title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The rise of giant multinational corporations has been a topic of concern among the aforementioned scholars, intellectuals and activists, who see the large corporation as leading to deep, structural erosion of such basic human rights and civil rights as equitable wealth and income distribution, equitable democratic political and socio-economic power representation and many other human rights and needs. They have pointed out that in their view large corporations create false needs in consumers and—they contend—have had a long history of interference in and distortion of the policies of sovereign nation states through high-priced legal lobbying and other almost always legal, powerful forms of influence peddling. In their view, evidence supporting this belief includes invasive advertising (such as billboards, television ads, adware, spam, telemarketing, child-targeted advertising and guerrilla marketing), massive open or secret corporate political campaign contributions in so-called "democratic" elections, corporatocracy, the revolving door between government and corporations, regulatory capture, "too big to fail" (also known as "too big to jail"), massive taxpayer-provided corporate bailouts, socialism/communism for the very rich and brutal, vicious, Darwinian capitalism for everyone else, and—they claim—seemingly endless global news stories about corporate corruption (Martha Stewart and Enron, among other examples). Anti-corporate-activists express the view that large corporations answer only to large shareholders, giving human rights issues, social justice issues, environmental issues and other issues of high significance to the bottom 99% of the global human population virtually no consideration. American political philosopher Jodi Dean says that contemporary economic and financial calamities have dispelled the notion that capitalism is a viable economic system, adding that "the fantasy that democracy exerts a force for economic justice has dissolved as the US government funnels trillions of dollars to banks and European central banks rig national governments and cut social programs to keep themselves afloat."


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: David Schweickart wrote: "Ordinary people [in capitalist societies] are deemed competent enough to select their political leaders-but not their bosses. Contemporary capitalism celebrates democracy, yet denies us our democratic rights at precisely the point where they might be utilized most immediately and concretely: at the place where we spend most of the active and alert hours of our adult lives".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States, said "I hope we shall crush ... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country". In an 29 April 1938 message to the U. S. Congress, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism, arguing that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following figures for 1935: "Ownership of corporate assets: Of all corporations reporting from every part of the Nation, one-tenth of 1 percent of them owned 52 percent of the assets of all of them".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower criticized the notion of the confluence of corporate power and "de facto" fascism and in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation brought attention to the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" in the United States and stressed "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs—balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: In a 1986 debate on Socialism vs Capitalism with John Judis vs Harry Binswanger and John Ridpath, intellectual Christopher Hitchens said:


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Critics of capitalism view the system as inherently exploitative. In an economic sense, exploitation is often related to the expropriation of labor for profit and based on Karl Marx's version of the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value was supported by classical economists like David Ricardo and Adam Smith who believed that "the value of a commodity depends on the relative quantity of labor which is necessary for its production".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: In "Das Kapital", Marx identified the commodity as the basic unit of capitalist organization. Marx described a "common denominator" between commodities, in particular that commodities are the product of labor and are related to each other by an exchange value (i.e. price). By using the labor theory of value, Marxists see a connection between labor and exchange value, in that commodities are exchanged depending on the socially necessary labor time needed to produce them. However, due to the productive forces of industrial organization, laborers are seen as creating more exchange value during the course of the working day than the cost of their survival (food, shelter, clothing and so on). Marxists argue that capitalists are thus able to pay for this cost of survival while expropriating the excess labor (i.e. surplus value).


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Marxists further argue that due to economic inequality, the purchase of labor cannot occur under "free" conditions. Since capitalists control the means of production (e.g. factories, businesses, machinery and so on) and workers control only their labor, the worker is naturally coerced into allowing their labor to be exploited. Critics argue that exploitation occurs even if the exploited consents, since the definition of exploitation is independent of consent. In essence, workers must allow their labor to be exploited or face starvation. Since some degree of unemployment is typical in modern economies, Marxists argue that wages are naturally driven down in free market systems. Hence, even if a worker contests their wages, capitalists are able to find someone from the reserve army of labor who is more desperate.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The act (or threat) of striking has historically been an organized action to withhold labor from capitalists, without fear of individual retaliation. Some critics of capitalism, while acknowledging the necessity of trade unionism, believe that trade unions simply reform an already exploitative system, leaving the system of exploitation intact. Lysander Spooner argued that "almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, large fortunes could rarely be made at all by one individual, except by his sponging capital and labour from others".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some labor historians and scholars have argued that unfree labor—by slaves, indentured servants, prisoners, or other coerced persons—is compatible with capitalist relations. Tom Brass argued that unfree labor is acceptable to capital. Historian Greg Grandin argues that capitalism has its origins in slavery, saying that "[w]hen historians talk about the Atlantic market revolution, they are talking about capitalism. And when they are talking about capitalism, they are talking about slavery." Some historians, including Edward E. Baptist and Sven Beckert, assert that slavery was an integral component in the violent development of American and global capitalism. The Slovenian continental philosopher Slavoj Žižek posits that the new era of global capitalism has ushered in new forms of contemporary slavery, including migrant workers deprived of basic civil rights on the Arabian Peninsula, the total control of workers in Asian sweatshops and the use of forced labor in the exploitation of natural resources in Central Africa.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Academics such as the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner have proposed the adoption of upper limits in individual wealth as "a solution that would make the world a better place". Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff postulates that capitalist economies prioritize profits and capital accumulation over the social needs of communities, and that capitalist enterprises rarely include the workers in the basic decisions of the enterprise.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Political economist Clara E. Mattei of the New School for Social Research demonstrates that the imposition of fiscal, monetary and industrial austerity policies meant to discipline labor by reinforcing hierarchal wage relations and therefore protect the capitalist system through wage repression and the weakening of collective bargaining power by workers can increase their exploitation while boosting the profits of the ownership class, which she says is one of the primary drivers of the "global inequality trend". As an example, Mattei shows that over the last four decades in the United States the profit share of national output increased while labor's share plummeted, demonstrating a symmetrical relationship between owner profit and worker loss, where the former was taking from the latter. She adds that “an increase in exploitation was also evident, with real wages grossly lagging behind labor productivity.”


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Near the start of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin wrote that state use of military power to defend capitalist interests abroad was an inevitable corollary of monopoly capitalism. He argued that capitalism needs imperialism to survive. According to Lenin, the export of financial capital superseded the export of commodities; banking and industrial capital merged to form large financial cartels and trusts in which production and distribution are highly centralized; and monopoly capitalists influenced state policy to carve up the world into spheres of interest. These trends led states to defend their capitalist interests abroad through military power.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: According to economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, capitalism requires the accumulation of excess wealth in the hands of economic elites for the purpose of large scale investment, continuous growth and expansion, and enormous amounts of cheap labor. As such, there was never and could never have been a gradual or peaceful transition to capitalism, and that "organized violence, mass impoverishment, and the destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies" ushered in the capitalist era. Its emergence was fueled by immiseration and extreme violence that accompanied enclosure and colonization, with colonized peoples becoming enslaved workers producing products that were then processed by European peasants, dispossessed by enclosure, who filled the factories in desperation as exploited cheap labor. Hickel adds that there was fierce resistance to these developments, as that the period 1500 to the 1800s, "right into the Industrial Revolution, was among the bloodiest, most tumultuous times in world history."


