Max Ajl鈥檚 笔别辞辫濒别鈥檚 Green New Deal is a brutal reminder for the American left that even the most celebrated and progressive developments in American politics are still simply American politics, in other words they are a politics for America, and America first. Ajl situates both the longer history of environmental destruction and the response to it within a planetary frame without losing sight of geographical unevenness. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is where Ajl systematically debunks the American-centrism of the Cortez/Markey Green New Deal (GND). The second part is an imagination-widening exposition of an alternative 笔别辞辫濒别鈥檚 Green New Deal that centers the livelihood of the majority of the world鈥檚 people by putting forth an anti-imperial and anti-capitalist framework for a just transition.
The structure of anti-trust laws is generally and neatly divided into ex-post enforcement and ex-ante regulation of market conduct and its participants. It is a matter of social and economic policy choice as to whether any regulation should precede 鈥榟arm鈥� or follow it, as is the construction of 鈥榟arm鈥� across statutes. For example, the requirement of a means to understand and assess the market impact of a merger. On the other hand, abuse of dominant position is an ex-post assessment once the dominance has set in, which may be in the long run. The determination of abuse is subject to a rule of reason and analysis by the competition authorities. Against this background, the question is what happens in the intervening period when an undertaking is slowly and surely inching towards domination, engaging in conduct which would be punished only once it becomes dominant ? What happens to the process of concentration of markets, along with the practices in concentrated markets? These questions are not borne out of academic interest alone and are not completely answered by a simple focus on anti-competitive agreements, as will be seen below. The analysis will zoom in on the Indian market conditions to make a case for questioning the timing of regulatory intervention and proceed to show that new economic methods may be required in this task.
In the last three months, there have been three strikes by gig workers in Indonesia. Problems related to harsh working conditions, injustice, and the decline in the welfare of gig workers became the main issues in the three strikes. The biggest strike was carried out by (delivery service from the platform company) involving nearly 1,500 couriers or almost 80% of active couriers on GoKilat. A day later, couriers from went on strike spontaneously for three days by mass deactivating accounts on their platform application.
Prior to the two strikes above, on April 6, 2021, a strike was carried out by couriers for 1 day in Bandung, Indonesia, involving around 1,000 couriers. The Shopee Express courier strike was motivated by a cut in the payment they received. The new rules reduce courier revenue from 2,500 rupiah (US$0.17)/package to only 1,500 rupiah (US$0.10)/package and that is the only income earned by the couriers. In other words, they did not earn basic income equal to the minimum wage in the province where they work. Moreover, they did not have health insurance, decent working hours, overtime pay, leave /holiday rights, and severance pay. The working conditions were worse due to the fact that the vehicles (motorcycle) used are theirs and they had to pay fuel cost.
With such a wage system, to be able to earn the minimum wage in Bandung City in 2021 of 3,742,267 rupiah (US$263.16) per month for instance, couriers have to deliver 2,495 packages monthly鈥攏ot including fuel and maintenance costs they have to pay. It means that they would have to deliver about 104 packages per day to the customers. If, on average, a package is delivered in 10 minutes, they need 17 hours per day, far above the decent 8 hours work day. This oppressive work system for gig workers is possible and there is no prohibition from the Indonesian government, due to the courier’s status as an independent contractor or, instead of labor.
The precarious and uncertain working conditions stem from the misclassification of their employment status. Companies classifies them as 鈥減artners鈥�, so that they could avoid the obligation to provide the minimum wage, health insurance, overtime pay, severance pay, 8 working hours per day, and holiday rights if they were labor, although the working relationships between the companies and their couriers represents the employer-employee relationships as there are shift work for the couriers, work control by the companies, requirements in recruitment such as contracts of employment, and the companies unilateral rules established by the companies.
This blog post was originally published on the India-China Institute/The New School’s .
COVID-19 has exacerbated the gendered impact of care work globally, but lessons can be learned from countries like China that have relied on community organizations for solutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a severe care crisis throughout the world. The measures to contain the infection 鈥� lockdown, social distancing, quarantine 鈥� severely disrupted activities crucial to the basic functioning of society from cooking to cleaning, childcare, elder care and more. The experience of China shows the critical role of the community in providing essential services.
Like in many other countries, women in China assume disproportionately more care responsibilities than men. With the care crisis intensified by the pandemic, women from different socioeconomic backgrounds were all significantly affected. Urban women mostly saw themselves shouldering more household chores when hiring domestic workers or seeking extra help from family members became impossible or difficult during the lockdown. As most female migrant workers are employed in the precarious informal sector, they had to endure job losses and economic hardship, in addition to extra childcare and household chores. Female healthcare professionals risked their health working on the frontline while having to bear the added mental stress of possibly carrying the virus and spreading it to family members.
