Volume 51, Issue 4: Autumn-Winter 2017
“Consume Less, Share More,” reads a popular bumper sticker from the 1990s. On the face of it, it’s pretty hard to disagree with this sentiment. Confronted with the obscenity of late capitalist hyper-consumption, who could possibly object to the idea that we might benefit from sharing the abundance? But what exactly do we mean by “sharing”? This question has become a lot murkier in recent years, as new corporations have found ways to accumulate vast sums by brokering peer-to-peer exchanges.
The contributors to this issue take us inside the daily life of the corporate sharing economy. They show us how digital platforms are remaking our cities, changing long-established labour practices and exacerbating inequalities. All are sceptical about the liberatory deliverance that platform corporations promise. Bluntly put, the corporate sharing economy compels us to advance a different vision of sharing, one that harnesses the democratic potential of platform connectivity.
Also inside: what’s the real scoop on Canada and Quebec’s far-right movements? Barbara Perry, co-author of the only in-depth study published on this timely subject, Uneasy Alliance: A Look at the Right-Wing Extremist Movement in Canada, is interviewed by Cy Gonick and Andrea Levy. As well, the issue features an exclusive article on the far right in Quebec by Montreal writer Xavier Camus.
In his brilliant essay, “No justice without liability for corporate immorality,” Harry Glasbeek, Professor Emeritus of Osgood Law School, writes that “behind all corporations there are identifi able ravishing and pillaging human profiteers” who escape liability because the law allows shareholders to “hide behind corporate veils. Let us rip those veils off. Class war is easier to fi ght if the enemy has a face.”
Radhika Desai contributes insight on how NATO functions to support the American war machine and suggests foreign policy options Canada could pursue if it departed from NATO. Mostafa Henaway writes about Canada’s role in the creation of over 60 million refugees in the Middle East and Central America and, as part of the expansion of global capital, its contribution to the overall wave of migration, which reached a massive 244 million by 2015.
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