FAQs
Who is Critical Takes for?
Critical Takes is a not-for-profit discussion platform for people from civil society around the world who are critical of the power of multinational corporations.
The definition of “civil society” here is broad and includes various groups and people with progressive aims, including non-governmental organisations, coalitions and networks; activists and campaigners; not-for-profit, charitable and voluntary organisations; trade unions; academia, research institutes and think thanks; progressive media organisations, journalists and media commentators. The work of Critical Takes is based on the universality of human rights.
You can use the platform as a source of information and ideas for your own work, and to keep up with what critics of corporate power from different places in civil society are thinking. You can also write for Critical Takes yourself (see "write for us" for details)
What is the purpose of Critical Takes?
Ideas do not enter the political mainstream by themselves. The neoliberal orthodoxy which long dominated mainstream thinking around the world was propagated for many years by an ecosystem of university departments, think tanks, journals and other media, backed by funding from very rich men. The far right has its own version of this ecosystem which promotes ideas of hostility and exclusion.
For a positive vision of justice to become mainstream, it is necessary to strengthen networks of ideas on the progressive side of politics. Critical Takes on Corporate Power is intended to play a useful role in that process by focussing on one particular problem of economic justice, which is the overweening power of multinationals and other very large corporations.
Critical Takes takes a general view that corporate power is a structural problem which calls for a comprehensive and ambitious response from civil society. Beyond that, the platform does not promote its own policy agenda or attempt to say what the end-point of change should be.
The aim is to gather ideas about how to tackle corporate power from across worldwide civil society, make those ideas easily accessible and encourage a patient and inclusive discussion about how they might fit together into a single agenda for transforming the problem, based on points of consensus which people with different priorities and starting points can work on together.
Critical Takes is a resource for civil society and does not usually campaign or conduct advocacy towards governments or multinational corporations.
Who owns and funds Critical Takes?
Critical Takes on Corporate Power Limited is a not-for-profit Company Limited By Guarantee in the United Kingdom whose director and member is me, the Editor, Diarmid O'Sullivan. The company is registered in England (Number 14966786) and its registered address is: Flat 10, 54 Cecile Park, London N8 9AT.
The platform is currently run and funded solely by me. The plan is to raise funds from non-profit foundations in future and take on more people.
Why doesn't Critical Takes use video on its website?
Video is everywhere nowadays, so why doesn't Critical Takes use it? One reason is that I don't have (and can't really afford) the setup for video: to do it well, you need a proper recording space and so on.
A more important reason is that I don't see how a movement of ideas can be fashioned out of short clips of talking heads which are mainly designed for virality and compete with each other for online attention. These formats are an increasingly important means of conveying ideas, but I feel that their form may actually turn out to work against their intention unless they're firmly embedded within some wider programme which includes other forms of communication (such as face-to-face discussions).
The pared-down, text-heavy look of this website is designed to appeal to the relatively small number of people who work on converting complex ideas about our economic life into political change. There's never been much point in Critical Takes trying to attract huge numbers of views from society at large because the platform has no means for converting that fleeting interest into sustained political action.
At some point, if Critical Takes achieves its aim of catalysing a more holistic and ambitious civil society agenda for transforming corporate power, then that agenda will have to be communicated more widely across society in different countries. At that point the video clips and the explainers and so on will become necessary, but their creation and handling will best be left to other people in civil society who are experts in these forms of communication, which I'm not.
Why is there no AI on the platform?
I'm not against these technologies, per se. They can't be uninvented and evidently they can be very useful in many ways, once their limitations are understood. But as long as they are controlled by very rich, very selfish men whose aims are deeply at odds with democracy and justice, I'd prefer to steer clear of them in almost all cases.
Can I reproduce material from this website in my own work?
You can quote or refer to material published on this website as long as you cite the name of the author and refer to Critical Takes on Corporate Power as its source, for example via a link or a footnote.
If you want to reproduce most or all of an article from the website, or if you want to republish any material from the website for commercial purposes, you must contact the Editor for permission first.
Please note that Critical Takes does not respond to marketing messages from commercial organisations.
Nothing published on this website may be used for the training of AI or machine-learning software, or for similar purposes.