Author: Gowani

by B. R. GOWANI

a slave has hardly any agency
in bondage, you can determine almost nothing about yourself
most of the control rests with your master
the slave-master

in slavery, you are your master's property
you can be bought
you can be sold
you can be paid if the master opts to
if not, you're exploited without ant remuneration
you even become a 2/3rd vote for your master

the slave's fate is absolutely decided by the owner
the master can beat you up 
make you work like a dog 
treat you like a piece of shit
can even kill you if she/he chooses to

in slavery, you can barely escape
if you flee but are recaptured
you'll be branded with a hot iron rod as to who you belong to 

surely, the slave-master is a capitalist
the motive is maximum profit out of slave's labor

but there is a capitalist who doesn't want slave-labor
he wants slave-like workers
he would even pay them meager money

is it because the capitalist is an upright man?
is it because the capitalist thinks slavery is abhorring?

is it possible?
in rare cases, yes
but ultimately you're a chattel for the capitalist
who wants to squeeze the maximum labor out of you

the good thing about wage-labor -- for the capitalist -- is:
the the means of production owner doesn't have to enslave you
doesn't have to hunt for you
doesn't have to keep an eye that you don't run away
even if you quit, he doesn't need to capture you
there are always millions of unemployed looking for jobs

they get workers from other countries
they send work to other countries

they don't need you
you need them
because you want to survive
they don't have a survival problem
they and their children can live luxuriously for generations
little government protection available is disappearing fast
you are on your own

the government is selected and supported by billionaires
sometime a billionaire becomes the leader too
in 2000, election spending by billionaires was $18 million
that is, 0.6% of the total contribution
in 2024, 100 billionaires contributed $2.6 billion
(or $2,600 million) that is, 16.5% of the total contribution
percentage increase was 27.5 fold
dollar increase was a bit more than 144 fold

California wants to impose one time 5% tax on billionaires
most of the money would be used on public health services

the billionaires doesn't want to pay even 5%
they are bombarding airwaves with $1 million ads everyday
they want to spend $340 million
state's largest health care workers' union is no match
it has just $32 million to counter billionaires' ads
 
Californians were in favor of the tax
but the more false ads by billionaires are aired
more Californians are now turning against the tax

money can buy almost anything -- democracy for sure

the rulers call the US a "democracy"
the real democracy is nothing but real socialism
why would we elect people who are extremely unequal than us?
that's where the pro-ruling class sycophants pops up
the pundits, think tanks, media people
they teach us:
what to think
who to vote for
who to hate
who to malign

or
who to praise
who to love
who to avoid
what not to think

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky has a name for it:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media 

the news media 
bombards us with so many lies
creates so much fear in us
makes us hate so many people and countries
prepares us to accept insane inequality
brainwashes us to go thousands of miles to kill "enemy"
diverts our attention from the real enemy, the rulers

the news media's opium is not any less effective
than the religious opium -- as Karl Marx put it:

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, 
the expression of real suffering 
and a protest against real suffering. 
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, 
the heart of a heartless world, 
and the soul of soulless conditions. 
It is the opium of the people."

news media, warmongers, war industry, others scream:
this leader or that country or certain nation is dangerous
we get scared

government promises:
the country and its people will be liberated
permission or no permission
government destroys Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, Guatemala, ...
the list is endless
the enemies we fight are always weaker than us
they can't reach us
we are safe
our life goes on

the propagandists are happy
the rulers are very happy
the war industry is the happiest

but what actually got liberated?
well ...
Children are liberated from parents
parents are liberated from children
sisters are liberated from brothers 
and so many other things got liberated

if there was true democracy
if the government was working for the people
a person wouldn't have to work 5, 6, 7 days or double jobs
just 1 days work would be enough for a happy life
rest of the week could be spent with the family
going to library
enjoying nature
helping out people
...

so why was a human being turned into a beast of burden?
who is always working, working, working
who is always under immense stress
who is always worried about how to make ends meet

