Tag Archives: capitalism

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 ..

June 29, 2017

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

by lefteast   0

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   1

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   0

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   1

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&# ..

June 3, 2016

An Interview with Boris Buden – Antifascism as Platitude

by admin   2

By: Milena Ostojić (this text originally appeared in Lupiga.com). Boris Buden is a cultural theorist, translator, and publicist, currently guest lecturer at the Bauhaus-Weimar Universität. He is widely known for essays originally published in Arkzin, and later in the Barikade collection (two editions). In our conversation with Buden, we interrogated the question of antifascism as a concept and a practice related to the long term local and wider European experience, with an appeal for an alternative to the contemporary revisionist conjecture. Last year, at a panel about NOB (Narodnooslobodilačka borba – ..

April 13, 2016

On Marxism, barbarism, Russia, Greece and more: Interview with Kees van der Pijl

by admin   0

Kees van der Pijl is a Dutch political scientist who is emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Sussex. He is known for his critical approach to global political economy and has published, amongst others, a trilogy on Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy (2007, 2010, 2014); Global Rivalries from the Cold War to Iraq (2006); Transnational Classes and International Relations (1998); and The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class. Kees van der Pijl was interviewed by George Souvlis and Yulia Yurchenko. Q1: Would you like to present yourself by focusing on the formative experience ..

March 20, 2016

Workers Control in Venezuela and Beyond: An Interview with Dario Azzelini

by Marko Miletic   0

Note from the LeftEast editors: The following interview was originally published in Serbian at Mašina.rs Dario Azzelini is a theoretician and political activist splitting time between Berlin and Caracas. He recently stayed in Belgrade to participate in the conference “Let’s bring socialism back into the game“. That gave us an opportunity to talk about different topics he addresses in his work – ranging from the question of Maduro’s election loss, the interrelation of art and politics, to cases of recuperations of workers’ factories throughout Europe. Could you comment on the resul ..

February 17, 2016

NO to transition 2.0: Social recomposition, Decolonisation and Transautonomism

by OvidiuTichindeleanu   2

This article was originally published as part of the Gazette of Political Art (GAP) #12 „In the Name of the Periphery. Decolonial theory and intervention in the Romanian context” December 2015, coordinated by Veda Popovici and Ovidiu Pop. It is the second out of a small series of materials from this issue, which LeftEast will present in English. The illustration was prepared for GAP by Alex Horghidan. (translated from Romanian for LeftEast by Raluca Parvu) In some of the biggest Spanish towns, the 2015 local elections have been won by women, and the left won in the top five biggest cities in Spain. Man ..

February 15, 2016

An Austere Place of Refuge

by Joseph Grim Feinberg   1

Nations in their barbarous condition are impenetrable; they must be broken into… Vico, The New Science, Book I, Axiom CII, proposition 303 (trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch) On February 6, Europe witnessed what might be the boldest attempt to date to mobilize the continent’s masses against immigration and Islam. An international movement is emerging, uniting Europeans across borders—to call for the strengthening of the continent’s outer borders. The movement is overcoming old national hatred—but it is driven by a hatred that is international. It has even begun to articulate a critique o ..