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Who is killing the Sudanese?

The Sudanese have taken to the streets in revolution against military rule, braving utter and ceaseless brutality.


14/06/2025

Al-Bashir’s men, his security apparatus–the Janjaweed militia, and the military, and the state police, have stained their hands with Sudanese blood. They ignited a proxy war, fighting for expansionist imperialist ambitions to control and compete for Sudan’s resources and exploit its geopolitical position.

About six years ago, in the second half of December 2018, Sudan’s cities rose up against the policies of privatisation and rising prices of basic goods, especially bread. Citizens of Atbara, ‘the city of iron and fire,’ burned down the headquarters of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, headed by General Omar al-Bashir, who had usurped power for more than thirty years. 

The 19th of December was like the storming of the Bastille–the protests quickly spread to all other villages and cities in Sudan until they reached Khartoum, the capital, where daily, day and night, centralised demonstrations were held in its three neighbouring cities, Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum Bahr. Citizens gathered in neighbourhoods, schools, universities, official and popular football fields, mosques and industrial areas without ceasing, despite the killing, bullets, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances.

Arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances

After mobilising citizens for five months, from December to April, the resistance succeeded in besieging the General Command building on 6 April 2019. They then carried out a sit-in, known in Sudanese circles as the General Command sit-in, and persisted, withstanding bullets and continuous assaults. After five days the security committee was forced to arrest al-Bashir and held him in a “safe place”, and proceeded to announce the setting up of a military council to run the country for two months or more.

The resistance rejected the council and demanded full civilian rule, according to the Declaration of Freedom and Change. The security committee, which began to call itself the Transitional Military Council (TMC), stalled negotiations, while the revolutionaries refused to leave the sit-in and rejected all attempts to circumvent the demands of the revolution. 

On 3 June, the security committee brutally dispersed the sit-in with excessive force, killing hundreds of people and dumping their stone bound bodies in the Blue Nile.

Despite the rising death toll, persecution, internet and telecommunication cuts, and media blackout, the Sudanese revolutionary forces regrouped successfully, calling for a million-man demonstration on 30 June 2019 in Khartoum.

On that day, the crowds exceeded expectations, as Sudanese people came out from all parts of the country and from the three cities of Omdurman, Khartoum and Bahri, and declared their rejection of military rule, and their continued struggle for freedom, peace and justice.

The Berlin conference is Africa’s renewed curse 

In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry called a conference on Sudan, where it invited Sudan’s neighbouring countries, as well as Britain and America, but did not invite a single Sudanese person. Here, they started to promote a partnership government between the military and civilians, which was against the will of the revolutionary masses. Through Ethiopia and the intervention of the African Union and IGAD, negotiations between some opportunists affiliated with the revolution and the military council resumed. These negotiations were supported by the so-called international community, and a transitional government was imposed in the name of partnership between the military and civilians, on the basis of which General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan became head of the Sovereign Council (the collective head of state of Sudan), and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, and Dr Abdullah Hamdok became prime minister and the executive authority.

The partnership supported by the “international community”–which was rejected by a large sector of the revolutionary forces, lasted for two years, during which, the prime minister changed his government twice, adopted IMF policies, and raised subsidies for the disgruntled. They also repealed the law rejecting normalization with Israel and went as far as receiving and meeting Israeli leaders in Khartoum. This caused widespread demonstrations and protests against the policies of the Transitional Partnership Government. All these events, in addition to the obliteration of the justice files, increased the gap between the Hamdok government and the revolutionary street. The Islamists and their allies came up with new names and plans, encouraging Burhan and his deputy to overthrow the Freedom and Change Government in a military coup on October 25, 2022.

‘Down with the tenth, down with the tenth, we don’t want military officers in power.’

From the dawn of the coup, the resistance to the new coup began. People came out early in the morning from everywhere, rejecting the coup and the return to military rule. Groups of resistance youth headed to the main streets and blocked them, and some headed to the General Command, but were shot dead before they could enter and occupy the command. More than twenty unarmed peaceful demonstrators were killed that day. This made clear their bloody intention to monopolise power, which increased the ferocity and seriousness of the resistance in overthrowing military rule and breaking the evil cycle forever.

The resistance committees in the neighbourhoods led the resistance and set the overthrow of the coup as a priority and put forward the slogan “No partnership, no negotiation, no legitimacy”, and mobilised the street against the coup and weakened it completely. Under the pressure of the revolutionary street, Burhan released Abdullah Hamdok and a group of detainees and signed a new agreement in which Burhan promised to return to the civil transition path and correct the course of the revolution, something that the revolutionaries completely rejected and continued to demonstrate and protest daily for a year. Burhan was unable to form an executive government as the people continued to reject his rule. Burhan refused to hand over power and killed more than 300 young men and women demonstrators in the streets of Khartoum, Wad Madani and other cities in cold blood.

International complicity

Minister Abdullah Hamdok had passed a decision authorising the arrival of a special UN mission ‘UN Integrated Transition Support Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS)’. Led by a German expert, Volker Peretz, who had worked in Syria for years. From the early days, Mr Volker tried to play the role of mediator between the military and the revolutionary forces, with a clear bias towards the military, looking for a new partnership. The Sudanese reject his approach completely, but Volker and his international community have always worked against the will of the Sudanese people. Volker mobilised the AU, IGAD, Britain, America and Germany, forming a tripartite and quadripartite mechanism. The framework agreement sharply polarized the political actors and revolutionary forces, with some opportunists affiliated with the revolution supporting it and the radical revolutionary movement representatives in the resistance committees rejecting it. 

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Janjaweed militia, agreed to the framework agreement and Burhan refused to sign the security and military reform clause in which the RSF proposed to integrate its forces into the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) over a period of ten years. Military skirmishes began on the border with Central Africa and at Marawi Airport, until a war broke out on Saturday morning, 15 April (28th day of Ramadan), in the capital Khartoum. In the sports city, the airport, Omdurman and Khartoum.

The RSF broadcast a statement saying that it had taken control of the presidential palace, radio and television, leaving only a few parts of the General Command, after which it announced its complete victory and seized power, this time in the name of democracy and against Islamists.

The coup did not succeed and the Janjaweed suffered the biggest failure–they filled Khartoum with their armies and soldiers from everywhere, they took control of citizens’ homes, stole and looted them, expelled their families and barricaded themselves in them. The army bombed their camps, so they barricaded themselves in homes and hospitals, which Burhan also bombed without the slightest concern for the citizens. The war quickly spread throughout Sudan. 

Hundreds of thousands were killed in Khartoum, Darfur and Gezira State. Nearly ten million Sudanese were displaced between displaced people in Sudan’s cities and villages and refugees outside the colonial borders.

In the war for gold and water, everyone is fighting by proxy

The United Arab Emirates is unabashedly supporting the RSF militia–financially, militarily, and through media. There are reports proving their funding of the militia, providing them with modern weapons and anti-aircraft weapons, building field hospitals in Darfur and Chad to treat the wounded and injured RSF mercenaries, in addition to supporting Haftar in Libya and the Russian Wagner forces. The UAE also mobilised its allies in the region, in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, to put pressure on Burhan in order to pass their agenda.