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
as out Dear Leader would have put it
all in capital letters
but in this case, it needs capital letters and emphasis
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM 

yes, it is the central culprit
it lets few people steal all the means
it permits 1% people at the top to have 31% of the wealth
but the bottom 90% have little less than 31% of the wealth

a simple calculation:
1 person at the top has 31 dollars
90 people at the bottom has little less than 31 dollars
1 of the each person in the bottom 90 has just 34 cents

the other 9% of the people have 38% of the wealth

patents, corruption, unregulated prices, etc. causes this
Dean Baker noted in 2024 January:
on drugs we're spending over $600 billion
the real cost should be under $100 billion

over $600 billion spending means almost $5,000 per family 
but under $100 B spending means $833 per family

per family paid $4,167 more to the pharmaceutical companies
the average minimum wage per hour was $16
which means each family had to work 260 hours more that year
which is 32.5 days, more than a month, of work
for whom?
for the bosses of the pharmaceutical companies

same thing goes for the defense industry
in 2025, the US spent $954 billion on war 
or $954,000,000,000
the military spending per person came to $2805

China's defense spending in 2025 was $336 billion
China is also considered by the US ruling class as an "enemy"
keeping that in mind, the US should have spent $340 billion
($4 billion more because US is the big brother)
that means, the US wasted 954 - 340 = $616 billion more
or $1,811 more per person
so each person in the US worked 113 hours more
about 5 more days in 2025 for the death merchants

do the same calculation for
housing industry
tech industry
food industry
advertising industry
fashion industry
film industry
media industry

one could go on

just one day a week of work is enough for us to live happily
the 4, 5, or 6 days we're working for the system and going crazy

suffice to say that
people are sacrificing their families, leisure, nature
for the capitalists

we're harming ourselves and the environment

the more we produce and consume
the more we also destroy our planet earth
the capitalist system is a destructive one
we should stop it before it destroys us

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by JAWED NAQVI

It may not be inaccurate to say that Manmohan Singh created India’s middle class, and the middle class created Narendra Modi. Marxists call them/us the ‘vacillating class’.

Janus-like, we are suspiciously double-faced and have a split identity. We look towards the capitalists with one face, wishing to join their ranks and protect property rights. And we look towards the working class with the other face, sharing their economic anxiety and fear of being ruined by big corporations. Given that powerful protests have mushroomed since July across India, mostly led by young students and unemployed youth, it could be signalling a significant disenchantment with the system that has wooed middle class support since 1991.

Before Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms as finance minister and his subsequent decade as prime minister (2004-2014), India’s middle class was miniscule, estimated at roughly 2.5 million people earning over $10,000 annually or representing a small, state-controlled bureaucratic and managerial stratum.

Following the 1991 liberalisation and the growth of the IT, services, and corporate sectors, the middle class expanded dramatically. By 2015, the number of Indians earning over $10,000 annually grew to 55m. Other estimates placed the middle class at roughly 142m people (about 12 per cent of the population) by the early 2010s, when they were entering various tiers of the middle or ‘neo-middle’ class depending on purchasing power parity of around $10-$50 per day.

After Singh left office in 2014, the expansion plateaued for many households due to rising living costs, stagnant real wages, and a K-shaped economic recovery, where wealth concentrated more heavily at the very top. The Modi-led alliance of big business and right-wing street thugs peaked during the Covid-19 episode when the government asked the people to bang their pots and pans to drive away the virus and the UN secretary-general warned that liberalising the exploitation of coal, which the government had announced bang in the middle of the crisis, was hardly the prescribed method to fight the deadly scourge sweeping India and the rest of the world.

An Oxfam report in November 2021 said Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 35pc during the lockdown to three trillion, ranking India after the US, China, Germany, Russia, and France. Out of these, the rise in fortunes for the top 100 billionaires since the lockdown was estimated as enough to give every one of the 138m poorest Indian people a cheque for Indian rupees 94,045 each. Oxfam’s Inequality Virus Report was released at the remotely conducted World Economic Forum in Davos.