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Sociologist David Nibert argues that while capitalism "turned out to be every bit as violent and oppressive as the social systems dominated by the old aristocrats", it also included "an additional and pernicious peril—the necessity for continuous growth and expansion". As an example of this, Nibert points to the mass killing of millions of buffalo on the Great Plains and the subjugation and expulsion of the indigenous population by the U.S. military in the 19th century for the purpose of expanding ranching operations, and rearing livestock for the purpose of profit.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Capitalism and capitalist governments have also been criticized as oligarchic in nature, due to the inevitable inequality.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The military–industrial complex, mentioned in Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential farewell address, appears to play a significant role in the American capitalist system. It may be one of the driving forces of American militarism and intervention abroad. The United States has used military force and has encouraged and facilitated state terrorism and mass violence to entrench neoliberal capitalism in the Global South, protect the interests of U.S. economic elites, and to crush any possible resistance to this entrenchment, especially during the Cold War, with significant cases being Brazil, Chile and Indonesia.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some opponents criticize capitalism's inefficiency. They note a shift from pre-industrial reuse and thriftiness before capitalism to a consumer-based economy that pushes "ready-made" materials. It is argued that a sanitation industry arose under capitalism that deemed trash valueless—a significant break from the past when much "waste" was used and reused almost indefinitely. In the process, critics say, capitalism has created a profit driven system based on selling as many products as possible. Critics relate the "ready-made" trend to a growing garbage problem in which, as of 2008, 4.5 pounds of trash are generated per person each day (compared to 2.7 pounds in 1960). Anti-capitalist groups with an emphasis on conservation include eco-socialists and social ecologists.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Planned obsolescence has been criticized as a wasteful practice under capitalism. By designing products to wear out faster than need be, new consumption is generated. This would benefit corporations by increasing sales while at the same time generating excessive waste. A well-known example is the charge that Apple designed its iPod to fail after 18 months. Critics view planned obsolescence as wasteful and an inefficient use of resources. Other authors such as Naomi Klein have criticized brand-based marketing for putting more emphasis on the company's name-brand than on manufacturing products.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some economists, most notably Marxian economists, argue that the system of perpetual capital accumulation leads to irrational outcomes and a mis-allocation of resources as industries and jobs are created for the sake of making money as opposed to satisfying actual demands and needs.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Market failure is a term used by economists to describe the condition where the allocation of goods and services by a market is not efficient. Keynesian economist Paul Krugman views this scenario in which individuals' pursuit of self-interest leads to bad results for society as a whole. John Maynard Keynes preferred economic intervention by government to free markets. Some believe that the lack of perfect information and perfect competition in a free market is grounds for government intervention. Others perceive certain unique problems with a free market including: monopolies, monopsonies, insider trading and price gouging.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Critics argue that capitalism is associated with the unfair distribution of wealth and power; a tendency toward market monopoly or oligopoly (and government by oligarchy); imperialism, counter-revolutionary wars and various forms of economic and cultural exploitation; repression of workers and trade unionists and phenomena such as social alienation, economic inequality, unemployment and economic instability. Critics have argued that there is an inherent tendency toward oligopolistic structures when "laissez-faire" is combined with capitalist private property. Capitalism is regarded by many socialists to be irrational in that production and the direction of the economy are unplanned, creating many inconsistencies and internal contradictions and thus should be controlled through public policy.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: In the early 20th century, Vladimir Lenin argued that state use of military power to defend capitalist interests abroad was an inevitable corollary of monopoly capitalism.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: In a 1965 letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of "Marcha", a weekly newspaper published in Montevideo, Uruguay, Che Guevara wrote:


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. ... It is a contest among wolves. One can win only at the cost of the failure of others.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: A modern critic of capitalism is Ravi Batra, who focuses on inequality as a source of immiserization but also of system failure. Batra popularised the concept "share of wealth held by richest 1%" as an indicator of inequality and an important determinant of depressions in his best-selling books in the 1980s. The scholars Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein suggest that left to its own devices, capitalism will result in a small group of economic elites capturing the majority of wealth and power in society. Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel argue that poverty continues to exist in the contemporary global capitalist system in spite of it being highly productive because it is undemocratic and has maintained conditions of extreme inequality where masses of working people, who have no ownership or control over the means of production, have their labor power "appropriated by a ruling class or an external imperial power," and are cut off from common land and resources.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: In the United States, the shares of earnings and wealth of the households in the top 1 percent of the corresponding distributions are 21 percent (in 2006) and 37 percent (in 2009), respectively. Critics, such as Ravi Batra, argue that the capitalist system has inherent biases favoring those who already possess greater resources. The inequality may be propagated through inheritance and economic policy. Rich people are in a position to give their children a better education and inherited wealth and that this can create or increase large differences in wealth between people who do not differ in ability or effort. One study shows that in the United States 43.35% of the people in the "Forbes" magazine "400 richest individuals" list were already rich enough at birth to qualify. Another study indicated that in the United States wealth, race and schooling are important to the inheritance of economic status, but that IQ is not a major contributor and the genetic transmission of IQ is even less important. Batra has argued that the tax and benefit legislation in the United States since the Reagan presidency has contributed greatly to the inequalities and economic problems and should be repealed.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Critics of capitalism, particularly Marxists, identify market instability as a permanent feature of capitalist economy. Marx believed that the unplanned and explosive growth of capitalism does not occur in a smooth manner, but is interrupted by periods of overproduction in which stagnation or decline occur (i.e. recessions). In the view of Marxists, several contradictions in the capitalist mode of production are present, particularly the internal contradiction between anarchy in the sphere of capital (i.e. free market) and socialised production in the sphere of labor (i.e. industrialism). In "The Communist Manifesto", Marx and Engels highlighted what they saw as a uniquely capitalist juxtaposition of overabundance and poverty: "Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some scholars blame the financial crisis of 2007–2008 on the neoliberal capitalist model. Following the banking crisis of 2007, economist and former Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan told the United States Congress on 23 October 2008 that "[t]his modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year", and that "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in firms ... I was shocked".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Friedrich Engels argue that the free market is not necessarily free, but weighted towards those who already own private property. They view capitalist regulations, including the enforcement of private property on land and exclusive rights to natural resources, as unjustly enclosing upon what should be owned by all, forcing those without private property to sell their labor to capitalists and landlords in a market favorable to the latter, thus forcing workers to accept low wages to survive. In his criticism of capitalism, Proudhon believed that the emphasis on private property is the problem. He argued that property is theft, arguing that private property leads to despotism: "Now, property necessarily engenders despotism—the government of caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse". Many left-wing anarchists, such as anarchist communists, believe in replacing capitalist private property with a system where people can lay claim to things based on personal use and claim that "[private] property is the domination of an individual, or a coalition of individuals, over things; it is not the claim of any person or persons to the use of things" and "this is, usufruct, a very different matter. Property means the monopoly of wealth, the right to prevent others using it, whether the owner needs it or not".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Mutualists and some anarchists support markets and private property, but not in their present form. They argue that particular aspects of modern capitalism violate the ability of individuals to trade in the absence of coercion. Mutualists support markets and private property in the product of labor, but only when these markets guarantee that workers will realize for themselves the value of their labor.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: In recent times, most economies have extended private property rights to include such things as patents and copyrights. Critics see these so-called intellectual property laws as coercive against those with few prior resources. They argue that such regulations discourage the sharing of ideas and encourage nonproductive rent seeking behavior, both of which enact a deadweight loss on the economy, erecting a prohibitive barrier to entry into the market. Not all pro-capitalists support the concept of copyrights, but those who do argue that compensation to the creator is necessary as an incentive.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Many aspects of capitalism have come under attack from the anti-globalization movement, which is primarily opposed to corporate capitalism. Environmentalists and scholars have argued that capitalism requires continual economic growth and that it will inevitably deplete the finite natural resources of Earth and cause mass extinctions of animal and plant life. Such critics argue that while neoliberalism, the ideological backbone of contemporary globalized capitalism, has indeed increased global trade, it has also destroyed traditional ways of life, exacerbated inequality, increased global poverty, and that environmental indicators indicate massive environmental degradation since the late 1970s.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some scholars argue that the capitalist approach to environmental economics does not take into consideration the preservation of natural resources and that capitalism creates three ecological problems: growth, technology, and consumption. The growth problem results from the nature of capitalism, as it focuses around the accumulation of capital. The innovation of new technologies has an impact on the environmental future as they serve as a capitalist tool in which environmental technologies can result in the expansion of the system. Consumption is focused around the capital accumulation of commodities and neglects the use-value of production.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: One of the main modern criticism to the sustainability of capitalism is related to the so-called commodity chains, or production/consumption chains. These terms refer to the network of transfers of materials and commodities that is currently part of the functioning of the global capitalist system. Examples include high tech commodities produced in countries with low average wages by multinational firms and then being sold in distant high income countries; materials and resources being extracted in some countries, turned into finished products in some others and sold as commodities in further ones; and countries exchanging with each other the same kind of commodities for the sake of consumers' choice (e.g. Europe both exporting and importing cars to and from the United States). According to critics, such processes, all of which produce pollution and waste of resources, are an integral part of the functioning of capitalism (i.e. its "metabolism").


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Critics note that the statistical methods used in calculating ecological footprint have been criticized and some find the whole concept of counting how much land is used to be flawed, arguing that there is nothing intrinsically negative about using more land to improve living standards (rejection of the intrinsic value of nature).


