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In memory of Ozzy Osbourne

Looking back at Ozzy Osbourne’s incredible and notorious legacy


02/08/2025

He built the foundation for an entire musical genre so beloved by its fans that it has taken on many of the characteristics of a religion. His show The Osbournes established the template which created, for worse or for worse, reality TV as we know it. He urinated on the Alamo resulting in a decade-long ban from San Antonio, snorted ants up his nose, and, intoxicated beyond belief, “mistakenly” bit the heads off of two doves which he had intended to dramatically release during a meeting with record label executives. He left us with such memorable quotes as “I am Burrito Man” and “Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?”. He was one of the world’s most beloved performers whose influence transcends genres and styles. After years of struggling with Parkinson’s disease, after surviving a quad accident, and after decades of substance abuse, Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness, has made his last bow sober and surrounded by love. His funeral procession was accompanied by tens of thousands of devoted fans crying “Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy oi oi oi!” through the streets of Birmingham. Ozzy’s final performance raised over 190 million dollars—to be split between Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn’s Children’s Hospice, and Cure Parkinson’s—surpassing every other charity concert in history, including 1985’s Live Aid—a truly rock’n’roll exit to the man who exemplified the rock’n’roll life.

John Michael Osbourne was born to a working-class family in Birmingham, England on 3 December 1948. Raised in an area where the only possible futures seemed to reside in factory labor, “Ozzy” met bass-player Terence “Geezer” Butler after posting an ad in a local music shop (“Ozzy Zig Needs a Gig”). The two musicians eventually united with guitar player Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward, forming the Polka Tulk Blues Band, then the band Earth, before finally settling on the name “Black Sabbath”. Inspired by the effect horror films had on people, the band crafted an image that was ominous and frightening, with Ozzy bringing a fitting dash of comedy into the mix.

Known for his showmanship and stage antics—from hoisting the late-great guitar hero Randy Rhoads into the air mid-solo to the silly but somehow contagiously energetic jumping jacks and clapping of his later years—an Ozzy concert was a spectacle indeed. A man of contradictions, Ozzy Osbourne always seemed comically out of place surrounded by the wealth and privilege he enjoyed for much of his adult life, resulting in hilarious moments like this gem where he reflects on his working-class character and determination to do his own chores from his Beverly Hills mansion while being served meals that look like they should be in an art gallery instead of on a plate.

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath!

Formed by Osbourne, Iommi, Butler, and Ward, Black Sabbath laid the foundation for heavy metal music while surrounded by the tense and constant beats of Birmingham’s industrial machinery. In fact, industry played more than a symbolic role in the development of Black Sabbath’s sound—guitarist Tony Iommi lost bits of his fingers in an accident on his last day of work at a sheet metal factory. Persevering with a set of plastic fingertips he made for himself, the new difficulties of playing led Iommi to detune his guitar, slackening the strings, resulting in a much darker tone. Combine this with Bill Ward’s swinging drumbeats, Geezer Butler’s bluesy baselines and ominous lyrics, and Ozzy Osbourne’s melodies and incredible vocals, which managed to haunt even as they soared, and you have the perfect recipe for a heavy metal origin story.

Black Sabbath released a total of nineteen studio albums with numerous lineup changes between 1970 and 2013, though it is the original Ozzy-fronted lineup that produced the band’s most successful work. The band’s self-titled debut was a groundbreaking mixture of horror-inspired blues and rock’n’roll. The artwork on Black Sabbath perfectly captures the mood of the album, with a menacing figure gazing directly at you against a busy and unsettling background. The title track opens to the sound of rain and is premised on a tritone, the so-called “devil’s interval”. Osbourne’s haunting voice enters with fearful questions:

“What is this that stands before me?
Figure in black which points at me
Turn ‘round quick and start to run
Find out I’m the chosen one
Oh no!”

Heavy metal was born.

The band’s sophomore album Paranoid featured what would become some of the band’s most famous songs, the title track becoming a radio hit. Fueled by the growing sentiment against the invasion of Vietnam, “War Pigs” continues to serve as a powerful protest anthem and has been covered by artists ranging from Faith No More to T-Pain. Then there is “Iron Man” (no, not the Marvel character), with its thundering riff that, to this day, is often the first thing new guitarists learn to play (making it the bane of music store employees around the world).

