Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“We are living through a moment when the ‘F’ word is no longer taboo and the threat of fascism lurks everywhere.”  Alberto Toscano “reminds us that liberalism is no enemy of fascism , and fascists flower in the hot house of capitalism.”

Politically and intellectually bankrupt

Harris or Trump will soon occupy the most violent elected office in their homeland (and the world). Trump and Harris “are destroying what is left of the democratic institutions of this country.” ‘Democratic institutions’? When were they ‘democratic’?  “ The existing two parties are identical in their genocidal militarism and backing of the Israeli settler colony, with one openly planning its  fascist takeover  of the entire country.”  The 50/60 per cent of eligible Americans who do vote “are conditioned by the commercial logic of their degenerate capitalism to choose between Coke and Pepsi, McDonald's and KFC, Nike and Reebok, Apple and Samsung, or Trump and Harris.” I have always liked Dabashi’s articles . I fear though he is sliding into repeating sentences with different words and tone.

Catching and Falling Behind in the Global Economy (open access)

I don’t think we can talk about ‘hypocrisy’ anymore. It has been normalised as part of ‘our values’. It is not a negative feature. I don’t agree with the two state solution implied in the article.

The enduring influence of Marx’s masterpiece

Today’s Imperialist Clashes ‘Are Driven by Economic Rivalry’ A must read Unlike classical imperialism, write Costas Lapavitsas  the driving force of contemporary imperialism  “springs from this pairing of internationalized industrial with internationalized financial capital. Neither dominates the other and there is no fundamental clash between them. Jointly they comprise the most aggressive form of capital known to history.” And  this pairing of capitals  “thrives on unfettered access to global natural resources, cheap labor power, low taxation, loose environmental standards, and markets for its industrial, commercial, and financial components. The United States will obviously not submit to the challenge and draws on its vast military, political, and monetary power to protect its hegemony. That makes it the main threat to world peace.”  It implies there is now a world peace that is under threat. I don’t think there is world peace. “The socialist left must oppose...

A must read Unlike classical imperialism, write Costas Lapavitsas   the driving force of contemporary imperialism   “springs from this pairing of internationalized industrial with internationalized financial capital. Neither dominates the other and there is no fundamental clash between them. Jointly they comprise the most aggressive form of capital known to history.” And   this pairing of capitals  “thrives on unfettered access to global natural resources, cheap labor power, low taxation, loose environmental standards, and markets for its industrial, commercial, and financial components. The United States will obviously not submit to the challenge and draws on its vast military, political, and monetary power to protect its hegemony. That makes it the main threat to world peace. The socialist left must oppose imperialism, while recognizing that the United States is the main aggressor. But that ought to be done from an independent position that is openly anti-capitalis...

This will not happen soon, Cori, especially when accommodating voices, if not complicit ones, of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are betraying their own principles. But in exposing the crimes and the complicity in crimes of power and wealth,   words of defiance against nefarious outfits   are always needed.

Interview with Kevin B. Anderson Related A multi-polarity: a new alignment?

What does fascism mean today?

[C]apitalism is historically coherent—if “vast but weak”—from the long sixteenth century; co-produced by human and extra-human natures in the web of life; and cohered by a “law of value” that is a “law” of Cheap Nature. At the core of this law is the ongoing, radically expansive, and relentlessly innovative quest to turn the work/energy of the biosphere into capital (value-in-motion). If the destructive character of capitalism’s world-ecological revolutions has widely registered—the “what” and the “why” of capitalism-in-nature—there has been far too little investigation of how humans have made modernity through successive, radical reconfigurations of all nature. How capitalism has worked through, rather than upon nature, makes all the difference. —Jason Moore,  Capitalism in the Web of Life

My introduction: To understand the crisis of the National Health Service, the bad handling of the pandemic*, stagnant economy, weak productivity, a state struggling to invest adequately in the green economy, inability to build enough and affordable houses, expensive rent, decades of poor investment in infrastructure by OECD measures, consumption, and consumerism, driven by debt, Labour/Conservatives capitalist values, one has to look at the economic model of the British economy. In reviewing Brett Christophers’s work, Cédric Durant has provided a good overview of such an economic model of accumulation and its ramifications as well as some criticism of Christophers’s take on capitalism in general and what might replace it. ——— *I doubt it that the recently publish report will ever mention the economic model pursued by Britain for more than four decades and how it played a major role in the infrastructure of health and the well-being of the Brits. ***** Few today will need convincing th...

The implications of “an approach that captures the geopolitically interconnected and sociologically co-constitutive nature of its [capitalism’s] emergence.” “Uneven and combined development is capable of bringing together – not only theoretically, but concretely – historical processes understood from multiple vantage points into an interactive totality of social relations.” “A rethinking of what historically and theoretically constitutes capitalism.” “Capitalism is neither natural nor eternal: it has been historically constructed by annihilating or subsuming other – non-capitalist – ways of life.” “The conquest, ecological ruin, slavery, state terrorism, patriarchal subjugation, racism, mass exploitation and immiseration upon which capitalism was built continue unabated today.” “In the contemporary period, the divesting machinations of capitalism have continued and expanded into a global system of geopolitical violence and integrated production processes which afford it coercive and di...

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/a-global-war-regime

An interview with Malaika Jabali Correction:  “I feature Frida Kahlo, who was a part of the Communist Party.” She was in the Mexican Communist Party, not the American one.

A good review , especially that it questions the authors’ ‘alternative’ and its limitations.

An entire academic industry has developed around attempting to explain the apparent persistence and durability of Middle East authoritarianism. Much of this has been heavily Eurocentric, seeking some kind of intrinsic “obedience to authority” inherent to the “Arab mind.” Some authors have focused on the impact of religion, tracing authoritarian rule to the heavy influence of Islam, and the fact that “twentieth-century Muslim political leaders often have styles and use strategies that are very similar to those instituted by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia some 1400 years ago. The history of the region is thus characteristically recounted as a long-standing struggle between the “authoritarian state” and “economic and political liberalization. Instead of viewing the Arab uprisings as protests against the “free market” economic policies long championed by Western institutions in the region, they were framed as essentially political in nature. The state/civil society dichotomy serves to “con...

“At a very simple level, that means one of the pleasures of reading the  Manifesto  is that it’s beautiful. It’s remarkable. Whether one agrees or not with some of its claims and its positions, it is just a joy to read this incantatory prose. Marshall Berman famously really stresses this, and it’s something that even critics of Marx will often allow. This is a remarkable piece of almost apocalyptic literature. If you read it critically, of course, but also generously and thoughtfully, you may gain, as I did, a great deal more out of it politically and intellectually than you might assume if you only think of it as an introductory text.” China Miéville’s stimulating reading of The Manifesto and its authors

Highlights from Jason Hickel 1)  Compensation for atmospheric appropriation .  This is my top highlight. We show that rich countries have already dramatically exceeded their fair-shares of the carbon budget for 1.5 ° C and 2 ° C and are rapidly appropriating the fair-shares of others, forcing them to mitigate faster than would otherwise be required. In a scenario where all countries aim for zero emissions by 2050, rich countries will owe $192 trillion to global South countries in compensation for atmospheric appropriation. In  Nature Sustainability . 2)  Climate change and racial justice .  Rich countries and elites are overwhelmingly responsible for excess emissions, but communities in the global South—and Indigenous and racially minoritized groups within nations—face a disproportionate burden of illness and mortality due to climate change. The climate crisis is a process of atmospheric colonization, and the consequences are playing out along colonial lines. Ma...