Month: September 2019

Separated by 100 years, two Davids – Prime Ministers Lloyd George and Cameron – made decisions which in one case certainly, and in the other case almost certainly, changed the course of history. In 2015, David Cameron offered that referendum – to win over members of UKIP, a fringe nationalist political party. Back in 1917, David Lloyd George offered Palestine as a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ – to win over Zionism, a minority, fringe, national, political movement. Both Davids were short-sighted, careless, and too clever by half.

Lloyd George endorsed Zionism, in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, initially as a war measure designed to persuade Jews in Russia and the USA to redouble their support for the Allied war effort. Ultimately, supporting Zionism made no difference to the Allied cause. After 1918, Lloyd George decided not to break this promise, and incorporated the Balfour Declaration into Britain’s mandate for ruling Palestine. His decision – to retain this commitment in peace-time – was far more significant than his decision to issue it during the war.

The main criticism of Lloyd George’s post-war commitment to Zionism is that it was undertaken in the face of all the facts, arguments and prophesies that cautioned against it – before 1922, when the mandate was awarded. For example, Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the cabinet, forecast in August 1917 two likely consequences. ‘When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home … you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country’. Meanwhile, ‘Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine’. For Montagu, Zionism was ‘a mischievous creed’. His concerns were brushed aside.

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Then, in 1919, two eminent Americans, Henry King and Charles Crane, investigated Palestine for the Paris peace-makers. They reported that ‘the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist programme’. They continued: ‘No British officer consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms’; rather, Zionism ‘would intensify with a certainty like fate the anti-Jewish feeling both in Palestine and in all other portions of the world’. The report was ignored.

Yet this was no Project Fear. In 1936, the Arabs revolted against British rule amid rising levels of Jewish immigration. The following year, the report of a commission of enquiry headed by Lord Peel was unambiguous in its conclusions. It served to emphasise how tragically prophetic were Montagu, and King and Crane, and numerous others – many of whom had predicted ‘another Ireland’. ‘The belief that the obligations undertaken towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively would prove in course of time to be mutually compatible … has not been justified’. ‘An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities’. There was ‘no hope of compromise’.

The consequences of Lloyd George’s ill-conceived policy were disastrous for the British Empire and, in the longer term, for the Middle East. In Palestine and beyond, it alienated both Arabs and, in time, the Zionists, whose militias, during and after the Second World War, helped force the British to leave.

By the late 1930s, the future for Palestine, now a country which was proving ungovernable, was already most uncertain. The British proposed, in turn, two contrasting exit strategies: in 1937, a ‘two-state solution’, via partition; in 1939, a ‘one-state solution’. After the Second World War and the Holocaust, the UN opted for the former of these approaches. But more than 70 years after the founding of the state of Israel, in the deeply divided Palestine bequeathed by the British Empire, a solution of neither type is in sight.

Lloyd George has been fortunate in his posthumous reputation. A celebratory exhibition at the National Library of Wales in 1914 was called ‘Lloyd George: The Wizard, the Goat, the Man Who Won The War’. It is not widely recognised that he caused lasting turmoil in the Middle East. ‘An improviser of speech and an improviser of policy’, he ignored inconvenient truths. He appears to have been driven by his love of the Old Testament, and a view of the Jews which combined sentimentality with anti-Semitism (judging by his depiction of Edwin Montagu as ‘a dirty coward: men of his race usually are’). He loathed, and felt an irrational rivalry with, the French. And, charismatic himself, he fell for the charms of others: especially Chaim Weizmann, the irresistible spokesman of the Zionist cause (though also, later, Adolf Hitler).

Lloyd George was buoyed by wishful thinking: although he was right that Jewish capital and enterprise would help fund Britain’s administration, he was tragically wrong in supposing that the inhabitants would welcome immigrant Jews for the prosperity they brought. The Wizard failed to anticipate – either with political acumen, or with sympathetic imagination – how the resident Palestinian Arab majority were bound to respond to Britain’s endorsement of the Zionist colonisation of their country. His legacy should have warned all subsequent statesmen to take reality into account before meddling in the affairs of distant countries and faraway peoples.

David Cameron’s short-sightedness and failure are comparable. While Lloyd George created lasting division in a distant land, Cameron has already produced deep division in his own – though of course it is a little early to know quite how the reputation of this latter-day David will fare.

Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel by Gardner Thompson is published by Saqi Books.

“We understand that our new bonus system will not suit everyone, but a return to the previous system is impossible,” ran the announcement of Glovo, a leading delivery service app, in Kyiv.

Since July, food delivery riders in the Ukrainian capital have faced a sizeable pay cut. Under Glovo’s old system of bonuses, a driver could receive a 2,200 hryvnya bonus (€76) after completing 40 deliveries in a week. But the new system set the 40 delivery bonus at 1,480 hryvnya, and drivers who aren’t ready to work under these new conditions have been asked to leave the service. This news about worsening working conditions shocked riders, prompting the first public protest by platform workers in Ukraine.