On the other hand, the Islamists, who were ousted from power, found their way into the conflict, declaring their explicit and direct support for Burhan in his holy war, “the war of dignity”, against the militia,  “the militia that came out of their womb”. Burhan found himself under their grip, heading to Turkey, the stronghold of the remnants of the former regime, and automatically directing himself to Al-Burhan, who a little while ago was crawling to normalise with Israel, has only the resistance camp with little support from the Ukrainian army, which officially said that it helped him come out of hiding and supported him with weapons in Khartoum and Darfur to limit the arrival of gold to Russia and the UAE.

In short, after two years and more, the war in Sudan has moved out of the logic of internal social conflict and turned into a global proxy war, led by the comprador in which the machines of global capitalism and its desire for expansionism and control over Sudan’s resources and geopolitical location. The imperialist expansionist proxy war against Sudan, its people, its revolution and its wealth.

“The Metaphorical Ship of the Zionist Entity is Sinking”

Interview with Yazan Eissa (Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Germany)

Yasan Eissa stands in front of a wall, hands clasped in front of him. He is wearing a keffiyeh and a necklace with a pendant.

Editors’ Note: This interview was taken on 8th June, the day before the occupants of the Madleen were kidnapped by Israeli troops on international waters. We will update you with more news as quickly as we can.

Hi Yazan, thanks for talking to us. Could you start by briefly introducing yourself?

My name is Yazan Eissa. I am a Palestinian in exile. I have been living in Germany for seven years already. I am a representative of the Freedom Flotilla in Germany and a steering committee member.

When did you become an activist, and why?

Although I’m not a big fan of the word “activist,” I can say that as a Palestinian, I’ve always resisted the occupation one way or the other. However, ever since October 7, the masks have fallen, not only for me, but for anyone else around the world. 

The governments of the world started taking sides. Capitalism has shown its colours, colonialism and Zionism have become more prominent in the way the governments respond to everything. It was just clear to me that I have to do as much as I could to cause a change in this world. 

How did you get involved with the Freedom Flotilla? 

I simply couldn’t take it anymore, sitting there being helpless. The inability to do anything pushed me to contact as many direct actions as possible, offering my help. I contacted the Freedom Flotilla repeatedly without response. When I found out that a steering committee member was moving to Germany, I contacted them and offered to help start the Germany team.

What inspired you specifically about the Freedom Flotilla compared to other efforts since October 7th?

What really stood out for me was that the Freedom Flotilla had started way before October 7th. It was about the siege of Gaza. It’s the values carried by this organization. Those people actually know about the struggle in Palestine. I realized that even more after joining and talking to them. They’re doing this for the right values and the right cause. 

I really wanted to join them because they were advocating for direct action. Different organizations have different approaches, but for me it was direct action that could make a difference. We could cause turmoil. We could start the butterfly effect. 

Can you tell us about your involvement with the Conscience?

The Conscience is a big ship, and, along with the Madleen, it was set to take almost 50 people to Gaza. I was one of the people who was willing to be a participant and go all the way to break the siege.

But as we were trying to get things started, the Zionist entity took notice of our movements and tried to stop us. First through bureaucratic warfare, then by removing a flag from a ship in international waters––breaching maritime law. They finally resorted to dropping a bomb on the engine of the Conscience and destroying it. They thought this would destroy our hopes. But 2 weeks later, we organised the Madleen to deliver the aid. 

I guess most people know about the Madleen because of the involvement of Greta Thunberg. How important or unimportant is her involvement? 

Speaking to Greta, I know for a fact that her values are in the right place. This is something that made me very comfortable having her on board. In the beginning, we asked her to be there as a prominent figure but not be on the ship. Then she decided: “this is something that I would stand behind. I want to be on the ship.” That’s something we hold a lot of respect for.

Prominent people are more than welcome to be on board, because this means more media and less risk of our comrades being attacked. It was a very strategic decision to make. Rima Hassan, a French parliamentarian, is also aboard. 

The Madleen is not able to take much food, and at the moment thousands of children are being starved to death in Gaza. Is this just a symbolic action?

A year ago, we were trying to deliver 50,000 tons of aid, using the Conscience and other ships. We know that even if we were to take a small ship and load it as much as we can with aid, it would not be enough for a single day in Gaza. 

But we’re doing our best, and that’s why we decided to create a storage area in front of the ship. We even bought barrels, filled the barrels with aid, and then just tied them on board the ship. When you see the pictures of the Madleen, you can see those brown, weird-looking barrels that are filled with aid. 

We also understand, regardless how much we take, it would not be enough for the humanitarian aid to Gaza. But it is not only symbolic, because our main goal is to break the siege on Gaza. We want to open the humanitarian corridor so other ships can join us. After that happens, the siege will be broken by land. From the beginning, our goal was to break the siege on Gaza. 

The Global March for Gaza is starting next week. How are you coordinating with what they’re doing? 

A strategic alliance has been made between the Global March to Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla. They simply share the same goal of breaking the siege on Gaza, so it’s very natural, very organic, that this would happen. As a grassroots movement, we decided not just to break the siege of Gaza by sea, but also by land. Having these all together adds to the idea that the siege is illegal and inhumane. 

How are people in Gaza responding to the Freedom Flotilla?

We have received a lot of support from Gaza; a lot of videos that are emotional and eye watering. They view any sign of hope, any uprising by free people, with happiness. Seeing that there is even the slightest reaction from the people in Gaza is so powerful and motivating for us.

Gaza is basically our soul right now, and our soul is slowly dying. They are killing people by the hundreds every single day. Any form of hope that comes from Gaza is amplified a million times and moves millions of free people around the world, causing waves of resistance from the outside. 

How easy is it for you to stay hopeful? 

It’s really not easy, especially with hundreds of people dying every single day. With every martyr who is killed by the Zionist entity, it makes it more difficult to be hopeful. However, it brings together communities, and makes us want to gather our strength and to move forward.

When we are not resisting, what are we doing? We’re sitting there at home alone, unable to feel, unable to move, unable to live. We experience a collective suicide that is experienced by every single individual on their own. 

We send out a little boat to Gaza, which gets reciprocated by a small hope from Gaza, which gets amplified a million times. This is the way that our energy keeps on adding up and multiplying and amplifying, and the hope starts lightning from this lighthouse. 

It is one fight. It is one monster we are facing. The only way to defeat it is by putting our hands together and fighting.

There’s been attempts to break the siege before, most memorably the Mavi Marmara, where two German MPs were on the boats. That got attacked by Israeli troops. What’s the likelihood that this will happen again? 

If we look at the different missions that came after 2010, the Zionist entity has realised that it’s not in their interest to go on the ship and kill activists and journalists. They had to pay for that.

I really think that because of the strong media presence that we have this time, because all eyes are on us and because the Zionists are losing the grip of their narrative, this will add to our security and hopefully what’s happening right now will not be similar to what happened on the Mavi Marmara.

Could you say a little bit about the change in narrative? Last month, we had Friedrich Merz, Annalena Baerbock, Emmanuel Macron, and Keir Starmer all saying that maybe Israel has gone a little too far. Why do you think that there’s been this shift in how our politicians talk?

