Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

iPhone workers today are 25 times more exploited than textile workers of 19th century England I do not agree with the authors, who are using a Marxist analysis, on calling Eeastern European countries before 1990 'socialist'. Their labbelling throws dust in readers' eyes.  If those countries were socialist, what do today's socialists are fighting for then? And if those countries were socialist, it is more of an argument for the defenders of capitalism: "if that was socialism, we don't want it." The Rate of Exploitation (The Case of the iPhone) Related: "Sucking up"  (Apple's app and Hong Kong protests)

"Stolen  [by Grace Blakeley] leads the reader through the various periods of Anglo-American capitalist development from 1945 to the Great Recession of 2008-9 and beyond.  And it finishes with some policy proposals to end the thievery with a new (post-financialisation) economic model that will benefit working people. This is compelling stuff. But is Blakeley’s account of the nature of modern Anglo-American capitalism and on the causes of recurring crises in capitalist production correct? An accessible read/economics made simple Theft or exploitation — a review of Grace Blakeley's  Stolen   Related: It's not just profitability

Essays by Arundhati Roy

What kind of world are we living in?

Class was the key for Erik Olin Wright

Italy and France A row that exposes both hypocrisy and truth Further reading: -  How poor countries develop rich countries by Jason Hickel (LSE) - How Europe underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney - Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century  by John Smith

A country with the size of Western Europe,  centuries of exploitation, a Belgian-led Genocide, a CIA-backed coup, plunder by multinationals, 5 million killed in the last 20 years ... Congo An analysis Africa's Leaky Giant

The lives of African fruit pickers in Italy

Is capital or labor winning at your favorite company? The New York Times

There is a book sweeping the popular media at the moment.  It’s called  Factfulness .  It purports to argue that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the world is becoming a better place.  Poverty is falling, life expectancy is rising; health levels are improving; people have more things and better services.  Even violence and wars are in decline. This is a hoary old message... Rising world inequality

K for Karl — Exploitation (episode 4)

The end of May?

Ian Wright [Open University, UK] dismisses the mainstream causes of rising inequality: namely, unequal distribution of profits and wages or lower taxes on the rich; or automation driving down wages relatively for those not working in ‘knowledge-based’ industries.  Instead, the causes of rising inequality must be found in the very nature of the capitalist mode of production.  As Wright puts it,  “capitalism is a system in which one economic class systematically exploits another. And its economic exploitation — not housing, tax policies or low wages — that is the root cause of the economic inequality we see all around us.” Inequality and exploitation

Gender gap in Britain If the figures provided by the companies are genuine ... 1. 'Free market': Leading robbers in this are banks and budget airlines such as easyjet and ryanair.  2. Transparency: For how long has this been going on? Who has been complicit in hiding this?  3. Justice: Will the women affected get back what they have been robbed of?  4. Certainly many women, and men, knew about the gap for years, but accepted it and kept silent. Aren't they also complicit? 4. Exploitation: Like what is happening between the rich and poor countries through multinational companies, debt, etc, when you get something "cheap", or if you feel that your standard of living is OK, someone else /other people, another class must be paying for it.

Sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant launched a  2001 protest against what they called “a strange Newspeak,”  or “NewLiberalSpeak” that included words like “globalization,” “governance,” “employability,” “underclass,” “communitarianism,” “multiculturalism” and “their so-called postmodern cousins.” Bourdieu and Wacquant argued that this discourse obscures “the terms ‘capitalism,’ ‘class,’ ‘exploitation,’ ‘domination,’ and ‘inequality,’” as part of a “neoliberal revolution,” that intends to “remake the world by sweeping away the social and economic conquests of a century of social struggles. This is a society characterized by the deliberate dismantling of the social state and the correlative hypertrophy of the penal state, the crushing of trade unions and the dictatorship of the ʻshareholder-valueʼ conception of the firm, and their sociological effects: the generalization of precarious wage labour and social insecurity, turned into the privileged engine of economic activity.

Walmart: an exmaple of neoliberalism hijacking of social movements Also An in-depth analysis by Nancy Fraser

"The growth of large-scale migration is after all part of the system of corporate globalisation that took hold in the past 30 years and widened inequality both within and between countries. It's also been fuelled by 15 years of western wars and intervention from Afghanistan to Somalia. And in Eastern Europe, the exploitation and migration of low-waged and skilled workers has been central to the neoliberal model imposed after 1989." Seumas Milne, the Guardian online, 01 January 2013 Italy as an example ' Migrants are more profitable than drugs' Raped, beaten, exploited

Turkey's People's Democratic Party (HDP)

The New Spirit of Capitalism

Capitalism's crisis of care and an excellent analysis here From progressive neoliberalism to Trump — and beyond