Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The question remains a question of class.

“A labour movement United on Ukraine”

A few years ago I was told not to talk politics in class. I left my job. In my current job I am very cautious. I had lived under a police state, and in a “free market democracy” you don’t fear the state, but you fear loosing your job. You may be even hated by others for expressing your non-conformist views. “Social activism could cost you valuable career currency”

In the absence of clearer planning, with market mechanisms failing, consumers are only acting rationally in preparing for being confined at home, the authors add. Food rationing required

"Human bone" in Primark's sock Workers in Asia and else where are sending a message: "we are exploited to the bone so that you could afford what we make."

The New Panopticon

"In East-Central Europe, and especially in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, an anti-immigrant left has formed that is conscious and proud of how it departs from received images (allegedly received from the West) of the left as the defender of marginalized peoples and cultures. In attacking the “multiculturalism” that liberal elites have championed, this anti-multicultural left positions itself as the defender of the hard-working nation against dangerous outsiders, both rich and poor. [T]he anti-multicultural left accepts, once again, the terms set by that liberalism which it sees as its chief competitor. The central principle of liberalism is the principle of separation—the insistence on looking only at one sphere of social reality at a time, and on looking at entities within these spheres as separate entities pursuing separate interests. The anti-multicultural left likewise takes each aspect of the system separately, rejecting out of hand internationalist talk of interconnecti

Class struggle in Turkey "Picture yourself in this situation: You have managed to form a trade union in your workplace.  You've gotten formal recognition from the government.  Under the law, your employer is obligated to open negotiations with you.  But the employer refuses.  So you go out on the picket line.  A year goes by, and the situation doesn't change.  What do you do? This is what happened to workers at DHL Express in Turkey.  They have been on the picket line since 17 July 2017 -- over 300 days.  They have now turned to the international labour movement for help.  We need to send thousands of messages to the management of DHL Express to tell them to recognise the union, to open negotiations, and to play fair with their employees." DHL vs. the trade union

K is for Karl - Communism (episode 2)

I cannot disclose who said the following, but the arguments about the US and British armies today sound very interesting. "The peasants [of the Russian army prior 1917] in uniform weren't mercenaries, but conscripts. The US and British soldiers [today] aren't conscripts, not the historical equivalent of the Russian imperial army, but the historical equivalent of Hessians or the Swiss guard. There's a huge difference between those two. Only a conscript is a worker in uniform - all the others are bourgeois cops with bigger or smaller guns. Edit: I can't find any historical example where a revolution was won with the aid of professional soldiers - it was always won by defeating them, be they Hessians, the Swiss Guard or Cossacks...and some US soldiers are OK and have resisted imperialism - still doesn't change the US military's role as a whole... I never said a soldier "can't act in favour of the masses because he wasn't conscr

Does the FN has an economic strategy?

The European Economic Community "which made May Day into a public holiday was a body composed not, in spite of Mrs Thatcher's views on the subject, of socialist but of predominantly anti-socialist governments. Western official May Days were recognitions of the need to come to terms with the tradition of the unofficial May Days and to detach it from labour movements, class consciousness and class struggle. But how did it come about that this tradition was so strong that even its enemies thought they had to take it over, even when, like Hitler, Franco and Petain, they destroyed the socialist labour movement?" (My emphasis ) Birth of a holiday

The Young Marx: film by Raul Peck The first film ever about Karl Marx

Yet in 2015, only eighty-one thousand workers participated in strikes, and only 170,000 days were lost to labor action.  These figures  represent the fewest strikers and the second-smallest loss to productivity since records began in 1893.  “The legal framework works against workers,” argues Chris, an IWW organizer. “It’s tailored toward management, but also toward compromise. If you reject that framework, then you can operate in a way that is actually really effective.” The rise of the unorganizable

" Following what we’ve seen in Europe, it makes sense that when the populist right is in power, the center-left  moves to the right . The Democrats are a little bit different, in that you’re going to see some semblance of a leftward movement — doubling down on the social inclusion part of the Democratic Party — and resisting some of Trump’s nativism, while moving rightward on issues of political economy to try to win over moderate segments of the capitalist class. I think you’ll see a leftward and a rightward movement at the same time." Full interview here

Italy Striking the Startups Ukraine Transport workers face attcaks on rights

Yemen: DNO must pay its workers

Textile firms paying UK workers £3 per hour "Free market democracy"

Egypt Independent union under attack

An interesting analysis albeit some narrative of politically blaming mainly the Tories.