Research by the International Labour Organization shows that Ukraine ranks first in Europe in terms of how quickly people are taking up employment through digital platforms. As a rule, prominent companies in Ukraine use civil contracts – which give no protection, and only promise payment for completed work – instead of employment contracts. But Glovo’s business model stands out: in Ukraine, they don’t even sign civil contracts, which are legally required. Roughly 5,000 couriers in Ukraine are working without any form of agreement with the company. These riders have not registered themselves as individual entrepreneurs (as have, for example, Ukrainian Uber drivers).

Ukraine’s gig economy has been “infected” by local diseases, combining precarious employment with the worst forms of illegal work. But recent victories in Spain – and signs of change in Ukraine – give us a glimpse of what a resolution could look like.

Terms and conditions. What’s inside?

Glovo currently holds a leading position in Ukraine’s food delivery market. Roughly 500,000 people have downloaded the company’s mobile app, and since December 2018, the share capital of Glovo’s Ukrainian branch has increased tenfold. This month, the company opened its eighth office in the country.

Relations between Glovo and its couriers are regulated by different internal rules. Risks and principal expenses are shifted onto riders, who are called “prudent businesspersons” or “freelancers”. According to a set of “Special Terms and Conditions” (which riders have to accept), Glovo asks couriers to take out insurance and pay taxes. But in Ukraine, a former Glovo courier tells me, most couriers work without fulfilling these obligations. Couriers do not pay welfare contributions on their earnings, and so they can’t be recognised as employed or self-employed persons. In turn, this means they don’t have the right to any compensation from the state in case of injury. For example, in late July this year, a 20-year-old rider died following a road accident in Kharkiv. His family did not receive compensation.

Instead, Glovo states that it provides information services, acting as a “meeting point” between a buyer and a courier. Yet Glovo, as owner of the platform, sets requirements to be followed at work (hot and cold food should be transported in different containers, a courier should wear a denim or leather jacket in the rain etc).

The food delivery service states that it is not an employer – yet, according to the “Special Terms and Conditions”, it can fire a rider for making “negative’’ comments on Facebook. After Glovo drivers held protests in Kyiv last month, several participants later found that they had been banned from the Glovo app – without being told why. Despite the company’s assertion that digital platform acts automatically, it is fully dependent on managers who make decisions at their own discretion.

There are other aspects of the relationship between Glovo and its couriers that suggest they are “employment relations” according to Ukraine’s Labour Code:

• As part of driver registration, drivers have to submit a medical record certifying the completion of a physical examination
• Glovo can give instructions to new riders about traffic rules, which is comparable to safety training
• Company provides branded clothing and delivery bags to the courier
• Internal working regulations: Glovo identifies important business factors for independent contractors; prohibition of alcohol and drug use before or during “working hours”; maximum delivery time is set (60 minutes)

Generally speaking, the more control a platform exerts over workers, the more likely it is to be considered an employer.

Why is the Ukrainian situation is unique?

Glovo, a multinational firm, imposes the same model of relations with its riders in every state. But in Ukraine this behaviour looks even more abusive. Ukraine has the lowest minimum salary in Europe, yet Glovo still tries to cut rider bonuses. And employees are not protected in cases where the company attempts to pressure them. The latter can be explained by the following factors.

• Ukraine’s Labour Inspection, including its inspectors, have limited powers, as noted in a 2018 EU-ILO report. The State Labour Service does not have adequate human or financial resources. In May 2019, Ukrainian employers challenged regulation on labour inspections in court, and now the Labour Service is not permitted to conduct unplanned workplace inspections.
• Ukrainian trade unions are, on the whole, very weak. In 2018, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine did not record any strikes. Of course, Ukraine did witness several protests and “wildcat” strikes, but no legal strikes. There is no experience of organising workers in Ukraine’s “new economy” of apps and platform workers. Young people are not involved in trade unions, and there are no regulations on determining the status of trade unions that incorporate non-typical employment scenarios, such as on-demand workers.
• Ukrainian laws do not stipulate what factors constitute an employment relationship. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Social Policy attempted to change labour legislation, but failed. (Neoliberal experts and institutions stated that mechanisms to tackle undeclared work will compromise Ukraine’s IT sector.) This means it is not easy to fight against false self-employment by bringing a claim to court. ILO sets a simple rule: whenever there is a juridical subordination between a work provider and who benefits from it, these relations should be considered official employment

Indeed, the focus on the person who benefits from work is important in terms of the ILO’s practice when it comes to detecting hidden employment. Privately, representatives of Ukraine’s State Labour Service say that it is difficult to identify the beneficiary in the Glovo case: a courier in Kyiv interacts with offices in both Ukraine and Spain. For example, couriers working in Kyiv receive payment from Spain.