Right now, we are reaching a phase where the masks are being removed, where the Zionist entity is losing its grasp of reality. People are seeing what has been going on in Palestine since 1948. They are looking back into the records and a lot of people around the world are starting to wake up; to realize. 

The metaphorical ship of the Zionist entity is sinking. And the partners complicit in this genocide, including Germany, have started to realize this. So it’s a way for them to abandon the ship, to save themselves a little bit by saying: “Now we realize what’s happening is a genocide. Now we realize that we are standing on the wrong side of history.”

One day or the other, the Zionist entity will fall. People are starting to lose hope in the Zionist narrative, and that’s why a huge shift in narrative is happening around the world. 

What are the different scenarios which could happen to the Madleen in the next couple of weeks? 

I think the best way for them is to actually let the ship enter and provide the aid, even if it means they would lose the inhumane siege they have been upholding all those years. The other alternatives would not help them. If they board the ship and injure any one of our comrades that would not come back positively on them. 

It’s also a possibility that they occupy the ship, take it to Ashdod port or Haifa, put the activists in prisons, and then deport them. Our comrades have practiced non-violent resistance. They know what to do there, and they will try their best to make sure that no one gets injured during this process. 

Another scenario, which is, in my opinion, the least likely, is that they would just drop a bomb and kill everyone on board. I do not think that would be a smart move for them, and that’s why I believe there’s a really small likelihood that this thing would happen. But once again, we’re dealing with the Zionist entity, and who knows how far they’re willing to push this.

What happens next? 

Since the beginning of the siege, our idea has been to keep sending ships until the siege is broken. I hope that we do not have to send even more ships, but we are going to send as many ships as we can to end this siege.

What is your next step, personally?

I want to be more part of this global uprising. I want to take part in the social movement of decentralizing away from the government.

I received my Bachelors in renewable energy engineering. Currently I am pursuing a Masters in electrical engineering. I think it would be beautiful if I’m able to use my knowledge and my skills to create electrical grids that are not connected to the government and used in a way that upholds human values and does not destroy the environment. 

This would be a form of launching point, or a base for more social movements where everyone is accepted; everyone is united. We live life the way it’s supposed to be, and then hopefully an example for humanity to just go deeper in that sense and build this new future that I am dreaming about.

What can people do to actively help the Flotilla?

What they need to realize is that this is not a fight for specific people. It’s not only the 12 people on board who are leading the fight. It’s a fight that involves every single person of the free world, and they are part of it. We have so much power in the collective. Putting our hands together and working together would move mountains and not just stones. Freedom Flotilla will soon publish a form for people to join us on the next mission, to participate in any way they can. 

Right now, we are approaching a very tense and critical time with the Madleen, because they are less than 24 hours away from Gaza. We have already been receiving threats by the Zionist entity. The latest threat is that they are going to deploy commandos to board the ship. Those specific commandos with the specific numbers and specific names have been involved in multiple war crimes in Gaza. They’re also going to employ ships and helicopters just to stop this small boat. So it’s going to be a very critical time.

What could be done right now is to not leave our comrades alone on the waters in that ship. Send letters to the government in Germany, for example. German citizen Yasemin Acar is on board that ship, and the German government is obliged to provide security for a German activist who is just upholding the ICJ laws and following the Geneva Conventions and the UN laws to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. 

We should send as many letters and emails as possible to the German foreign office and the Zionist entity’s embassy in Germany. Maybe they won’t read them, but maybe we succeed in causing so much disruption in their system and jamming their signals with the phone calls that they are forced to have a look and see what is going on here.

This is only one of the things that we can do at this specific moment in the next 24 hours where times are critical. 

What is possible in Germany?

I was speaking to a German once, and he told me that what’s happening in Palestine right now is liberating us in Germany. It is making us wake up and see what Germany is doing to us. We do not in fact live in democracy. The amount of people whose houses have been raided by the police for standing firm for Palestine, these are things that should not be silenced.

We, as people, need to draw our boundaries, to tell the German government that this is not all right. If Germans believe in freedom of speech, it doesn’t come at an easy cost. 

Risks are part of it, but it is a global uprising, and it’s happening everywhere else in the world. It’s up to the German public now, whether they choose to be part of it or choose to be complicit in the genocide happening in Gaza.

Imperialism and the working class in the Global North

A response to Joseph Choonara’s talk on the relationship of Global North workers to imperialism


03/11/2024

The British communist newspaper the Daily Worker exposing British atrocities during the Malayan Emergency, 1952. Author unknown, Wikimedia Commons. Gore censored.

This article is meant to act as a response to Joseph Choonara’s series of talks on whether or not workers in the Global North benefit from imperialism in the Global South. While different variants of this talk have been presented to a number of leftist groups in London and Berlin, I am responding to the version of the talk presented at the Socialist Workers Party’s Marxism festival in London. In this article, I briefly summarise Choonara’s main positions, some of which I agree with, and then proceed by responding to those that I take issue with.

Global North workers

Choonara begins his talk by discussing the gravity of his theory, in light of the hundreds of thousands of British workers pouring out onto the streets in solidarity with Gaza. If he is wrong, he claims, then the only reason these people are protesting is because of morality; their material interests are tied to imperialism, and therefore to Israel.

He then states that he is not claiming that living standards for British workers are somehow lower than or even equivalent to living standards for workers in Global South countries like Bangladesh or Chad. He also does not debate that imperialism has ravaged the world, and helped birth capital, which (quoting Marx) “comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt”. Having said that, he takes objection to dependency theory, which states that there is a flow of value from the Global South to the North, and the theory of a labour aristocracy, which states that the interests of workers in the North lie with capital, due to how relatively well-compensated they are.

His issues with dependency theory lie in that it allegedly replaces the ideas of exploitation on the basis of class with ideas of exploitation on the basis of nations. This leads to a core of nations (the capitalist class) and a periphery (the working class), together with a semi-periphery (the middle class). He claims that this obscures class divisions within nation-states, and, more importantly, obscures the mechanisms through which value flows. The birth of capitalism in Britain was due to the specificity of exploitation as a form of labour under capitalism. The same mechanisms that benefited from the slave trade and colonialism, through the processes of primitive accumulation, transformed British farmers into a doubly-free worker: free to sell their labour, free of the ability to reproduce themselves. Dependency theory, by decentering exploitation, obscures its novelty and effectiveness as a mechanism of accumulation.

Moving onto slavery and colonialism, he says that slavery ended due to slave revolts; colonialism in broad swathes of Africa and Asia came to an end after the Second World War, partially because the United States wished for the more capitalist subjugation of these markets. Colonies became less critical to profits, and were left in a state of malign neglect; Northern capitalists attempted to substitute Southern resources with domestic alternatives, oil being an exception. His explanation for the perennial underdevelopment of the South is that capital is directed towards where profits can be generated. This is where one finds clusters of highly educated workforces, large amounts of fixed capital, functional infrastructure, and so on: the global North.

China, he claims, is rather exceptional. China’s meteoric economic rise to being the world’s production hub cannot be explained by dependency theorists. The people that derive their wealth from Chinese growth are exclusively capitalists (who are egalitarian, in that they only care about profit). China, too, has seen the birth of a colossal domestic bourgeoisie, and the rise of massive inequality. Yet, capital remains predominantly focused on Northern Europe, North America and Japan.

