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Showing posts from January 30, 2022

In UK, Not in a Third World Country

 While Shell announced a "momentous year" after making $20bn in profits…

A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa

Introduction by Joel Beinin Political economy addresses the mutual and historical constitution of states, markets, and classes… In this perspective, causes are simultaneously effects; all events are situated in a relational matrix; all social hierarchies are subject to contestation. The historical development of social formations dominated by capital is inextricably intertwined with genocides, slavery and other forms of unfree labor, racialization, patriarchy, national oppression, and empire. Capital accumulation by individuals, partnerships, and even contemporary corporations can occur through exploiting many different forms of labor as well as cheap nature. The ambit of political economy also includes the legal, political, and cul- tural forms of the regulation of regimes of capital accumulation; relations among local, national, and global forms of capital, class, and culture; the so- cial structure of reproduction; the construction of forms of knowledge and hegemony; technopolitics;...

The Culture Wars in France

How French politics has ended up being a politics of culture. Excerpts from Daniel Zamora’s article on Catalyst The shift is due to the long-term decline, beginning in the early 1980s, of class politics and alternatives to capitalism. In a post-ideological France, class struggle has been displaced onto the terrain of identity. Politicians, media commentators, and scholars from both left and right all seem to agree that the French political debate has been contaminated… What they’ve been labeling ‘Americanization’ is a certain kind of identity politics they believe is threatening French republicanism.  Despite Macron’s professed disdain for identity politics, his alternative can scarcely be construed as anti-identitarian. To understand this state of affairs, we need to look at the recent history of identity in France, a history that begins not with woke concepts colonizing French universities but rather with the long-term decline, beginning in the early 1980s, of class politics and ...