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15 November 1884 – start of Berlin conference

This week in working class history


12/11/2025

On 15 November 1884, Otto von Bismarck opened the Berlin Conference in his palace on Wilhelmstraße. The conference aimed to resolve the “Scramble for Africa,” in which Global North countries competed to control the continent’s mineral-rich resources. Nineteen delegates from fourteen countries attended, ranging from the United States to Tsarist Russia. Despite it sometimes being called the Congo Conference or the African Conference of Berlin, not a single African country was invited.

The conference redrew the borders of Africa. When it opened, only 20% of the continent was colonised. By the outbreak of the First World War just thirty years later, only Ethiopia and Liberia remained free. Ten thousand distinct communities were forced to live within forty separate occupied territories. Before the conference had even ended, Nigeria’s Lagos Observer reported that “the world had, perhaps, never witnessed a robbery on so large a scale”.

Colonisation was far from peaceful. South Africa saw the world’s first concentration camps, set up by British occupation forces. Germany followed suit in Namibia, where a German-organised genocide killed 80% of the Herero and Nama populations. Various methods were used to normalise colonisation to the German public: street names were dedicated to colonisers, and the supermarket Edeka took its name from an acronym for the Einkaufsgenossenschaft der Kolonialwarenhändler (Cooperative of Colonial Grocers).

The General Act of the Berlin Conference contained two key articles. Article 34 declared the “doctrine of spheres of influence,” allowing European powers to claim parts of Africa provided they informed the other nations beforehand. Article 35, the “principle of effective occupation,” stated that a country could acquire rights over colonial land by setting up a coastal base, as long as it promised to protect existing rights and freedom of trade—meaning the rights and freedoms of other imperial powers.

The attempt by the Great Powers to carve up Africa did not go unopposed. The Nandi waged a ten-year war in what is now Kenya, disrupting the construction of the Uganda Railway. Ethiopian resistance preserved the country’s independence until the Italian invasion of 1936. The Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania between 1903 and 1907 was one of many local uprisings. Ultimately, however, European firepower overwhelmed local resistance. The divisions sown in Berlin endure to this day.

Threads of Resistance: the women stitching stories and struggles

From Palestine to Greece, mothers are the roots of hope, the strength of solidarity, and the flames that keep tradition and dignity alive.


11/11/2025

The art of Palestinian embroidery, or «Tatreez», is a decorative technique on fabric using needles and threads, passed down through generations of Palestinian women. This art form encompasses a variety of styles and motifs from different regions of Palestine, with each design reflecting the life, experiences, and social fabric of its community. The creation and preservation of these garments played a vital role in the daily life, cohesion, and socialization of women within each local society.

From nature-inspired motifs — such as flowers and trees — to geometric patterns, the embroideries carry unique meanings and histories. The most characteristic garment adorned with such stitching is the traditional thoubah — the wide dress once worn by Palestinian women. Every village in Palestine had its own distinct motifs, serving as visual identifiers for the women of that community. Red is the dominant color in embroidery, though its hue varies from region to region, from one artist to another. Common designs included the “eight-pointed star”: the moon, birds, palm leaves, stairs, and diamonds or triangles used as amulets to ward off the evil eye.

The Greek tradition of embroidery, though unique in its own right, follows a similar path. In Greece, embroidery has long been a form of expression and social connection, deeply rooted in history and tradition. From the famous embroideries of Macedonia to the intricate patterns of Crete and Thrace, the creation of woven and embroidered textiles in materials such as linen, cotton, and silk was intertwined with women’s everyday lives and with the preservation of family and local heritage. The motifs — whether depicting elements of nature or geometric forms — were closely linked to the rhythms of Greek life and society.

Just as in Palestine, embroidery in Greece served as a form of communication and a marker of one’s place of origin. Each region had its own characteristic designs, many of which — such as the cross-stitch — were rich in symbolism. Through embroidery, women cultivated their artistry, preserved traditions, and created garments that held deep significance in both their social and personal lives.

Both the Greek and Palestinian traditions reveal how women, even within societies shaped by different historical and political contexts, use art as a way to express identity, forge communal bonds, and strengthen their position within society. The art of «Tatreez» and Greek embroidery are inextricably linked to resistance, the preservation of cultural heritage, and the ongoing struggle for equality.

