Against the Grain

Education and Inequality

It seems logical: if you don’t have enough education your economic prospects will be diminished, while those who have a lot are able to succeed in our purportedly knowledge-based economy.  But what if that’s only partially accurate? John Marsh posits that economic inequality and poverty are not causally connected to differing levels of education. He … Continued


Against the Grain

Agamben on State Power and “Bare Life”

How foundational are violence and coercion to Western sovereign authority? According to Giorgio Agamben, states of emergency have become not the exception but the rule, and the individual has been reduced by state power to “bare life” to an alarming degree. Adam Kotsko explains and interprets the Italian theorist’s influential ideas. For more details and … Continued


Against the Grain

Peter Linebaugh on Tom Paine

Peter Linebaugh, best known for tracing the history of the commons and of commoning practices, calls Thomas Paine “a planetary revolutionary.” He has found in Paine’s lesser-known works radical critiques of inequality and authoritarianism and even the system of money wages. Many lessons for our time, Linebaugh argues, can be drawn from Paine’s writings and … Continued


Against the Grain

We Are All Criminals

People with criminal records are, too often, written off by society. Is that fair, asks Emily Baxter, given that we’ve all violated the law at one time or another? Baxter’s project collects and disseminates the stories of crimes people got away with, often because of their class or race privilege. For more details and higher-quality … Continued