Should it interest the protesters that the wealth of just the top 11 billionaires during the pandemic could easily sustain the MGNREGS — the 2005 social welfare law guaranteeing rural employment — or the health ministry for the next 10 years? Instead, inequalities deepened during Covid-19 when the wealthiest escaped the worst impact of the pandemic and the poor faced joblessness, starvation, and death.

A tycoon who emerged as the richest man in India and Asia, earned INR900m an hour during the pandemic when around 24pc of the people in the country were earning under INR3,000 a month during the lockdown.

A reintroduction of the wealth tax was advised as a one-time Covid-19 cess of 4pc on taxable income of over a million Indian rupees to help the economy recover from the lockdown. The rejected tax on the nation’s 954 richest families could have raised the equivalent of 1pc of GDP.

Even as they seek to repair India’s broken democracy, which is a most crucial task, the young protesters may have to engage with the fact that India’s growth has been consumer-led and K-shaped, with deepening inequality. In comparison, China’s modern economic growth model has been state-led, investment-heavy, and steered by a policy of ‘common prosperity’.

Dawn for more

by DEAN BAKER

Remember, these industry leaders are doing what they do for money—and lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price.

Amidst all the talk of the need for government regulation of AI, there has been too little discussion of the simplest route: criminal liability. The basic story is that the AI companies are being irresponsible in dealing with a product they know to be dangerous. The companies and the people who run them need to know that they face serious monetary risk from letting their little models run wild, and possibly criminal prosecution and jail time.

To be clear, sensible regulation of AI would be desirable. But let’s be serious. We have Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, and RFK Jr. all running major government departments. Do we really think having someone like this overseeing AI development would be an improvement?

We do already have laws to deal with harms caused by AI; we just need to be prepared to use them. Again, no one would expect President Trump’s personal lawyer and Attorney General Todd Blanche to take criminal or civil actions against AI in the public interest. If there was a major incident, he would most likely look to initiate a prosecution in pursuit of a payoff for dropping the case. But the law does not begin and end with Donald Trump’s Justice Department.

If we can forget about the extinction events that keep our pundits busy, and focus instead on the millions of far more likely disasters that AI could cause, there will almost certainly be plenty of room for state-level prosecutions, as well as civil suits.

To take some hypothetical cases, suppose an AI system manages to hack into a city’s traffic control system, and the resulting chaos leads to a number of car crashes, causing serious injuries and death, in addition to property damage. To take another case, suppose AI falsifies clinical trial data, leading a drug to be approved even though the trials show it to be ineffective or dangerous. Or suppose AI gets inside a bank’s computers and makes a total mess of its records in a way that they cannot be reconstructed. (I know banks almost certainly have backups, but our super-intelligent AI can surely get into the backup records as well.)

Common Dreams for more

by MILENA BAYUM

On 13 September, I woke in southwest Türkiye to news of a large-scale operation targeting LGBTI organizations and human rights defenders across the country. Since then, police have arrested at least 116 people across 15 provinces following raids on homes, venues and the offices of LGBTI rights organizations. At least 83 people have been placed in pretrial detention and criminal investigations have been launched against more than 160 people. LGBTI rights organisations have reported allegations of intrusive strip searches, insults and humiliation as well as HRDs being held in isolation in violation of their rights. Hundreds of social media accounts belonging to LGBTI organizations and activists, journalists, media outlets and others have so far been blocked or restricted alongside a number of websites. Those affected include Amnesty International Türkiye’s X account.?

The authorities have named this operation “Ailem Güvende” (“My Family Is Safe”) under the spurious guise of ‘protecting the family’.  Yet as LGBTI activists and many others rightly point out, families in Türkiye are suffering poverty, insecurity and increased repression of their civil and political rights, while violence against women and girls is rife, including inside their homes. Far from protecting anyone, this sweeping crackdown has nothing to do with protecting families and everything to do with further harming and stigmatizing people who have battled decades of discrimination and intimidation. 