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Many environmentalists have long argued that the real dangers are due to the world's current social institutions that claim to promote environmentally irresponsible consumption and production. Under what they call the "grow or die" imperative of capitalism, they say there is little reason to expect hazardous consumption and production practices to change in a timely manner. They also claim that markets and states invariably drag their feet on substantive environmental reform and are notoriously slow to adopt viable sustainable technologies. Immanuel Wallerstein, referring to the externalization of costs as the "dirty secret" of capitalism, claims that there are built-in limits to ecological reform and that the costs of doing business in the world capitalist economy are ratcheting upward because of deruralization and democratization.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: A team of Finnish scientists hired by the UN Secretary-General to aid the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report assert that capitalism as we know it is moribund, primarily because it focuses on short term profits and fails to look after the long term needs of people and the environment which is being subjected to unsustainable exploitation. Their report goes on to link many seemingly disparate contemporary crises to this system, including environmental factors such as global warming and accelerated species extinctions and also societal factors such as rising economic inequality, unemployment, sluggish economic growth, rising debt levels, and impuissant governments unable to deal with these problems. The scientists say a new economic model, one which focuses on sustainability and efficiency and not profit and growth, will be needed as decades of robust economic growth driven by abundant resources and cheap energy is rapidly coming to a close.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some scientists contend that the rise of capitalism, which itself developed out of European imperialism and colonialism of the 15th and 16th centuries, marks the emergence of the Anthropocene epoch, in which human beings started to have significant and mostly negative impacts on the earth system. Others have warned that contemporary global capitalism "requires fundamental changes" to mitigate the worst environmental impacts, including the "abolition of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use, strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reining in corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women". Jason Hickel writes that capitalism creates pressures for population growth: "more people means more labour, cheaper labour, and more consumers." He argues that continued population growth makes the challenge of sustainability even more difficult, but adds that even if the population leveled off, capitalism will simply get already existing consumers to increase their consumption, as consumption rates have always outpaced population growth rates.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The majority of criticisms against the profit motive centre on the idea that the profit motive encourages selfishness and greed, rather than serving the public good or necessarily creating an increase in net wealth. Critics of the profit motive contend that companies disregard morals or public safety in the pursuit of profits.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Free market economists counter that the profit motive, coupled with competition, actually reduces the final price of an item for consumption, rather than raising it. They argue that businesses profit by selling a good at a lower price and at a greater volume than the competition. Economist Thomas Sowell uses supermarkets as an example to illustrate this point:


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: American economist Milton Friedman has argued that greed and self-interest are universal human traits. In a 1979 episode of "The Phil Donahue Show", Friedman stated: "The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests". He continued by explaining that only in capitalist countries, where individuals can pursue their own self-interest, people have been able to escape from "grinding poverty".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Wage labor has long been compared to slavery. As a result, the phrase "wage slavery" is often utilized as a pejorative for wage labor. Similarly, advocates of slavery looked upon the "comparative evils of Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and slavery to Capital" and proceeded to argue that wage slavery was actually worse than chattel slavery. Slavery apologists like George Fitzhugh contended that workers only accepted wage labor with the passage of time as they became "familiarised and inattentive to the infected social atmosphere they continually inhale". Scholars have debated the exact relationship between wage labor, slavery, and capitalism at length, especially for the Antebellum South.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use while Luddites emphasized the dehumanisation brought about by machines. Before the American Civil War, Southern defenders of African American slavery invoked the concept of wage slavery to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North. The United States abolished slavery during the Civil War, but labor union activists found the metaphor useful. According to Lawrence Glickman, in the Gilded Age "references abounded in the labor press, and it is hard to find a speech by a labour leader without the phrase".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: According to Noam Chomsky, analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the Enlightenment era. In his 1791 book "On the Limits of State Action", liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness" and so when the laborer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is". Both the Milgram and Stanford experiments have been found useful in the psychological study of wage-based workplace relations. Additionally, as per anthropologist David Graeber, the earliest wage labor contracts we know about were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money and the slave another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses). According to Graeber, such arrangements were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James argued in "The Black Jacobins" that most of the techniques of human organisation employed on factory workers during the Industrial Revolution were first developed on slave plantations.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Some anti-capitalist thinkers claim that the elite maintain wage slavery and a divided working class through their influence over the media and entertainment industry, educational institutions, unjust laws, nationalist and corporate propaganda, pressures and incentives to internalize values serviceable to the power structure, state violence, fear of unemployment and a historical legacy of exploitation and profit accumulation/transfer under prior systems, which shaped the development of economic theory.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Aristotle made the statement that "the citizens must not live a mechanic or a mercantile life (for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue), nor yet must those who are to be citizens in the best state be tillers of the soil (for leisure is needed both for the development of virtue and for active participation in politics)", often paraphrased as "all paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind". Cicero wrote in 44 BC that "vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery". Somewhat similar criticisms have also been expressed by some proponents of liberalism, like Henry George, Silvio Gesell and Thomas Paine as well as the Distributist school of thought within the Roman Catholic Church.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: To Marxist and anarchist thinkers like Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, wage slavery was a class condition in place due to the existence of private property and the state. This class situation rested primarily on:


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: For Marxists, labor as commodity, which is how they regard wage labor, provides a fundamental point of attack against capitalism. "It can be persuasively argued", noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it". That this objection is fundamental follows immediately from Marx's conclusion that wage labor is the very foundation of capitalism: "Without a class dependent on wages, the moment individuals confront each other as free persons, there can be no production of surplus value; without the production of surplus-value there can be no capitalist production, and hence no capital and no capitalist!".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: At least two assumptions are necessary for the validity of the standard model: first, that supply and demand are independent; and second, that supply is "constrained by a fixed resource". If these conditions do not hold, then the Marshallian model cannot be sustained. Sraffa's critique focused on the inconsistency (except in implausible circumstances) of partial equilibrium analysis and the rationale for the upward slope of the supply curve in a market for a produced consumption good. The notability of Sraffa's critique is also demonstrated by Paul A. Samuelson's comments and engagements with it over many years, stating:


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: What a cleaned-up version of Sraffa (1926) establishes is how nearly empty are all of Marshall's partial equilibrium boxes. To a logical purist of Wittgenstein and Sraffa class, the Marshallian partial equilibrium box of constant cost is even more empty than the box of increasing cost.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Aggregate excess demand in a market is the difference between the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied as a function of price. In the model with an upward-sloping supply curve and downward-sloping demand curve, the aggregate excess demand function only intersects the axis at one point, namely at the point where the supply and demand curves intersect. The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem shows that the standard model cannot be rigorously derived in general from general equilibrium theory.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The model of prices being determined by supply and demand assumes perfect competition. However, "economists have no adequate model of how individuals and firms adjust prices in a competitive model. If all participants are price-takers by definition, then the actor who adjusts prices to eliminate excess demand is not specified". Goodwin, Nelson, Ackerman and Weisskopf write:


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: If we mistakenly confuse precision with accuracy, then we might be misled into thinking that an explanation expressed in precise mathematical or graphical terms is somehow more rigorous or useful than one that takes into account particulars of history, institutions or business strategy. This is not the case. Therefore, it is important not to put too much confidence in the apparent precision of supply and demand graphs. Supply and demand analysis is a useful precisely formulated conceptual tool that clever people have devised to help us gain an abstract understanding of a complex world. It does not—nor should it be expected to—give us in addition an accurate and complete description of any particular real world market.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: According to Harvard academic Shoshana Zuboff, a new genus of capitalism, surveillance capitalism monetizes data acquired through surveillance. She states that it was first discovered and consolidated at Google, emerged due to the "coupling of the vast powers of the digital with the radical indifference and intrinsic narcissism of the financial capitalism and its neoliberal vision that have dominated commerce for at least three decades, especially in the Anglo economies" and depends on the global architecture of computer mediation which produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power she calls "Big Other".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: According to Immanuel Wallerstein, institutional racism has been "one of the most significant pillars" of the capitalist system and serves as "the ideological justification for the hierarchization of the work-force and its highly unequal distributions of reward".


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: Austrian School economists have argued that capitalism can organize itself into a complex system without an external guidance or central planning mechanism. Friedrich Hayek considered the phenomenon of self-organisation as underpinning capitalism. Prices serve as a signal as to the urgent and unfulfilled wants of people and the opportunity to earn profits if successful, or absorb losses if resources are used poorly or left idle, gives entrepreneurs incentive to use their knowledge and resources to satisfy those wants. Thus the activities of millions of people, each seeking their own interest, are coordinated.


title: Criticism of capitalism

text: The novelist Ayn Rand made positive moral defenses of "laissez-faire" capitalism, most notably in her 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged" and in her 1966 collection of essays "". She argued that capitalism should be supported on moral grounds, not just on the basis of practical benefits. Her ideas have had significant influence over conservative and libertarian supporters of capitalism, especially within the American Tea Party movement. Rand defined capitalism as "a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned". According to Rand, the role of government in a capitalist state has three broad categories of proper functions: first, the police "to protect men from criminals"; second, the armed services "to protect men from foreign invaders"; and third, the law courts "to settle disputes among men according to objective laws".


title: Ethane

text: Ethane ( , ) is an organic chemical compound with chemical formula . At standard temperature and pressure, ethane is a colorless, odorless gas. Like many hydrocarbons, ethane is isolated on an industrial scale from natural gas and as a petrochemical by-product of petroleum refining. Its chief use is as feedstock for ethylene production.


title: Ethane

text: Related compounds may be formed by replacing a hydrogen atom with another functional group; the ethane moiety is called an ethyl group. For example, an ethyl group linked to a hydroxyl group yields ethanol, the alcohol in beverages.


title: Ethane

text: Ethane was first synthesised in 1834 by Michael Faraday, applying electrolysis of a potassium acetate solution. He mistook the hydrocarbon product of this reaction for methane and did not investigate it further.


title: Ethane

text: During the period 1847–1849, in an effort to vindicate the radical theory of organic chemistry, Hermann Kolbe and Edward Frankland produced ethane by the reductions of propionitrile (ethyl cyanide) and ethyl iodide with potassium metal, and, as did Faraday, by the electrolysis of aqueous acetates. They mistook the product of these reactions for the methyl radical (), of which ethane () is a dimer.


