Alain Supiot will be speaking at the LSE on Thursday 17th May on his new book, The Spirit of Philadelphia: Social Justice vs the Total Market
Thursday 17th May, 5pm
Connaught Building, room CON.1.04, LSE

Hosted by the British Journal of Industrial Relations. 

Leading French jurist and expert in labour law Alain Supiot comes to the LSE to speak about his new book, The Spirit of Philadelphia:Social Justice vs the Total Market. A manifesto for social justice, The Spirit of Philadelphia is published by Verso next month. 

In 1944, the International Labour Organization laid out its "Declaration of Philadelphia," a full-fledged social bill of rights in the same spirit as FDR's State of the Union address of the same year. The welfarist spirit was then at its apex-but Supiot argues that with neoliberalism still rampant, even following the economic crash, the Declaration remains an important baseline. Then as now, social ties had been compromised in favor of market values; now, as then, the law must be reorganized to uphold social values and the spirit of solidarity.

Short, punchy and often rousing, The Spirit of Philadelphia describes the worldwide triumph of neoliberalism as once-communist elites turn towards market dogma and the privatization of welfare states. Arguing against the return to social Darwinism, and the bureaucratic embrace of numbers and statistics as ends, Supiot champions the social democratic spirit, hoping for its revival in the wake of the recent crash.

Alain Supiot is Professor of Law at the University of Nantes, France. His previous books include Beyond Employment: Changes in Work, The Future of Labour Law in Europe and, from Verso, Homo Juridicus.