As protest within Türkiye builds and international condemnation mounts, it is clear that the Turkish authorities have every intention of intensifying the crackdown. The Ministry of Justice has sent a circular to 175 chief public prosecutors in all of Türkiye’s 81 provinces, regarding content and activities deemed in their view contrary to “public morality” and harmful to families, children and young people. It instructs prosecutors to promptly assess complaints and reports, take immediate investigative steps, preserve digital evidence and, where necessary, seek the removal or blocking of online content on the vague grounds of ‘obscenity’. 

Police reportedly used pepper spray against peaceful protesters in ?zmir and more than 100 people were reportedly detained when they peacefully gathered outside the ?stanbul Courthouse in Ça?layan. With countrywide protests expected in the coming days and weeks, there are fears of more arrests to come. 

The crackdown is part of a wider ongoing attack on the rights of LGBTI people and those who advocate for LGBTI rights. Pride marches including Istanbul Pride have been banned since 2015. In the last two years, proposals to introduce penalties to criminalize expressions of LGBTI identities or consensual same-sex sexual activity have been repeatedly leaked into the public domain. They were withdrawn after huge public uproar and resistance from civil society. While these government efforts to legislate failed, ‘My Family is Safe’ is a further attempt to exclude LGBTI people.  

July marked the tenth anniversary of the failed coup attempt that ushered in state of emergency provisions which were in place for two years. These provisions morphed into a raft of repressive legislation targeting civil society, with the independence of the judiciary hollowed out, domestic courts weaponized, international courts ignored, and treaties and standards trampled on. Over the last decade, Türkiye has been subjected to an ongoing authoritarian bonfire of rights which has impacted every aspect of Turkish society, silencing dissent, stoking divisions, and spreading fear. 

Whilst thousands of people in Türkiye have been impacted by baseless prosecutions and convictions, there have been several emblematic cases. Prisoner of conscience Osman Kavala, who remains in prison despite two binding European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments (in 2019 and 2026) ordering his release and infringement proceedings against Türkiye initiated by the Council of Europe in 2022. Selahattin Demirta? and Figen Yüksekda?, former leaders of the People’s Democratic Party, also remain in prison despite ECtHR rulings ordering their immediate release.?Taner K?l?ç, Amnesty Turkey’s Honorary Chair, was tried alongside ?dil Eser, the organization’s former Turkey director and nine other human rights defenders, known as the Istanbul 10, on baseless allegations of “membership of a terrorist organisation”. They were all eventually acquitted, with Taner K?l?ç’s acquittal coming almost eight years after his imprisonment for over 14 months in 2017.? 

The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, association and expression have come under sustained attack with arbitrary restrictions and blanket bans. Peaceful protesters have been subjected to police violence and allegedly tortured in police custody.  

Women’s Day marches have also faced bans at a time when the rights of women and girls are facing serious erosion. In 2021, Türkiye withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, the landmark treaty on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. In so doing, Türkiye not only became the first Council of Europe member to withdraw from an international human rights convention but removed key protections in a country where gender-based violence remains widespread.

Amnesty International for more

by THOMAS MILZ

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke in no uncertain terms at the opening of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday in New York: “Brazil does not belong in anyone’s backyard,” the Brazilian president said. His comment was directed at his US counterpart Donald Trump, despite Trump not being in attendance.

The US president has repeatedly interfered with Brazilian domestic politics, siding with former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro and the far-right opposition. In July, Trump imposed sanctions on a judge who found Bolsonaro guilty of attempting a coup and sentenced him to 27 years in jail. Washington only lifted the sanctions after negotiating with Lula.

