Texts

Beyond the agrarian revolution

10/06/2017 - 13:58

»In short: the degree to which the relations in the countryside have been 'revolutionized', do not just form a measure for the degree to which capitalism has penetrated, but has also in fact formed the terrain on which the revolutionary left has operated since the nineteenth century.«

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The Islamic State: a Materialist Analysis

08/20/2017 - 17:19

When the “Battle of Mosul” began, it signified for many the beginning of the end of the Islamic State. A broad coalition of Iraqi, Kurdish, and Turkish troops is taking part in the as-yet largest military assault on the ISIS “caliphate.” That the provincial capital will be liberated seems certain. And still, no one believes it will bring an end to Islamist terror in the region.

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Trapped at a Party Where No One Likes You

05/13/2017 - 18:52

When considering unemployment, social exclusion or precarity, it is inadequate to simply take refuge within the empirical question of which groups live under these conditions. Contemporary sociological identities are themselves forms of appearance, moments of the totality of the reproduction of the capital-labor relation and therewith in the devaluation of the labor-power commodity presently unfolding through the category of the surplus proletariat.

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Order prevails in Cairo

01/26/2015 - 22:13

On January 25, 2011, in the context of the "Arab Spring", the first of a series of waves of unrest broke out in Cairo. In the course of this unrest, the dictatorial president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak was deposed und replaced by a military regime. The latter then ceded power to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the President Mohammed Mursi after they won elections. They, too, were unable to hold on to power for very long: a second wave of unrest led the military to oust him as well. Last Sunday was the fourth anniversary of the beginning of this chain of events with Egypt once again ruled by generals.

In the Spring of 2011 several Friends of the Classless society conducted an interview with Jano Charbel, an Egyptian anarcho-syndicalist who spoke about class composition, Islamists, unions, gender relations and feminism and the prospects of the struggle in Egypt.

Then, in November the Friends of the Classless Society published their own analysis of the events surrounding the "Arab Spring" titled "The Arab Spring in the Autumn of capital". In 2012, a postscript describing what had happened in the meantime was added to this text.

On the occasion of this anniversary, we now publish another interview. This discussion with Philip Rizk, a filmmaker and writer from Cairo, took place in the Fall of last year. In it, he discusses recent developments.

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The Arab Spring in the Autumn of capital

12/11/2012 - 02:45

"Considering the fact that there were as many youths in Greece and Spain facing the problem of being condemned to wage labour but not being able to find any as in Tunisia and Egypt, this can hardly be the result of state corruption and ossification, but rather appears to be caused by the historical dynamic of the existing mode of production itself. It appears that the Arab Spring is taking place in the autumn of capital making its outcome all the more unpredictable."

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The Bounds of Proletarian Emancipation - A Contribution to the Critique of Unions

12/10/2012 - 15:30

Translation from Article «Schranken proletarischer Emanzipation – Zur Kritik der Gewerkschaften» of Kosmoprolet #3

Everybody who is involved in one of the current labour struggles – who watches them or tries to intervene in them – has to deal with the issue of unions. Whether acting as mediators or supporters, drivers or procrastinators, you meet them almost every time on the scenes of struggles. In workers' consciousness they are still important institutions, whether they are seen as leading the fight or playing some other role. And for those advocating class struggle, the unions have their fixed place: mostly as institutions in which the workers learn how to struggle, and as organisations that may indeed have corrupt leaders, but stand up for worker’s interests. Less frequently one encounters the opinion that unions are agents of capital that inhibit the working class and enchain it again and again.

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