On March 8, a day that honors women and mothers around the world, we are reminded that — though they come from different lands and historical realities — the women of Palestine and Greece share common struggles, aspirations, and values. Our worlds may seem distant, separated by thousands of miles, yet the power of art and solidarity brings us closer than ever.

In 2021, UNESCO added traditional Palestinian embroidery to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

 “The reason the housing crisis continues is because there are people benefitting from it”

Interview with Jacob Stringer, author of “Renters Unite”


10/11/2025

Hi, Jacob, thanks for talking to us. Can you first introduce yourself?

I’m Jacob Stringer. I organised for five years or so with London Renters’ Union and then I did a PhD on tenant unions. I just wrote a book called Renters Unite, which is an overview of the new wave of tenant organising in the Global North.

When you say the Global North, where exactly do you mean?

The book covers Europe and North America. Realistically, I didn’t have the opportunity to go to Australia or other more far-flung places. But it’s a wide variety of countries and experiences.

Tenant unions have been springing up across Europe, across different parts of the UK. There are city-specific unions, so I talk about the Manchester tenant union. Then some countries have a national tenant union. Ireland has one called CATU. It’s also happening in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Poland.

In the US, there’s a huge number of new tenant unions, which tend to be city based. I talk a lot about the Los Angeles and Crown Heights (Brooklyn, New York) tenant unions because they’re particularly interesting examples.

You say there’s a new surge of tenant unions. Why now?

It’s happening now because many places are experiencing what we loosely call a housing crisis. “Housing crisis” is a strange term, because usually you use the word crisis for something that doesn’t last long and then you resolve it. That’s not what’s happening with housing.

In many countries, people are facing ridiculously high rents for very low-quality accommodation. There’s a lot of overcrowding in the UK. A lot of low-income families are pushed into “temporary” (accommodation) in which you can actually be for years.

It’s better to talk about housing injustice because the reality is that it’s a crisis for tenants, but it’s not a crisis for landlords and it’s not a crisis for a lot of the establishment. The reason it continues is because there are people benefitting from it.

The increase in housing costs and degradation of conditions has now been going on for decades. Housing has become a very intensive site of exploitation in the current moment and often the big investment funds see more opportunity to extract money from housing than they do from setting up a factory, say, particularly in de-industrialised countries like the UK.

Around the world, people are starting to say that this can’t continue. We’ve got to do something about this. We’ve got to take the fight to the landlords and to the establishment who are keeping things going this way.

After Occupy, for instance, a lot of people started thinking about more permanent organisations, which could gather people together in communities of solidarity. Tenant unions just became the answer in a lot of different places.

You’re talking about the Global North where the population is stable. Free market theorists say that supply and demand means that housing prices should remain as stable as the population. So, what’s behind this surge in rent costs?

That depends on who you ask. There are some on the UK left who say that we don’t need to build more housing in the UK. I disagree with that. As an example, housing has been quite tight in London, and over the last few years net migration into London has been half a million people. When that’s happening, I do think is necessary to build more housing.

However, at the moment, building more housing doesn’t actually make prices cheaper, and part of the reason for that is because more and more capital is flowing into housing. It is becoming really attractive to big real estate investment trusts, private equity even.

Housing prices are not just about supply and demand. It’s also about who has the capital to put into it. So, what’s happening in the UK, and I suspect in a lot of countries, is that the landlords have more capital than ordinary people. They out-compete everyone.

People also occupy housing less densely than they used to. In a lot of rich countries the boomer generation is coming into retirement. In a more rational housing market, when you retire and your kids have left home, you might sell your three- or four-bedroom house and move into a smaller place. But what’s happening is that for a lot of retired people, their house is their main asset, which gives them a lot of security.

It’s not just retired couples. Single people are also living in large family houses. The boomer generation is called that because it was so large. Now enormous numbers of older, retired people who don’t really need very much space are living in these big houses. That’s a more peripheral effect, but it all comes into the mix.

In the UK, a big factor is the sale of social housing. The purpose of social housing was to undermine the landlord class and provide cheap, quality accommodation. Nobody would dream of paying large amounts of money to a private landlord. A big project of neoliberalism was to sell off a lot of public housing.

People talk about this a lot in the UK. But there are other countries that haven’t sold off their social housing. Spain never had much social housing. France hasn’t really sold off much. Yet they still have housing crises. There are a lot of factors in play. But the really short answer is property becoming attractive to capital.