Bolsonaro’s eldest son Flávio is Lula’s biggest challenger in the upcoming presidential election on October 4, and polls currently show the two of them to be neck and neck in a potential runoff.

The election in the world’s fifth largest country is drawing a great deal of international attention. Brazil is an agricultural giant and very rich in natural resources — boasting rare earth elements, vast water resources and enormous crude oil reserves.

Brazil one of South America’s last bastions of the left

Lula is the “last man standing” of the South American left, while Flávio Bolsonaro is part of an increasingly strong far-right camp. Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia all have governments that are sympathetic to Trump. And since January, Venezuela has been what some describe as a US protectorate.

Foreign policy hasn’t played a big role in the campaign, but this election will nonetheless decide whether Brazil moves closer to Trump’s US. Washington is seeking economic and military dominance in South America through the Shield of the Americas initiative, focused on combating violent cartels.

After his military intervention in Venezuela, Trump is now exerting economic pressure on Mexico and Cuba. At the same time, he is trying to counter Chinese influence in the region.

For his part, Lula is an advocate of multilateralist diplomacy, wanting Brazil to engage in dialogue and trade with everybody. China has long been Brazil’s most important trading partner.

Flávio Bolsonaro favors a conservative alliance with the US and other right-wing states. But for Leonardo Paz from the Brazilian Fundação Getúlio Vargas think tank, a Bolsonaro victory would not necessarily automatically mean better relations with the US.

He said that Lula had established a largely normal relationship with Trump — both are 80 years old — despite some initial friction. The two leaders got along well, said Paz, even if Lula has not succumbed to Trump’s pressure.

Who is Brazil’s Flávio Bolsonaro?

Paz did admit that if Bolsonaro won, the 45-year-old would be more likely to accommodate Trump, pointing out that his father Jair had made far-reaching concessions to the US when he was president.

During Jair Bolsonaro’s time in office from 2019 to 2023, Brazil agreed to forgo its “developing country status” in World Trade Organization negotiations in exchange for a mere promise that the US would back its bid to become a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Trump also said he was considering giving Brazil NATO “privileges.” Neither promise came to anything.

Brazzil for more

by FOLAKEMI, STEVEN W. THOMAS, & FOLASHADE ROBERTS

Some of Nigeria’s biggest filmmakers now look to YouTube for opportunity instead of cinemas and streamers. But is what looks like a new era really a return to an old one?

Scroll to the comments under the movie Love in Every Word on YouTube, and you will find viewers from Lagos to London, Accra, Houston, and beyond, tagging sisters to “come and watch this.” Even though the movie had no cinema release and no streaming deal, it reached 15 million views within a week of its release in March 2025 on the YouTube channel Omoni Oboli TV. It reached roughly 30 million by year’s end. Omoni Oboli TV was launched by actress and filmmaker Omoni Oboli and her business partner Tomi Adeoye in December 2023. Since then, the channel has gained more than two million subscribers. The success of Love in Every Word and its sequel pushed their YouTube television channel past 182 million total views of 550 videos, and it was named YouTube Nigeria’s Top Creator Channel of 2025.

The story and style of Love in Every Word is somewhat typical of Nollywood cinema, but there is something about the success of its format that raises questions. Is it an example of a new paradigm for how we understand the present-day movie industry in Nigeria? Or is it marking a return to the spirit of the original Nollywood? Does this format’s mix of “New Nollywood” and “Old Nollywood” betoken a new concept? Perhaps we could call it “Old Nollywood 2.0.”

“Old Nollywood 2.0” can be best described as a paradox. It is not a clean break from Old Nollywood nor a break from New Nollywood. It is not even entirely new in its formulation. Sometimes journalists and scholars like to divide film history into neat periods of succession. But looking at the history of Nollywood cinema, the reality is that there have been overlapping industrial formations. 