Finally, Choonara ends with two problems that dependency theory turns up. First: how do we mobilise British workers if capitalism works in their interests? Second: do we tell Global South workers to strike deals with their own domestic capitalists?

***

If I had to hazard a guess, there are three historic motivations for Choonara’s position. The first of these is that import substitute industrialisation—the idea that the South needed to shut off imports from the more developed North to fuel internal industrialisation—has tended to fail where it has been attempted. The second is that the Global South bourgeoisie does tend to view colonialism as some sort of balance sheet, cynically using the most absurd market valuations of “colonial plunder” to further their own political careers. Finally, the bourgeoisie in the Global South have indeed often succeeded at using postcolonial nationalist fervour to rally “their” workers for “their” cause. For instance, the recent outpourings of grief in India after the death of the industrial capitalist Ratan Tata exemplifies how real this absurd phenomenon is.

Motivation aside, however, Choonara’s interpretation is rather blind to how profits are made and redistributed in the contemporary economy, which is the focus of this article. I shall begin by addressing how Northern capital benefits from imperialism; I shall then follow up with how these advantages are absorbed by Northern labour.

Capital

Choonara is correct that exploitation is the source of surplus value and capitalist growth. However, as theorists since Rosa Luxemburg have been pointing out, capital is subject to frequent crises of profitability, or barriers to its own expanded reproduction. This forces it to rely on spheres of the economy located outside capitalism to offset these crises, such as gendered labour, or racialised labour in the global South. Particularly in the colonial context, these crises were partially offset through cheap resource inputs from the colonies. In Britain, for instance, this included sugarcane from the Caribbean, cotton from American plantations, and later, oil from Iran (p. 94). They have also been offset by turning colonies into (non-competitive) markets, allowing for the expansion of capital located mostly in the core, often mediated via capital in the periphery. This was India’s primary role within the British Empire. Balance-sheet analyses of “how much money was drained from colonies” can actually end up obfuscating these mechanisms, and validating vulgar economism: resources expropriated from the colonies were undervalued by design.

These periodic crises also serve as an explanation for China’s rise. Choonara is correct that China cannot be explained by dependency theory: Dengist reforms and the rapid integration of Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZs) into the world economy was the exact opposite of what many dependency theorists recommended. Deng’s reforms instead created a Chinese bourgeoisie who drew massive profits from the exploitation of Chinese workers, but also drove colossal economic growth for decades, effectively turning China into a microcosm of capitalism itself. But China also represents a bit of a problem for Choonara’s framing. His claim that “capital clusters in the North because profits are higher there” fails to explain why industrial capital moved to China in the first place. A popular analysis of this shift has involved ascribing it to the relative collapse in the rate of profit in the global North’s industrial sector, due to rising productivity and growing wages through organised workers’ movements. Under these readings, this collapse in profitability is what first sparked American industry’s shift to Germany and Japan, followed by South Korea and Taiwan; and finally, two decades ago, to China. Choonara’s repeated insistence that China is an exception is rather iffy. As critics of the winners of this year’s economics Nobel have pointed out: if China or India are exceptions to your model, you need a new model.

Choonara is correct when he says that capital is attracted to where the most productive workers lie. Following the deindustrialisation of the Global North, Northern labour has flooded into the service sector. Britain today produces very few goods: manufacturing accounts for around 8% of both GDP and employment. The majority of British workers are employed in the tertiary sector, which includes fields as diverse as finance, IT, fundamental research, medicine, care work, etc. Some of these roles are intrinsically resilient to real subsumption, and lack clear notions of productivity: a barista or a schoolteacher are equally productive all over the globe (if not more productive in the Global South). Other roles, particularly those that employ highly skilled workers, do generate massive profits. This is where the third volume of Capital becomes relevant. The distribution of profits and rents in the economy, Marx is clear to point out, need not necessarily align to the generation of surplus value itself. As Caffentzis puts it, profits are more of a “field variable” (p. 119), a result of a transformation process applied to societal surplus value. It is precisely this phenomenon that dependency theorists have concerned themselves with: the global North’s use of political power to redirect the surplus value generated in the South towards the North. This does not in any fashion preclude domination by class being the primary mechanism of accumulation, as Choonara would claim it does.

In a contemporary economy, the profits generated by much high-end labour are not necessarily generated through expansions in productivity and output, but rather through their ability to enable this redistribution of surplus value. This is done through a broad range of mechanisms that I shall briefly touch upon.

One of these mechanisms is financial capital, which works to maintain expropriative tendencies in the Global South. This is done through organisations like the IMF, that tether the productive forces of the Global South to Northern credit lines, destroying state capacity through forcing endless reforms. This helps spawn a domestic bourgeoisie, and is also why leftist strategy should not involve pushing citizens of the global South to compromise with their capitalists. First, this class is tiny: it is unclear that a labour-capital compromise in the South would do much to raise living standards. Second, this class often ends up acting as a comprador class, raking in profits while shuffling even larger profits higher up the value chain, mostly to Northern firms. An examination of H&M’s value chain ought to illustrate this perfectly: no Bangladeshi mill-owner will ever approach even a fraction of the wealth of the Persson family.

Yet another mechanism includes the generation of intellectual property, maintained through diverse, shifting mechanisms, such as patents or data holdings. Global North states are able to leverage their highly educated populations to attract both highly educated workers in the South, as well as actual surplus value generated in the South. This is ensured through the creation and the enforcement of ownership over these artificially scarce assets, protected by international law and enforced via treaties like TRIPS. Similar mechanisms increasingly permeate into industrial manufacturing, in countries like Germany or the United States (or critically, Taiwan): patents that protect high-tech manufacturing ensure continual surplus drain from countries that lack the capacity to generate IP at scale.

Often, these processes are accompanied by attempts to shut down Southern productivity where it does exist, forcing payments up the value chain. An example of this is the decades-long battle to force the Indian pharmaceutical industry — which supplies most of the Global South with generic drugs — to recognise intellectual property rights (India presently retains the legal right to ignore international drug patents if there is a major public need for a drug). More recently, the utility of user data in contemporary capitalism has led to Northern corporations actively lobbying for monopoly positions in data extraction: see, for instance, Meta’s Free Basics scandal in Africa.

Labour

One might argue, at this point, that the search for profits benefits capitalists and not labour, whose interests lie in the abolition of capital. But labour has another, more immediate interest than the abolition of capital: it is the consumption of use-values. Being a worker is universally alienating, but alienation is a lot less bad when you only have to work 36 hours a week, mostly at a desk job, and when you can afford to buy a lot of commodities with your wage. Northern states have the capacity to ensure precisely this compromise, to ensure its smooth functioning and reproduction. States aid capital in creating and enforcing the legal mechanisms that allow for the smooth appropriation of surplus value; in exchange, capital transfers part of this appropriated surplus to states, allowing them to retain the capacity to create enough of a welfare state that domestic dissent is quelled. The ability that Northern states have to tax and redistribute surplus value (often generated elsewhere, often through the use of resources expropriated from elsewhere) is what quells domestic workers’ movements. Capitalists have framed the welfare state as a compromise between domestic capital and labour. They are correct.

