, Michael Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia and the director of Yukos, one of the largest R... more , Michael Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia and the director of Yukos, one of the largest Russian companies, was arrested at gunpoint in Novosibirsk airport and transferred to Moscow. A few months earlier, one of his deputies, Platon Lebedev, had been arrested on 3 July 2003. In the months that followed the arrest of Lebedev, the general prosecutor raided the offices of Yukos and Menatep, a major shareholder of Yukos. 1 On 17 October 2003, Vasily Shakhnovsky, a Yukos shareholder, was detained for tax evasion. Another major shareholder, Leonid Nevzlin, was accused of conspiracy to commit murder and fled to Israel. One of Yukos's security guards was also accused as a culprit in this conspiracy and was imprisoned. The general prosecutor subjected the company to a series of raids and restrictions that led to the decline of the value of its shares and brought it to the verge of bankruptcy by the middle of August 2004. Officially, all of these actions occurred because of Yukos's illegal economic dealings and tax frauds, but the real reasons were that Khodorkovsky had dared to criticize publicly the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin; that he had funded rival political parties; and that he had also toyed with the idea of entering politics himself and becoming a presidential candidate. Since the conflict between Yukos and the state is a good illustration of the contradictory relation between state and capital in Russia, let me give a brief description of Yukos's history.
The protest movement that emerged in Iran in the wake of the presidential election of 2009 has se... more The protest movement that emerged in Iran in the wake of the presidential election of 2009 has seen a subsequent decline due to the combined effects of repression and the timidity of the reformist leadership. The growing conflict between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad around the upcoming parliamentary election of March 2012 has created a new political crisis. The radical section of the movement tries to use this split to launch a subversive strategy against the Islamic regime. Alternatively, Khamenei tries to rid himself of the last vestiges of the autonomy of any elected institution and establish a full theocratic dictatorship. Iranian society has two choices-either to subvert the Khamenei regime or to be subjugated by it. 1
Abstract In this article I describe and analyse the conditions of youth in post-Soviet Kazakhstan... more Abstract In this article I describe and analyse the conditions of youth in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, their attitudes to work and their economic practices. The article argues that the post-Soviet changes, most importantly neo-liberal reforms and rise of consumerism, have ...
The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak)... more The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. My focus is the ways in which the dispossessed people understand and react to what they term 'chaos' and their own dispossession and the variety of coping strategies they have adopted to survive in the new, harsh economic and political environment. My account draws on 15 months 'multi-site' ethnographic fieldwork in Almaty from July 1995 to Oct 1996. What dispossessed describe as 'chaos' are the circumstances of their plunder: a situation which they think has been deliberately created by members of the former Soviet elite and a variety of Westerners. It is, I argue, a situation created and exploited by the Kazakhstan state official and others, locally known as 'the mafia' (mafiia) as part of their response to the collapse of the USSR, and the new liberal economic policies associated with the new style of 'global capitalism'....
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by... more This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Further, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his underestimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a society where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will be based on lo...
A ingestão nutricional e o estado nutricional correlacionam-se com o desenvolvimento de lesões po... more A ingestão nutricional e o estado nutricional correlacionam-se com o desenvolvimento de lesões por pressão (LPP), bem como com a cicatrização destas. Com base em tais primícias, o objetivo deste estudo foi verificar o perfil nutricional de pacientes acamados com LPP. Foram estudados 12 pacientes acompanhados no domicílio por equipes de Saúde da Família de São José do Rio Preto entre julho e agosto de 2012. Os resultados mostraram que 06 pacientes apresentavam LPP estágio II, 05 pacientes, estágio III e, 01 paciente, estágio IV. Pela ANSG, 50% foram considerados em risco nutricional e os outros 50%, com desnutrição. Pelos indicadores antropométricos, 16,7% eram eutróficos, 25%, em risco nutricional e 58,3%, desnutridos. Os pacientes ingeriam 1465,3 ± 459 (DP) calorias/dia e 54,1 + 26,9 (DP) g de proteína/dia. Em relação à ingestão de suplemento nutricionais, apenas 16,66% utilizavam algum tipo. O aporte calórico-proteico pode predizer o desenvolvimento de LPP e dificultar a cicatrização. Pacientes que receberam maior aporte proteico e energético, assim como nutrientes específicos, tenderam a desenvolver menos LPP e a apresentar melhor cicatrização. A desnutrição pode estar associada ao desenvolvimento de LPP mais graves, o que sugere que a avaliação nutricional e a realização das intervenções necessárias servem para auxiliar na prevenção e no tratamento de LPP. Conclui-se que a desnutrição pode ser um fator de risco associado ao desenvolvimento e gravidade da LPP no ambiente domiciliar. Portanto, o acompanhamento nutricional destes pacientes é importante tanto na prevenção quanto no tratamento de LPPs.
