Squeezed between Iran and the US: the future of the protests in the Middle East
The US and Iran teetered on the brink of war as Iranian missiles hit the American bases in Iraq in response to the killing of the Quds Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. In this interview, Marxist scholar Jakob Rigi discusses these events in the context of the Iranian domestic politics and the social tensions in the […]
Kryvyi Rih: wages and democracy
Maksym Kazakov Ukraine’s mining and metal industry was constructed largely in the era of fulfilled (and over-fulfilled) five-year plans. After Ukraine gained independence in 1991, these factories and mines played (and continue to play) no less a role than in the Soviet state. Today, every school student in Ukraine has to know about the shortcomings […]
1917—2017
Редакторська передмова Сьогодні світ відзначає великий ювілей: рівно сто років тому відбулося збройне повстання в Петрограді, за результатами якого владу взяла партія більшовиків, розпочавши процес, що трактувався ними як соціалістична революція. Навіть сто років потому багато питань, що стосуються цієї події, викликають гостру полеміку. Чим була Жовтнева революція як подія? Яка природа того суспільства, що утворилося внаслідок її розвитку? Наскільки актуальний її спадок для […]
Peer to peer production as the altarnative to capitalism: a new communist horizont
Jacob Rigi The current crisis of capitalism has provoked protests, revolts and revolutions in major parts of the planet that include 3 billions of inhabitants. Even the mainstream Time Magazine made “The Protester” the person of the year. The caption on Time’s cover reads: From the Arab Spring To Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to […]
Ukraine’s Fractures
First published in: Ukraine’s Fractures. An interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko. In: New Left Review 87, May-June 2014 Since the start of the Maidan protests six months ago, Ukraine has been at the centre of a crisis which has exposed and deepened the fault-lines—geopolitical, historical, linguistic, cultural—that traverse the country. These divisions have grown through the […]
Support Ukrainians, but do not legitimize the far-right and discredited politicians!
Volodymyr Ishchenko Recently a number of internationally recognized scholars and public intellectuals signed a letter in full support of Euromaidan protests, backing ‘Ukrainian society’ against ‘Ukrainian government’. Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Craig Calhoun, Claus Offe, Saskia Sassen, Charles Taylor, Michel Wieviorka, Slavoj Zizek and many others celebrated the ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ protests embodying, as they claimed, ‘the […]