How are people resisting the rise of rents?

The short answer is that they’re setting up tenant unions.

What does a tenant union do?

A tenant union is a membership organisation that collectivises people’s struggles around housing in a similar way to a union collectivising people’s struggles around the workplace.

A lot of people were involved in smaller struggles before over a particular building or a particular housing estate in London. And people saw that there was a need to build larger organisations, to really build broad-based solidarity. And so, these tenant unions have arisen. Usually, they have a fee-paying membership. So, they have resources. Some of them have paid staff, others don’t.

But all the tenant unions have two main tracks that they’re working on. One is solidarity around particular conflicts with landlords. Sometimes that’s just an individual having a conflict with a landlord, sometimes it’s a whole building. A lot of the base organising of the tenant union is around those conflicts.

Another track is campaigning. Most tenant unions are involved in campaigning for things like rent controls or ending no-fault evictions, which has just been won in the UK. They are also campaigning at local level around regulation of landlords and things like that.

A lot of the tenant unions are also trying to build local communities of solidarity, so that neighbours get to know each other and people do not live in isolation. Most tenant unions see themselves as part of a wider political project of trying to challenge individualism, making sure that people don’t feel that they’re facing the troubles of life alone.

London Renters Union, for example, tries to make its events enjoyable. It’s not just about having meetings. We have food in most of the branch meetings, we put on events people can enjoy coming to. It’s about building relationships and trying to spread networks of solidarity through your community.

You’re talking about moving from smaller, localised struggles to larger ones. It’s obvious how that works in social housing if everyone has the same landlord. How can people with different landlords work together?

This is a particular problem in the UK, where ‘landlordism’ is very dispersed. Most landlords in the UK only own one or two houses. Most blocks are owned by the local authority. This is something that London Renters Union has had to address by developing a narrative of mutual aid: “We’re going to help you. You’re going to help with someone else’s struggle.”

We sometimes put quite a lot of work into just one individual’s case. Sometimes that person then leaves the union and never sees us again. It’s always a little disappointing when that happens. But a lot of people don’t. They stay and want to fight other people’s cases as well.

The collective action element comes in with individual cases, where a tenant union decides that we will bring pressure on either the landlord or the agents in a collective way. We might write a letter to an agent who is failing to do repairs on a house. Then we turn up at the agent’s office with 20 people and say: “here are our demands. We are not going to go away until you sort this out. We are going to make your life miserable until you sort this out.”

That can be very effective. It doesn’t always work. Any workplace union could tell you that you don’t win every fight. But London Renters Union has got pretty good at winning.

Part of your book covers Berlin, where most of our readers live. As an outsider, what’s your perception of the housing movement in Berlin at the moment?

On the one hand, the housing movement is stronger in terms of numbers than in London. Berlin has had strong housing organising for a while. On the other hand, it’s very apparent that a lot of the attempts to stop gentrification have not, in fact, stopped gentrification. Many attempts to save sites which were available for community use have failed. The rents keep going up. There are some really wonderful successes, but it feels like not enough.

I talk a little bit about the expropriation campaign in the book. That’s a wonderful, inspiring campaign in many ways. A lot of people around the world read about it and go: “Wow, we wish we could achieve something like this here”. On the other hand, it also feels painfully slow to many people. It also feels like it will only help a limited number of people.

In Berlin, everyone knows the figure 59.1%, which was the number of people who voted to expropriate the big landlords. But after we won the referendum, the Berlin government just simply ignored the decision and carried on as before. What can we do to ensure that we do not just win votes, but get real change?

Barcelona has suffered some similar disappointments, where the housing movement got their people into the city government for a few years, who managed to make some changes, just not as many changes as people were hoping. And there’s still a housing crisis in Barcelona.

Now that that left wing government is out of power, they’re asking themselves: how is it that we could get so far and still not really make a big impact on housing for ordinary people? I think the difficult but true answer is that it’s hard to see how housing issues will really be resolved without undoing the wider neo-liberal governing conjuncture and taking on the powers of finance at the national and international level.

It is a huge struggle, but we have to face up to the reality that to make changes through legislative methods, these wins at local level are often not enough. You’re going to have to get wins at national level and get your people into government at national level.

But even then, you’re going to find that you’re up against the power of capital and the finance power block. The reality is that we’re not going to solve housing crisis until we are strong enough to take that on. That’s quite a difficult message, because it feels a long and painful job to take on those powers. But I do think it’s going to be necessary.

