---
title: "Capitalism: the winter 2017 New Humanist"
date: "2017-11-16T10:13:47+00:00"
modified: "2017-11-16T10:13:47+00:00"
url: "https://newhumanist.org.uk/2017/11/16/capitalism-the-winter-2017-new-humanist/"
post_id: 6707
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Capitalism: the winter 2017 New Humanist

![cover](https://newhumanist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/1711-1-Cover-web.jpg)

***The Winter 2017 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! [Subscribe here](/subscribe) for just £27 a year. Or give someone else [the gift of a year’s subscription](/promo/XMAS17%20) for just £19.99.***

Capitalism: how the system shapes the way we think
--------------------------------------------------

**Apocalyptic populism**

From Donald Trump to Brexit, the establishment is under fierce attack. But political populism is not simply a challenge to the neoliberal order – it is a product of it, writes **Wendy Brown**.

> Political, personal and social relations are rendered by neoliberal reason in market terms, everything, from learning to eating, becomes a matter of speculative ­investments – ranked, rated, balanced in your portfolio. And democracy itself is devalued and transformed.

**‘‘The market gives the illusion of being egalitarian’’**

**JP O’Malley** interviews **David Harvey**, a leading expert on the work of Karl Marx.

> There is the apocalyptic kind of thinking that says: capitalism is going to fall apart tomorrow. I don’t think that is the case. It’s more likely that the future of the world is going to look like what happened to Greece: where we are all going to be pinned down and made to pay out and suffer for the sins of the 1 per cent.

**The end of work as we know it?**

The idea of what employment really means has undergone radical changes. Now, some thinkers are questioning whether it should exist at all, writes **Rhian E Jones**.

> As work becomes more uncertain and unstable, and workers variously resist, subvert or adapt to new conditions, might it be possible to reject them altogether?

**Warp-speed capitalism**

The latest sci-fi imagines what society will look like if we colonise space. **Yiannis Baboulias** explores a universe in which might is right and there are no good guys.

**Swiped away**

**Joana Ramiro** asks: in the era of commercial dating apps, is the easy availability of sex dehumanising the experience?

***The Winter 2017 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! [Subscribe here](/subscribe) for just £27 a year.***

Also in this issue:
-------------------

![Wade](https://newhumanist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/wade-for-preview-post.jpg)

- What’s behind the violence in Myanmar? **Francis Wade** reports on the religious roots of a humanitarian crisis
- **Massimo Pigliucci** argues that the ancient philosophy of Stoicism is uniquely suited to the modern world
- An abusive polygamous cult in the US is finally being challenged – but what happens if its members refuse to see themselves as victims? **Rebecca Kenna** reports
- **Samira Ahmed** on decolonising university reading lists and the backlash against diversity
- The Mosuo, a culturally isolated community in south-western China, are as close as we can get to a matriarchal society, writes **Angela Saini.** What can we learn from them?
- **Niki Seth-Smith** looks at how novelists are imagining English identity in a time of change
- **James Poulter** explores how the online culture wars gave birth to the alt-right – and why it needs to be challenged
- Leading biologist **Lewis Wolpert** explains how the fear of death gave birth to religion
- **Marcus Chown** pays tribute to the Cassini space probe
- **Jonathan Rée** reviews Patricia Lockwood’s memoir *Priestdaddy*
- Columns from Michael Rosen and Laurie Taylor; the latest developments in biology, chemistry and physics; cartoon by Grizelda; book reviews; cryptic crossword and Chris Maslanka’s quiz

***New Humanist is published four times a year by the Rationalist Association, a 132 year-old charity promoting reason, science and secularism. Our journalism is fiercely independent and supported entirely by our readers. To make a deeper commitment, why not* *[donate to the Rationalist Association](https://www.justgiving.com/rationalistassociation)?***