The Ozzy-fronted Sabbath continued to release a number of now classic albums including Master of Reality, Vol. 4, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. However, after the release of the band’s eighth album Never Say Die! internal frustrations, drug abuse, and accusations against Osbourne’s notorious unreliability reached a pinnacle. Osbourne was kicked out of the band and replaced by Ronnie James Dio, who would eventually reform the band as Heaven and Hell.

Ozzy Zig needs a gig (again)

Following his dismissal from Black Sabbath and a stint of coke-fueled melancholy, Osbourne got back on the horse and began putting together a band for his solo debut with the assistance of the notorious music manager Don Arden and his daughter Sharon Arden (now Sharon Osbourne). The album Blizzard of Ozz featured the talents of Don Airey on keyboards, Bob Daisley on bass, Lee Kerslake on drums, and Quiet Riot’s Randy Rhoads on guitar. Daisley’s excellent writing and Rhoads’ blistering guitar skills, which injected an element of high-speed “classical” music into Osbourne’s blues-rock style, paved the way for success. Blizzard of Ozz would eventually be certified 5x platinum in the United States and contained several of Osbourne’s greatest hits—what rock playlist is complete without “Crazy Train”?

Osbourne’s solo success continued with the followup album Diary of a Madman and its creeping but mesmerizing title-track, alongside more bombastic hits like “Over the Mountain” and “Flying High Again”. Then tragedy struck. In 1982 the band’s tour bus driver, Andrew Aycock, offered to take Rhoads and Rachel Youngblood (who was in charge of make-up and costumes) on a flight in a small airplane. Behaving recklessly, Aycock clipped the tour bus with the wing of the aircraft, where Ozzy and Sharon were then sleeping, breaking the plane’s wing and leading to a fatal crash that killed Aycock, Rhoads, and Youngblood. Rhoads’ tenure with Osbourne, his display of musical genius and his charismatic showmanship which meshed so perfectly with Osbourne’s stage persona, have become permanently sewn into the tapestry of heavy metal mythology.

A long farewell

Those who have been following Osbourne’s musical career for a long time have likely seen the musician’s “last” show a number of times. From the “No More Tours” tour in 1992 (undone by the 1995 “Retirement Sucks Tour”) to the comically titled “No More Tours II” in 2018, plus Black Sabbaths’ “The End” tour in 2016-17 (following the band’s release of 13, the first album with Osbourne since 1978) one might be forgiven for thinking that Ozzy Osbourne would go on playing forever. And in a way, he did—living up to the principles of heavy metal excess, Ozzy quite literally rocked right to the end.

Osbourne’s final show, the “Back to the Beginning” charity event in Birmingham, was an homage to heavy metal history and Ozzy’s defining role in it. The event brought together a veritable “who’s who” of rock royalty. Hosted by the guitar legend and socialist activist Tom Morello, band after band took the stage showcasing the development of the genre pioneered by Osbourne and his Black Sabbath bandmates over five decades ago. Each band was afforded time to play some of their own hits plus covers of Ozzy or Black Sabbath songs (Halestorm’s rendition of “Perry Mason” and Slayer’s performance of “Wicked World” were notable highlights). Metallica’s James Hetfield praised metal’s founding fathers, stating “without Sabbath there would be no Metallica” during a set which saw metal’s largest act dish out some Black Sabbath deep cuts.

Osbourne took to the stage on a throne and, despite his physical impairments, still managed to exude a tremendous amount of energy and emotion from his seated position. Seeming to tear up during his final performance of “Mama I’m Coming Home”, Ozzy thanked the audience proclaiming “you have no idea how I feel, thank you from the bottom of my heart”. It was an incredible farewell, and before the fun got underway Ozzy was even able to witness Slipknot’s Sid Wilson make a marriage proposal to his daughter Kelly Osbourne (in typical fashion, Ozzy didn’t miss a beat, joking “Fuck off! You’re not marrying my daughter!”). After his passing, Sabbath cofounder Tony Iommi acknowledged the mounting challenges to Ozzy’s health and remarked that Ozzy likely “just held out to do that show”, determined to say one final goodbye.