The strongest interim measure that you can take, without entirely overthrowing the current order, is to get public housing built in very large quantities. But the problem with that is you’ve got to get the finance for it. And as long as governments are pretending that austerity is the only option, it’s very difficult to get the finance for that housing.

Building more public housing is not a full answer, but it’s a good halfway house. And even to get that, we’re going to have to undo the entire austerity narrative that has bedevilled Europe for the last couple of decades. We’re going to have to say: “this scarcity you’ve created is false. We do have the resources to build the public housing we need”. I think it’s achievable, but it’s a big, big project.

What would you say to the people who say higher rents are not because of landlords or austerity. They’re the fault of migrants?

Of course, it is not migrants’ fault that house prices go up. This is about the scarcity narrative that years of austerity has induced. People are convinced that there’s very scarce resources to go around and that there’s not enough to share with new people coming in.

That narrative is entirely false. In the case of London, which has had a lot of migration over the last few years, you do need to build more housing, but that housing needs to be public housing. It needs to be aimed at the working-class, low-income people who need it the most.

In many cities, the population is not increasing. In that case, it’s very easy to show it’s nothing to do with migrants. It’s to do with the grip that landlords and capital in general have over the housing economy.

The main thing we have to do around this migration issue is destroy this idea of scarcity. We live in very rich countries with enormous access to resources. We can share these resources around, as long as the people at the top aren’t hoarding too much of it. And that’s got to be the main message.

Where can people get hold of your book?

Renters Unite is published by Pluto press, and you can order from their website, or you can just go into a bookshop and ask them to order it for you.

Is there anything that you’d like to say that we haven’t covered?

I would say, join a tenant union. And if there isn’t one near you, start a tenant union. Because this is the fight of our lives. We’ve got to win decent housing, or we can never live well.

Berlin and the cultural cost of control

A city more interested in order than openness


Back in 2017, when Orania.Berlin, the luxury hotel at the western end of Oranienstraße, first opened its doors, it’s likely more than one lukewarm bottle of Sterni had “Berlin is over” muttered into it from across the street.

Lavished with handwoven Luribaff carpets and Japanese silk curtains, “Berlin’s coolest grand hotel” was a new kind of Kreuzberg arrival, one that didn’t just move in but repackaged the fading smell of anarchy around it as ‘boutique ambience’. Sitting on a low-slung designer couch behind a floor-to-ceiling glass façade, guests could look out onto a scuffed up Oranienplatz and feel, for a moment, like they were part of the furniture. Like they were part of the myth of a city built on art and friction. Like being there was a creative act in itself.

The promise of inclusion

But while guests behind the glass cosplayed the city’s creative identity, and that familiar three-word prophecy floated through streets being steadily smoothed out for consumption, artists arriving in Berlin were cautiously optimistic about a different kind of shift. Beyond the warnings of paperwork, waiting rooms, and Kafka-esque loops of registration (all the things Germany truly excels at), new spaces and collectives were taking shape, and the cultural scene was finally trying, or at least pretending, to catch up with the diversity already shaping the city.

In the same year, the Berlin Senate had launched Diversity Arts Culture, a project aimed at addressing structural racism and underrepresentation across the city’s cultural sector. And at Weißensee Art Academy, the *foundationClass — founded in 2016 for artists affected by racism, exile, or displacement — became one of the clearest expressions of that moment: a counterspace where creative practices could continue despite the barriers of bureaucracy and belonging.

Room to make it happen

What allowed these movements to take root wasn’t just Germany’s supposed awakening to the language of inclusion, but the material conditions that made it possible: space. Berlin’s reputation as a cultural haven rested on an older foundation of subsidised studios and public grants that kept artists secure in the city. Berufsverband Bildender Künstler (BBK), is one such association whose network of subsidised studios quietly made it possible for its tenants to keep working as the city grew less affordable.

For decades, the BBK’s studio programme has been one of Berlin’s quiet pillars of cultural life. The association rents buildings across the city and offers them to artists at affordable, income-adjusted rates. In 2021, the system was restructured into two funding tiers — 4.09 and 6.50 euros per square metre, bruttowarm (heating included) — with the BBK covering the difference between those set rates and the market price. The model allows hundreds of artists to maintain stable studios in a city where commercial rent has become unmanageable, effectively bridging the gap between public funding and private property.