The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak)... more The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. My focus is the ways in which the dispossessed people understand and react to what they term 'chaos' and their own dispossession and the variety of coping strategies they have adopted to survive in the new, harsh economic and political environment. My account draws on 15 months 'multi-site' ethnographic fieldwork in Almaty from July 1995 to Oct 1996. What dispossessed describe as 'chaos' are the circumstances of their plunder: a situation which they think has been deliberately created by members of the former Soviet elite and a variety of Westerners. It is, I argue, a situation created and exploited by the Kazakhstan state official and others, locally known as 'the mafia' (mafiia) as part of their response to the collapse of the USSR, and the new liberal economic policies associated with the new style of 'global capitalism'....
Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age, 2015
This chapter does not offer a comprehensive analysis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work.1 ... more This chapter does not offer a comprehensive analysis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work.1 It only critiques their claim that the Marxian law of value is passe (Negri 1991; Hardt and Negri 1994, 2000, 2004, 2009). As this claim has been best espoused in Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009), I shall focus principally on these titles. The next section, quoting from these two books, provides an account of this claim. The third section, argues, in agreement with Hardt and Negri, that certain sectors of the world economy, taken in isolation, undermine the law of value. However, the arguments of the section are radically different from those of Hardt and Negri, in being derived from Marx’s theory of value. The fourth section demonstrates that this tendency is only a partial reality and is neutralized by intensive and extensive global expansion of the domains of the law. The fifth section deals with the value-form that Hardt and Negri suppose has replaced the value-form that Marx described. This, allegedly, new value-form, they argue, is the representation of an immeasurable “common”. The section shows that Hardt and Negri’s construction of this allegedly new value-form is fraught with serious mistakes. To the extent, the section argues that valueless commons is exchanged with money, such money is rent, a component of surplus-value in the Marxian sense. The sixth section argues that Hardt and Negri fail to grasp the concept of surplus-value. The conclusions restate that the law of value is still the integrating principle of the global economy.
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by... more This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Further, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his underestimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a society where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will be based on lo...
Abstract: This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are p... more Abstract: This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are pro-posed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Fur-ther, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his under-estimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a socie-ty where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will ...
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
The aim of this article is to sketch a preliminary outline of a Marxist theory of the political e... more The aim of this article is to sketch a preliminary outline of a Marxist theory of the political economy of information. It defines information as a symbolic form that can be digitally copied. This definition is purely formal and disregards epistemological, ideological, and functional aspects. The article argues that the value of information defined in this sense tends to zero and therefore the price of information is rent. However, information plays a central role in the production of relative surplus value on the one hand, and the distribution of the total social surplus value in forms of surplus profits and rents, on the other. Thus, the hegemony of information technologies in contemporary productive forces has not made Marx’s theory of value irrelevant. On the contrary, the political economy of information can only be understood in the light of this theory. The article demonstrates that the capitalist production and distribution of surplus value at the global level forms the foun...
, Michael Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia and the director of Yukos, one of the largest R... more , Michael Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia and the director of Yukos, one of the largest Russian companies, was arrested at gunpoint in Novosibirsk airport and transferred to Moscow. A few months earlier, one of his deputies, Platon Lebedev, had been arrested on 3 July 2003. In the months that followed the arrest of Lebedev, the general prosecutor raided the offices of Yukos and Menatep, a major shareholder of Yukos. 1 On 17 October 2003, Vasily Shakhnovsky, a Yukos shareholder, was detained for tax evasion. Another major shareholder, Leonid Nevzlin, was accused of conspiracy to commit murder and fled to Israel. One of Yukos's security guards was also accused as a culprit in this conspiracy and was imprisoned. The general prosecutor subjected the company to a series of raids and restrictions that led to the decline of the value of its shares and brought it to the verge of bankruptcy by the middle of August 2004. Officially, all of these actions occurred because of Yukos's illegal economic dealings and tax frauds, but the real reasons were that Khodorkovsky had dared to criticize publicly the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin; that he had funded rival political parties; and that he had also toyed with the idea of entering politics himself and becoming a presidential candidate. Since the conflict between Yukos and the state is a good illustration of the contradictory relation between state and capital in Russia, let me give a brief description of Yukos's history.
The protest movement that emerged in Iran in the wake of the presidential election of 2009 has se... more The protest movement that emerged in Iran in the wake of the presidential election of 2009 has seen a subsequent decline due to the combined effects of repression and the timidity of the reformist leadership. The growing conflict between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad around the upcoming parliamentary election of March 2012 has created a new political crisis. The radical section of the movement tries to use this split to launch a subversive strategy against the Islamic regime. Alternatively, Khamenei tries to rid himself of the last vestiges of the autonomy of any elected institution and establish a full theocratic dictatorship. Iranian society has two choices-either to subvert the Khamenei regime or to be subjugated by it. 1
Abstract In this article I describe and analyse the conditions of youth in post-Soviet Kazakhstan... more Abstract In this article I describe and analyse the conditions of youth in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, their attitudes to work and their economic practices. The article argues that the post-Soviet changes, most importantly neo-liberal reforms and rise of consumerism, have ...
The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak)... more The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. My focus is the ways in which the dispossessed people understand and react to what they term 'chaos' and their own dispossession and the variety of coping strategies they have adopted to survive in the new, harsh economic and political environment. My account draws on 15 months 'multi-site' ethnographic fieldwork in Almaty from July 1995 to Oct 1996. What dispossessed describe as 'chaos' are the circumstances of their plunder: a situation which they think has been deliberately created by members of the former Soviet elite and a variety of Westerners. It is, I argue, a situation created and exploited by the Kazakhstan state official and others, locally known as 'the mafia' (mafiia) as part of their response to the collapse of the USSR, and the new liberal economic policies associated with the new style of 'global capitalism'....
