Tag Archives: capitalism

August 24, 2020

Gift or Data Platform? Capitalist Hospitality and Couchsurfing’s New Paywall

by Katarzyna Gajewska  

Like most major corporations, Couchsurfing.com is a C Corporation, for-profit and subject to corporate taxes, though it was a non-profit from 2003 to 2011. Hosts on the platform offer free accommodation to travelers. However, lately it seems to have taken a turn toward becoming yet another scheme to extract money from online users. In mid-May 2020, many users received a message that they needed to pay a monthly or yearly fee if they wanted to continue using the platform. Some people who did not want to pay cannot access their profile, including information that they themselves left on the website. It is still pos ..

April 3, 2020

Coronavirus and the Contradictions of Capitalism

by Erdem Yoruk  

Coronavirus has revealed yet another contradiction of capitalism: the capitalist tendency to globalize as a solution for the profitability crisis has undermined the capitalist capacity to profit. The virus has exacerbated an already deepening capitalist crisis into a catastrophe and illustrated how vulnerable global capitalism is to any external risk. Globalization, which emerged as a solution to a previous crisis of profitability, has rendered the world capitalist system extremely vulnerable because of the unprecedented connectedness that it has created. Also, the retrenchment in public healthcare, which was sup ..

December 4, 2019

“Eastern Europe’s extraordinary 30-year revival.” A Bulgarian immigrant’s anecdotal response

by A Georgiev  

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video of the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov circulated by a Bulgarian Facebook group. The video began with an excerpt of a speech by the Prime Minister delivered to his party at the beginning of the year. In it, pondering the falling popularity of his government, he proceeded to outline the many achievements of his party, GERB – Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria. In a typically arrogant and condescending manner he asked aloud ‘What’s the reason?’, giving the supposed counter argument himself: ‘The income has increased, the infrastructure has increas ..

February 21, 2019

The Commercialization of Science and the Struggle Against It

by Denys Bondar  

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 ..

November 20, 2018

Ankica Čakardić: We need to look for origins of fascism in capitalist crises

by Ankica Cakardic  

Note from the LeftEast editors: This interview with Ankica Čakardić was conducted by Darko Vujica and published at Prometej.Ba in BCS. It is hereby reprinted by LeftEast with the permission of Ankica Čakardić, and translated by Stevan Bozanich. Ankica Čakardić is an assistant professor and the chair of Social Philosophy and Philosophy of Gender at the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Her research interest include Social Philosophy, Marxism, Marxist-feminist and Luxemburgian critique of political economy, and history of women’s struggles in Yugoslavia. She is a member of ..

August 1, 2017

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

by Domagoj Mihaljevic  

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 ..

June 29, 2017

Resisting “Dirty Business”: Report from the Field of Social Exclusion in the Czech Republic

by lefteast  

by: Ana Tomicic, Petr Kupka As the position of the Roma community is regularly being evaluated as more difficult than that of other minority communities in Europe, the Council of Europe and the European Union have been paying particular attention to Roma issues in recent years, especially since 1993, as part of the EU’s assessment of candidate countries’ capacity to become full members of the Union. The European Court of Human Rights has also pointed out how “vicissitudes and perpetual uprooting” contribute to the Roma being a disadvantaged and vulnerable minority, therefore in need of special protection ..

January 10, 2017

Leo Panitch: “What does it mean to smash the state? This is our great challenge.”

by lefteast  

Note from the LeftEast editors: Our comrades from the Serbian Left-wing portal MAŠINA spoke to Marxist political economist Leo Panitch (York University) during his stay in Belgrade. There he was a guest at the conference The Return of Utopia (BCS), organized by the Center for Political Emancipation. This is the first appearance of the interview in English. Its original publication in Serbian can be accessed here. On behalf of Masina it was carried out by András Juhász. Q: Would you publicly declare yourself to be a socialist? A: Definitely. Q: Why? A: That’s a hard question to decide how to answer. In t ..

October 5, 2016

LGBT rights: question of priorities

by lefteast  

Note of the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web-portal Bilten.Org and has been translated by and republished with the consent of the author himself.  Although pronounced successful, Belgrade Pride has aroused more interest amongst politicians, than the public and the LGBT community. While politicians didn’t hesitate to express their attitude, the community mostly ignored the event, showing clearly that it is not interested in political images without real solutions. In spite of this, the message that LGBT rights absolutely are not a priority was sent. A ..

August 14, 2016

Belgrade: From necessity to aimlessness, or who for whom and what kind of city

by Ana Vilenica  

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article originally appeared in the Serbian publication Masina on 10.06.2016. It was composed in the months following a series of nocturnal demolitions in the Belgrade neighbourhood of Savamala. The demolitions, conducted by unidentified workers in balaclavas, are widely perceived to be the vanguard actions of Belgrade on the Water, a controversial ‘urban renewal’ project that has been the focus of continuous protests led by the civic initiative Ne da(vi)mo Beograd (a name that simultaneously means: ‘Let’s not give Belgrade away’ and ‘Let&# ..