Atelierhaus Fichtestr. 3

On Fichtestraße, six artists — Salwa Aleryani, Anaïs Héraud-Louisadat, Verónica Lehner, Isabell Spengler, Antje Taubert, and Ladislav Zajac — share one of these BBK studio houses. The space holds a mix of practices: installation, moving image, participatory art, and art therapy. It’s less a collection of rooms than a small ecosystem, where studio work spills into workshops, neighbourhood collaborations, and classrooms. 

For Salwa Aleryani, who arrived in Berlin a decade ago, the studio represents what once drew so many artists to the city, the chance to sustain a practice without constant precarity. “On a daily basis, it gives me a framework to structure my work around” she says. “If I don’t have that studio, I would lose not just a physical space to build my work, but also the structure for preparing classes, organizing my thoughts, bringing people in. That’s not something you can really do from your kitchen table.”

Across the corridor, others describe it the same way: a working space, but also as a small community that still carries something of Kreuzberg’s collective spirit, even as the pressures of rent and redevelopment close in. “Our studio house is a diverse community of artists from different backgrounds, generations, and disciplines,” says Héraud-Louisadat, who has shared the building since 2018. “Because of the long-standing connections and shared energy, this place is unique, not anonymous like so many others. It’s what people mean when they talk about Berlin’s creative synergy.”

The cuts

Then in May, the artists at Fichtestraße received an email. As part of Berlin’s much-publicised cultural budget cuts — which stripped €130 million from the 2025 culture budget, around 12 to 13 percent — their studio was among those at risk of losing support by year’s end.

The BBK called the move “a severe threat to the atelier program, with no studio truly secure”. Without these workspaces, the entire system begins to unravel. Artists already working at the edge can’t simply relocate; the private market offers no affordable alternatives, and a studio isn’t something you can easily replace.

“I depend financially on my studio,” says Héraud-Louisadat. “Losing it would mean I might not be able to continue my profession at all. It wouldn’t just affect me, but also my family, my collaborators, and the people I teach or work with through art education and therapy.”

Verónica Lehner feels the same uncertainty. Her practice relies on large, time-intensive installations and paintings — the kind of work impossible to make in an apartment shared with family. “Without this studio,” she says, “I simply couldn’t continue.”

Artists from endangered studios across Berlin haven’t been waiting quietly. They’ve written open letters, met with local representatives, and joined demonstrations. For months, they’ve petitioned the Senate to reconsider, coordinating with the BBK to push for temporary extensions and public visibility.

According to BBK estimates, Fichtestraße is one of seven subsidised studio houses set to lose support in 2025. Thirty more are expected to follow in 2026, and another fifty-eight by 2027 — nearly a hundred buildings in total. Most are tied to leases the Senate has chosen not to renew, and once those expire, the spaces don’t come back; they’re converted, privatised, or simply folded into the commercial market.

The city is effectively cutting away the very infrastructure that drew visitors, residents, and artists alike, and the fallout is anything but equal.

Who gets left behind?

Aside from the studios at risk, when it comes to funding cuts for spaces, institutions with PR departments, long-standing ‘prestige’, or the right philanthropic ties are better equipped to weather the storm and grab all the headlines. Meanwhile, initiatives that aren’t — like *foundationClass — have already disappeared.

The Senate has scrapped Diversity Arts Culture and drastically reduced support for Berlin Mondiale, which connected underrepresented communities with the city’s cultural institutions. Oyoun, a cultural space in Neukölln committed to decolonial, queer, feminist and migrant perspectives, lost public funding after refusing to disinvite a Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East speaker (a decision that exposed how conditional Berlin’s support for diversity really is). Sinema Transtopia, known for its intersectional programming and social discourse, also had 100% of its support pulled. 

The list goes on and the pattern is impossible to ignore. The same communities once held up as proof of “Berlin’s cultural diversity” are now the first to lose support. “You start to see that those who have much bigger cuts,” Salwa points out, “it’s connected to institutions that are more grassroots, are more connected to certain communities, and have a certain kind of programming. It’s affecting people, but not equally and there’s a reason for that. It’s not coincidental.”

What’s happening isn’t just a question of budgets or priorities, but of power and of who gets to define culture in the first place. Funding cuts are being used not just to save money, but to silence institutions that challenge Germany’s self-image, whether through decolonial, queer, or pro-Palestinian perspectives. And while artists and cultural workers fight to hold onto their voices, the state is quietly investing in more police, more surveillance, and more rules about who can gather and what can be said.