A career of controversies

Unfortunately, the “Back to the Beginning” event was not without controversy. A recorded appearance by Marilyn Manson, the infamous shock-rocker embroiled in a number of sexual assault and abuse allegations, brought boos from the otherwise jubilant crowd. Further booing emerged with the appearance of Disturbed frontman David Draiman, a notorious Zionist who has been photographed signing Israeli artillery shells as that state continues its genocidal campaign against the people of Palestine. A number of pro-Zionist writers have attempted to claim Ozzy himself as one of their own following the singer’s death. An op-ed by one Nicole Lampert celebrates Ozzy’s “defense of Israel” on the grounds that he has twice performed there and that his wife Sharon has regurgitated Zionist talking points, for example through her ridiculous criticism of Kneecap.

Ozzy sometimes remarked on his distance from political matters, a privilege for someone whose luxurious life was largely managed for him. While it doesn’t seem sufficient to accuse Ozzy of holding any specific beliefs purely due to Sharon’s remarks (and while the conflation of Ozzy’s and Sharon’s actions has been a frequent source of sexist accusations within the discourse of the metal community), it is also insufficient to use his notorious irresponsibility as a shield from criticism. Sharon arrogantly dismissed criticism over Ozzy’s playing in Israel on the grounds that “we play where we want to play”. Equally frustrating is the presence of Ozzy and Sharon’s signatures on a letter demanding an inquiry into the BBC over a documentary it released on Gaza, alleging “bias against Israel”. Those attempting to claim Ozzy as a “fierce Zionist” through appeals to the beliefs of his wife seem to reject both the agency and responsibility of both individuals. Whatever Ozzy’s views might have been, it is sad that his actions were such that they provide Zionists with any claims at all—and hiding behind Sharon is no excuse.

Moreover, many aspects of the “rock ‘n roll” lifestyle were notoriously problematic and Ozzy was emblematic of many of them throughout his long career. Sadly, it is still common for fans of the genre to brush many of its worst excesses under the carpet as “just how it was”. Arguably the darkest chapter in Osbourne’s life was the attempted murder of Sharon after the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. Having completely lost his mind and any semblance of self-control to the various substances he was abusing (“God only knows what combination he was on”, recalled Sharon) he allegedly stated “we’ve come to a decision that you’ve got to die” and attempted to strangle his wife, who was able to fend him off and signal for help. He woke the next morning in jail, completely oblivious to what he had done. Sharon dropped the legal charges against him with the insistence that he cease drinking—her dedication to rehabilitating her husband probably saved his life.

Ozzy’s legacy

Throughout his life, Ozzy played a huge role in launching the careers of many other musicians—Mötley Crüe is perhaps the biggest example. Then, of course, there was the legendary Ozzfest which Ozzy and Sharon kicked off in 1996 and continued more or less annually until 2018. The festival generally had a main stage, headlined by either Ozzy or Black Sabbath, with support from a number of heavy metal heavyweights like Slayer and System of a Down. Then there was a second stage to provide space for smaller bands to carve out a name for themselves. This proved fortuitous for a largely unknown nine-member ensemble out of Iowa during Ozzfest ‘99: Slipknot is now one of the most successful metal bands of all time. That is Ozzy’s legacy—not just the invention of an entire genre, but his love of shining the spotlight on others, ensuring that the party he started back in ‘68 never stops.

That party is now a global phenomenon. From its roots in Britain’s industrial heartland, metal has spread around the world and, as it developed, bands began to integrate the genre’s basic elements with their own cultural influences. Across Latin America, the rebellious nature of the music found new life as a way to express outrage at dictatorial regimes and the intense feelings of alienation shared by so many. Brazil’s Sepultura, arguably the most prominent band emerging from such circumstances, came from an impoverished working-class background and grew to become one of heavy metal’s most successful acts. The band formed the same day that founding member Max Cavalera heard Black Sabbath’s 1972 release, Vol. 4, for the first time.

