August 13, 2017

The Contradictions of European Capitalism: An interview with Joachim Becker – Part II

by Domagoj Mihaljevic   0

Notes from the LeftEast editors: this is part II of a two-part interview with Joachim Becker,, professor of Economics and Business at Vienna University and deputy head of the Institute for International Economics and Development, was conducted by the Croatian activist and writer Domagoj Mihaljević.  Mihaljević: How do you see developments in the post-Yugoslav territory, especially given that  currently a potential crisis is lurking around the corner with the bankruptcy of Agrokor, the largest regional retail-chain? Becker: In Croatia, the Agrokor crisis is shaking the agro-industrial complex, which is, alongs ..

August 6, 2017

Radicalizing the Sanctuary Movement

by John Maerhofer   0

In December of 2016, students organized several “sanctuary campuses” across the City University of New York (CUNY) system, one of the largest university systems in the U.S. Reeling from the victory of Donald Trump, activists organized sanctuary “safe spaces,” working with university administrators to ensure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators would have limited access to background information, and to set up a system that reported harassment and intimidation of “undocumented” students. Disgust with the explicit racism of the current political regime is the basis for the sanctu ..

August 3, 2017

Of Fences, national securities and solidarity: An open letter to Momentum

by lefteast   0

Note from the LeftEast editors: As we move towards the 2018 parliamentary elections in Hungary, the Momentum Movement, recently chartered as a party, is being touted in the international liberal media as a pro Europe party with potential to threaten the right-dominated political space where the main challenge to Fidesz comes from the extreme right party Jobbik. After becoming known this spring through it’s a successful campaign against Hungary’s the government’s plan to bid to host the 2024 Olympics, Momentum is now poised to run in the elections. Momentum drives a campaign designed by communication profess ..

August 1, 2017

The Contradictions of European Capitalism: An interview with Joachim Becker – Part I

by Domagoj Mihaljevic   0

The following two-part interview with Joachim Becker,, professor of Economics and Business at Vienna University and deputy head of the Institute for International Economics and Development, was conducted by the Croatian activist and writer Domagoj Mihaljević. Mihaljević: For the time being, it seems the process of capital accumulation in Europe has been stabilized through policies of fiscal stability and structural reforms. In doing this, the central focus of European ruling classes was to secure the survival of monetary union at any cost necessary. In turn, this has made the fragmentation between the core and ..

July 28, 2017

“Flipping a Coin: Heads—No One Is Illegal; Tails—Everyone Must Be,” Pt. 3

by Ernest Larsen   0

Images, notes, and quotes on and around the No Border encampment in Thessaloniki, July 2016 (rendered in the light of anarchist illegalism). by Ernest Larsen Continued from Part II 10) Lesson in the Powers of Negativity There were many signs like the one above around the Aristotle University campus during the encampment. I have a black tee shirt with white lettering: NO PHOTOS PLEASE. Whenever I saw one of those signs I wished I had brought it with me. As it has been at all the demos we’ve participated in in Thessaloniki (and elsewhere in Greece), the use of cameras was an issue at all the No Border events and ..

July 24, 2017

“The Putinist Majority Could Fast Become Anti-Putinist”: an Interview with Ilya Budraitskis

by Ilya Budraitskis   0

This interview was originally published in Russian on www.yuga.ru and translated for LeftEast by Adam Leeds. How would you describe the ideology of the ruling regime in contemporary Russia? On what values rests that which some call “Putinism”? What is behind the facade of all this speech about ‘spiritual bonds’ and ‘our glorious past’? The conventional idea has become that from the beginning of Putin’s third term we have been experiencing a conservative turn. If in the ’00’s the regime presented itself as technocratic, standing above politics and simply ensuring the integrity of the country, s ..

July 20, 2017

“Flipping a Coin: Heads—No One Is Illegal; Tails—Everyone Must Be,” Pt. 2

by Ernest Larsen   1

Images, notes, and quotes on and around the No Border encampment in Thessaloniki, July 2016 (rendered in the light of anarchist illegalism). by Ernest Larsen Continued from part 1. 4) The anti-nationalist No Border network attacks the problematic of the illegal concretely and actively, its primary slogan affirming the implied double negative: no person is illegal. The European Union’s famously and falsely open borders continue to provide for the No Border network the con-testing ground of neoliberal ideology, the crux of which is that Capital is absolutely free to move but Labor can never be allowed that right/ ..

July 17, 2017

Race to the Bottom: The Battle over Minimum Wage in Bulgaria

by Jana Tsoneva   1

Ten years after Bulgaria joined the European Union as its poorest member, its economy works at two speeds, deepening the income gap between poor low-skilled workers and a handful of well payed employees working in the country’s booming areas such as IT and auto parts. The following article was originally published in Serbo-Croatian by the online platform, Bilten. Its English version is published here with the site’s kind permission. It is a truism that the wage is one of the most contested aspects in the relation between capitalists and workers. Nothing reveals better the fundamental incomprehensibility ..

July 13, 2017

“Flipping a Coin: Heads—No One Is Illegal; Tails—Everyone Must Be,” Pt. 1

by Ernest Larsen   1

Images, Notes, and Quotes on and around the NO BORDER encampment in Thessaloniki, July 2016. This three-part series was first published in E-flux conversations. We publish it with E-flux’s permission.          graffiti on window of abandoned store in Thessaloniki, July 2016 Flipping a Coin is less an essay than a narrative construction, an indeterminate, deliberately ramshackle form, built up of quotes, long and short, a variety of digital  images and photomontages, appropriated texts, anecdotes, personal history, reports, shards of literary, historical and political analysis, interviews, memories ..

July 10, 2017

The reproduction crisis and the birth of a new “out of law” proletariat (an interview with Silvia Federici)

by Silvia Federici   6

Feminist philosopher, political economist, and activist Silvia Federici on the transformation reproductive labor has experienced over the last 40 years, and in particular, with the post-2009 austerity. Originally published in Italian in Francesca Coin (ed.), Salari rubati. Economia politica e conflitto ai tempi del lavoro gratuito, Verona: Ombre Corte, 2017, pp. 99-106. Francesca Coin (FC): In the 70’s you were among the first to discuss unpaid labor, showing how the accumulation process in the factories started from women’s body. What has changed in the following years? Free labor has exploded. What we saw a ..