Lefteast

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism – Matan Kaminer

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? The consistent left in Israel is mostly made up of Palestinian citizens, organized in the Communist Party and its front group Hadash/al-Jabhah, the liberal-nationalist Balad/Tajama’u (who both form part of the Joint List parliamentary formation) and smaller extra-parliamentary formations like Abnaa’ el-Balad. These have generally been sympathetic to Corbyn due to his support for the Palestinian cause, but I don’t get the impression that they have been following ..

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Sorin Gog

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organise? In the Central and Eastern European region, Romania stands out as one of the countries that has adopted some of the most radical neo-liberal reforms in the past three decades of post-socialist transformation. Starting with the shock therapies, economic restructurings and privatizations of the mid-90’s and ending with the structural reforms and austerity policies adopted after the 2008 financial crisis, Romania has become deeply entrenched in neo-liberal reforms ..

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Mariya Ivancheva

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? What was at stake with this project was in equal measure painfully distant and painfully close to the contexts I am immersed in, and to an extent represent. In both the UK and in Bulgaria, I would be quite similar to the part of the UK Left that has been eating humble pie about the electoral loss: urban, university-educated, cosmopolitan left-wing voters. In both cases, this is a new Left with two further shared characteristics. First, we are fighting with ghosts fro ..

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Rossen Djagalov

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organize? I never thought of myself as a Corbynist/ Corbynista and found the early hype about him vaguely troubling. Don’t get me wrong: I very much like the man and his politics and certainly there is little reason to think he would ever “betray” the cause: he has stood on the right side of history for more decades than I have lived. But, granted I call myself a Marxist, I find it hard to think of a single person—rather than a set of principles—as my political lodes ..

We Asked on the Legacy of Corbynism: Tomislav Medak

What has the Corbyn project meant – as a model, an inspiration, or otherwise – to you and people in the milieu(x) in which you organise? My political milieu is largely defined by anti-enclosures struggles and a group of progressive and radical left political initiatives in Croatia, which have emerged out of the university occupations and Right to the City movement and have recently started to contest elections. The attraction of the Corbyn project for that milieu would be primarily in the attempt to bootstrap a transformative political project built on a mass political mobilisation under the historica ..

We Asked: the Legacy of Corbynism

Under the radical leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Labour Party has been seen as a ray of hope and a model for progressive revival by many – though by no means all – leftists across Europe and the Atlantic world. Labour’s painful defeat in the recent general election is an occasion for thinking about the legacy of Corbynism, and the view from Eastern Europe, broadly defined (here including Israel and the diaspora) is particularly important given the role played by Eastern European migration, English nationalism, xenophobia and accusations of antisemitism in the run-up to this decisive setback ..

Restauration of Capitalism in Slovenia

This article outlines the processes of reintegration of former Yugoslavia into the world capitalist system and reestablishment of capitalism in its former federal republics, particularly in Slovenia. Continue reading →

Bread and Fear

1989, Thirty Years Later Thirty years ago, the end of history was rumored to have begun. Though that thesis now looks quaint to say the least, the events that prodded it have left a deep and lasting impression on much of the world, perhaps most of all on central and eastern Europe, where the “transition” or Wende to the neoliberal monoculture began. In the next two weeks, we at LeftEast will be publishing a series of nine essays on the effects of 1989 on post-state-socialist Europe and beyond. The pieces were developed around the workshop “Eastern Europe after 30 years of transition: New emancip ..

What Has Just Happened in Chile?

Note from LeftEast editors: This text, composed cooperatively by four Chilean academics, was read during the opening ceremony of the Sixth International Days of Latin American Problems (VI Jornadas Internacionales de Problemas Latinoamericanos 2019), a biannual conference that in 2019 set out to examine contemporary social, political, cultural and democratic movements in the light of the neoliberal restoration and the alleged end of the ‘progressive cycle in Latin America. The conference took place on the 27-29 November 2019, in the History and Social Science Department of the Faculty of Humanities and Educ ..

“We were never this united, and now we must succeed!”- The Self-Organized Strike of Serbia’s Postal Workers

Photo: Marko M. Dragoslavić / Association of Serbia Post Workers / Goran Klještan BOSKE – Facebook. The conversations with workers quoted in this report where conducted during the strike. This text is an extended version prepared for Left East. The original text appeared in Serbian on Mašina. Serbia’s postal workers recently conducted a collective action that stands out as an example of mutual care, worker pride, decency, solidarity, and struggle for one’s profession – a struggle that lasted for almost ten months and has recently ended with an agreement. The value of the strike lies not only in its ver ..