"This might at least help to pose the problem, which is not so much that workers as a whole are turning to the right as that the class is fundamentally fractured by the material interests deriving from the market position of its component parts as Weber noted long ago. Framed in this way, the necessary strategy would seem to be not to accommodate the rightward drift to little avail, but to find a basis on which to suture that divide, one that speaks both to highly specific, culturally inflected market interests as well as class-wide interests rooted in the common experience of wage labour.

This politics must start from the observation that the economic interests of wage earners under capitalism are highly differentiated and can point in different, even contradictory political directions. Class interests and economic interests are by no means identical. It is not a matter of appealing to ‘economic’ interests over ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ interests (misleadingly termed ‘identity’ politics). Rather, it is a matter of developing a materialist politics that is at once specific and general, and which addresses workers’ lives in the experientially accessible realm of market relations, and their potential in the experientially distant structure of ownership."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/first-principles

#Politics #Left #LeftWing #Capitalism #ClassWarfare #PoliticalEconomy #WageSlavery #IdentityPolitics

"This might at least help to pose the problem, which is not so much that workers as a whole are turning to the right as that the class is fundamentally fractured by the material interests deriving from the market position of its component parts as Weber noted long ago. Framed in this way, the necessary strategy would seem to be not to accommodate the rightward drift to little avail, but to find a basis on which to suture that divide, one that speaks both to highly specific, culturally inflected market interests as well as class-wide interests rooted in the common experience of wage labour.

This politics must start from the observation that the economic interests of wage earners under capitalism are highly differentiated and can point in different, even contradictory political directions. Class interests and economic interests are by no means identical. It is not a matter of appealing to ‘economic’ interests over ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ interests (misleadingly termed ‘identity’ politics). Rather, it is a matter of developing a materialist politics that is at once specific and general, and which addresses workers’ lives in the experientially accessible realm of market relations, and their potential in the experientially distant structure of ownership."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/first-principles

#Politics #Left #LeftWing #Capitalism #ClassWarfare #PoliticalEconomy #WageSlavery #IdentityPolitics

OnlineFirst - "Shifting sands and ecological uncertainties: An urban political ecology of dredging in Mombasa" by Louis Cyuzuzo:

#UrbanPoliticalEcology #Infrastructure #PortDevelopment #Dredging #CoastalEnvironments #Africa #PoliticalEconomy #Logistics

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261420090

We need to talk about Elinor Ostrom. 🗳️

She won a Nobel Prize for debunking the idea that common property always leads to ruin. Her work provides the empirical data for Autogestion.

If you are building a cooperative, her design principles are non-negotiable. They are the difference between a robust commons and a failed experiment.

https://rootandbranch.online/library/governing-the-commons/

#Ostrom #TheCommons #Governance #Coops #PoliticalEconomy

The Root & Branch Library has been updated with 4 new structural audits. 🏛️

We are moving beyond translation into forensic analysis:

- Why 'Retained Surplus' is not 'Profit.'
- The 1844 Rochdale Rules as a solvency algorithm.
- W.E.B. Du Bois on the 'Group Economy.'

We need to stop treating the social economy as charity and start treating it as superior engineering.

Explore the analyses: https://rootandbranch.online/library/

#SocialEconomy #OpenSource #PoliticalEconomy #Coops #SystemChange

The Root & Branch Library has been updated with 4 new structural audits. 🏛️

We are moving beyond translation into forensic analysis:

- Why 'Retained Surplus' is not 'Profit.'
- The 1844 Rochdale Rules as a solvency algorithm.
- W.E.B. Du Bois on the 'Group Economy.'

We need to stop treating the social economy as charity and start treating it as superior engineering.

Explore the analyses: https://rootandbranch.online/library/

#SocialEconomy #OpenSource #PoliticalEconomy #Coops #SystemChange

We need to talk about Elinor Ostrom. 🗳️

She won a Nobel Prize for debunking the idea that common property always leads to ruin. Her work provides the empirical data for Autogestion.

