Lefteast
Note from LeftEast editors: This text first appeared on the Transnational Social Strike Platform website. It is co-authored by members of the LevFem and Transnational Social Strike Platform collectives. The text reflects key issues discussed during a June 28, 2020 online webinar coordinated by the two collectives [LINK TO VIDEO]. The webinar built on discussions […]
Bulgaria—and most East and Central European countries—have not had the devastating COVID-19 numbers that Western Europe has exhibited and unlike the US, for example, have managed to significantly bring down the number of infections. However, far from a major success on part of the country’s leadership, the pandemic revealed in even starker relief the near-complete […]
Note from LeftEast editors: this article first appeared in Bulgarian under the title “Some coronavirus considerations” and was published by the investigative journalism portal Bivol.Bg, and was then translated into English and Russian. It is hereby reprinted by LeftEast with the kind permission of the author and by the editorial team of the portal. With […]
In the blink of an eye, the coronavirus epidemic revealed to the world just how vulnerable global capitalism is: the stock market is in freefall, global supply chains are coming to a grinding halt as privatized healthcare buckles in an instant. The fallout from decades of liberalisation, privatization and financialisation is immense. Even the most […]
#stayhome #notstayingaside Note from LeftEast editors: we reprint the call for housing justice, first published by the Romanian group BLOCUL pentru LOCUIRE on their website. The time has come for this political agenda to change radically: housing politics must satisfy the needs of the people and respect the right to housing as a universal right! The […]
A version of the first part of this article in Polish is available on the author’s blog, Fronesis. When the truth offends, we lie and lie, until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that […]
Picture: Israeli riot police patrol Yefet Street in Jaffa after putting down demonstrations against police violence, 1 April 2020 (source: Matan Kaminer) The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly enhanced the charisma of the strong state around the world. In the West, the early knee-jerk characterization of East Asian responses as authoritarian and illiberal has been completely […]
The current situation in Russia has reached “a perfect storm”: the pandemic here coincided with the collapse of the national currency, as well as the political crisis caused by Vladimir Putin’s proposals to change the Constitution. At a time when every world political leader seeks to show himself as a sovereign capable of declaring a […]
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 […]
In moments of heightened crisis, such as today’s, one of the first strategies of a state is to defer its pretense of universal social solidarity, directing its energies towards the social groups it prioritizes but normally cannot single out. This same tendency often leads to postponing of its efforts to negotiate difficult social, economic, and […]