Guy Standing

It is about the uncharted corruption of a claimed ideal – ‘free markets’ – and how economies are being rigged to favour owners of assets – the rentiers – while depressing incomes from labour.
Some would say that capitalism is inherently corrupt, because those who can cheat successfully for long enough do very nicely and always have. Even many of those who espouse capitalism unreservedly would grudgingly admit to that. Every day there is a report of some economic crime. There are too many rogues whose names are known to us to imagine that corruption does not pay. There is a saying among Russian businessmen: never ask how he got his first million.
Yet that is not what this book is about. It is about how the claims made on behalf of capitalism have been subverted in the construction of a system that is radically different from what its advocates claim. They assert a belief in ‘free markets’ and want us to believe that economic policies are extending them. That is untrue. Today we have the most unfree market system ever created. It is deeply corrupt because its leaders claim it is the opposite of what it is becoming.