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Paperback
Published: 12th March 2024
Hardback
Published: 2nd July 2024
Paperback
Published: 1st July 2025
Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom
By (Author) Grace Blakeley
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
12th March 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Economics of specific sectors
Far-left political ideologies and movements
Far-right political ideologies and movements
Political structure and processes
306.342
Paperback
416
Width 153mm, Height 234mm
All over the world, democracy is in crisis. Liberal political systems are straining under the pressure imposed by authoritarian strong men undermining institutions, the rule of law and the international system that governs relations between countries. Obvious examples include Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, but these issues stretch around the world from Brazil, to Hungary, to the Philippines. People see this liberal collapse stemming from populist leaders, working class voters and rogue states. But what if the threat to liberal democracy does not come from the outside, but from within Liberal democracy and free market capitalism always go hand in hand but it is capitalism that is responsible for the crisis of liberalism. In the modern world, democracy and competition have been replaced with oligarchy and monopoly. What we are left with is corporatocracy: societies governed by a tight-knit cartel of big monopolies, financiers, states and international institutions. From technology to food, healthcare to capital, the decisions made by senior execs at the top of the worlds most powerful corporations increasingly determine the conditions of life for everyone else. In Vulture Capitalism, Grace Blakeley takes on the worlds most powerful corporations by showing how the causes of our modern crisis are a result of our capitalist system. And she shows how it is too full of contradictions for it to even be fixed instead, it must be replaced. Searing, explosive and extremely timely, Vulture Capitalism will upend how we relate to capitalism and the world around us.
Grace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune magazine and author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation and The Corona Crash. She previously worked as a research fellow for the Institute for Public Policy Research and as the New Statesmans economic commentator. She appears regularly in the media as a political and economic commentator, including appearances on Question Time, BBC This Week, and BBC Breakfast.