If you are building a cooperative, her design principles are non-negotiable. They are the difference between a robust commons and a failed experiment.

https://rootandbranch.online/library/governing-the-commons/

#Ostrom #TheCommons #Governance #Coops #PoliticalEconomy

There's one way in which crypto is useful. It gives us new ways to explain why neoclassical economics is broken, and why we need to return to a political economy approach to studying resource allocation, financial flows, and the effects of different styles of economic regulation.

(1/?)

#economics #PoliticalEconomy #crypto

"A nation doesn't have to balance its books. In fact, you can almost say with certainty that the worst thing a nation can do is balance its books, because there wouldn't be enough money to go around, and that's pretty serious."

#RichardMurphy, 2025

https://shows.acast.com/bold-politics-with-zack-polanski/episodes/68f7f3528125b849f840aa4a

#podcasts #BoldPolitics #PoliticalEconomy

Most Americans have probably never heard of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. But 42% of the world’s population are now members of this non-western economic organization.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgoldenziel/2025/08/31/42-percent-of-the-world-is-buying-chinas-anti-us-narrative/

#economics #geopolitics #politicaleconomy

"In Europe, discussions are coalescing around an ambitious idea called EuroStack, an EU-led “digital supply chain” that would give Europe technological sovereignty independent from the US and other countries.

The idea gathered steam a couple of months before Trump’s reelection, when a group of business leaders, European politicians, and technologists—including Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, and Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s former minister of digital affairs—met at the European Parliament to discuss “European Digital Independence.” According to Cristina Caffarra, an economist who helped organize the meeting, the takeaway was stark: “US tech giants own not only the services we engage with but also everything below, from chips to connectivity to cables under the sea to compute to cloud. If that infrastructure turns off, we have nowhere to go.”

The feeling of urgency has only grown since Trump retook office. The German and French governments have embraced EuroStack, while major EU aircraft manufacturers and military suppliers like Airbus and Dassault have signed on to a public letter advocating its approach to “sovereign digital infrastructure.” In all the European capitals, the Danish government adviser says, teams of people are calculating what elements should be folded into the effort and what it would cost.

And EuroStack is just one part of the response to enshittification. The European Union is also putting together a joint defense fund to help EU countries buy weapons—but not from the US. The EU’s executive agency, the European Commission, is patching together a network of satellites that could eventually provide Ukraine and Europe with their own home-baked alternative to Starlink."

https://www.wired.com/story/enshittification-of-american-power/

#USA#Trump#BigTech#Enshittification#Monopolies#Oligopolies#DigitalSovereignty#EU#Eurostack#PoliticalEconomy

"In Europe, discussions are coalescing around an ambitious idea called EuroStack, an EU-led “digital supply chain” that would give Europe technological sovereignty independent from the US and other countries.

The idea gathered steam a couple of months before Trump’s reelection, when a group of business leaders, European politicians, and technologists—including Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, and Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s former minister of digital affairs—met at the European Parliament to discuss “European Digital Independence.” According to Cristina Caffarra, an economist who helped organize the meeting, the takeaway was stark: “US tech giants own not only the services we engage with but also everything below, from chips to connectivity to cables under the sea to compute to cloud. If that infrastructure turns off, we have nowhere to go.”

The feeling of urgency has only grown since Trump retook office. The German and French governments have embraced EuroStack, while major EU aircraft manufacturers and military suppliers like Airbus and Dassault have signed on to a public letter advocating its approach to “sovereign digital infrastructure.” In all the European capitals, the Danish government adviser says, teams of people are calculating what elements should be folded into the effort and what it would cost.

And EuroStack is just one part of the response to enshittification. The European Union is also putting together a joint defense fund to help EU countries buy weapons—but not from the US. The EU’s executive agency, the European Commission, is patching together a network of satellites that could eventually provide Ukraine and Europe with their own home-baked alternative to Starlink."

https://www.wired.com/story/enshittification-of-american-power/

#USA#Trump#BigTech#Enshittification#Monopolies#Oligopolies#DigitalSovereignty#EU#Eurostack#PoliticalEconomy