Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Solidarność: 40 years ago and now The writer calls the former communist-party-led regimes of eastern Europe “state socialists.” There is no left consensus on the character of those regimes. I wouldn’t call them state socialists though. They were dictatorial, bureaucratic regimes that controlled most of the economy. “ Today, the union [Solidarity] is almost entirely allied with PiS, and thus with all the illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, homophobic, protofascist policies and practices that the party has been promoting.” The Triumph and Tragedy of Poland’s Solidarity Movement

When Neoliberalism Hijacked Human Rights

Zeef Sternhell (1935-2020) Israel's left has no future  (2009)

This is a very engaging paper. Primitive Socialist Accumulation in China: An Alternative View on the Anomalies of Chinese 'Capitalism'

Neil Davidson (1957-2020) I recommend: Is social revolution still possible in the twenty-first century? Neoliberalism as a Class-Based Project

A long good summary A specter is haunting the West—the specter of authoritarian capitalism

"Viruses mutate all the time to be sure. But the circumstances in which a mutation becomes life-threatening depend on human actions. But the economic and demographic impacts of the spread of the virus depend upon preexisting cracks and vulnerabilities in the hegemonic economic model. Public authorities and health care systems were almost everywhere caught short-handed. Forty years of  neoliberalism  across North and South America and Europe had left the public totally exposed and ill-prepared to face a public health crisis of this sort, even though previous scares of SARS and Ebola provided abundant warnings as well as cogent lessons as to what would be needed to be done. Corporatist  Big Pharma  has little or no interest in non-remunerative research on infectious diseases (such as the whole class of coronaviruses that have been well-known since the 1960s).  Workforces in most parts of the world have long been socialized to behave as good neoliberal subjects (which means

"Agribusiness would risk millions of deaths"

The Lebanese uprising continues

Those who search for dawn do mot fear the night; nor the hand that holds the dagger

"We must revitalise the enlightenment and recommit to honouring its values of freedom, respect for knowledge and democracy." — Joseph Stiglitz Stiglitz, a renegade, has been attacking "neoliberalism" and intellectual orthodoxy. I wonder though which part of "the enlightenment he wants to revitalise." Is it the Steven Pinker's way of cheriching "the enlightenment"? "Recommiting to honouring the values of freedom." What were these "values of freedom" before the 40 years of "neoliberalism"? What were they in regard to what imperialism inflicted on what used to be called at that time "the third world" or the support of despotism, etc? If the solution is some sort of a new social democracy, what socio-economic form of capitalism could be the foundation?

Former President of Ecuador Raphael Correa:  "Clearly what happened in Bolivia was a coup." I am puzzeled though when he said there was no corruption in the United States or that he loved the the U.S. What does loving an imperialist and very unequal country mean? A country that is rife with  justice at home and it is policing global injustice!

When a senior editor of a right-wing magazine argues for "taxing the better off" and "more public provision", it says something about the unease of the (international) ruling class. Counting the cost of neoliberalism in Chile

ore corporate management models, they increasingly use and exploit cheap faculty labor ... Students increasingly fare no better in sharing the status of a sub ‐ altern class beholden to neoliberal policies and values’ (Giroux, 2014, p. 20). The implications of this go far beyond the university itself, resulting in what Giroux, one of the leading writers on this topic, has called ‘the near‐death of the university as a democratic public sphere’ (p. 16). In these assessments, neoliberalism, in its impact on Higher Education, is associated with a range of other terms or ‘discourses’: The ascendancy of neoliberalism and the associated discourses of ‘new public management’, during the 1980s and 1990s, has produced a fundamental shift in the way universities and other institu ‐ tions of higher education have defined and justified their institutional existence. The traditional professional culture of open intellectual enquiry and debate has been replaced with an

The End of Fukuyama and the Last Book

 "[A]nything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary – it just helps people cope. In fact, it could also be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, mindfulness says the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic frameworks that shape how we live. And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. It’s magical thinking on steroids." The mindfulness conspiracy

Global 3G Internet: A Universal Basic Service?

Russia "A lot of the continuities I see are really more focused on the internal evolution of the system. I think that a lot of what people, certainly in the West, criticize Putin for certain kinds of authoritarian behavior, reining in the regions, control of the press, galloping corruption–all of these things were not only present under Yeltsin, but actually the foundations were laid during the Yeltsin years for what then developed under Putin. The clearest example I can think of this is the constitution. That was imposed after this slightly dodgy referendum in 1993. All of Putin’s presidential power derived from that moment where Yeltsin resolved the conflict with the Parliament by force. If you want to undo this contrast between Yeltsin, the democrat, and Putin the authoritarian, all you’ve got to do is look at that moment and then you understand that in that particular moment when a liberal, or someone committed to a liberal free market transformation of Russia, when Yelt

"Revolutionary Cycles Are Contagious"

The Metamorphosis The political education of Mario Vargas Ilosa