This is precisely the argument that many dependency theorists have made; to accuse them of “replacing class with nation” is a colossal misrepresentation. Yes, exploitation and expropriation do exist in the Global North. But the former is often offset through the receipt of wages higher than the surplus value generated by the worker. The latter falls squarely onto a range of insecure populations: such as migrants, held captive to migration regimes that kill their capacity to organise, and allow capital to treat them as entirely disposable workers through the very enforceable threat of deportation. To address Choonara’s question about mobilising British workers: capitalism is not going to be overthrown by British workers. It is in the interests of workers in the Global North to retain their reformist sensibilities and struggle for a restoration of the welfare state. This will not change without mass movements in the Global South that de-link both their resources and their labour from the North, redirecting their productive capacities towards instead producing domestic use-values, rather than luxury goods for Northern citizens.

To ignore this is to ignore reality. The Northern working class fully recognises their position, which is simultaneously both privileged and precarious. The desire to maintain this and to win some compromise explains the massive popularity of anti-migration reformists like Sahra Wagenknecht, or of MAGA communism across the pond. As long as Northern states retain their ability to mediate bargains between global capital and domestic labour, this progression is inevitable.

Compromise

Today, the mechanisms of expropriation and of the transfer of surplus value from the Global South as profits and rent towards the North appear to be increasingly turning inwards. This is neoliberalism manifest: the same processes of subjugation forced upon the Global South have been granted increased freedom, in the wake of profitability crises, to inflict the same horrors upon Northern citizens. This has been particularly true in the aftermath of 2008, where quantitative easing (QE) has resulted in extraordinary freedom for capital, and these processes of commodification have accelerated all over the globe. Financial capital, for instance, has embarked upon a program for the rapid privatisation of assets previously held by the state, such as public transport, housing and even healthcare. This follows market principles: these commodities are affordable, but for high-wage workers that enter the hallowed halls of finance and tech. Ultimately, this growing wage gap has sparked growing polarisation in Western economies, and is potentially the cause of the renewal of radical politics beyond the end of history.

But times change, and political economy with it. The Western world appears to have begun an orderly exit from neoliberalism, precisely now that capital accumulation outside the core has accelerated. There have been signs of this reversal for decades: already in the 2000s, Brazilian and Indian capitalists had begun suing the United States for its anti-competitive agricultural subsidies. QE might have extended neoliberalism’s longevity somewhat, but perceived Chinese belligerence and the COVID supply chains crisis have led to de-risking becoming an increasingly consensus position in the US. Europe remains more split, partially due to German economic imbecility. German capitalists dream of selling cars to the Chinese middle class, and appear to take some perverse pleasure in impoverishing Greeks; at this point, this fetish goes against the better judgement of even orthodox establishment economists like Mario Draghi.

This has the potential to lead to a grand restoration of labour movements in the global North. Now that essential production is less inclined to move to China or Vietnam, labour could win back its fading ability to compromise with capital by asserting control over their own states through labour movements, just as they did in the past. Whatever revolutionary fervour exists in the Global North can be quelled: the labour-capital compromise is, at the cost of the Global South, something that can be attained. Congolese tantalum will continue to enter Chinese suicide-proof factories for consumer electronics; the productive forces of Bangladesh will remain devoted to spinning yarn for Northern luxury brands as their own country disappears into the Indian Ocean; the deforestation of the Amazon and the Indonesian rainforest will continue so Northern consumers retain easy access to the finest hazelnut chocolate spreads. Smaller, wealthier European nation-states are a template for this paradigm. Their economies tend to consist of highly-educated service workers engaged in generating intellectual property. High taxation, and union-driven wage negotiation ensures both that the proceeds of capital are distributed to workers, and that rapidly growing wage discrepancies do not upset domestic markets. This is accompanied by rigid migration systems (such as in Denmark): ensuring, in practice, a system that works mostly exclusively for highly-skilled workers that will join the IP/patent-generating masses.

***

I would like to raise a counter-problem to the challenges that Choonara has raised. In light of the fallout from 2008, many Southern countries have fallen deeper and deeper into economic stagnation and an active de-development that rivals the colonial period. This is increasingly impossible to ignore. At this point, the extractive tendencies of Northern capital are clear to most heterodox economists, and even a subsection of the orthodoxy. The average early-20s liberal activist is fully aware of the conditions in which their chocolate and coffee are grown, or their 118 items of clothing are produced (what they choose to do with this knowledge is, of course, a different story).

Someone who has grown up in a Global South country integrated into the world economy has likely either experienced or witnessed gruelling labour conditions, and is fully aware of how they end up generating profits for Northern firms. For the lucky few that end up moving to the North, what they see is a crumbling but still intact welfare state, with leisure time and a bountiful surplus of commodities and services, many of which are subsidised by precarious labour in their home countries. In the absence of a movement that genuinely acknowledges the role imperialism plays in subsidising Northern lifestyles, many of these workers will be driven to reaction, driven more by a desire to “discipline” the “lazy” than to actually collectively liberate humanity from exploitation.

When all is said and done, Choonara and other developmentalist-Marxists are perfectly entitled to their own analysis of things. What is rather poor form, however, is to present these analyses as if they were established fact: as if Marxian analyses of the utility of colonialism were fringe tankie opinions, and critical analyses of the welfare state were revisionist heresy, tearing apart the unity of the workers of the world. This goes beyond being merely poor form, and becomes actively harmful when presented to an audience of newly radicalised Northern citizens, as an invitation to participate in some sort of collective moral redemption, but in a leftist fashion.

***

Finally, a few finishing notes. Choonara refers to Saudi Arabia (and presumably other petrostates, like the UAE and Qatar) as “Global South” nations. This is quite a strange usage of the term. The Gulf features some of the highest incomes for citizens in the world; they feature extensive welfare states, near-0% taxation, and require very little labour from citizens. The labour forces in these countries tend to be migrants with no pathway to permanent residence, let alone citizenship. Many of them work in non-free conditions akin to slavery, with routine passport confiscations through the kafala system. But more importantly, these nations are very much part of the informal American empire. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar are major non-NATO allies; Saudi is frequently referred to as an American client state, with good reason. The sole exception in the Gulf is Iran, a country that has been wrecked by sanctions since the Revolution.

Next, the planet. At this point it is abundantly clear to everyone that there are planetary limits to consumption, and that consumption patterns simply cannot be extended to the entire world. This provides an almost trivial counterargument to Choonara’s claims: the consumption power of the Northern (particularly American) worker, in an egalitarian world, must necessarily collapse. This is definitionally against their interests.

Finally, concerning Israel. It seems to me to be rather uncharitable to refuse to credit British workers with even a shred of morality and camaraderie. Yes, these workers benefit from imperialism; this does not mean that they will blindly support imperialism’s absolute worst excesses, especially not if they are workers whose ethnic or religious identity emphasises solidarity with Palestine. This wasn’t true during the colonial period, when abolitionism and Home Rule societies thrived in England, and there is no reason it should be true today. And it would do us good to remember that not all forms of imperialism serve the same purpose or are equally useful. The establishment of the State of Israel may have been in the interests of Western capital, but at this point, it is unclear what anyone in the West gains from Israel’s expanding, genocidal campaign. At this point, the Western world appears to be lumbering towards slow political suicide, under no force other than its own sheer inertia.