title: Ethane

text: This error was corrected in 1864 by Carl Schorlemmer, who showed that the product of all these reactions was in fact ethane. Ethane was discovered dissolved in Pennsylvanian light crude oil by Edmund Ronalds in 1864.


title: Ethane

text: At standard temperature and pressure, ethane is a colorless, odorless gas. It has a boiling point of and melting point of . Solid ethane exists in several modifications. On cooling under normal pressure, the first modification to appear is a plastic crystal, crystallizing in the cubic system. In this form, the positions of the hydrogen atoms are not fixed; the molecules may rotate freely around the long axis. Cooling this ethane below ca. changes it to monoclinic metastable ethane II (space group P 21/n). Ethane is only very sparingly soluble in water.


title: Ethane

text: The bond parameters of ethane have been measured to high precision by microwave spectroscopy and electron diffraction: "r" = 1.528(3) Å, "r" = 1.088(5) Å, and ∠CCH = 111.6(5)° by microwave and "r" = 1.524(3) Å, "r" = 1.089(5) Å, and ∠CCH = 111.9(5)° by electron diffraction (the numbers in parentheses represents the uncertainties in the final digits).


title: Ethane

text: Ethane occurs as a trace gas in the Earth's atmosphere, currently having a concentration at sea level of 0.5 ppb, though its preindustrial concentration is likely to have been only around 0.25 part per billion since a significant proportion of the ethane in today's atmosphere may have originated as fossil fuels. Global ethane quantities have varied over time, likely due to flaring at natural gas fields. Global ethane emission rates declined from 1984 to 2010, though increased shale gas production at the Bakken Formation in the U.S. has arrested the decline by half.


title: Ethane

text: Although ethane is a greenhouse gas, it is much less abundant than methane, has a lifetime of only a few months compared to over a decade, and is also less efficient at absorbing radiation relative to mass. In fact, ethane's global warming potential largely results from its conversion in the atmosphere to methane. It has been detected as a trace component in the atmospheres of all four giant planets, and in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.


title: Ethane

text: Atmospheric ethane results from the Sun's photochemical action on methane gas, also present in these atmospheres: ultraviolet photons of shorter wavelengths than 160 nm can photo-dissociate the methane molecule into a methyl radical and a hydrogen atom. When two methyl radicals recombine, the result is ethane:


title: Ethane

text: In Earth's atmosphere, hydroxyl radicals convert ethane to methanol vapor with a half-life of around three months.


title: Ethane

text: It is suspected that ethane produced in this fashion on Titan rains back onto the moon's surface, and over time has accumulated into hydrocarbon seas covering much of the moon's polar regions. In December 2007 the Cassini probe found at least one lake at Titan's south pole, now called Ontario Lacus because of the lake's similar area to Lake Ontario on Earth (approximately 20,000 km). Further analysis of infrared spectroscopic data presented in July 2008 provided additional evidence for the presence of liquid ethane in Ontario Lacus. Several significantly larger hydrocarbon lakes, Ligeia Mare and Kraken Mare being the two largest, were discovered near Titan's north pole using radar data gathered by Cassini. These lakes are believed to be filled primarily by a mixture of liquid ethane and methane.


title: Ethane

text: In 1996, ethane was detected in Comet Hyakutake, and it has since been detected in some other comets. The existence of ethane in these distant solar system bodies may implicate ethane as a primordial component of the solar nebula from which the sun and planets are believed to have formed.


title: Ethane

text: In 2006, Dale Cruikshank of NASA/Ames Research Center (a New Horizons co-investigator) and his colleagues announced the spectroscopic discovery of ethane on Pluto's surface.


title: Ethane

text: Ethane can be viewed as two methyl groups joined, that is, a dimer of methyl groups. In the laboratory, ethane may be conveniently synthesised by Kolbe electrolysis. In this technique, an aqueous solution of an acetate salt is electrolysed. At the anode, acetate is oxidized to produce carbon dioxide and methyl radicals, and the highly reactive methyl radicals combine to produce ethane:


title: Ethane

text: The chemistry of ethane involves chiefly free radical reactions. Ethane can react with the halogens, especially chlorine and bromine, by free-radical halogenation. This reaction proceeds through the propagation of the ethyl radical:


title: Ethane

text: Because halogenated ethanes can undergo further free radical halogenation, this process results in a mixture of several halogenated products. In the chemical industry, more selective chemical reactions are used for the production of any particular two-carbon haloalkane.


title: Ethane

text: The complete combustion of ethane releases 1559.7 kJ/mol, or 51.9 kJ/g, of heat, and produces carbon dioxide and water according to the chemical equation:


title: Ethane

text: Combustion may also occur without an excess of oxygen, forming a mix of amorphous carbon and carbon monoxide.


title: Ethane

text: Combustion occurs by a complex series of free-radical reactions. Computer simulations of the chemical kinetics of ethane combustion have included hundreds of reactions. An important series of reaction in ethane combustion is the combination of an ethyl radical with oxygen, and the subsequent breakup of the resulting peroxide into ethoxy and hydroxyl radicals.


title: Ethane

text: The principal carbon-containing products of incomplete ethane combustion are single-carbon compounds such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde. One important route by which the carbon–carbon bond in ethane is broken, to yield these single-carbon products, is the decomposition of the ethoxy radical into a methyl radical and formaldehyde, which can in turn undergo further oxidation.


title: Ethane

text: Some minor products in the incomplete combustion of ethane include acetaldehyde, methane, methanol, and ethanol. At higher temperatures, especially in the range , ethylene is a significant product. It arises through reactions such as this:


title: Ethane

text: Similar reactions (with agents other than oxygen as the hydrogen abstractor) are involved in the production of ethylene from ethane in steam cracking.


title: Ethane

text: Rotating a molecular substructure about a twistable bond usually requires energy. The minimum energy to produce a 360° bond rotation is called the rotational barrier.


title: Ethane

text: Ethane gives a classic, simple example of such a rotational barrier, sometimes called the "ethane barrier". Among the earliest experimental evidence of this barrier (see diagram at left) was obtained by modelling the entropy of ethane. The three hydrogens at each end are free to pinwheel about the central carbon–carbon bond when provided with sufficient energy to overcome the barrier. The physical origin of the barrier is still not completely settled, although the overlap (exchange) repulsion between the hydrogen atoms on opposing ends of the molecule is perhaps the strongest candidate, with the stabilizing effect of hyperconjugation on the staggered conformation contributing to the phenomenon. Theoretical methods that use an appropriate starting point (orthogonal orbitals) find that hyperconjugation is the most important factor in the origin of the ethane rotation barrier.


title: Ethane

text: As far back as 1890–1891, chemists suggested that ethane molecules preferred the staggered conformation with the two ends of the molecule askew from each other.


title: Ethane

text: After methane, ethane is the second-largest component of natural gas. Natural gas from different gas fields varies in ethane content from less than 1% to more than 6% by volume. Prior to the 1960s, ethane and larger molecules were typically not separated from the methane component of natural gas, but simply burnt along with the methane as a fuel. Today, ethane is an important petrochemical feedstock and is separated from the other components of natural gas in most well-developed gas fields. Ethane can also be separated from petroleum gas, a mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons produced as a byproduct of petroleum refining.


title: Ethane

text: Ethane is most efficiently separated from methane by liquefying it at cryogenic temperatures. Various refrigeration strategies exist: the most economical process presently in wide use employs a turboexpander, and can recover more than 90% of the ethane in natural gas. In this process, chilled gas is expanded through a turbine, reducing the temperature to approximately . At this low temperature, gaseous methane can be separated from the liquefied ethane and heavier hydrocarbons by distillation. Further distillation then separates ethane from the propane and heavier hydrocarbons.


title: Ethane

text: The chief use of ethane is the production of ethylene (ethene) by steam cracking. When diluted with steam and briefly heated to very high temperatures (900 °C or more), heavy hydrocarbons break down into lighter hydrocarbons, and saturated hydrocarbons become unsaturated. Ethane is favored for ethylene production because the steam cracking of ethane is fairly selective for ethylene, while the steam cracking of heavier hydrocarbons yields a product mixture poorer in ethylene and richer in heavier alkenes (olefins), such as propene (propylene) and butadiene, and in aromatic hydrocarbons.


title: Ethane

text: Experimentally, ethane is under investigation as a feedstock for other commodity chemicals. Oxidative chlorination of ethane has long appeared to be a potentially more economical route to vinyl chloride than ethylene chlorination. Many processes for producing this reaction have been patented, but poor selectivity for vinyl chloride and corrosive reaction conditions (specifically, a reaction mixture containing hydrochloric acid at temperatures greater than 500 °C) have discouraged the commercialization of most of them. Presently, INEOS operates a 1000 t/a (tonnes per annum) ethane-to-vinyl chloride pilot plant at Wilhelmshaven in Germany.


title: Ethane

text: Similarly, the Saudi Arabian firm SABIC has announced construction of a 30,000 t/a plant to produce acetic acid by ethane oxidation at Yanbu. The economic viability of this process may rely on the low cost of ethane near Saudi oil fields, and it may not be competitive with methanol carbonylation elsewhere in the world.