Metal has also been the subject of academic inquiry—a collection of scholarly work on metal history titled Metal Rules the Globe is full of interesting analyses about the genre’s development in China, Indonesia, Japan, Norway, Singapore, and more. The genre Ozzy helped birth has been analyzed in a number of ways regarding its relationship to class, gender, power, mysticism, and nationalism. It has also exploded into countless metal subgenres (and sub-subgenres, and sub-sub-subgenres, like “Polish Blackened Death Metal” which under no circumstances should be confused with “Atmospheric Black Metal”, “Swedish Melodic Death Metal”, “Speed Metal”, “Symphonic Metal”, or “Stoner Metal”). Ozzy’s legacy has evolved in so many directions that metal-loving anthropologist Sam Dunn produced several documentary series cataloguing the ever-evolving “Heavy Metal Family Tree”.

You can’t kill rock’n’roll

One of Ozzy’s most charming characteristics was his unassuming simplicity and the fact that, despite being a bona fide rock’n’roll god, he never stopped being a fan. Watching him onstage, as his health deteriorated over the years, he simply radiated energy and passion for what he was doing. When he could no longer run around the stage he began to run in place, doing jumping jacks and clapping his hands. When he was confined to a throne for his final performance, struggling with Parkinson’s disease and unable to hoist himself up, he rocked back and forth, tapping, stomping, anything he could manage. Whether one looks at Ozzy’s earliest performances or those of his later years, it is always clear that no matter how much fun the audience was having—he was having even more.

Rest in Power, John Michael Osbourne.

Brandon Warner is a Marxist activist with a background in philosophy and sociology. He is based in Berlin.

The Romanian anti-communist memory wars

Romania’s new president is famous for defeating the far-right in the recent elections. Now he is playing into their hands


26/07/2025

Two months into his term, Romania’s new president, Nicușor Dan, has chosen his first hill to die on. No, it’s not an ardent fight against the government’s catastrophic austerity measures, even though these contradict Dan’s explicit campaign promise that VAT would not be raised. Dan has decided to make his first public and legal presidential intervention by repeatedly challenging a new law project that would increase penalties for promoting and distributing fascist and far-right materials.

This might come as some surprise. In May, Dan’s victory in the Romanian presidential elections hit international news as a much-needed sign that the European right-wing surge could be stalled. After an eventful electoral season decided through lawfare, the independent mayor of Bucharest appeared as a centrist, liberal, pro-European savior who stopped the fall of yet another country to extremist rule. Dan has now refused to promulgate a law against fascism voted in by Parliament — first by sending it to the Constitutional Court; and upon his challenge being rejected by the Court, by announcing that he would send it back to Parliament for redrafting.

This showcase of presidential stubbornness is, however, not shocking. Although Dan defeated a far-right candidate in the presidential elections, his personal history and political profile are clearly conservative. More importantly, his challenges to the law fit into the mainstream of Romanian memory politics, a mainstream that legitimizes far-right opinions and historical figures under the justification of anti-communism.

The Legion

Dan’s fig leaf throughout this scandal has been his insistence that he is not willing to accept fascist points of view, and that his concern is rather with the lack of concrete definitions in the law, bringing up a specific example in a public statement about the issue:

“In the town of Făgăraș [Dan’s hometown] there is a small association dealing with the promotion of the [anti-communist] Resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains […]. Among the members of the Resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains are a few persons who in their past had been part of the legionary movement. The question is: does this association have a legionary character or not? Because the law does not tell us. And, if it does have a legionary character, should these people go to jail or not? Because the law tells us that, if you set up an association with a legionary character, you have to go to jail. I think not, I think that it is legitimate to promote the anti-communist Resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains.”

Dan’s accusation that the law does not clearly spell out what a “legionary character” is can immediately be disproved by looking at the text itself. Part of the justification put forth by the MP who proposed the law is that it would close loopholes in the existing legislation with “a better definition of some notions,” including “legionary.” And the definition offered in the draft law is nothing if not concrete, referring to membership in the “fascist organization in Romania that was active in the period 1927-1941 under the names ‘The Legion of the Archangel Michael,’ ‘The Iron Guard,’ and the ‘Everything for the Country Party.’”

The Legion, the main far-right organized movement in interwar Romania, is at the center of Romanian memory politics and polemics. A nationalist, antisemitic, Christian Orthodox movement, the Legion reached mass membership among peasants and students under the charismatic leadership of “Captain” Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Legionnaires got together in work camps where they built local civil and religious infrastructure. These camps and local “nests” also promoted Orthodox mysticism and paramilitary organizing, which ultimately manifested in high-profile political assassinations carried out by fanatic legionnaires.