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by... more This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Further, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his underestimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a society where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will be based on lo...
A ingestão nutricional e o estado nutricional correlacionam-se com o desenvolvimento de lesões po... more A ingestão nutricional e o estado nutricional correlacionam-se com o desenvolvimento de lesões por pressão (LPP), bem como com a cicatrização destas. Com base em tais primícias, o objetivo deste estudo foi verificar o perfil nutricional de pacientes acamados com LPP. Foram estudados 12 pacientes acompanhados no domicílio por equipes de Saúde da Família de São José do Rio Preto entre julho e agosto de 2012. Os resultados mostraram que 06 pacientes apresentavam LPP estágio II, 05 pacientes, estágio III e, 01 paciente, estágio IV. Pela ANSG, 50% foram considerados em risco nutricional e os outros 50%, com desnutrição. Pelos indicadores antropométricos, 16,7% eram eutróficos, 25%, em risco nutricional e 58,3%, desnutridos. Os pacientes ingeriam 1465,3 ± 459 (DP) calorias/dia e 54,1 + 26,9 (DP) g de proteína/dia. Em relação à ingestão de suplemento nutricionais, apenas 16,66% utilizavam algum tipo. O aporte calórico-proteico pode predizer o desenvolvimento de LPP e dificultar a cicatrização. Pacientes que receberam maior aporte proteico e energético, assim como nutrientes específicos, tenderam a desenvolver menos LPP e a apresentar melhor cicatrização. A desnutrição pode estar associada ao desenvolvimento de LPP mais graves, o que sugere que a avaliação nutricional e a realização das intervenções necessárias servem para auxiliar na prevenção e no tratamento de LPP. Conclui-se que a desnutrição pode ser um fator de risco associado ao desenvolvimento e gravidade da LPP no ambiente domiciliar. Portanto, o acompanhamento nutricional destes pacientes é importante tanto na prevenção quanto no tratamento de LPPs.
The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak)... more The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. My focus is the ways in which the dispossessed people understand and react to what they term 'chaos' and their own dispossession and the variety of coping strategies they have adopted to survive in the new, harsh economic and political environment. My account draws on 15 months 'multi-site' ethnographic fieldwork in Almaty from July 1995 to Oct 1996. What dispossessed describe as 'chaos' are the circumstances of their plunder: a situation which they think has been deliberately created by members of the former Soviet elite and a variety of Westerners. It is, I argue, a situation created and exploited by the Kazakhstan state official and others, locally known as 'the mafia' (mafiia) as part of their response to the collapse of the USSR, and the new liberal economic policies associated with the new style of 'global capitalism'....
Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age, 2015
This chapter does not offer a comprehensive analysis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work.1 ... more This chapter does not offer a comprehensive analysis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work.1 It only critiques their claim that the Marxian law of value is passe (Negri 1991; Hardt and Negri 1994, 2000, 2004, 2009). As this claim has been best espoused in Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009), I shall focus principally on these titles. The next section, quoting from these two books, provides an account of this claim. The third section, argues, in agreement with Hardt and Negri, that certain sectors of the world economy, taken in isolation, undermine the law of value. However, the arguments of the section are radically different from those of Hardt and Negri, in being derived from Marx’s theory of value. The fourth section demonstrates that this tendency is only a partial reality and is neutralized by intensive and extensive global expansion of the domains of the law. The fifth section deals with the value-form that Hardt and Negri suppose has replaced the value-form that Marx described. This, allegedly, new value-form, they argue, is the representation of an immeasurable “common”. The section shows that Hardt and Negri’s construction of this allegedly new value-form is fraught with serious mistakes. To the extent, the section argues that valueless commons is exchanged with money, such money is rent, a component of surplus-value in the Marxian sense. The sixth section argues that Hardt and Negri fail to grasp the concept of surplus-value. The conclusions restate that the law of value is still the integrating principle of the global economy.
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by... more This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Further, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his underestimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a society where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will be based on lo...
Abstract: This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are p... more Abstract: This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are pro-posed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Fur-ther, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his under-estimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a socie-ty where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will ...
tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 2014
The aim of this article is to sketch a preliminary outline of a Marxist theory of the political e... more The aim of this article is to sketch a preliminary outline of a Marxist theory of the political economy of information. It defines information as a symbolic form that can be digitally copied. This definition is purely formal and disregards epistemological, ideological, and functional aspects. The article argues that the value of information defined in this sense tends to zero and therefore the price of information is rent. However, information plays a central role in the production of relative surplus value on the one hand, and the distribution of the total social surplus value in forms of surplus profits and rents, on the other. Thus, the hegemony of information technologies in contemporary productive forces has not made Marx’s theory of value irrelevant. On the contrary, the political economy of information can only be understood in the light of this theory. The article demonstrates that the capitalist production and distribution of surplus value at the global level forms the foun...
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