For the past three decades, the Nollywood phenomenon and its global impact has been described, analyzed, and debated by many journalists and film scholars, and the basic plot of its story goes something like this. Once upon a time, in the late ’80s, in the street markets of Onitsha and Lagos, movie theaters were declining because the cost of production and distribution of celluloid films was prohibitive. Independent producers were shooting television drama on video, working with Nigerian television networks, while the Yoruba traveling theater troupes were experimenting with video. Alongside this development, traders and marketers, who were already distributing imported and pirated Hollywood and Bollywood films, began to make and market their own cheaply produced melodrama on VHS.

Before Nollywood, there was a politically Pan-Africanist movie industry across Africa into which the recently liberated postcolonial nation-states enthusiastically invested. In the 1970s, the Nigerian government expanded its involvement in film and cultural production when it hosted FESTAC ’77 and repositioned the existing Nigerian Film Unit (formerly Colonial Film Unit) into the Nigerian Film Corporation, with a mandate to broaden its responsibilities and foster development of the national film industry. Filmmakers such as Ola Balogun and Adamu Halilu made artistically stunning films, sometimes collaborating with Black artists from across the world.

But with the structural adjustment policies that were imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), alongside the devastation of civil wars and repressive regimes, the state’s investment in a liberated media crumbled. What some consider the “golden age” of artistically brilliant, politically progressive Nigerian cinema had diminished. Into the void stepped entrepreneurial, commercially minded filmmakers who took advantage of the straight-to-video format and what economists call the “informal market” of the street. The new “video-films” (first made on VHS and then on VCD and DVD) were quite popular for genres such as crime (e.g., Issakaba, 2001), domestic melodrama (e.g., Violated, 1996), family drama (e.g., Rattlesnake, 1995), religion (e.g., Agony of a Mother, 2002), romance (e.g., Keeping Faith: Is That Love?, 2002), slapstick comedy (e.g., Osuofia in London, 2003), social mobility (e.g., Glamour Girls, 1994), urban aspiration (e.g., Domitilla, 1996), and occult and supernatural narratives (e.g., Living in Bondage, 1992, and Nneka the Pretty Serpent, 1994). The rapid success of these movies far exceeded expectations.

Africa Is a Country for more

by PAUL MITCHELL

Palestinian-Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah spoke in London on October 6 about her new novel, Discipline, as part of a sold-out UK and Ireland tour.

Discipline draws on her experience of censorship, institutional retaliation, and the breakdown of democratic norms in Australia and internationally. Tuesday night’s launch at the Trouble Club was an act of defiance against mounting repression, raising the central political question of our time: can society’s deepening crises be resolved through reform, or do they require revolutionary change?

Abdel-Fattah was recently at the centre of a major free-speech controversy in Australia. In January, Adelaide Writers’ Week disinvited her—the only Palestinian writer listed—citing “community cohesion” after the Bondi Beach massacre. The backlash saw 180 writers and artists withdraw in protest, the director resign, and the event collapse.

After her UK tour was announced, the campaign against her escalated. Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp and the Board of Deputies of British Jews called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to bar her entry to Britain, while a headline in The Spectator demanded, “Don’t let Randa Abdel-Fattah into Britain”.

On September 4, organisers of the Cambridge Literary Festival cancelled her planned appearance after a campaign by Zionists, citing “operational issues”.

Abdel-Fattah told her audience on Tuesday, “Before Israel’s genocide in Gaza my books were celebrated by the media, arts institutions and universities, which promoted my work as a symbol of diversity and gave me prominent platforms.”

She recalled, “That changed when I criticised Israel. The genocide became a dividing line: doors closed, censorship intensified, and institutional support turned into repression.”

Abdel-Fattah spoke with composure and tenderness toward the communities her book depicts.

…

On the myth of journalistic neutrality, Abdel-Fattah was at her most forceful. “What is the other side of [a child’s body] having more than 300 bullets?” she asked. “How can you talk of balance with children’s dismembered, decapitated bodies in plastic bags?” And on the pretence of neutrality itself: “It is as absurd as saying, I am neutral over the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust.”