Good. The sooner it dies, the better.

The post-election challenge in France

Interview with John Mullen by Tempest magazine


16/10/2024

What do you understand to be the main lessons from the summer’s electoral process? Given Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) won the greatest number of votes (more than 10 million) in each round of the election, despite failing to win a majority of parliamentary seats, do you consider the outcome of the second round a defeat for the forces of the far right?

You have to look at the dynamic of the situation. What looked like the unstoppable rise to government of the fascists was pushed back by the biggest mobilization against them for decades.

The second round was an important tactical victory for the Left and for the working class. Consistent polls predicted that the RN would win more seats than any other group, and might even secure an overall majority in parliament, but they ended up in third place. However, the far right will only remain on the back foot for a short period.

Four parties of the Left formed a coalition—the Nouveau Front Populaire, the New Popular Front (NPF), comprised of the Communists, Socialists, Greens, and La France Insoumise (France in Revolt)—and agreed on a fairly radical minimum program for government in record time. They were, it is true, under tremendous pressure from below (outside the building where negotiations happened, hundreds had gathered to chant slogans of unity). The result is that we do not have a fascist government.

Those political groups who were (and are) opposed to the coalition, one must imagine, consider that it changes little or nothing who is in government. Given that Marine Le Pen’s party has declared it wants the hijab to be banned in all public places, social housing to be reserved to French nationals, and certain public sector jobs to be forbidden even to people with dual nationality, one can imagine there are few Muslims or people from ethnic minorities in France who are quite so relaxed about this prospect. Even a minority government controls the police and the schools, and fascist ministers in charge of these domains would be a demoralizing nightmare for our class.

The reason I speak of a tactical victory is that the fascists remain very strong. They have 140 or so MPs (several dozen more than before) and they garnered ten million votes. The need for a mass anti-fascist movement to go onto the offensive against them is clear.

For the moment, the National Rally is very weak indeed on the ground. In many towns they have practically no party structure, and they have not organized a street demonstration of more than 10,000 people for decades. At its annual conference the NR leadership noted that, in addition to continuing the long march through the institutions and their obsession with respectability, they absolutely must build locally. It would be quite possible for antifascists to stop them with broad campaigns of education and harassment.

Because the NR has concentrated on a parliamentary strategy, hoping to win power in the institutions to then permit a mass of street fighters, it is particularly the wrong time to argue that elections have no importance.

Earlier this month, President Emmanuel Macron, himself a figure of authoritarian neoliberalism, ignored historical precedent in overseeing the creation of the new government after the election. Macron facilitated the creation of a new government led by a prime minister (Michel Barnier) from the traditional center-right party, The Republicans,which had come in fourth place. In doing so, Macron refused to allow the NFP, with the largest number of parliamentary seats, to seek to form a government. How do you assess the stability of this government and the role that now has to be played by the NFP, La France Insoumise, and the forces of the revolutionary left, respectively? What has been the response of the Left, as well as the working-class, to Macron’s decision?

Although the present crisis is a slow-burning one, it is the deepest in the country since 1968. The constitution forbids repeat parliamentary elections until next June, so we will see weak minority governments, rapidly changing alliances, and significant space for extraparliamentary revolt.

Barnier’s government is stuffed with reactionaries who are copying ideas from the RN. But Macron would have preferred a more stable left-right coalition, and is unhappy that (so far) the left coalition, the New Popular Front, has held.

Every political organization and political alliance in the country is fragile, including the Barnier government. It took a long time for him to choose ministers, and apparently he had to threaten to resign to make Macron accept his list. The ministers are already bickering publicly about whether RN is a legitimate democratic party or not.

The NFP has reacted by insisting that Macron is in contempt of democracy and that Lucie Castets, the agreed NFP candidate for prime minister, should have been appointed. Nevertheless, nearly half the Socialist Party National Committee wanted to break the left alliance, and voted to support a compromise PM, Bernard Cazeneuve.

It seems to me essential that the whole of the Left should defend the very limited democracy we have under capitalism. It does matter whether Macron respects elections or not. La France Insoumise (but not the rest of the NFP) is campaigning for Macron to be impeached for not respecting democracy. This is a healthy, popular demand. The reactions of the revolutionaries have varied, but sadly almost none of the groups have supported the campaign for impeachment.

On other important questions of strategy, the far left organizations are very far from unanimous. One of the bigger groups, Le Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste—The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), has joined the NFP as a minor player. Others are busy denouncing it.

At very short notice, the NFP was able to build an electoral coalition, one that mobilized broadly across the Left, and within working-class, immigrant, and Arab and Muslim communities, to win the largest plurality of seats. What, if any, is the ongoing impact of these mobilizations in the face of the right-wing government? Can this coalition be the basis for ongoing struggle against the Right?

To some extent. On September 7, demonstrations led by youth organizations and La France Insoumise, and looked on favorably by the leadership of the main left trade union confederation, the Confédération Générale du Travail—General Confederation of Labour (CGT), took place in some 150 towns across France. The Green party and the Communists called for people to get on the streets, but the Socialist Party did not. On September 21, there was a similar mobilization, but it was considerably smaller. La France Insoumise is at the center of this dynamic, with other parts of the NFP sometimes agreeing to join in.

It is impossible to say what will come out of a situation which sees both dynamic mass activism and plenty of discouragement on the Left. No doubt the key result on the ground is the 60,000 new people who have asked to get involved with La France Insoumise and the many hundreds who have joined the different revolutionary organizations.

The more parliament is paralyzed, the more mass action outside parliament is crucial.

There is a lot of criticism and skepticism of the NFP from sections of the revolutionary left based on the participation of the historically social liberal, and pro-NATO Socialist Party. How do you respond to this line of criticism? And how do you understand the balance of forces within the NFP between its constituent parts? How stable do you expect it to be in the face of the Barnier government?

You form coalitions with people you do not agree with. If the La France Insoumise leadership had said, “We will not ally with the social-liberals,” there would be a fascist-led government in France today. Every day gives good reason to mistrust most of the leadership of the Socialist Party (as well as the Communist Party), but it is critical that their leaders were pressured from below to sign on  to a radical program to block a fascist government.

Like every political force in France today, the coalition is unstable and the right-wing of the Socialist Party are getting organized in case the alliance falls apart. Among other crises, a small group of four or five La France Insoumise members of parliament has split off to its right, accompanied by acres of joyful newsprint from the right-wing media. Some of the less right-wing of Macron’s MPs have left his grouping, and the Greens are also having fierce internal debates.

The good news is that Macron’s plan A and plan B both failed. Plan A was the lightning speed election which was supposed to knock out a divided left and leave Macron as “our only defense against fascism.” Plan B was to split the left alliance and set up a “national unity” government with the Right and with sections of the Left outside La France Insoumise.

The huge movement of strikes and street mobilizations, which is necessary and likely, stands more chance against this weak Barnier government.

Insofar as the forces of the far right, led by Marine Le Pen’s RN—which won the greatest number of votes in each round of the election—are essentially giving support to the Barnier government, how do you assess the impact of the new government on the growth of the far right?

