Free markets aren’t really free. Corporate profits don’t trickle down. Our choices aren’t our own. Economist and journalist Grace Blakeley dismantles the myths of capitalism, revealing how global corporations and financial institutions have shaped a system designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

From JPMorgan to Boeing, from Nixon to Ford, she traces the roots of our modern crisis, arguing that capitalism isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as intended.

Join Grace at The Conduit as she unpacks the forces driving inequality, the exploitation baked into the system, and how we can fight back.

Speakers:

Grace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune magazine and author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation and The Corona Crash. She previously worked as a research fellow for the Institute for Public Policy Research and as the New Statesman’s economic commentator. She appears regularly in the media as a political and economic commentator.

Mike Savage joined the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2012 and was Martin White Professor of Sociology before retiring from the Department in 2024. He is now Professorial Research Fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, from where he retains active collaboration with the Department of Sociology. Mike was Head of Department between 2013 and 2016. Between 2015 and 2020, he was Director of LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, which hosts the Atlantic Fellows programme, the largest global programme in the world devoted to challenging inequalities.