Scared by their growing power and electoral success, the dictatorial King Charles II cracked down on legionary organizing and had Codreanu assassinated under the cover of a failed attempt to escape arrest. Charles, however, was himself forced out of the country by General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu. Antonescu went on to become Romania’s military dictator during the country’s participation in WWII on the side of the Axis powers, allying himself with the Legion to proclaim a National Legionary State.

This alliance was however short-lived, as tensions between Antonescu and the Legion came to a head with the latter attempting a coup in January 1941. The legionary rebellion quickly became a two-day pogrom that killed 125 Jews in Bucharest. After the rebellion was quashed by the army, the Legion’s leadership fled the country and thousands of its members were imprisoned. Those legionnaires that remained free continued to participate in Romania’s antisemitic atrocities, such as the June 1941 Iași pogrom.

Although defeated and disbanded, legionnaires and the legionary ideology continued to act and to capture the Romanian imagination. Already based on a fascist-cum-Orthodox death cult, legionnaires embraced their imprisonment as a form of martyrdom. Others took refuge in monastic life, as monks or lay inhabitants of sympathetic monasteries.

Their true glorification, however, began after the 1944 coup, when Romania turned against Germany, and gradually came under communist control. Many legionnaires took refuge in the mountains and organized into armed groups, fighting against the Red Army, and later against the forces of the new Romanian communist state. Anti-communist resistance was extinguished by the early 1960s, but accusations of legionary membership or sympathies became one of the main justifications for political imprisonment in Romania throughout the communist period.

Even so, the dividing line between communist and legionnaire is not as clear as it might seem. The communist regime, for instance, instrumentalized imprisoned legionnaires, co-opting them as torturers in the infamous prison “re-education” programs of the 1950s. And even as the Legion remained the regime’s scarecrow, Romanian communism itself became more and more nationalist, in ways that closely resembled interwar fascist discourse.

Saints and heroes

The Legion’s post-1989 legacy is marked by this paradox. On the one hand, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s nationalist communist party produced the ideological framework and even the members of many far-right parties and organizations of the 1990s and the 2000s. Communist elites who became post-communist politicians overnight continued calling their adversaries “legionnaires”, as for instance during the violently repressed student protests of the early 1990s. They had little interest in giving this floating signifier any substantive content, or in risking their own nationalism being interrogated by a real inquiry into the Legion.

On the other hand, the Romanian search for non- and anti-communist historical narratives settled on a romanticized interwar period as the last milestone of a European trajectory interrupted by the external, Oriental imposition of communism. This left little space for a critical engagement with the far-right movements of Romania in the 1930s, or with the sympathies that many of the cultural elites—now also recovered as the authentic expression of Romanian values before and beyond communism—expressed for these movements.

The lack of a reckoning with the Legion’s historical role and legacy allowed a different type of memorialization to develop and become mainstream. Former legionnaires, or their descendants and sympathizers, latched onto the communist condemnation of the Legion to paint an image of heroic martyrs. The (auto)biographies of jailed legionnaires became narratives of Orthodox suffering at the hands of an atheist (judeo-)bolshevism, peppered with stories of suffering, self-sacrifice, and saintly revelation.

The idea of “prison saints” took its place as a central trope in stories of repression and violence. All of this happened with the active participation of the Romanian Orthodox Church, where (former) legionnaires have played important roles in its monastic branch, the main source of leadership within the Church. Through the Church, the “saints” moniker became literal, as several legionnaires were recently canonized.

Outside of prisons and monasteries, the main vector for the memorialization of legionnaires has been their resistance against communism. The participants in the resistance had diverse motivations. While many of them were indeed legionnaires fighting out of conviction, or to avoid prison, others were members of other political parties, were royalists, or were simply resisting nationalization and collectivization. Regardless, the armed groups that took refuge in the mountains have gained mythical status in Romania, with their image folding into romantic narratives of bandits or hajduks

Legion sympathizers, however, have managed to take over the memory of communist oppression and anti-communist struggle, claiming, for instance, that 75% of all political prisoners were legionnaires. They have used the resistance—an absolute force for good in Romanian historiography—to whitewash fascist holdouts as heroic underdogs. At the same time, the centrality of legionnaires in narratives of resistance turns anti-communism itself into a legionary action, infusing statements of support for the anti-communist resistance with implicit apologia for the Legion.