This support could be very temporary indeed. But obviously the fascists are hoping to advance in the crisis. Firstly, they want to gain respectability outside their own electorate, particularly in upper-middle-class circles. Secondly, they want to pretend they are the realistic alternative to discredited Macronism. Lastly, they need to encourage their fascist core with red meat racist rhetoric. It’s a difficult balance. In addition, they want to build local party structures everywhere. So, they have real strengths, but lots of weak points that antifascists can attack. There are some signs of antifascist activity increasing around the country, including in La France Insoumise.

Given the role that La France Insoumise has been playing, and its undisputed mass support within left-wing and antifacist sections of the working-class and immigrant and Arab and muslim communities, it seems clear that revolutionary socialists should relate to this in some way. At the same time, there is some criticism of its inability or failure to create a “democratic membership organization.” In what ways can the revolutionary left relate to LFI?

I was a member of revolutionary organizations in France for more than 30 years. If I am no longer a member now, it is because I think they are wrong on crucial questions and their attitudes to the French new left is at the center of this.

The emergence of La France Insoumise over the last eight years represents a remarkable success for mass left reformism, which must be clearly understood if revolutionaries are to react appropriately.

This is an organization that secured more than 7.5 million votes in 2022 and that speaks of “a citizen’s revolution.” Its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, calls it “an anticapitalist force, aiming at ecological planning of the economy.” Tens of thousands of people have flocked to the movement over the last couple of months. La France Insoumise organized a summer school with 116 meetings and more than 5,000 people in August 2024. It has set up regular educational courses for activists, including “Introduction to Marxism” classes, and is taking the accumulation of cadre seriously.

La France Insoumise was the driving force behind the coalition that pushed back the fascists—and it is the force attracting the best young activists now. The organization has succeeded in transforming public debate and breaking the reigning “there is no alternative to neoliberalism” atmosphere. It has brought opposition to islamophobia into the mainstream of left politics, from where it had been absent for several decades (even though both La France Insoumise and the revolutionary left in France have some distance still to go on this question).

The organization is organizationally independent of the old reformist left (unlike, say, mass Corbynism in the United Kingdom). It now publishes books, organizes weekend schools and lectures, and seems to be becoming hegemonic on the radical left.

In sharp contrast to left reformist groups in several other countries, La France Insoumise’s leadership has held firm on the two issues on which the establishment pressure has been strongest: Palestine and police violence. Two of its leaders, Mathilde Panot and Rima Hassan, were called into the police station, accused of the crime of “supporting terrorism.”

Mélenchon had an official police complaint lodged against him by the Ministry of Higher Education because he criticized the disgusting attitude of the Chancellor of Lille University who banned the group’s lecture on the genocide in Gaza. A far-right police trade union organized a demonstration in front of La France Insoumise’s headquarters some time back. In short, La France Insoumise is the center of gravity of radical left politics.

Its emergence is the result of two phenomena. Firstly there is the generalization of political class consciousness in France after the mass political strikes of 1995, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2019, and 2023 (against attacks on pensions or on labor protection legislation) and the popular revolts of 2005, 2018, and 2023 (against police violence or rural poverty). Secondly, there was the weakness and division of the revolutionary left, which we would have liked to have become hegemonic. The result is a mass left reformism, seen as an open-ended determination to rethink the whole of society.

It would be disastrous for revolutionaries to primarily see this new force as unwelcome competition. Seeing tens of thousands of new activists flood in to defend a “citizens’ revolution” and “spectacular change” should delight every Marxist. “Debate, debate, debate” should be the priority—not “denounce, denounce, denounce!” It is essential to take as a starting point what the relation is between La France Insoumise and workers’ interests, not to start with what effect the rise of the FI will have on our small organizations.

It is easy to read online what the main newspapers of the French revolutionary left have written about La France Insoumise in the last few years. The organization is almost never mentioned, except to denounce selected actions, tactics, or slogans. You find almost no debates with its representatives, nor do you find fraternal in-depth articles explaining agreements and disagreements. I think these two kinds of articles should have been present in every issue of every publication.

Mélenchon has written seven books in the last ten years. I have been unable to find a review of any of them in the main far left publications in France.

This tendency to assess other parties of the Left in a sectarian manner has led to some serious mistakes, cutting the far left off from the most promising new masses of activists. I will mention three examples.

In the presidential elections in 2022, two separate Trotskyist candidates stood against Melenchon, obtaining 0.56 and 0.77 percent of the vote (as against Mélenchon’s 21.95 percent). What is more, the campaign of the least unpopular, Philippe Poutou, mostly spoke of radical reforms, not of revolution.

Then, two months ago, a few La France Insoumise MPs split off from the party, after having prepared a new organization (L’Après—L’Association pour la République écologique et sociale). It is becoming clear that this formation will, in fact, be less left-wing. Much of the far left supported the split and continues to support the small organization born from it, citing worries about democracy within La France Insoumise.

And, third, the far left has refused, with occasional honorable exceptions, to contradict and fight against the horrific smear campaigns against Mélenchon and other La France Insoumise leaders, which are similar to those run against Corbyn in the United Kingdom a few years ago, that he is an antisemite and “friend of Vladimir Putin” and so on.

Concerning the kind of organization La France Insoumise is building: unimpressed with the results of traditional radical left parties in France, which are frequently bogged down in endless faction fighting, its leadership wanted to try something different. The party has no formal membership, no one can be expelled, representatives at national delegate meetings are chosen by lottery, and local action groups are very much autonomous. The program is meant to hold the organization together.

Revolutionaries may agree or disagree with these methods (though no one is asking our opinion, to be clear), but they give rise to a situation that has advantages for Marxists. You can be an activist in La France Insoumise and a member of another organization. You can openly publish your own paper and have your own meetings.

Personally, I can’t see why revolutionaries won’t work openly inside La France Insoumise. Two or three Trotskyist groups do, keeping their independent voice. But even groups that prefer to stay outside should be ten times more interested than they are in debating with La France Insoumise people on the many crucial questions thrown up by the present crisis.

Despite its important work building up movements, the revolutionary left is a small player, and needs to recognize this. Mostly, what we have to offer is ideas, analysis, history.

Many debates are in progress inside La France Insoumise. How should we understand women’s oppression? How can a radical program be implemented? What should we think of the animal rights movements, privilege theory, the crisis of imperialism, or left patriotism? Marxists have a huge contribution to make to these discussions.

There are also numerous serious disagreements between Marxists and the leadership of La France Insoumise over French imperialism, the role of parliament, the potential for constitutional reform, and so on.

But in La France Insoumise, we have an attractive, dynamic mass organization looking for a “citizens’ revolution.” We Marxists want a workers’ revolution. But in a situation in which 90 percent of the working class do not see a clear difference between the two, it’s better to be inside the hall discussing the way forward than standing in the bus shelter across the road, searching through lists of tactical decisions by La France Insoumise looking for one to denounce.

This interview first appeared on the Tempest website. Reproduced with permission.

Wolt Claims to be Apolitical but its Actions Suggest Otherwise

Wolt is funnelling money to Israeli businesses and menacing anyone who disagrees.


06/07/2024

The Left Berlin interviewed an employee at Wolt about the company’s support of Israel. The employee wishes to remain anonymous.

What happened at Wolt that made you want to speak out?