Policing the void

In 2023, just around the corner from Orania.Berlin, on the edge of Kottbusser Tor — a neighbourhood with a largely migrant community — a new police station opened its doors. Officially framed as a response to “safety concerns” in the area, the move marked a shift in tone, with politicians speaking of danger zones and disorder. Fast forward to today and knife-crime posters line Görlitzer Park and Kotti, casting a sense of threat over public space. The message is clear: be afraid.

Because while artists lose studios and community spaces disappear under the guise of austerity, Berlin’s police budget has magically climbed to €2.9 billion. The city that once prided itself on artistic freedom now dismantles cultural infrastructure with one hand while expanding its machinery of surveillance and control with the other.

And the fearmongering doesn’t stop at knife posters. Over the past two years, Berlin has become a testing ground for the criminalisation of protest — just look at every Palestine demo. They’re often banned pre-emptively, and people are prosecuted for flags, slogans, or even gestures. When demonstrations do go ahead, it’s always the police who escalate violence first, using disproportionate force and provoking confrontation before pointing to the resulting chaos as justification.

At the same time, there must have been hundreds of thousands of euros poured into court cases against pro-Palestine activists caught in that chaos. The cases are so weak they’re routinely thrown out, yet they still drain public funds and attention.

The cycle is self-perpetuating: police violence produces unrest, the media report the police are the victims of disorder (yes, really), and authorities cite that disorder to spend more on the very system causing it. Meanwhile, those protesting genocide are criminalised and art reflecting an increasingly authoritarian reality quietly disappears ‘from the walls’.

Resistance, solidarity, and the future

Even as “austerity” tightens its grip, cultural workers across Berlin are refusing to accept silence as the new normal. On July 8th, dozens of social and youth organisations shut their doors in protest. ‘Tag der geschlossenen Tür’ was a citywide action warning that the coming cuts wouldn’t just mute culture, but dismantle youth development, cultural education, inclusion, and anti-discrimination work.

As well as the march, a petition to preserve the BBK’s subsidised studios continues to gain support (sign it here), while collectives organise open letters and open studios. “I think resistance looks like collectivity,” Salwa says. “Trying to come together and mobilise, have more presence in the public to show how this affects not just us on a personal level, but entire communities, and the wider city too.”

Artists are using what platforms they have to make visible what’s being quietly erased and to remind those in power that what’s disappearing isn’t abstract. Some are listening. “There are a couple of political representatives who are really supportive,” she adds. “They’re sharing information, trying to mobilise, mostly from the opposition. At least when it comes to these kinds of cuts, they’re really trying to push back for now.”

And sometimes, persistence pays off, if only temporarily. After months of uncertainty, the artists at Fichtestraße received new contracts with a one-year extension. On paper, the building’s lease runs until 2027, though the Senate says funding may only last until 2026. It’s a reprieve, not a resolution, but for now it buys a bit more time.

So what’s left to lose?

Back in 2017, when people muttered “Berlin is over” into lukewarm bottles of Sterni, it was mostly a cliché — shorthand for tourists, tech money, or another wave of gentrification. None of it seemed good, but now that prophecy sounds different. What’s fading isn’t only affordable studios or community spaces, but also the fragile progress made toward inclusion and access, not just in the arts but across Berlin’s broader cultural, ethnic, and public life.

The cuts follow a familiar pattern; one where spaces led by migrants, queer artists, and people of colour are the first to lose support, and where the language of diversity that once signalled progress now rings hollow, masking the same exclusions it once claimed to address. Behind the talk of austerity sits a quieter kind of gatekeeping, deciding which stories get told and which are made to disappear. 

Across the city, dozens of collectives and cultural spaces are trying to hold things together: places like Oyoun, Sinema Transtopia, and Berlin Mondiale, continue to make space for dialogue, collaboration, and care despite shrinking resources. Showing up still matters — at protests, in petitions, and in the rooms where culture is made and shared — because what remains of Berlin depends on people keeping those spaces alive before the only version left is the one seen from the top of the Amazon Tower.

Artificial intelligence: A tool for capital or liberation?

Can AI serve the working class and how can we gain collective control over digital production?


