Words matter. These are the best Ash Sarkar Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The idea of the NHS took root in the political imagination less as an example of social entitlement’s victory over private provision, and more as the embodiment of brand Britain.
As in health, so in crime – prevention is better than cure.
More draconian forms of policing and punishment are no guarantee of a reduction in violent crime.
Ezra Pound was a pioneer of the most exciting aesthetic movement of the 20th century.
Bengal in the early 1930s was a hotbed of anti-British revolutionary activity – and women were at the heart of this insurrectionist moment.
The key to stopping the hard-right nationalist forces poised to pounce on Brexit isn’t going to be finessing a reprieve for the status quo. It’s about actively creating consent for meaningful change, and expanding democratic participation beyond a second referendum.
No one but the ruling class wins in a culture war.
Human labor cannot compete with fixed capital – that’s just a fact.
The demand for adequate social housing provision is something that transcends race, religion and settled status.
My great-great-aunt was a terrorist. I’m not talking about the sense in which the pacifist Mahatma Gandhi was branded a terrorist by the British parliament in 1932: Pritilata Waddedar was an active participant in armed struggle against the British state. She supplied explosives. She fired a gun. And I’m proud of it.
There shouldn’t be a barrier between rich and poor in terms of the kind of health care that they can access.
Britain’s done a lot of changing in the past 50 years. The decline of manufacturing and heavy industry under Margaret Thatcher ripped the economic heart out of huge swathes of the country, and dramatically transformed class composition.
It is up to us to push for a transformation in political culture in which the basic human dignity of migrants is unequivocally respected.
There is something deeply wrong with a political culture which only wants to talk about incarceration in the aftermath of a tragedy.
Let me be clear: I recognise the necessity of tackling antisemitism in the Labour party head-on.
While I agree that embracing vibrancy and joy is an essential bulwark against the left’s tendency towards energy-sapping endless meetings, pop culture alone won’t save us from racism.
Not all cultural borrowing is a form of social violence: some of it is just cringe.
As a long-termist, I acknowledge there are more pressing causes than the abolition of private property.
But communism is the only thing which says all things should be brought into the hands of commons to benefit all people. In the past, you’d call that communism. I think in the future, we’ll have to call that common sense.
It’s important to recognise that opposing racism isn’t just about presenting an alternative set of values; it’s about looking at how the far right play on people’s hardships in order to nurture a sense of enmity between white people and those racialised as migrants.
Immigration has tremendously changed the fabric of this country. Immigration is what built our NHS, when Britain invited people from the Commonwealth, from nations it had formerly colonized, in order to rebuild this country after the ravages of the Second World War.
Research has shown that the availability of mental health care prior, during, and after imprisonment reduces violent offending drastically.
Feminism isn’t about curating or policing the boundaries of womanhood.
My mum was an anti-racist activist in the 70s and 80s.
Our modern understanding of cultural appropriation is highly individualised. It’s all about what Halloween costume you wear, or who’s cooking biryani. But the way in which the idea was first used was to describe a relationship of dominance and exploitation between a global ruling class and a globally subjugated one.
It’s worth pointing out that conflicts between racially oppressed people often result from the fact that colonialism worked on divide and rule. Certain ethnic, religious, racial or indigenous groups were deliberately privileged over others in order to create a sense of investment in upholding the power structure.
Our priorities are all wrong if we only care about how long people are in prison for, and not what goes on inside them, and what happens after people are released.
Austerity hasn’t just decimated our public services. It has corroded the political imagination.
If you want any hope of staying in the EU, or having a Brexit that doesn’t mean capitulation to ethno-nationalism, you’ve got to tie it to a wider vision of political and economic transformation.
The Simpsons has shaped my psychology to a degree one would usually attribute to a parent, or a particularly devout upbringing. I am a zealot.
British women’s history was never confined to the British mainland; and contesting the narrative around enfranchisement shows us that rights were not bestowed by the state, but extracted from it by force.
I can’t help but feel that trying to locate a universal femininity in either consumer culture or particular bodily functions serves as a way to opt out of dealing with the multiple processes that impede our full participation in society.
Here’s the problem with downplaying the radical nature of decommodification: when you empty something of political content, politicians are free to wield symbols as they please.