Demands of on-demand workers

Glovo stands out for one more reason. It is almost the only Western tech company operating in Ukraine which has united workers against it. Since 22 July, Glovo couriers have organised three protests in Kyiv in response to the new bonus structure. Their demands include bonus system thats allow drivers to earn decent wages without working extreme overtime, insurance policies for couriers in case of accidents, an “amnesty” for drivers involved in protests, compensation of drivers’ expenses on fuel, food and time spent waiting for orders.

So far, all attempts to negotiate with the company have been unsuccessful. Each new protest has resulted in more couriers being banned from the Glovo app. In response, couriers have decided to set up a trade union of delivery services workers. (Disclaimer: the Social Movement NGO, of which I am a member, helped in this regard.) Of course this union has no specific rights in Ukrainian law. Their first task is to prove that their relationship with Glovo should be considered officially as employment.

Footage of Glovo rider protest in Kyiv, Ukraine. Source: Political Critique Ukraine

A rider can thus bring an action to the court. If the court establishes that the relationship should equal employment, the couriers will have the right to receive a salary for the entire period of employment. After that, a labour inspector can fine the company €4,430 for non-registration of labour relations. In turn, a further fine could be imposed (for each unregistered worker) after the inspection.

One eye on Spain

Precarious delivery riders and labour inspectors in Ukraine are looking at the experience of fighting Glovo elsewhere for inspiration.

In July 2018, the Spanish Labour Inspectorate recognised 326 Glovo couriers working in Zaragoza as official employees of the company. Glovo was forced to pay €379,963 as part of the decision, which includes welfare contributions for the eight months in which the labour investigation ran. During the investigation, inspectors questioned roughly 180 Glovo drivers (including ex-couriers) and representatives of the city’s restaurants. Several hundred drivers were registered in Social Security system as a result.

In Ukraine, labour inspectors can fine employers only after “catching” illegal workers on the premises. On 21 August, the Ukrainian government adopted new regulations on inspection visits. Representatives of State Labour Service believe that these legislative changes will establish a flexible framework for revealing hidden employment.

If the Ukrainian labour inspection renews its activity, the main question will touch on how to categorise the relationship between Glovo and its riders.

Prior to 2019, Spanish courts had no consolidated position concerning Glovo’s business model. In some regions, Spanish courts identified couriers as not being truly self-employed and found that they had been dismissed unlawfully, but in others – they didn’t. “Maybe one day the [Spanish] Supreme Court will decide, setting a precedent,” reflected one Spanish outlet.

In July 2019, the Spanish Supreme Court identified a Glovo courier as an employee of the company. The Court’s argument ran that without the Glovo platform, a person simply would not be able to deliver food, so the Glovo application is actually a means of production. Conversely, without couriers, the company would not be able to deliver the food. Couriers have no right to change the terms of the contractual relationship with the company, which indicates the asymmetry of power. Glovo actually acts as an employer, as it has a deciding influence on the provision of offline services and determines their maximum cost. The company indirectly controls the execution of work – through the Glovo app and location tracking. Finally, the grounds for termination of the relationship are similar to disciplinary grounds for dismissal (improper performance of duties, delays).

Notably, the Spanish Supreme Court cited European Parliament Directive 2019/1152 and of the European Council in June 2019 on transparent and predictable working conditions in the European Union. These documents proclaim a minimum set of rights for those employed in the “sharing economy”. Glovo experts have doubted whether the Directive could be applied to Glovo workers, because they can be classified as self-employed.

Conclusions

Alongside other platforms, Glovo has created a challenge not only in Ukraine, but also in the European Union.

Previous EU directives on atypical forms of work used the concept of “equal working conditions with comparable workers”. For example, fixed-term workers or part-time workers received the right to demand a minimum set of guarantees, established for “standard” employees who work in a similar situation. But this doesn’t fit into situations where employer uses atypical workers exclusively. Yet the economic essence of these models isn’t new, they are similar to those which were used under early capitalism. “Breaking up jobs into small, low-skilled tasks is simply old wine in new bottles,” proclaims researcher Kurt Vandaele in his study of platform work.

Will Glovo change how it treats Spanish couriers after the Supreme Court ruling? “If that were the case, the solution would be to grow in other countries so that Spain would represent a smaller percentage of our business,” this is what Oscar Pierre, CEO and founder of Glovo, said in 2018. The Spanish Supreme Court can’t force Glovo to change their practice everywhere it works, including Ukraine. But showing these examples of harmful practice is important: multinational startups are sensitive to public opinion. Partners of Glovo such as McDonald’s should consider how ethical it is to work with companies that fail to comply with minimum working standards.