Reproducing class domination through more advanced means

As Karl Marx noted in many of his works, every technological leap within the capitalist system does not lead to human liberation but to the reproduction of class domination by more advanced means. Therefore, current technological developments are not neutral, they take shape within prevailing relations of production. Artificial intelligence, despite its enormous potential to serve humanity, has become a tool used by the bourgeoisie to strengthen its control over labor, dominate resources, and reshape mass consciousness in ways that serve the capitalist system. 

Just as machines were used during the industrial revolution to intensify exploitation instead of reducing working hours, artificial intelligence today is employed in automation to lower production costs and reduce the need for human labor in most cases, imposing more precarious and less secure working conditions. 

This also deepens alienation, as manual and intellectual workers are turned into human tools in their workplaces and replaced by algorithms, which leads to increased unemployment or forces them to seek alternative work. At the same time, new production relations are imposed in which the bourgeoisie tightens its grip on the means of digital production. In this context, artificial intelligence becomes a tool for reproducing exploitation in its most advanced form.

A tool for control, repression, and mass consciousness washing

Capitalist control over artificial intelligence no longer stops at reproducing relations of production, it has also become a direct tool of control and political repression. Today, artificial intelligence is used in mass surveillance systems, facial recognition, analysis of political behavior of individuals and groups, and more. This allows repressive regimes, even in so-called democratic countries, to preemptively intervene to weaken or thwart any potential radical leftist resistance that crosses the pre-established “red lines,” i.e., poses a serious threat to the structure of the capitalist system.

Digital surveillance today goes beyond merely deleting content or blocking accounts. It takes the form of “voluntary self-censorship,” where individuals begin adjusting their speech and opinions out of fear of censorship or digital penalties. This reduces the ability of leftist and progressive organizations to mobilize the masses and helps turn the internet, to a large extent, into a space governed by capitalist market logic and state dominance.

In addition to its role in reshaping labor relations and enhancing control and repression, most applications of artificial intelligence, just like media in all its past and present forms, are used as tools for manipulating mass awareness and instilling capitalist values. This is done through algorithms that control information flow, steer public discourse, and attempt to impose a singular cultural reality that reinforces market dominance and individual consumption as natural and inevitable values.

Today, artificial intelligence is among the most effective tools for entrenching this ideological hegemony. Algorithms are configured to guide the masses toward accepting capitalism as the best, even eternal, system. This is done gradually, softly, and imperceptibly, giving users a false impression that the system is entirely neutral. 

Over time, the public may be transformed into a “docile herd easily led,” weakening class consciousness by flattening progressive and critical thought and reducing political discourse to trivial side issues, instead of analyzing the existing political, economic, and social structure based on exploitation.

The leftist alternative: confronting digital slavery and liberating technology

Redirecting artificial intelligence to serve the people rather than capital requires developing open-source, transparent systems with neutral orientations, democratically managed and subject to community oversight, as a currently feasible solution. It also requires passing international legislation to regulate its operation to ensure it serves society as a whole, until progressive, leftist alternatives based on community ownership are proposed as a necessary solution, far from the monopoly of major corporations.

We must struggle to ensure artificial intelligence is used to reduce working hours without lowering wages, achieve fair distribution of resources, and promote justice and equality, etc., enabling humanity to benefit from technology in its broadest forms and to build a better world.

The struggle over artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the broader class struggle. Therefore, the fight against the exploitation of artificial intelligence and technology in general is a vital part of the broader struggle for human liberation from capitalist exploitation. 

Liberating technology from the grip of capital and redirecting it to serve the masses and achieve social justice and a socialist alternative is not merely a choice, it is a historical necessity imposed by the growing contradictions within the capitalist system itself. 

This must be one of the main tasks of leftist, progressive, and rights-based forces around the world; otherwise, we will face a new era of digital slavery, if we are not already living in it, where capitalist elites control every aspect of life, from labor to thought, consciousness, and daily existence.

Building digital leftist internationals

Humanity today faces unprecedented global control by major tech corporations, capitalist states, and authoritarian regimes over artificial intelligence and technology in general. This makes the formation of global leftist alliances and internationals an inevitable necessity to confront this hegemony.

These alliances must go beyond ideological differences among various leftist and progressive organizations, aiming to unify efforts broadly, and especially in this field, to develop alternative open-source or leftist technologies that serve social justice and equality. 

