crafty dummy early in the second half. He also scored eight points with his boot. Mo'unga won seven Super Rugby titles with the Crusaders in New Zealand and said he was 'so grateful to be part of winning teams'. 'I try to tell some of the boys in our team not to take this moment for granted because a lot of people don't win, and a lot of people don't win back to back,' he said. - 'Ultimate team man' - Mo'unga jinked through the opposition defence to open the scoring in the eighth minute. He also started the second half strongly, taking out a defender with a dummy before slipping the ball to Yuto Mori for Toshiba's second try. Mo'unga said the pain in his hand made 'things just a little bit harder' but did not affect his game. 'Once you get out there, you just play rugby and try not to think about it too much,' he said. Toshiba's victory denied Kubota's Australian fly-half Bernard Foley and South African hooker Malcolm Marx a second title in Japan. Marx said he was not aware that Mo'unga was carrying an injury. 'He's a great player, he showed that how he performed today even with a broken hand,' said Marx. 'It shows his resilience.' Toshiba finished the regular season in first place, which earned them a bye into the play-off semi-finals. Third-placed Kubota had to come through a quarter-final and were looking to regain the title that they won in 2023. Toshiba coach Blackadder hailed Mo'unga's influence on his side, calling him the 'ultimate team man'. 'At the start of the week, we weren't sure,' he said of Mo'unga's injury. 'It was 70-30 that he wouldn't be available and he just found a way.'
