Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“Rather than making work easier or more rewarding, we expect the development and application of new technologies, particularly in the areas of automation, computation and artificial intelligence,   to disempower us .” “In a world where the vast majority of us are  compelled to work in order to live , the future of work matters – which is to say: workers matter…  In a word, they [workers] are free , and by their most basic and human capacity for autonomy introduce uncertainty into a finely calibrated calculus for making money.” (My emphasis N.M.) As far as I can understand there is a contradiction. The word ‘free’ is not even in inverted commas.

[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

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?

The question should be: what’s wrong with the capitalist system? What are we doing wrong?

“Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propagan...

Did what Bertrand Russell say in 1916 still relevant today? “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.” —  Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 13: Freedom in Society.

 “I’m trying to abolish everyone’s boss”

 Young Chinese brush up on ‘Das Kapital”

The assumptions underpinning our modern economy – that we are competitive by nature, that our desires will always exceed our means – were wrong. And second, it meant that for the vast majority of our history, while we roamed the Earth as hunter-gatherers, we enjoyed more leisure time than we do today. Lots of these things that we think we are hostage to are actually not a part of our nature. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of Britons said their work did not meaningfully contribute to the world. In 2017, a Gallup poll of 155 counties found that only one in 10 western Europeans described themselves as engaged by their jobs. Though labour productivity has increased roughly four- or five-fold in industrialised nations since post-WWII, average weekly working hours have remained stubborn at just under 40 hours a week. A recent report by  Tax Justice  found that Britons think accumulating wealth is positive and morally right, and are broadly supportive of the ultra-rich, believing them ...

Which country works the longest hours ?

K for Karl — Exploitation (episode 4)

Alienation [episode 1]

It is mot about stating the obvious; it is about how you state it beautifully and succinctly. Do we get paid what we "deserve"?

In  The Road to Serfdom , there is a rather chilling passage in which Hayek writes that “the manager of any plant” needs to be given “considerable” power, and approvingly quotes an engineer on the importance of economic spontaneity versus planning: “there ought to be surrounding the work a comparatively large area of unplanned economic action. There should be a place from which workers can be drawn, and when a worker is fired he should vanish from the job and from the pay-roll. In the absence of such a free reservoir[,] discipline cannot be maintained without corporal punishment, as with slave labour Freedom for whom?

In the-called  "communist" countries, Women Had Better Sex ( The New York Times )

I hear now and then that this or that person is on the left, this or that university is leftist, Le Parti Socialiste Français and the Spanish Socialist Party are socialists, etc.  The term " left" has become very loose and misleading over the last decades, and the blurring of the distinction has been deliberate.  What it means to be on the left

The Metamorphosis at 100

No, wealth isn't created at the top

30% of the Egyptian families have a woman as the only bread winner ( BBC Arabic )

Keynes 2030