title: Ethane

text: Ethane can be used as a refrigerant in cryogenic refrigeration systems. On a much smaller scale, in scientific research, liquid ethane is used to vitrify water-rich samples for cryo-electron microscopy. A thin film of water quickly immersed in liquid ethane at −150 °C or colder freezes too quickly for water to crystallize. Slower freezing methods can generate cubic ice crystals, which can disrupt soft structures by damaging the samples and reduce image quality by scattering the electron beam before it can reach the detector.


title: Ethane

text: At room temperature, ethane is an extremely flammable gas. When mixed with air at 3.0%–12.5% by volume, it forms an explosive mixture.


title: Ethane

text: Some additional precautions are necessary where ethane is stored as a cryogenic liquid. Direct contact with liquid ethane can result in severe frostbite. Until they warm to room temperature, the vapors from liquid ethane are heavier than air and can flow along the floor or ground, gathering in low places; if the vapors encounter an ignition source, the chemical reaction can flash back to the source of ethane from which they evaporated.


title: Ethane

text: Ethane can displace oxygen and become an asphyxiation hazard. Ethane poses no known acute or chronic toxicological risk. It is not a carcinogen.


title: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

text: "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". The uplifting lyrics describe somebody who overcomes his troubles and worries by realizing that "it won't be long till happiness steps up to greet me."


title: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

text: The single by B. J. Thomas reached No. 1 on charts in the United States, Canada and Norway, and reached No. 38 in the UK Singles Chart. It topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 for four weeks in January 1970 and was also the first American No. 1 hit of the 1970s. The song also spent seven weeks atop the Billboard adult contemporary chart. "Billboard" ranked it as the No. 4 song of 1970. According to "Billboard" magazine, it had sold over 2 million copies by March 14, 1970, with eight-track and cassette versions also climbing the charts. It won an Oscar for Best Original Song. Bacharach also won Best Original Score.


title: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

text: The song was recorded by B. J. Thomas in seven takes, after Bacharach expressed dissatisfaction with the first six. In the film version of the song, Thomas had been recovering from laryngitis, which made his voice sound huskier than in the 7-inch release. The film version featured a separate vaudeville-style instrumental break in double time while Paul Newman performed bicycle stunts.


title: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

text: Ray Stevens was first offered the opportunity to record it for the film, but turned it down. He chose instead to record the song "Sunday Morning Coming Down", written by Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan is supposed to have been approached for the song, but he reportedly declined too. The trumpet solos in the song are performed by Chuck Findley. Carol Kaye played electric bass on the song.


title: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

text: The song was featured during the 2004 superhero film "Spider-Man 2" over a montage sequence when Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) initially renounces his identity as Spider-Man. The same year, it finished at number 23 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. In 2008, the single was ranked 85th on "Billboard"'s Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs and placed 95th in the 55th Anniversary edition of the All-Time Hot 100 list in 2013. "Billboard Magazine" also ranked the song 15th on its Top 50 Movie Songs of All Time list in 2014.


title: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

text: On December 3, 2013, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced that the single would be inducted into the 2014 Grammy Hall Of Fame.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil, sold under various trade names, is a calcium channel blocker medication used for the treatment of high blood pressure, angina (chest pain from not enough blood flow to the heart), and supraventricular tachycardia. It may also be used for the prevention of migraines and cluster headaches. It is given by mouth or by injection into a vein.


title: Verapamil

text: Common side effects include headache, low blood pressure, nausea, and constipation. Other side effects include allergic reactions and muscle pains. It is not recommended in people with a slow heart rate or heart failure. It is believed to cause problems for the fetus if used during pregnancy. It is in the non–dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker family of medications.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil was approved for medical use in the United States in 1981. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. Verapamil is available as a generic medication. Long acting formulations exist. In 2020, it was the 151st most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 3million prescriptions.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil is used for controlling ventricular rate in supraventricular tachycardia and migraine headache prevention. It is a class-IV antiarrhythmic and more effective than digoxin in controlling ventricular rate. Verapamil is not listed as a first line agent by the guidelines provided by JAMA in JNC-8. However, it may be used to treat hypertension if patient has co-morbid atrial fibrillation or other types of arrhythmia.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil is also used intra-arterially to treat cerebral vasospasm. Verapamil is used to treat the condition cluster headache. Tentative evidence supports the use of verapamil topically to treat plantar fibromatosis.


title: Verapamil

text: Use of verapamil is generally avoided in people with severe left ventricular dysfunction, hypotension (systolic blood pressure less than 90 mm Hg), cardiogenic shock, and hypersensitivity to verapamil. It is also contraindicated in people with atrial flutter or fibrillation and an existing accessory tract such as in Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.


title: Verapamil

text: The most common side effect of verapamil is constipation (7.3%). While the definite mechanism by which Verapamil causes constipation has not been studied, studies have been conducted to rule out mechanisms of actions that might yield this adverse effect. In a study conducted by The National Library of Medicine titled, "Effect of Verapamil on the Human Intestinal Transit", the study found that verapamil does not have an effect on upper GI transit but rather in the colon.


title: Verapamil

text: Other side effects include dizziness (3.3%), nausea (2.7%), low blood pressure (2.5%), and headache 2.2%. Other side effects seen in less than 2% of the population include: edema, congestive heart failure, pulmonary edema, fatigue, elevated liver enzymes, shortness of breath, low heart rate, atrioventricular block, rash and flushing. Along with other calcium channel blockers, verapamil is known to induce gingival enlargement.


title: Verapamil

text: Acute overdose is often manifested by nausea, weakness, slow heart rate, dizziness, low blood pressure, and abnormal heart rhythms. Plasma, serum, or blood concentrations of verapamil and norverapamil, its major active metabolite, may be measured to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized patients or to aid in the medicolegal investigation of fatalities. Blood or plasma verapamil concentrations are usually in a range of 50–500 μg/L in persons on therapy with the drug, but may rise to 1–4 mg/L in acute overdose patients and are often at levels of 5–10 mg/L in fatal poisonings.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil's mechanism in all cases is to block voltage-dependent calcium channels. In cardiac pharmacology, calcium channel blockers are considered class-IV antiarrhythmic agents. Since calcium channels are especially concentrated in the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes, these agents can be used to decrease impulse conduction through the AV node, thus protecting the ventricles from atrial tachyarrhythmias. Verapamil is also a Kv voltage gated potassium channel blocker.


title: Verapamil

text: Calcium channels are also present in the smooth muscle lining blood vessels. By relaxing the tone of this smooth muscle, calcium channel blockers dilate the blood vessels. This has led to their use in treating high blood pressure and angina pectoris. The pain of angina is caused by a deficit in oxygen supply to the heart.


title: Verapamil

text: Calcium channel blockers like verapamil dilate the coronary blood vessels, which increases the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart. They also cause dilatation of systemic peripheral vessels as well, causing a reduction in the workload of the heart. Thereby reducing myocardial oxygen consumption.


title: Verapamil

text: Preventive therapy with verapamil is believed to work because it has an effect on the circadian rhythm and on CGRPs. As CGRP-release is controlled by voltage-gated calcium channels.


title: Verapamil

text: More than 90% of verapamil is absorbed when given orally, but due to high first-pass metabolism, bioavailability is much lower (10–35%). It is 90% bound to plasma proteins and has a volume of distribution of 3–5 L/kg. It takes 1 to 2 hours to reach peak plasma concentration after oral administration. It is metabolized in the liver to at least 12 inactive metabolites (though one metabolite, norverapamil, retains 20% of the vasodilatory activity of the parent drug). As its metabolites, 70% is excreted in the urine and 16% in feces; 3–4% is excreted unchanged in urine. This is a nonlinear dependence between plasma concentration and dosage. Onset of action is 1–2 hours after oral dosage. Half-life is 5–12 hours (with chronic dosages). It is not cleared by hemodialysis. It is excreted in human milk. Because of the potential for adverse reaction in nursing infants, nursing should be discontinued while verapamil is administered.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil has been reported to be effective in both short-term and long-term treatment of mania and hypomania. Addition of magnesium oxide to the verapamil treatment protocol enhances the antimanic effect.


title: Verapamil

text: Intra-abdominal adhesions are common in rabbits following surgery. Verapamil can be given postoperatively in rabbits which have suffered trauma to abdominal organs to prevent formation of these adhesions. Such effect was not documented in another study with ponies.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil inhibits the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter family of proteins found in stem cells and has been used to study cancer stem cells (CSC) within head and neck squamous cell carcinomas.


title: Verapamil

text: Verapamil is also used in cell biology as an inhibitor of drug efflux pump proteins such as P-glycoprotein and other ABC transporter proteins. This is useful, as many tumor cell lines overexpress drug efflux pumps, limiting the effectiveness of cytotoxic drugs or fluorescent tags. It is also used in fluorescent cell sorting for DNA content, as it blocks efflux of a variety of DNA-binding fluorophores such as Hoechst 33342. Radioactively labelled verapamil and positron emission tomography can be used with to measure P-glycoprotein function.