Electoral triggers

This is where Dan’s intervention comes in. Although he does not explicitly name it, the association that the President most likely is referring to when questioning the new law is the “Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu” Foundation. Ogoranu, a native of the Făgăraș area, was the leader of a legionnaire youth group, arrested in 1941. When the communists took power, he led a relatively long-lived armed resistance group and gained fame by evading arrest for decades.

The foundation, set up after his death, is far from the local initiative that Dan tries to present it as, but rather a mainstay of national debates on memory culture and the legacy of legionarism. Its secretary, Florin Dobrescu, was present at parliamentary debates over the new law project; and the Foundation filed its own complaint about the law project to the Romanian Ombudsman and to the Constitutional Court. Dobrescu also publicly thanked Dan for his intervention, calling him an “authentic democrat” and a “president of all Romanians”.

The dilemma that Dan presents to the public is whether this foundation, honoring an anti-communist hero, has a “legionary character” only because that same hero happens to have been a member of the Legion. Rather than musing over what “character” is, however, the dilemma can very easily be resolved by looking at the activities of the Foundation’s secretary. Dobrescu is currently under investigation for organizing memorial services for Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, who, having died 10 years before Romania became a communist republic, could not have been an anti-communist fighter. Dobrescu not only organized the services, but also officiated parts of them, leading attendees into performing Nazi salutes.

These services have been taking place for years, but they only received public attention in 2024. While far-right groups, movements, and publications have been growing since the 1990s, it took the shock of two far-right politicians’ near victories in the recent presidential elections to trigger the Romanian state into action. When Călin Georgescu took everyone by surprise and won the first round of the elections in November, journalists uncovered his vast connections to neo-legionary work camps and memorial associations, including the Ogoranu Foundation.

After Georgescu’s victory was invalidated by the Romanian Constitutional Court due to alleged Russian interference, and Georgescu was banned from participating in the re-run, his place was taken by another far-right candidate, George Simion—who qualified for the run-off, only to lose to Nicușor Dan. A more established politician than Georgescu, Simion was already known for his far-right positions, but investigations also uncovered that he was embedded into neo-legionary networks, including monasteries and associations. Among them: the Ogoranu Foundation.

The growing strength and influence of Legion sympathizers had been going largely unnoticed or accepted by Romanian authorities. The new legislative project was meant to strengthen the application of the existing laws criminalizing the propagation of legionary and fascist materials, and the denial of the Holocaust or of war crimes. Between the years 2022–2024—a period of intense organizing leading to the last elections—no person was prosecuted for Legion sympathies. Among those who slipped through the cracks was Georgescu himself, whose 2020 declaration that Ion Antonescu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu were “national heroes” led to an investigation, in which the charges were ultimately dropped. It took Georgescu almost becoming president for him to be prosecuted for propagating fascist ideas.

Dan now seems to have hit the ideological and legal brakes on a long-awaited police crackdown against the far-right, a crackdown legitimated by his own electoral victory. This is not, however, a deviation from the President’s own political orientation. Most famously, Dan left the Save Romania Union—the party that he co-founded—over their embrace of same-sex marriage, with which he disagrees. This attitude goes back to 2000, when, before he became an activist or politician, he published an article declaring himself a nationalist and condemning “homosexual behavior” in public as damaging “traditional values and thus my collective, legitimate identity.”

More directly relevant is Dan’s refusal to rename Mircea Vulcănescu Street when he was Mayor of Bucharest. The street bears the name of a Romanian intellectual and subsecretary of state in the Antonescu government who was condemned as a war criminal in the post-WWII communist trials. After the Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust got a court to order the renaming of the street, the city government—led by Dan—announced that it would appeal the decision, following concerted media and public campaigns coordinated by online far-right groups.

Dan’s centrism, like all centrisms, leans right. His problems with fascism seem to be vague accusations of violence and extremism rather than its more substantive contents. In a December 2024 interview, when asked whether the Legion was “good” for Romania, he condemned its use of political assassinations, but had to be repeatedly prompted by the interviewer to finally also condemn its antisemitism. And his recent decision to challenge a law approved by both the Parliament and the Constitutional Court echoes his actions as mayor. In both cases, he clearly sees his own judgments as superior to those of others. As he declared after his constitutional challenge was rejected, he is still of the “opinion” that more than half of the new project is “unconstitutional, even if the Constitutional Court said something else”, continuing to make a political intervention under the guise of a legalistic one.

