Lefteast

The Commercialization of Science and the Struggle Against It

In the core countries of the global economic system, science has long been a productive power. Universities and laboratories today have become factories of knowledge and discovery, and scientists are the proletariat of these factories. There has long been a critique of the role of science and scientists in the capitalist system. What is happening with science/scholarship in the core countries, what is the position of science workers in Western universities and in particular, in the United States? In this text we present an interview with Denys Bondar, a young Ukrainian scientist working in one of the famous North ..

The Nurses in Bulgaria are Rising Up!

The nurses in Bulgaria have declared the 1st of March a day of strike. They will start protest actions throughout the entire country at precisely 12 p.m. We are in full support of their actions and we call for solidarity internationally. This strike is not just a Bulgarian one. This strike concerns labor power that has been mobilized geographically by the growing interest of capital in the medical sector. Nursing has been one of the most feminized sectors in the country, with disgracing wages and humiliating labor conditions growing by the day. Medical care has become yet another field in which capital accumulate ..

Notes from Hell: Inside a Bulgarian Prison

16.11.2018 This first-person account of the conditions inside the prison in Pazardjik, Bulgaria was first published on the web site of the Bulgarian Prisoners’ Association. The Pazardjik prison is a classic. I had heard a lot about it but now that I’m here, have no words to describe what I’m going through. Most people are mentally unstable or one step away from it, especially the prison management. The institution’s director Veselin Kotzev behaves like he’s at a market square. He screams, scolds and doesn’t know the letter of the law. Or rather, knows it, but behaves like a spoiled brat. His way o ..

Economic and Political Democracy for the City: an Interview with Ana Méndez de Andés

Many thanks to our comradely internet platform Masina in Serbia for permitting us to republish this interview. Six years ago a wave of demonstrations broke out throughout Spain. What started as a protest against the widespread political corruption and the lack of “real” democracy soon spread to millions of people challenging the current political and economic order. This movement will have later come to be known as the Indignados, or the 15M movement. The main three slogans of the May 15, that were supported by almost 80% of the population, were: “You call it a democracy – but it’s not”, “It’s n ..

Call for Support: the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Danger

Their organizational autonomy under threat from the government of Viktor Orbán, Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are circulating the following call for support (found in full here): It is with genuine concern for the future of academic freedom in Hungary that I write to you to appeal for your help. As a staff member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, it has been my misfortune over the course of the past roughly one year to watch as the current government has taken concrete steps to assert its control over scholarly institutions in Hungary, thereby endangering academic freedom and open intellectual ..

The Long and Winding Road to Socialism: a conversation with Srećko Horvat

When the reader embarks on reading The Iliad or The Odyssey, she knows quite well what will happen to whom and yet she doesn’t know exactly when. Capitalist financial crises are pretty much the same; we know from past experience that they will happen but we don’t know how and when. The European Debt crisis found the European Union completely unprepared. It showed not only that the European middle class was vulnerable but also that, once conscious of this vulnerability, it would significantly reorient its support for the established political platforms. As a result, Marine Le Pen reached the final round during ..

On the “Broad Left” in Russia

In certain circles in Russia, the expression “broad left” has lately become a slur. For example, one article entitled “For a narrow left!” published on the Levoradikal website in 2015, ascribes the following sins to the “broad left”: “tolerance towards non-Marxist, non-Communist theories in socialism,” as well as the neglect of “theoretical struggle” in the name of practical considerations. Such behaviour is contrasted with the “narrow left,” which demands “placing the interests of the workers’ party above ‘the interests of society as a whole’ or even those of ‘the [working] clas ..

Under Assault: Class and Gender in Bulgaria and Europe Today

Bulgarian Left Feminists LevFem: “We are in the midst of a class assault. It is impossible to think of it outside of gender.” The following interview was conducted by Hannah Schultes with three of the members of LevFem – a newly formed anti-capitalist queer-feminist collective in Sofia, Bulgaria. LevFem participated actively in the mobilization of the protest that marked the International Day Against Violence Against Women in Sofia in 2018. The collective emerged a few weeks prior to the protest to place socio-economic inequalities as part of the feminist agenda in Bulgaria. It has also urgently cal ..

[PODCAST] A Work Oddity: Tales of Ukrainian Migrants in Poland

In this broadcast, developed by Myroslava Keryk and Benjamin Cope of the Our Choice Foundation in Warsaw, we follow the stories of three Ukrainians working in Poland, in different sectors. The tales they tell bring to light different aspects of an emergent and shifting landscape of labor that is as yet only sketchily mapped. We believe that these experiences of migrant labor have much to tell about new challenges for building shared interests among workers, and thus about a radical reorganization of society whose outcome is as yet unknown. This podcast was originally published at podcasts.ceu.edu as part of the p ..

Internationalised Power Struggle in Venezuela

On January 10th, Nicolás Maduro commenced his third term as Venezuelan President. At that time, the oppositional president of the parliament, Juan Guaidó called on the military forces to stage a coup d’etat. A few days later, he declared himself to be the president. Within less than half an hour, he was recognised by the USA. This fits well into the classical patterns of right wing coup d’etats in Latin America. With this step, the power struggle has reached a new phase of escalation. Since 2015, a political stalemate and a form of dual power has reigned in the South American country. In the parliamentary ..