title: Ramona Young

text: Ramona Abish Young (born in Los Angeles, California) is a Chinese American actress. She is known for her recurring roles on the television series "Man Seeking Woman", "The Real O'Neals", and "Santa Clarita Diet". Young is also known for her regular roles as Kaya on "Z Nation," Mona Wu on "Legends of Tomorrow" and Eleanor on "Never Have I Ever."


title: Ramona Young

text: Ramona was educated in both Hong Kong, her parents' homeland, and the United States off and on until she was eight years old. Young graduated early from California State University, Los Angeles and studied acting at Playhouse West. On her family, Young stated "I don’t have family in the business. My grandfather is an eastern doctor. My grandmother sold clothes on the sidewalk. My mother is in the Navy. My father is a psychologist and professor."


title: Ramona Young

text: One of Young's first credited roles was an appearance in a 2014 episode of the short-lived ABC sitcom "Super Fun Night". In 2015, she wrote, produced, and starred in a short film, titled "Reflections". She also directed and did various other production duties on another short film, "Live Exit Here", for which she additionally starred in, wrote, and produced.


title: Ramona Young

text: In 2016, Young began portraying Kaya, an Inuk woman, during the third season of Syfy's "Z Nation", later becoming a main cast member. She originally auditioned for the role of Sun Mei. That same year, Young was cast in another recurring role as Allison, a lesbian teenager, on the second season of ABC's "The Real O'Neals".


title: Ramona Young

text: In January 2017, Young joined the cast of FXX's "Man Seeking Woman" in a recurring capacity as Robin for the third season. The following month, Young was featured in the Netflix series "Santa Clarita Diet", playing an eponymous deadpan store clerk in all three seasons. In 2017, she was also cast as a series regular in the Fox comedy pilot "Thin Ice". The project was later passed on.


title: Ramona Young

text: Young portrayed Angelica in the 2018 comedy film "Blockers". In July 2018, it was announced that Young had joined the main cast of The CW's Arrowverse series "Legends of Tomorrow" as Mona Wu (previously named Alaska Yu) for the show's fourth season.


title: Ramona Young

text: In 2020, it was revealed that Young had joined the cast of Mindy Kaling's Netflix series "Never Have I Ever".


title: Ramona Young

text: Young is a first-generation Chinese American. She speaks Mandarin and Cantonese fluently and can understand a few less widely known dialects because of her grandmother. Young has been doing martial arts since about the age of four. She specifically practices Wushu.


title: James Duval

text: James Edward Duval is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the Gregg Araki "Teenage Apocalypse" film trilogy—"Totally F***ed Up", "The Doom Generation", and "Nowhere". His other notable roles include Miguel in "Independence Day" (1996), Singh in "Go" (1999), Frank in "Donnie Darko" (2001), and Blank in "May" (2002).


title: James Duval

text: Duval has starred in numerous independent films, including the 2009 psychological thriller "The Black Waters of Echo's Pond" and the mystery crime-thriller film "Noirland" directed by Ramzi Abed.


title: Global Industry Classification Standard

text: The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is an industry taxonomy developed in 1999 by MSCI and Standard & Poor's (S&P) for use by the global financial community. The GICS structure consists of 11 sectors, 24 industry groups, 69 industries and 158 sub-industries into which S&P has categorized all major public companies. The system is similar to ICB (Industry Classification Benchmark), a classification structure maintained by FTSE Group.


title: Global Industry Classification Standard

text: GICS is used as a basis for S&P and MSCI financial market indexes in which each company is assigned to a sub-industry, and to an industry, industry group, and sector, by its principal business activity. "GICS" is a registered trademark of McGraw Hill Financial and MSCI Inc.


title: Global Industry Classification Standard

text: The classification standard is regularly updated by S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI. Numerous changes over the years have resulted in the addition, deletion, or redefinition of various sub-industries, industries, or industry groups. Since 1999, there have been two revisions at the sector level:


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Labour Party (, literally "Party of the Working People") is a centre-left and social-democratic political party in the Republic of Ireland. Founded on 28 May 1912 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, by James Connolly, James Larkin, and William O'Brien as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress, it describes itself as a "democratic socialist party" in its constitution.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Labour continues to be the political arm of the Irish trade union and labour movement and seeks to represent workers' interests in the Dáil and on a local level. Unlike many other Irish political parties, Labour did not arise as a faction of the original Sinn Féin party, although it incorporated Democratic Left in 1999, a party that traced its origins back to Sinn Féin. The party has served as a partner in coalition governments on eight occasions since its formation: seven times in coalition either with Fine Gael alone or with Fine Gael and other smaller parties, and once with Fianna Fáil. This gives Labour a cumulative total of twenty-five years served as part of a government, the third-longest total of any party in the Republic of Ireland after Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Led by Ivana Bacik, it is the fifth-largest party in Dáil Éireann, with seven seats, and is the joint third-largest party in Seanad Éireann, with four seats, making Labour the fifth-largest party in the Oireachtas overall as of 2021. The Labour Party is a member of the Progressive Alliance, Socialist International, and Party of European Socialists (PES).


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: James Connolly, James Larkin and William O'Brien established the Irish Labour Party on 28 May 1912, as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress. This party was to represent the workers in the expected Dublin Parliament under the Third Home Rule Act 1914. However, after the defeat of the trade unions in the Dublin Lockout of 1913 the labour movement was weakened; the emigration of James Larkin in 1914 and the execution of James Connolly following the Easter Rising in 1916 further damaged it.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Irish Citizen Army (ICA), formed during the 1913 Lockout, was informally the military wing of the Labour Movement. The ICA took part in the 1916 Rising. Councillor Richard O'Carroll, a Labour Party member of Dublin Corporation, was the only serving elected representative to be killed during the Easter Rising. O'Carroll was shot by John Bowen-Colthurst and died several days later, on 5 May 1916. The ICA was revived during Peadar O'Donnell's Republican Congress but after the 1935 split in the Congress most ICA members joined the Labour Party.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In Larkin's absence, William O'Brien became the dominant figure in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) and wielded considerable influence in the Labour Party. O'Brien also dominated the Irish Trades Union Congress. The Labour Party, led by Thomas Johnson from 1917, declined to contest the 1918 general election in order to allow the election to take the form of a plebiscite on Ireland's constitutional status (although some candidates did run in Belfast constituencies under the Labour banner against Unionist candidates). It also refrained from contesting the 1921 elections. As a result, the party was left outside Dáil Éireann during the vital years of the independence struggle, though Johnson sat in the First Dáil.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Anglo-Irish Treaty divided the Labour Party. Some members sided with the Irregulars in the Irish Civil War that quickly followed, however O'Brien and Johnson encouraged its members to support the Treaty. In the 1922 general election the party won 17 seats, having fielded 18 candidates. Winning 21.4% of the first preference vote, this remains the party’s highest ever share of the vote as of 2022. However, there were a number of strikes during the first year and a loss in support for the party. In the 1923 general election the Labour Party only won 14 seats. From 1922 until Fianna Fáil TDs took their seats in 1927, the Labour Party was the major opposition party in the Dáil. Labour attacked the lack of social reform by the Cumann na nGaedheal government. From 1927, a large number of the Labour Party’s voters were pre-empted by Fianna Fáil, with its almost identical policies. Labour lacked Fianna Fáil’s ‘republican’ image, which was a contributing factor to this loss.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Larkin returned to Ireland in April 1923. He hoped to resume the leadership role in the ITGWU which he had previously left, but O'Brien resisted him. Larkin also created a pro-communist party called the Irish Worker League. O'Brien regarded Larkin as a "loose cannon." Following a failed challenge to O'Brien's leadership and association with communist militancy, Larkin was expelled from the ITGWU and created the WUI, a communist alternative to the ITGWU, in 1924. Two-thirds of the Dublin membership of the ITGWU defected to the new union. O'Brien blocked the WUI from admission to the ITUC. Larkin was elected to Dáil Éireann at the September 1927 general election. However, the Labour Party prevented him from taking his seat as an undischarged bankrupt for losing a libel case against Labour leader Tom Johnson.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In 1932, the Labour Party supported Éamon de Valera's first Fianna Fáil government, which had proposed a programme of social reform with which the party was in sympathy. In the 1943 general election the party won 17 seats, its best result since 1927.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Irish Labour Party and the Irish Trades Union Congress separated in 1930. Future leader William Norton was prominent in urging the separation of the political and industrial wings of the labour movement into autonomous organisations, arguing that the move was necessary to broaden the party's electoral appeal beyond a trade union constituency.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The party was socially conservative compared to similar European parties, and its leaders from 1932 to 1977 (William Norton and his successor Brendan Corish) were members of the Catholic fraternal organisation the Knights of Saint Columbanus. The early to mid-20th century marked constant battles within Labour about whether to appease the Catholic Church or to take on a more militant labour approach.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Despite efforts in the 1930s to sternly downplay the idea of Communist influence over the party, by the 1940s internal conflict and complementary allegations of communist infiltration caused a split in the Labour Party and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Tensions peaked in 1941 when party founder Jim Larkin and a number of his supporters were re-admitted to the party and subsequently accused of "taking over" Labour branches in Dublin. In response William X. O'Brien left with six TDs in 1944, founding the National Labour Party, whose leader was James Everett. O'Brien also withdrew the ITGWU from the Irish Trades Unions Congress and set up his own congress. The split damaged the Labour movement in the 1944 general election. The ITGWU attacked "Larkinite and Communist Party elements" which it claimed had taken over the Labour Party. The split and the anti-communist assault put Labour on the defensive. It launched its own inquiry into communist involvement, which resulted in the expulsion of six members. Alfred O'Rahilly in "The Communist Front and the Attack on Irish Labour" widened the assault to include the influence of British-based unions and communists in the ITUC. The National Labour Party juxtaposed itself against this by emphasising its commitment to Catholic Social Teaching. However, Labour also continued to emphasise its anti-communist credentials. It was only after Larkin's death in 1947 that an attempt at unity could be made.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: After the 1948 general election National Labour had five TDs – Everett, Dan Spring, James Pattison, James Hickey and John O'Leary. National Labour and Labour (with 14 TDs) both entered the First Inter-Party Government, with the leader of National Labour becoming Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. In 1950, the National Labour TDs rejoined the Labour Party.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: From 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957, the Labour Party was the second-largest partner in the two inter-party governments (the largest being Fine Gael). William Norton, the Labour Party leader, became Tánaiste on both occasions. During the First Inter-Party Government he served as Minister for Social Welfare, while during the Second Inter-Party Government he served as Minister for Industry and Commerce. (See First Inter-Party Government and Second Inter-Party Government.)


