Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Capital seeks to destroy all barriers in order to expand Macron Wanted to Destroy a Utopia That Has Been Working for Ten Years I was in La Rolandière when it was announced that the airport construction project was being called off. Everyone jostled to see the footage of this historic decision on a tiny computer screen. We did a lap around the ZAD to thank the farmers who took part in the struggle, and then organised a big party. But after that, the state sought to divide the  zadistes . Of course, there were internal disagreements on the future course of action. Some favoured reaching a compromise with the state while others adopted a radical position, a pure anarchism, even at the risk of impotence. Rather than a firm majority decision or everyone just going off to do as they pleased, they sought a middle position. The discussions were sometimes difficult and they took time. Again, this was the idea of "composition." But the state did not want such an experience to de

Managers rule, not capitalists?

What is the architecture of control and how does it work? Listen also to  Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land

"Having taught in business schools for 20 years, I have come to believe that the best solution to these problems is to shut down business schools altogether." Why we should bulldoze the business school

"We cannot ignore that war if we want to understand the end of this revolutionary democracy, and those who draw a straight line from October 1917 to Stalinism invariably ignore or downplay the impact of that bloody conflict." The Revolutionary Democracy of 1917

Rana Plaza disaster – five years on Sweat and blood in our shirts and trousers. But  where are Bill and Angelina?

But by far the most casualties were suffered by Koreans. US carpet bombing, largely unopposed, was the furnace that forged North Korea as a merciless and paranoid regime. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 per cent of the population." Korean peace treaty would have to overcome decades of distrust

"Creative destruction"?

Marx 200 Conference in Berlin Scroll down to read the English version

Syria: on academic freedom and responsibility

There are no good guys" - or "everyone is equally bad" - has become a trope used by many otherwise decent people to absolve themselves of moral guilt for being bystanders to injustice. Are there really 'no good guys' in Syria?

"was there nothing wrong with capitalism before finance (and ‘financialisation’) emerged after the 1970s?  Were there no crises of overproduction and investment, no monopolies and rent-seeking before the 1970s?  Was there a wonderful productive, competitive, equal capitalist mode of production existing in the 1890s, 1930s or even in the 1960s? And why did finance suddenly emerge in the 1970s, leading to the GDP measure being altered to account for it? Mazzucato offers no explanation of why capitalism became increasingly ‘unproductive’ and ‘rent-seeking’.  But Marx’s value theory does.  From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, there was a sharp fall in the profitability of the productive sectors of all the major capitalist economies. Capitalism entered the so-called neoliberal period of the destruction of the welfare state, restriction of trade unions, privatisation, globalisation – and financialisation.  Financialisation (looking to make profit from the purchase and sale of fi

The soundtrack to London's murders

The biggest trading partner for each country. It matters a lot!

Carney, Bowles and Varoufakis

"Hooliganism came relatively late to Russian football, emerging in the early 1990s as a self-conscious copy of the decades-old English example – with its vicious firms, favoured clothing labels and racist chants." The rise of Russia's neo-Nazi football hooligans

This is funny, but it also refletcs how deep the level of political degeneration has reached.

A ruling class that has allowed all this and squandered wealth at home and abroad (enriching Western cities, for example), while their Arab-Muslim brothers and sisters suffer under economic development, poverty and different sorts of oppression, should be overthrown. The next Arab revolution must be socio-economic or it will not change the fundamental. Dubai's upper middle-class  

Cuba  (en français) par Richard Gott

A rarity from the London School of Economics. I don't necessarily agree with the idealization of Rojava 'revolution' , though. American imperialism is involved in it, among other problems. Syria and our brutal world order This is a summary of the predicament: “It is the capitalist-statist-nationalist-patriarchal system that forces people around the world and at the moment especially in the Middle East to choose between lesser evils in the name of freedom. Forcing millions of people to pick between ISIS or Assad; religious fundamentalism or secular militarism; monarchy, caliphate or racist nation-states; women's pornification or complete veiling; Sisi or Morsi; Atatürkism or Erdoğanism; etc are not choices but perfect weapons of breaking the people's will. To force people to settle between death by drowning or by burning is the perfect way to make them lose the most fundamental human power: hope." — Dilar Dirik