This confrontation requires adopting effective policies and programs, such as securing independent funding through cooperative financing and popular support campaigns, away from conditional funding from capitalist governments. It is also necessary to struggle for the imposition of progressive tax policies on major tech corporations and redirecting part of their massive profits to support social and cooperative projects.

The expected capitalist reaction cannot be ignored, dominant corporations and states will impose legal and technical obstacles to thwart any progressive leftist technological alternatives, even suppressing and sabotaging them in various ways. Therefore, it is crucial to adopt proactive strategies to develop systems resistant to technological repression that ensure digital independence and the ability to compete technologically.

Attracting youth, developing skills, and eliminating digital illiteracy within leftist organizations

Artificial intelligence and digital technology represent a new and important arena of class struggle. Capitalism continues to invest intensively and constantly in digital tools to strengthen its hegemony, while most leftist organizations suffer from a clear digital gap. Digital presence is no longer limited to managing social media pages or publishing statements online, it has become a strategic necessity requiring the development of independent technological infrastructure, owned and managed by leftist and progressive organizations. To ensure the survival of the left in this era, it is essential to focus on eliminating digital illiteracy through training programs that enable leaders and members to understand and effectively use digital tools, and even contribute to their development.

Youth play a pivotal role in this transformation, as they have the ability to quickly absorb technological developments and apply them effectively in leftist activism. Through their skills in areas such as social networks, YouTube, artificial intelligence, digital security, data analysis, and more, they can not only bridge the digital gap within leftist organizations but also lead them toward building independent digital policies. This also requires attracting technical talents to leftist thought and creating flexible organizational environments that allow engineers, programmers, and all those interested in technology to work on independent progressive projects away from monopolistic corporations.

These efforts should include the establishment of digital schools and open local and global workshops that offer advanced technical training in areas such as optimal and effective use of technology, digital security, data analysis, collaborative software development, and more. Leftist influence should also be strengthened across professional networks and technical platforms to expand the reach of progressive ideas within technological circles and draw them into the ranks of the left.

The position on current applications of artificial intelligence

The important question here is: can leftist forces benefit from current artificial intelligence, despite it being a capitalist, non-neutral product?

The answer is not a simple yes or no. Until progressive leftist alternatives are developed, leftist and progressive movements can carefully and critically utilize existing artificial intelligence to expand their influence in confronting capitalist hegemony and authoritarian systems. This technology can be employed to analyze political and social data, understand patterns of economic change, and identify the most pressing issues for working-class communities. 

Artificial intelligence can also be used to study public opinion trends, which could help leftist movements develop more scientific, realistic, and effective programs and policies, based not only on what is desired but on what is possible, grounded in real needs that lead toward various leftist theories, not the other way around. It can enhance their capacity for political and mass influence.

Additionally, artificial intelligence can be an effective tool for exposing the misinformation practiced by capitalist institutions and authoritarian regimes, analyzing dominant media discourse to dismantle manipulation and ideological control, and countering it with a progressive leftist narrative that is advanced and oppositional, contributing to raising mass awareness.

These tools can enhance leftist media that reflects the interests of working classes and marginalized groups, making it possible to reach broader audiences and present anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian content in more impactful and cost-effective ways.

Organizationally, artificial intelligence can improve coordination and interaction mechanisms within leftist organizations by analyzing organizational dynamics, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and enhancing cohesion among members and groups.

It also aids in information management within organizations, assessing the effectiveness of current policies, identifying successful working patterns, and thus improving collective organizational performance, reducing bureaucracy, and fostering smoother, more effective internal communication.

However, it is crucial to approach this technology with caution and critical awareness, ensuring it remains a supportive tool rather than a dominant force. It must be used to reinforce political and mass organization and field struggle, without becoming a substitute for them. Strict human oversight and auditing must always be applied. It is essential to avoid falling into the trap of over-reliance on technology or allowing it to reshape the priorities of struggle according to its technical logic rooted in a capitalist environment.

Conclusion

Liberating artificial intelligence and digital technology from the grip of capital and transforming them into tools that serve the people is an urgent struggle in the face of a capitalist system that harnesses these technologies to reinforce class domination and deepen social inequalities. The struggle to liberate technology is inseparable from the class struggle against capitalism, and true liberation cannot be achieved without collective control over the tools of digital production. Ultimately, the issue is not just about technology, it is about the struggle over the future of human society itself.