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 and Ireland Act 1949 precipitated a split in the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) with Jack Macgougan leading anti-Partition members out and affiliating branches to the Dublin party, joined by other left-wing and nationalist representatives and branded locally as "Irish Labour". At Westminster, Jack Beattie held Belfast West from 1951 to 1955; the British Labour party refused Beattie its whip. At Stormont, Belfast Dock was won by Murtagh Morgan in 1953 and Paddy Devlin in 1962, but Devlin in 1964 left for the Republican Labour Party and Irish Labour contested no further Westminster or Stormont elections. In the 1949 local elections it won 7 seats on Belfast City Council, 6 (unopposed) on Armagh urban district council (UDC) and one on Dungannon UDC. In Derry, the party collapsed when Stephen McGonagle left after 1952. It was strongest in Warrenpoint and Newry UDCs, winning control of the former in 1949 and the latter in 1958, retaining seats in both until their 1973 abolition. Tommy Markey was expelled from the party in 1964 for taking a salute as Newry council chair from the Irish Guards. Party branches still existed in Warrenpoint and Newry as late as 1982, though candidates were heavily defeated in Newry and Mourne District Council at the 1973 local elections. The Social Democratic and Labour Party founded in 1970 took most of Irish Labour's voters and soon had its formal endorsement.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Brendan Corish became the new Labour leader in 1960. As leader, he advocated for more socialist policies to be adopted by the party; although initially tempering by this describing these policies as "a form of Christian socialism", he would later feel comfortable enough to drop the "Christian" prefix. In contrast to his predecessors, Corish adopted an anti-coalition stance. He attempted to give his fractious, divided party a coherent national identity, lurched it to the left and insisted Labour was the natural party of social justice. In the late 1960s, Labour began to embrace the ‘New Left,’ and Corish presented his "A New Republic" document at the 1967 Labour national conference, alongside a famous speech which declared that "The seventies will be socialist", which later became a Labour campaign slogan. Corish's new socialist direction for Labour was generally well-received internally; the membership's faith in Corish had already been bolstered by encouraging election results in 1965 and 1967.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Although Labour's share of the vote improved to 17% in the 1969 Irish general election, the best in 50 years, the party only won 17 seats - 5 fewer than in the 1965 general election. The result dented Corish's confidence and caused him to reconsider his anti-coalition stance.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Labour promoted a Eurosceptic outlook in the 1961 general election, and in 1972, the party campaigned against membership of the European Economic Community (EEC).


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Between 1973 and 1977, the Labour Party formed a coalition government with Fine Gael. The coalition partners lost the subsequent 1977 general election, and Corish resigned immediately after the defeat.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In 1977, shortly after the election defeat, members grouped around the Liaison Committee for the Labour Left split from Labour and formed the short-lived Socialist Labour Party. From 1981 to 1982 and from 1982 to 1987, the Labour Party participated in coalition governments with Fine Gael. In the later part of the second of these coalition terms, the country's poor economic and fiscal situation required strict curtailing of government spending, and the Labour Party bore much of the blame for unpopular cutbacks in health and other public services. The nadir for the Labour party was the 1987 general election where it received only 6.4% of the vote. Its vote was increasingly threatened by the growth of the Marxist and more radical Workers' Party, particularly in Dublin. Fianna Fáil formed a minority government from 1987 to 1989 and then a coalition with the Progressive Democrats.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The 1980s saw fierce disagreements between the wings of the party. The more radical elements, Labour Left, led by such figures as Emmet Stagg, Sam Nolan, Frank Buckley and Helena Sheehan, and Militant Tendency, led by Joe Higgins, opposed the idea of Labour entering into coalition government with either of the major centre-right parties (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael). At the 1989 Labour Party conference in Tralee a number of socialist and Trotskyist activists, organised around the Militant Tendency and their internal newspaper, were expelled. Amongst those expelled included future TDs Clare Daly, Ruth Coppinger and Mick Barry as well as Joe Higgins, who went on to found the Socialist Party in 1996.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The early 1990s saw a sustained period of growth for the Labour Party. In 1990 former Labour Senator Mary Robinson became the first President of Ireland to have been proposed by the Labour Party. Although she had contested the election as an independent candidate, having resigned from the party over her opposition to the Anglo Irish Agreement, her victory was generally considered as reflecting very well on Labour, who had supported her campaign. Not only was it the first time a woman held the office but it was the first time, apart from Douglas Hyde, that a non-Fianna Fáil candidate was elected. It was also in 1990 that Limerick East TD Jim Kemmy's Democratic Socialist Party merged into the Labour Party, and in 1992 Sligo–Leitrim TD Declan Bree's Independent Socialist Party also followed suit and joined the Labour Party.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: At the 1992 general election the Labour Party won a record 19.3% of the first preference votes, more than twice its share in the 1989 general election. The party's representation in the Dáil doubled to 33 seats in a momentum swing dubbed by the Irish national media as the "Spring Tide", who attributed much of the surge in the party's popularity to its leader Dick Spring. After a period of negotiations, the Labour Party formed a coalition with Fianna Fáil, taking office in January 1993 as the 23rd Government of Ireland. Fianna Fáil leader Albert Reynolds remained as Taoiseach, and Labour Party leader Dick Spring became Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: After less than two years the government fell in a controversy over the appointment of Attorney General, Harry Whelehan, as president of the High Court. The parliamentary arithmetic had changed as a result of Fianna Fáil's loss of two seats in by-elections in June, where the Labour Party itself had performed disastrously. On the pretext that the Labour Party voters were not happy with involvement with Fianna Fáil, Dick Spring withdrew his support for Reynolds as Taoiseach. The Labour Party negotiated a new coalition, the first time in Irish political history that one coalition replaced another without a general election. Between 1994 and 1997 Fine Gael, the Labour Party, and Democratic Left governed in the 24th Government of Ireland. Dick Spring became Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs again.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Labour Party presented the 1997 general election, held just weeks after spectacular electoral victories for the French Socialist Party and British Labour Party, as the first-ever choice between a government of the left and one of the right; but the party, as had often been the case following its participation in coalitions, lost support and lost half of its TDs. Labour's losses were so severe that while Fine Gael gained seats, it still came up well short of the support it needed to keep Bruton in office. This, combined with a poor showing by Labour Party candidate Adi Roche in the subsequent election for President of Ireland, led to Spring's resignation as party leader.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In 1997 Ruairi Quinn became the new Labour Party leader. Following negotiations in 1999, the Labour Party merged with Democratic Left, keeping the name of the larger partner. This had been previously opposed by the former leader Dick Spring. Members of Democratic Left in Northern Ireland were invited to join the Irish Labour Party but were not permitted to organise.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Quinn resigned as leader in 2002 following the poor results for the Labour Party in the 2002 general election. Former Democratic Left TD Pat Rabbitte became the new leader, the first to be elected directly by the members of the party.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Prior to the 2004 local elections, party leader Pat Rabbitte had endorsed a mutual transfer pact with Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny. Rabbitte proposed an extension of this strategy, named "the Mullingar Accord", going into the 2007 general election. Although Rabbitte's strategy was opposed by some influential members such as Brendan Howlin it was supported by approximately 80% of Labour conference delegates. However, at 2007 general election the Labour Party failed to increase its seat total and had a net loss of 1 seat, returning with 20 seats. Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the Green Party and independents did not have enough seats to form a government. Pat Rabbitte resisted calls to enter negotiations with Fianna Fáil on forming a government. Eventually, Fianna Fáil entered government with the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party with the support of independents. In the aftermath, Rabbitte resigned as Labour Party leader in late August, taking responsibility for the general election result. In his wake Eamon Gilmore was elected, unopposed, as the new Labour leader.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Following the onset of the post-2008 Irish economic downturn, Labour's political fortunes began to alter rapidly. At the local elections of 5 June 2009, the Labour Party added 31 new councillors to their tally and performed particularly well in the Dublin region. At the 2009 European Parliament election held on the same day, the Labour Party increased its number of seats from one to three, retaining the seat of Proinsias De Rossa in the Dublin constituency, while gaining seats in the East constituency with Nessa Childers, and in the South constituency with Alan Kelly. It was the first time since the 1979 European Parliament Elections that Labour had equalled the number of seats held in Europe by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: On 11 June 2010, a poll by MRBI was published in "The Irish Times" which, for the first time in the history of the state, showed the Labour Party as the most popular, at 32%, ahead of Fine Gael at 28% and Fianna Fáil at 17%. Eamon Gilmore's approval ratings were also the highest of any Dáil leader, standing at 46%.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: At the 2011 general election, Labour received 19.5% of first preference votes, and 37 seats. It was the most seats the Labour party had ever won in the Dáil, and their highest percentage of first-preference-votes since the Spring Tide of 1992. On 9 March 2011, it became the junior partner in a coalition government with Fine Gael for the period of the 31st Dáil. Eamon Gilmore was appointed as Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In October 2011 the Labour Party's candidate, Michael D. Higgins was elected as the 9th (and current) President of Ireland. On the same day, Labour's Patrick Nulty won the Dublin West by-election, making the Labour Party the first government party in Ireland to win a by-election since 1982.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: Labour lost seven parliamentary members over the course of the 31st Dáil. On 15 November 2011 Willie Penrose resigned over the closure of an army barracks in his constituency. On 1 December 2011 Tommy Broughan lost the party whip after voting against the government in relation to the Bank Guarantee Scheme. On 6 December 2011 Patrick Nulty lost the party whip after voting against the VAT increase in the 2012 budget. On 26 September 2012 Róisín Shortall resigned as Minister of State for Primary Care and lost the party whip after conflict with the Minister for Health James Reilly. On 13 December 2012 Colm Keaveney lost the party whip after voting against the cut to the respite care grant in the 2013 budget. Senator James Heffernan lost the party whip in December 2012 after voting against the government on the Social Welfare Bill. MEP Nessa Childers resigned from the parliamentary party on 5 April 2013, saying that she "no longer want[ed] to support a Government that is actually hurting people", and she resigned from the party in July 2013. In June 2013, Patrick Nulty and Colm Keaveney resigned from the Labour Party. Willie Penrose returned to the parliamentary Labour Party in October 2013.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: On 26 May 2014, Gilmore resigned as party leader after Labour's poor performance in the European and local elections. On 4 July 2014, Joan Burton won the leadership election, defeating Alex White by 78% to 22%. On her election, she said that the Labour Party "would focus on social repair, and govern more with the heart". Burton was the first woman to lead the Labour Party.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In the 2016 general election, Labour achieved a poor result, receiving only 6.6% of first preference votes, and 7 seats. It was the worst general election in its history, with a loss of 30 seats on its showing in 2011.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: On 20 May 2016, Brendan Howlin was elected unopposed as leader; some controversy arose from the fact that there was no contest for the leadership because none of his parliamentary colleagues were prepared to second the nomination of Alan Kelly. Howlin stated that as leader he was prepared to bring Labour back into government, citing the lack of influence on policy from opposition. He denied any suggestions that Labour could lose any further support from their 2016 performance, stating "We’re not some outfit that comes out of the morning mist and disappears again. We're the oldest party in the state".