WSWS for more

by MARIA DEL VIGO & MIRIAM BUE

In Madrid the political landscape has been turned on its head. Public outrage over the attempted eviction of a 87-year-old woman in Madrid from the apartment she had lived in since 1953 brought tens of thousands of people across Spain to the streets demanding measures to alleviate rising rent.

The Sindicato de Inquilinas de Madrid, the Madrid Tenants’ Union, coming off an international housing right’s congress held in Madrid just the week before the headline grabbing eviction, played its cards skillfully, mounting a series of direct actions and clear demands over the course of five days that succeeded in forcing the government to pay attention.

On 5 October, Pedro Sánchez, with no credible candidate to his left, announced an early general election in a bid to capitalize on the public outcry, which reframed the political discussion previously dominated by an ascendant right.

Meanwhile, Spain’s tenants’ rights movement, the Confederation of Tenants’ Unions of Spain, and various left-wing organizations are scaling up their protests after parliament rejected the government’s attempt to pass legislation to alleviate Spain’s housing crisis.

A Rental Freeze and an End to Evictions?

The bill had been proposed by the Social Democrats in the PSOE-Sumar coalition government. A watered-down version of a proposal put forward by tenants’ unions, the bill was dubbed Decreto Maricarmen, Maricarmen’s Law, in honour of the elderly woman who had been evicted by Urbagestión, a vulture fund of property speculators just days before, on 23 September. 

Maricarmen’s Law comprised a package of four urgent measures. These included a freeze on rent prices for the duration of the housing emergency, and regulation of seasonal leases and renting by room — referred to as ‘anti-scam measures’, as many landlords use these tactics to circumvent housing legislation, shorten leases, and raise prices in high-demand areas. 

The bill also proposed a ban on evictions without the provision of alternative accommodation, for which public authorities would be responsible, as well as the automatic renewal of leases beyond the current five-year limit. In other words, landlords would not be able to evict tenants or increase rents without a justified reason. 

From the perspective of the Confederation of Tenants’ Unions, these demands represent a starting point. They are limited measures, however, as they fail to address fundamental issues such as the recovery of social housing sold to investment funds in 2008. 

Nor would they have established effective control or reduce rents, which would do something to help alleviate the hardship currently experienced by a large proportion of the population. However, the measures would serve to reduce some of the damage. In particular, the indefinite renewal of rental agreements would put a stop to future speculation.

From Activist Congress to National Movement

The unplanned sit-in at Puerta del Sol had been preceded by a wave of protests that week. After four years in Barcelona, The District, southern Europe’s largest international property fair, was held in Madrid for the first time between 22 and 24 September, drawn there by neoliberal Madrid governor Isabel Díaz Ayuso. 

In response, the Madrid Tenants’ Union and the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City (EAC) organized the international counter-summit EL BARRIO. The event condemned the use of housing as financial assets and championed the right to housing. EL BARRIO brought together over 70 groups from more than 20 countries worldwide, as well as 160 observers and housing activists from outside the local context. 

The housing movement, along with other anti-fascist, climate and left-wing groups, organized three instances of direct action at the property fair The District’s event. They blocked the venue’s main access road, blocked the rear entrance from the inside, and disrupted Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s welcome speech to investors who had just arrived in Madrid intent on dividing up what remains of the city as though it were a Monopoly board.

Just hours later, the Madrid Tenants’ Union led an event in support of Maricarmen, with speeches and performances by Spanish celebrities, such as Ana Belén, Juan Diego Botto, Marwan, Eddi Circa, Rozalén and Inés Hernand. The event brought Maricarmen and her situation into the public debate, challenging the dominant narrative. 

That very night, there was a call for those willing to resist the eviction to set up camp outside the property. Around 150 people gathered and some fifty tents were pitched outside number 46 Calle Alcalde Sáinz de Baranda.