How is imperialism relevant today? How has it mutated over the past century? What are different theoretical and empirical angles through which we can study imperialism? These are the questions we deal with in our edited volume on (2018).
We understand imperialism as a continuing arrangement since the early years of empire-colonies to the prevailing pattern of expropriations, on part of those who wield power vis-脿-vis those who are weak. The pattern of 鈥榦ld imperialism鈥�, in the writings of Hobson, Hilferding and Lenin, were framed in the context of the imperial relations between the ruling nations and their colonies with political subjugation of the latter, captured by force or by commerce, providing the groundwork for their economic domination in the interest of the ruling nations. Forms of such arrogation varied, across regions and over time; including the early European invasions of South America, use of slaves or indentured labour across oceans, and the draining off of surpluses from colonies by using trade and financial channels. Imperialism, however, has considerably changed its pattern since then, especially with institutional changes in the prevailing power structure.
The essays in the volume offer a renewed interpretation, which include the alternate interpretations of imperialism and its changing pattern over space and time, incorporating the changing pattern of oppression which reflects the dynamics underlying the specific patterns of oppression. The pattern can be characterised as 鈥榥ew imperialism鈥� under contemporary capitalism as distinct from its 鈥榦ld鈥� form under colonialism. The varied interpretations of imperialism as in the literature do not lessen the significance of the common ground underlying the alternate positions, including the diverse pattern of expropriations under imperialism.
The volume offers fourteen chapters by renowned authors. In this blog, we organise them in the following manner: the first five of those deal with the conceptual basis of imperialism from different angles, the next three chapters deal with contemporary imperialism, and then the rest six chapters of book deal with India, colonialism and contemporary issues with imperialism.
By Jo Inge Bekkevold, Arve Hansen and Kristen Nordhaug
China, Vietnam and Laos have for three decades been among the fastest growing economies in the world. In other words, three of the best growth performers in global capitalism are authoritarian states led by communist parties with socialism as the official development goal. This fact has received surprisingly little attention, especially when considering their strong performance on a wide range of development indicators. Many claim China and Vietnam indeed represent some of the most impressive 鈥渄evelopment success stories鈥� the world has seen in recent decades. The three countries claim to have found their own model of development combining a market economy with socialism 鈥� 鈥榯he socialist market economy鈥�. According to official definitions, this is not capitalism, but a more sustainable and socially just way of making a market economy work for national development and the improvement of living standards. In , an edited volume newly published by Palgrave Macmillan, we engage with the coherence, achievements and failures of this particular development model.
Chinese labour workers and their team manager laying the tracks on the Belgrade-Stara Pazova section of the Belgrade-Budapest railway. Source: author鈥檚 own.
The Belgrade-Budapest Railway has been lauded as the flagship Belt and Road project of the wider Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, and as such is promoted by Beijing as a successful template for Sino-CEE cooperation concluded via the 17+1 initiative, established in 2012 to foster relations between China and 17 CEE countries. In its host context of Hungary and Serbia, the investment has been politicised from the get-go, wherein criticism has largely focused on the project鈥檚 violation of EU public procurement , which require competitive dialogue and open-tender processes for projects of substantial size.
We would expect the Belgrade-Budapest Railway to be subject to greater scrutiny in both Hungary, as an EU member state, and Serbia, where of the EU is an important cornerstone of regime legitimacy, stemming from broad-based support for EU integration and cooperation. While this has played out in Hungary where there have been protests and where the EU launched against the construction for non-compliance, the Serbian section has proceeded relatively unhindered.
The protests in Punjab are happening at a time when the agrarian economy is under stress. With increasing uncertainty, previously antagonistic groups across classes, castes & gender are coming closer, building a broader base for the agitation & beyond.
Punjab鈥檚 farmers have been unrelenting in their opposition to passed in September. Their sustained and creative opposition continues to make headlines. The central government too remains adamant and increasingly belligerent about sustaining the laws in their current form. The political pressure of the farmers has led the Punjab government, in a symbolic gesture, to pass rejecting the centre鈥檚 farm laws. The past weeks have witnessed bitter stand-offs: farmers blocking rail tracks, the railways suspending services to Punjab , and . A march of thousands of farmers to Delhi earlier this week to register their opposition to these laws is faced police barricades, water cannons, and tear gas shells.
In the face of the unpopularity of the farm laws, the central government has found refuge in different kinds of arguments in favour of the reforms. It has sought to discredit the protests by arguing that the agitation is driven by , and that small and marginal farmers are with these laws. The opposition to the new laws is portrayed as coming from large, prosperous, and politically powerful farmers, who dominate Punjab鈥檚 farmers unions and who benefited the most from the old system.
黑料社区 