Communis Press

09/15/2026

“There are two paths in finance: the path of debt and the path of equity. As they are currently structured under the neoliberal system, both are harmful. They should be brutally reduced to their primary function: financing the agents of the real economy, without any frills.”

— Frédéric Lordon, "Smashing Neoliberal Finance: Banks, Credit, Debt"

Financing the agents of the real economy, without any frills.

09/12/2026

“We’ll have to run roughshod over the argumentative framework of neoliberal finance. Not a single tenet of its sociological doctrine holds water. This will provide further encouragement to stick to the methodological line that will guide the entire undertaking: strike hard. Strike very hard, in fact. Ignore all the whining, all the pleas for ‘complexity.’ On the contrary: send finance back to the Stone Age—that is, to the highest degree of simplicity. Any pocket of residual ‘complexity’ is a potential breeding ground for the very things we must break with: ‘innovation,’ circumvention—that is, escape.”

— Frédéric Lordon, "Smashing Neoliberal Finance: Principles and Methods"

Innovation, stability, liquidity, efficiency: how not to be swayed by any of neoliberal finance’s arguments

09/08/2026

"In the absence of conditions conducive to moving beyond capitalism—and without prejudice to the political work required to bring such conditions about—the left’s endeavor to move beyond this form of capitalism—an endeavor that constitutes a sort of minimum standard for left-wing politics, leaving it to all right-wing forces to manage the status quo and things as they stand—the left’s endeavor must target the head: finance. There can be no left-wing politics that does not target the head. If 'left-wing politics' means rolling back the grip of capital—and thus altering the structural conditions of that grip—then it must take on neoliberal finance. Vigorously."

— Frédéric Lordon, "A window of historic opportunity"

Or how the left can target the head of the snake.

09/06/2026

Tell the flame tongues
twisting up from the havoc.
Try. Try to hear
the speechless they bear

against the absconded
words…

— David Lloyd, “The Noise Floor,” fifth installment of Communis’ series Transiterations, in collaboration with Rolando Prats.

A hand stretched into the ash / for the cinder

09/04/2026

“Saying ‘self-organization’ or ‘workers’ sovereignty’ isn’t enough. How will financing be provided? How will collective functions be organized? How will the division of labor be managed? How will individuals fit into it once they are freed from the tyranny of wages and capitalist employment? What role will remain for the market? For money? What will be the overall consequences for the standard of living? And to what extent will people be aware of these necessities? So many questions, so few answers for now.”

— Frédéric Lordon, "The Days After (Questions of Strategy 1)"

What an “insubordinate” LFI government in France might look like?

09/02/2026

“If one wishes to understand the Soviet experience — including the meaning of Communism and of its Stalinist negation — one must come to grips with what seemed to millions throughout the world to be the great promise of the 1917 revolution.”

— Paul Le Blanc reviews, in "Remaining true to socialism and wrestling with its meaning", Notebooks for the Grandchildren: Recollections of a Supporter of the Marxist Opposition to Stalin Who Survived the Stalin Terror, by Mikhail Baitalsky.

From October 1917 in Petrograd through July 1953 in Vorkuta: What went wrong?

09/02/2026

"The explosion in AI capabilities and the scale of the resulting social decline will revolutionize the class landscape in ways that no form of Marxism fixated on 'the working class as the subject of history' could have imagined. Nor, for that matter, could a political sociology of the 'people of the networks' such as that of La France Insoumise. It is neither within workerist exclusivism nor within a new networked class that 'it' is happening—'it,' that is, the formation of forces of rupture. Not, for that matter, that everything cannot come together in the melting pot, for, yes, there remain combative working-class strongholds, and yes, there are those excluded from the networks—potential forces. But the essential shift is taking shape elsewhere: in capitalism’s own methodical demolition of its own support base. A base whose sociological minority status has always been offset by its symbolic majority status: 'intellectual' professions, entitled to a voice, with access to public expression, assured of respect and over-representation in the media—including the world of cinema, which has eyes only for its own class and interest only in its own lives."

— Frédéric Lordon, "Marx will end up being right (AI and Class Struggle)"

On the dialectic of the expendable bourgeois bloc.

09/01/2026

“For Lula to win it will not be enough to simply highlight his track record: he will also have to demonstrate his willingness to fight to deepen reforms and ensure a better life for Brazilians.”

— Valério Arcary, "The battle will be fierce"

Upcoming elections in Brazil: a clash between two antagonistic worldviews.

08/30/2026

“Fidel is the name of a process far broader than the biography of an individual: it is a theoretical and political space that defines a historical juncture—that of the ceaseless search for means to ensure the sovereign exercise of power by the people, in a national and revolutionary context but one that can be affirmed, with certainty and firmness, only within a global framework of equality and justice. And this is where History Will Absolve Me takes on an extraterritorial vitality, as it moves from the fighter defending Cuba’s sovereignty to the fighter standing in solidarity with human emancipation, in an eminently universal context.”

— Jaime Ortega, "Cordiality of Reason: Reading History Will Absolve Me"

https://communispress.com/cordiality-of-reason-reading-history-will-absolve-me/

Now on Communis. In Spanish and in English translation.

08/30/2026

«Fidel es el nombre de un proceso mucho más amplio que la biografía de un individuo: es un espacio teórico y político que demarca una coyuntura, la de la búsqueda incesante de medios de asegurar el ejercicio soberano del pueblo, en clave nacional y revolucionaria, pero que es susceptible de afirmarse, con certeza y firmeza, sólo en una condición global de igualdad y justicia. Y es ahí donde La historia me absolverá asume una vitalidad extraterritorial, pues pasa del combatiente que defiende la soberanía de Cuba al combatiente solidario por la emancipación humana, en clave eminentemente universal.»

— Jaime Ortega, «Cordialidad de la razón: Lecturas de La historia me absolverá»

https://communispress.com/cordialidad-de-la-razon-lecturas-de-la-historia-me-absolvera/

Now on Communis. In Spanish and in English translation.