This is a street in a central neighbourhood, next to Madrid’s Retiro Park.In 2025, there were more than 24,500 evictions in Spain. Seventy-five percent of these involved rented properties, but incidents of resistance against evictions are usually seen in working-class neighbourhoods.

The El Barrio Counter Summit

Maricarmen’s story debunks some of the rhetoric employed by the far-right in Europe. In this case, the person facing eviction was a 87-year-old white Spanish woman. She is a former employee, now a pensioner, who had never failed to pay her rent or fulfil her obligations under the system. She could be the mother or grandmother of many far-right supporters.

Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung for more

by INGO SCHMIDT

In March 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was published. Four months later, 13 North American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. Both events were in the air.

Economists before Smith had already pondered how to explain the then-observable increase in manufacturing and global trade, and what its consequences would be. Smith could not have foreseen that his Wealth of Nations would become, not long after his death, a kind of manifesto for the rising industrial bourgeoisie. First in England, soon after in Europe, the United States, and finally in all parts of the world where capitalists were striving for class rule based on industrial production.

The plantation owners, traders, freight forwarders, and shipowners of the North American colonies had long believed that the British Crown, British bankers, and merchants were taking an undue share of the profits from transatlantic business. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 gave spectacular expression to this resentment over economic exploitation and political domination. That the United States would one day replace Great Britain as the leading global power was not foreseeable at its founding.

Smith: Not a Prophet of Unfettered Markets

To justify this power, ideologues of the American bourgeoisie repeatedly invoked Smith. While presenting Smith as the herald of a doctrine of unfettered markets and themselves as the embodiment of this doctrine, they consistently deviated from it in the pursuit of their business interests.

In the tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith established a theoretical system of natural liberty. He contrasted this with mercantilist practice, which promoted the export of finished goods from the imperial centers and restricted corresponding imports to stimulate manufacturing production within those centers. Tariffs levied for this purpose, along with taxes imposed on the colonies, filled the coffers of absolutist rule. Slavery and debt bondage on the sugar, coffee, tea, and tobacco plantations supplied the wealthy and powerful in the centers with luxury goods. Under pressure from overcapacity and thus declining profits on the one hand, and an abolitionist movement – inspired in no small part by the Enlightenment – on the other, the British Crown considered abolishing slavery. Overcapacity or not, slave labour was indispensable to the plantation owners. They saw freedom from British colonial rule as a guarantee for the continuation of slavery.

Slavery and the Cotton Empire

Among other works, Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments also provided abolitionists with arguments against slavery. Addressing soberly calculating businessmen, he explained in the Prosperity of the Nation that slave labour was less productive and profitable than wage labour. The American plantation owners refuted his argument. The shift from producing luxury goods for the wealthy to cotton, which, machine-processed in England, clothed the masses in all parts of the world, was enormously profitable – for the American plantation owners as well as for the English industrialists.

The market seemed limitless. This was largely because the combination of English mass production and forced market liberalization devastated textile production in India. Textile manufacturers in the United States managed to escape the fate of ‘de-industrialization’ – if one wants to apply this term to the manufacturing prevalent in India – by imposing tariffs on their own Indian colonies to promote domestic manufacturing. Smith had introduced free trade as an alternative to mercantilism. While the latter, with its promotion of exports and restrictions on imports, benefited manufacturers and absolutist rulers, it did not benefit the nation.

Free trade became the guiding principle of British policy after the Industrial Revolution granted the country’s manufacturers a global monopoly. In the United States, the plantation owners of the South championed free trade. They rejected the tariffs demanded by the burgeoning industrialists of the American Northwest to secure their share of the global textile market against superior British competition. The plantation owners feared British retaliatory tariffs that would increase the cost of their cotton shipments to the Northwest’s industries, thereby reducing sales and profits. This issue led to the Civil War. The victory of the Northern states paved the way for the United States’ rise to industrial power.

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