Joseph Choonara

There is something quite peculiar about the first history of contemporary British Trotskyism being written by someone who was, during the 1980s, a member of the Communist Party — rather like a version of the Acts of the Apostles penned by Pontius Pilate.

Back in 1999, as the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle was shut down in a cloud of teargas, a global anti-capitalist movement was born. The best of the socialist left sought to engage with this movement, while also showing that it had something to contribute.

Carillion was a creature of government cronyism and capitalist dysfunction. It was born in 1999 when parent company Tarmac sought to refocus on its core business of building supplies and span off Carillion, which inherited the facilities management and construction business.

The secret of Carillion’s early success was the manner in which the recently elected government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown expanded the previous Conservative administration’s privatisation programme.

What can be learnt from Venezuela, currently witnessing a deadly struggle to topple its president, Nicolás Maduro? Over 100 have been killed, and the upheaval has added to the hardship in a country that has seen its economy shrink by one third since 2013.

The media and the political establishment in Britain have derived a simple lesson: misery is the only possible outcome if you elect a government promising, as Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez did, “socialism in the 21st century”. In other words, this is what will happen if you elect Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.

What has happened to employment in the modern era of the “gig economy” and “zero hour contracts”? And what should be done about it?

The Taylor Review, or “Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices” to give it its full title, was supposed to answer these questions. However, its arrival on 11 July was something of a damp squib.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Capital volume 1. As you say in your book, the 50th anniversary was the year of the Russian Revolution and the 100th anniversary was right before the events of 1968 such as the civil rights movement and the general strike in France. How relevant is Capital today?

Theresa May has enacted Article 50. Her letter has been despatched, and so the two-year process of Britain leaving the European Union has begun. Where does British politics stand on this occasion? Not quite, perhaps, where some had expected. A few days before the referendum, one left-wing blogger spoke of a Leave vote paving the way for an “incoming government headed by Johnson, Gove, IDS [Iain Duncan Smith], and Farage”. Such claims were commonplace in the run-up to the vote.

Robots are taking over. At least that is the impression given by the mainstream media. Headlines in recent weeks include: “Robots Could Replace 250,000 Public Sector Workers” (Independent), “Amazon To Open A Giant ROBOT-Run Supermarket Staffed By Just Three Humans” (Daily Mail) and “Give Robots ‘Personhood’ Status, EU Committee Argues” (Guardian).

There was an interesting letter in last month’s Socialist Review from Ken Muller. In it he questioned the approach taken by my recent book, A Reader’s Guide to Marx’s Capital, to the concept of “productive labour”.

Ken’s argument is that my definition of productive labour — actually Marx’s definition — as labour hired by capital which produces surplus value (the source of profit) is too narrow.

Theresa May has delivered her long-awaited speech on her Brexit strategy — knowledge of which was hitherto limited to the handwritten note spotted on the pad of a hapless Tory aide: “Have cake and eat it.”

May is pushing for a “hard Brexit”. Britain will leave the single market and the customs union governing trade between EU states. Instead she envisages a deal covering specific areas of the economy allowing “frictionless” tariff-free trade with the EU.