The paradox of our times

Charles Dickens was writing of a different age but prefigured the enormous contradiction of our own when there are so many reasons for hope, but presiding over it all is a doom-laden global politics. This book is inspired by that huge paradox, summed up by the widening gulf between the personal values we teach our children and the anti-social ideology that increasingly rules our lives. This book's vision is that the one may offer the key to transforming the other.

We are currently experiencing the full flood of this man-made disaster. It is blighting economies, dividing populations, undermining wellbeing and putting us and our planet at unprecedented risk through global warming and environmental damage. Its consequences dwarf pandemics like that of COVID-19 and yet many of us don't even know its name. It's the global catastrophe called neoliberalism – the deregulation of market economies and cutting back of state support for those they most damage. Offering short-term profit for the few orchestrating it, it brings insecurity, threat and disaster for most others. It has helped generate conflict within and between nations, created its own ‘culture wars’, forced mass migrations, reinforced hate and social divisions, divided Global North and South, created new kinds of colonialism and, most of all, it has concentrated power and wealth more narrowly than ever in a new ‘overclass’ without restraint or responsibility.