Israel is one of the biggest markets for Wolt, I think it is the third biggest market. After the 7th of October and everything that happened in Gaza, so around I think November, I heard from colleagues that there were some problems on Slack, like our communication platform regarding this incident, regarding the 7th of October. And that the CEO was involved in that discussion. And the people who told me were pretty disappointed. They are for Palestine and they were disappointed by the reaction of the CEO. So I was really interested in what was happening. One of them sent me the the link of the conversation. So I went there and checked. Apparently in Israel, some colleagues there, some employees involved, they created a link to support the Israeli small businesses, merchants, restaurants and so on, where anyone around the world can go to that link and make a normal purchase. And instead of just sending donations, they will make a normal purchase. So the people there, they make this food and they will donate it.

So when I read everything, I was like yeah, okay. Whatever they can do whatever they want to support anyone. Although no one there needs any support – we will get to that point. So I read something like there was a deleted comment in the conversation. Under this deleted comment, there were a lot of emojis. We use a lot of emojis in Slack and Wolt is famous for using emojis, but all the emojis were very highly disrespectful. Like discussing everything using the middle finger, the shit, and the comments under that deleted comment we’re amazingly bad language. And then there’s the comment from the CEO himself commenting on that comment that work is not a place for discussing politics. And the deleted one was made by someone whose name is Mohammed.

The CEO said go back to work, targeting Mohammed directly. I don’t know where Mohammed works. I don’t know which country he’s in. So Mohammed commented on the CEO’s comment again saying okay, I’m sorry for the political comment. But can we please make the same initiative for the people in Gaza? Then the CEO commented again, repeating his words, I’m telling you, is not the place nor the time to discuss this subject. Go back to work. So first thing came to my mind was, why it is the time and place for Israelis to do such an initiative, but not for other people? So I started to tell everyone around me because there are a lot of pro-Palestinian people working there.

And just a couple of days after that, the management in Finland was bombarded with emails. Because they immediately tried to do something and it was disgusting what they did. They shut down any one who is pro-Palestinian and just let all the pro-Israelis talk in the public channels to everyone and post whatever they want. At the same time deleting anything else that is pro-Palestinian. At first of all, they sent an email apologizing for what happened. And all of the emails they sent, they never mentioned what Mohammed said. What was the deleted comment? I couldn’t find the deleted comment and they didn’t mention what it is. They just said it’s political. But what Mohamed said, no one knows.

They also don’t want to stop this initiative, and at the same time, they don’t want to create a new initiative for Palestine at the moment. And they said, we’re going to find a solution. Just wait. So it took them around a week or two. I don’t remember exactly, but they came up with the solution or what they thought was a solution. What is the solution? The solution was that they going to donate, with DoorDash, $1 million to both parties. To both sides. The Israeli and the Palestinian. But still not creating this initiative to donate for Gaza.

But they never said anything or explained how these donations are going to be sent, through which kind of organization. So the only way that they’re going to send donations is that they’re going to send it to Israel. So that will never reach Gaza whatsoever. And then after that, no one talked about this again. And whatever you say, whatever you send them, they answer we are sorry. We’re working to have better communications. The only thing they did is to delete the emojis. The hurtful emojis under Mohammed’s comment. This is everything they did. 

Does this fit with your experience at the company?

The management, they’re trying to to avoid any political discussion whatsoever. Like before the 7th of October. So nothing was political in any kind of communications inside the company. I will give it to them. Like in this case, they were really professional, until this happened. After this happened, they showed exactly that they are pro-Israeli. But at the same time, while trying their best to keep it apolitical. They keep sending apologies to everyone. We are sorry, we know we are not doing enough, please bear with us, it’s complicated, we don’t know what to do right now, we didn’t face these kind of situations before, etc. So they always have this type of communication. So they tried to not show that they are political in any way.

But supporting Israel was an exception to this?

Yeah. And they are sharing, and they are proud of it, how many millions they collected and so on. I went back to the same channel, to the same discussion. And I saw how much they are proud of, the millions they are collecting. Especially coming back to the subject where I told you that they don’t even need any donations in Israel. The market in Israel is still booming. It’s still going up. It’s like nothing is happening. This is what’s scary. The market in Israel is still doing great. That’s why it’s like, why all these donations? They don’t even need any donations! They are still working. People are still buying. Number are still going higher and higher every day. 

Why do you feel this Israel initiative wasn’t justified?

The point is: Why are we allowing such an initiative to happen and trying everything to prevent the same initiative to happen for Palestinians? Like why these double standards? Like you are not political, okay, I’ll give it to you, but why then are you fighting against any initiative to help the other side.

And how does the initiative in Israel work?

The ones who created the initiative were asking people to take the link and share it with their family and friends. This is how they share the link. It’s not something like when you go online, you can see that Wolt stands with Ukraine and these kind of things. So you give businesses in Israel the money and the businesses just take it as normal business. But they make purchases and they give it to people. So you’re donating to people through the businesses. 

They [Wolt] are open with it. They’re doing it in front of everyone. But as I said, the point is this reaction towards any request to do something for the other side. And the solution they came up with, which is actually disappointing and pathetic.

We’re talking months after the 7th of October, and they are doing really good. So why do they need donations? Why? They’re still doing good. They are showing on TV that it’s a disaster. But everything is still going normally. 

How do others feel about the situation?

When we talk, we are highly disappointed. No one likes the decision they came up with. Everyone criticizes them, but no one publicly could do anything. Like, even the ones who contacted the management, they never wrote anything publicly on Slack. Because every one of us is just afraid that we’re going to lose our jobs. And especially after merging with DoorDash. Then it became very easy for you to be laid off. Because the first layoff, the big one happened exactly after merging. And it came actually from DoorDash, that decision. And 1,500 employees only in Wolt, not DoorDash, were laid off. From all of Wolt worldwide, of course, not only in Germany, but still it’s a big number. In Berlin alone, 15 people were laid off. And the layoffs were not just for anyone. Just like three of the 15 were maybe in their probation, where you can say like, okay, it’s probation, maybe the company don’t need that, or they didn’t reach any agreement, but the rest, around 12 of them were from the best employees. People who helped the company to grow in Germany. They are highly competent. They have great experience. They did a lot. And all of them surprisingly.

Why are people worried for their jobs?

Until now, they have mentioned the layoffs only once. One general meeting someone wrote this anonymous question – I still don’t know if it’s anonymous, to be honest – but someone wrote something about why we don’t have a Betriebsrat (workers council). And they just went crazy and called in the general manager immediately. And then in the meeting she took like 15 minutes just to explain how amazing we are doing and we don’t need Betriebsrat. How safe the employees are, and then sending emails and like talking again in different meetings. They’re trying really hard to show people like, no, no, no, we don’t need it. You are really safe here, while at the same time this was happening, the whole discussion about the Betriebsrat we had no HR. There were zero HR employees. I think we at the time we had only three employees and all of them were on vacation at the same time. So there is no one to solve your problem. Anything you need it has to go to Finland. And from Finland they don’t see anything in front of them. For them, everything is just numbers. They’re just requests coming from strange people. They don’t know even the pictures.

 

Here is one of the websites through which people could donate food to Israelis. You can read more about Wolt’s initiative in Israel here.