Memory politics

Does Dan personally hold right-wing convictions? Yes, he has told us as much, and there is no reason to ignore him. Convictions are not the only driver of his vehement intervention against the law, however. The President’s position within Romanian memory culture is a key aspect of his own legitimacy as a leader and politician.

Although his electoral victory meant the momentary defeat of the far-right, it was far from being an antifascist victory. Dan won the election as an anti-communist, rallying against social services, public spending, civil servants, and state-owned companies. His appeal as an activist-turned-politician was built on his claim to dismantle the corruption and clientelism that have plagued Romania due to its inability to shake off its communist past.

Amidst Dan’s defense of fascist anti-communist resistors, a poll was published showing that over 50% of respondents considered communism to have been a good thing for Romania, and over 66% considered Ceaușescu to have been a good leader. Romanian commentators and politicians responded by raising a paranoid moral panic. The director of the institute running the poll attributed the results to “Russia’s hybrid war”. The president of the state’s Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism once again called for a law that bans communist symbols. Dan himself used the poll results to rally against manipulation and disinformation, stressing how “fragile our memory culture is”, and the “duty to learn from the past”.

Dan cannot actively condemn the Legion without also undermining his own legitimation in a rabidly and unilaterally anti-communist memory politics. But anti-communism as both common sense and as state policy has been the main legitimating ideology of the far-right today. Just as a Ukrainian Nazi-collaborator veteran was applauded in Canadian Parliament because he was anti-Soviet (today read as anti-Russian), so too are Romanian Legionnaires memorialized as having been on the right side of history. 

This is also where the usefulness of legal solutions hits its limits. Yes, it is good to protect those vulnerable to far-right speech and attacks, and it is good to have the state break down organized neo-legionary groups. But the fact that so much Legion sympathy has gone unprosecuted is not due to the weaknesses of one specific law, but to the fact that investigators and lawmakers are themselves part of the anti-communist apparatus that is right-wing, almost by definition. After all, another law, passed in 2017 by Romanian Parliament, establishes a memorial day for “martyrs in communist prisons” using language taken directly from neo-legionary propaganda.

Even commentators who claim to appreciate the effort to fight against the far-right decry that communist speech is not covered, either in this law or in another—a conflation that is inaccurate and harmful. And as the recent Czech example shows, the outright banning of communist symbols and messaging is always around the corner in Eastern Europe. While a true effort to learn from the experiences of communist states involves dealing with their violence and failures, the total erasure and demonization that has been the mainstream so far has only led to deadly capitalism and to the rise of the far-right.

And this is exactly what is happening in Romania right now. Dan tries to play the role, as one journalist puts it, of an anti-communist “enlightened nationalist” who can assuage the cultural grievances that Georgescu and Simion rode on to almost take power, without falling into extremism. At the same time, the government he legitimated and put in power is enacting austerity measures that will deepen the inequalities and divisions in Romania to new lows—all the while increasing military spending, including on new defense contracts with Israel.

Another recent poll shows that the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, Simion’s far-right party, has strengthened its lead over Dan. It might seem ironic that the same social and economic conditions that led Romanians toward accepting communism as a good thing for the country also led them towards voting for a far-right that draws its legitimacy from anti-communist resistance. But Romanian communism has been emptied of its social policies and achievements, of its large-scale programs of progress and construction, as projects of a leftist, socialist vision. All that has been left of its culture within the Romanian public consciousness is its nationalism, its sovereigntism, its personalist rule: converging with the narrative of the contemporary far-right.

Romanians do not want the lack of freedom that marked their pre-1989 existence, but the security and the welfare that they had before capitalism and neoliberalism. As the center actively guts these services to adapt to capitalist forces, and as it also hollows out all memories of communism, the only place to invest these hopes is the far-right. Unless a different, positive project of well-being arises, uniting Romania’s past with Romania’s hopes for the future, the far-right will continue to monopolize the country’s political imagination.

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.

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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.

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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.