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In the Local and European Elections of May 2019, despite a decreased vote share by 1.4%, Labour increased their seat count on local authorities to 57, an increase of 6. However, the party failed to win a European seat, leaving the S&D Group unrepresented by an Irish MEP for the first time since 1984. At the February 2020 election, the party's first preference vote dropped to 4.4%, a record low. In the subsequent Seanad elections, Labour won 5 seats, which tied them with Sinn Féin as the third-largest party in the House.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: After the General Election, Brendan Howlin announced his intention to step down as the leader of the Labour Party. On 3 April 2020 Alan Kelly was elected as party leader, edging out fellow Dáil colleague Aodhán Ó Ríordáin 55% to 45%. In July 2021, the party gained a seventh TD in the Dáil after Ivana Bacik won the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election. In March 2022, Kelly resigned suddenly as leader, less than two years into the role and having not lead the party into an election. He did so upon being informed by Sean Sherlock and Duncan Smith, both of whom had supported him in his leadership bid, along with Mark Wall, that the parliamentary party had lost "collective confidence" in his leadership. The plan to remove him was devised by the parliamentary party in the home of Senator Marie Sherlock, in the absence of Kelly. An internal report reportedly showed that every one of the party’s nationally elected representatives were at risk of losing their seats in the next general election. Kelly became emotional as he announced his resignation, stating that the decision by the parliamentary party was a "surprise" to him, but that he accepted it immediately. On 24 March 2022 Ivana Bacik was confirmed as the new leader of the party unopposed at a conference in Dublin.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Labour Party is a party of the centre-left which has been described as a social democratic party but is referred to in its constitution as a democratic socialist party. Its constitution refers to the party as a "movement of democratic socialists, social democrats, environmentalists, progressives, feminists (and) trade unionists". It has been described as a “big tent” party by the "Irish Independent".


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The stance of the Labour Party has changed dramatically over time. In 1964, American historian Emmet Larkin described the Irish Labour Party as “the most opportunistically conservative Labour Party anywhere in the known world,” due to its Catholic outlook in an Ireland where 95 percent of the population was Roman Catholic. It was known for its longstanding unwillingness (along with Ireland's other major parties) to support any policy that could be construed as sympathetic to secularism or communism. However, from the 1980s it was associated with advocacy for socially liberal policies, with former leader Eamon Gilmore stating in 2007 that “more than any other political movement, it was Labour and its allies which drove the modernisation of the Irish state.”


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In the past Labour has been referred to, derisively, as “the political wing of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.” That Labour was influenced by Catholicism is not unusual in the Irish context (likewise, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were also products of a predominantly Catholic society). Labour's ethos and often its language was profoundly Christian. Following the official separation of the Irish Labour Party and Irish Trade Union Congress into two different organisations in 1930, early drafts of Labour's constitution referred to the responsibilities of the ‘Christian state’, but these had all been removed by the time the constitution was put before the new party's conference for approval. However, the Free State's commitment to a full-scale devotional revival of Catholicism was reflected in the outlook and policies of the party. The ‘Starry Plough,’ the traditional symbol of Labour, reflects a Catholic tradition and biblical reference to Isaiah 2:3-4, which is integral to its design. Like Fianna Fáil, Labour embraced corporatist policies, again influenced by the Catholic Church. This was deemed to be important for both in terms of winning electoral support from the lower and middle classes. However, Labour later became associated with increasing secularism and championing socially liberal causes in relation to contraception, divorce, LGBT rights and abortion. Its support base also shifted greatly towards postmaterialists. The Labour Party also changed its position from Euroscepticism in 1972 to pro-Europeanism and ideological integration with European social-democratic parties.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: The Labour Party has been involved in various campaigns for LGBT rights and put forward many bills. The party was in government in 1993 when homosexuality was decriminalised in Ireland, and it was President Mary Robinson, herself a longstanding LGBT advocate, who signed the bill into law. Mervyn Taylor published the Employment Equality Bill in 1996, which was enacted in 1998, outlawing discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of sexual orientation. Taylor also published the Equal Status Bill in 1997, enacted in 2000, outlawing discrimination in the provision of goods and services on grounds listed including sexual orientation.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: At the 2002 general election, only the manifestos of the Green Party and Labour explicitly referred to the rights of same-sex couples.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In 2003, Labour LGBT was founded. This was the first time a political party in Ireland had formed an LGBT wing.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: In December 2006, Labour TD Brendan Howlin tabled a private member's civil unions bill in Dáil Éireann, proposing the legalisation of civil partnerships and adoption for same-sex couples. The Fianna Fáil government amended the bill to delay it for six months time, however the Dáil was dissolved for the 2007 Irish general election before this could happen. Labour again brought this bill before the Dáil in 2007 but it was voted down by the government, with the Green Party, who had formerly supported gay marriage, also voting in opposition to the bill, with spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe arguing that the bill was unconstitutional.


title: Labour Party (Ireland)

text: At their 2010 national conference Labour passed a motion calling for transgender rights and to legislate for a gender recognition act.