Meanwhile, riders’ actions speak for themselves: couriers in Ukraine are saying that working conditions at a new delivery service, Menu Group, are better than Glovo, such as riders receiving accident insurance from the company. With the Ukrainian state constrained by the standard neoliberal agenda, it’s an interesting thought: could market forces help to deliver justice in Ukraine’s delivery sector? Perhaps, but at least so far – only in response to pressure from young workers.

Ukrainians believed that multinational businesses could bring higher levels of social standards to workplaces. Glovo has helped to dispel these illusions. Could they go back and try to build a civilised social dialogue with their riders? Right now, it seems like they’ve passed the point of no return.

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The NHS is a national treasure

The National Health Service is one of the UK’s greatest achievements. For over 70 years it has provided a cost effective, comprehensive, universal health service, free at the point of need. The public cares about this a great deal:

• YouGov polling shows people think the NHS is the second most important issue facing the country right now (the first most important is Brexit).
• 84% of the public support a publicly owned NHS.
• 700,000 people have so far signed the change.org Keep Our NHS Public petition against the NHS being included in a US trade deal.

Words are not enough to protect our NHS

Boris Johnson has repeatedly said the NHS won’t be on the table when it comes to a US trade deal. Liz Truss, Matt Hancock, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt and Donald Trump himself have all said the same.

But the NHS isn’t safe with just words – new legislation is needed.

Privatisation, competition and marketisation is already happening in our NHS

The NHS was originally set up as a system of comprehensive, publicly funded, publicly owned and provided, and publicly accountable health services available to all, but increasingly, due to marketisation, private firms are taking over the provision of NHS services and running them for profit:

• £9.2 billion of clinical services in England have already been privatised, plus billions more in equipment, support services and buildings.
• Our NHS is already open to competition from private companies like Virgin Care.
• US-owned firms – like UnitedHealth/Optum and Priory Group – already have contracts to run services in our NHS, and are also involved in shaping corporate-led restructurings and contracts that are leading to the declining local access to services including GPs, A&E and local hospitals.

Existing competition means the NHS can’t be protected from a trade deal

As long as private companies are allowed to compete for NHS services, the NHS can be included in trade deals. This means that the door is wide open for more privatisation, deregulation and takeover by US healthcare giants in the future.

Since the marketisation of the NHS (with the introduction of the purchaser/provider split), its protection can no longer be assumed. Any remaining doubt about the vulnerability of the NHS was removed in 2012, when the Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) ensured competition between service providers.

The only way to protect our NHS is to remove legislation that allows private contracts for NHS services. The NHS has to return to a government-run public service not structured for the purposes of commercial profit, through legislation along the lines of the NHS Reinstatement Bill. We need laws to safeguard our NHS from both existing privatisation and free trade agreements now and in the future.

A US trade deal could lock in privatisation and make it irreversible

Signing a trade deal with the US means that current levels of privatisation will be ‘locked in’ – and very difficult to reverse.

• The NHS is reliant on a wide range of public sector institutions and services, such as public health provision social care and emergent technology. The US is likely to insist on ‘negative listing’ which means everything is on the table unless it is explicitly excluded. We would have to list a huge range of NHS related services in order to exclude them from a trade deal. It also means we wouldn’t have protection for new, unforeseen services and technologies that could be important in the future.
• ‘Standstill’ and ‘ratchet’ clauses that will almost inevitably be included in any trade deals will lock in existing levels of privatisation and make it almost impossible for any government to roll back privatisation or deregulation in the future.
• Future trade deals are more than likely to include investment protection measures, like Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). This means that corporations can sue the UK government (and ultimately the tax payer) in private tribunals for any changes in government policies that they think might affect future potential profits. Only international investors can make use of these secretive, unaccountable courts – there is no equivalent mechanism for domestic companies, governments or citizens. This threat is enough to create a ‘policy chill’ on government policies, like reinstating the NHS. Canada, Australia and Slovakia have already had to pay millions in compensation due to investment protection measures.

Legislation is needed to protect us from new threats

• Vital access to medicines could be restricted by a trade deal. US politicians have already made clear they want to “pressure” the UK through trade negotiations to “pay more” for drugs. What’s at stake here is the NHS’s ability to hold down drug prices and demand cost-effectiveness before approving their use, in the UK and across other countries that peg drug expenditure to NHS reference prices.
• UK patient data is very comprehensive and therefore of great interest to corporations developing global business models for new markets. US trade negotiators want US firms to be able to harvest this data freely and sell it back to the NHS and globally at a premium, through “state-of-the-art rules to ensure that the UK does not impose measures that restrict cross-border data flows”. If ‘data is the new oil’ then it’s vital we don’t give this precious asset away.
• Vital safety standards for drugs, new technology, and numbers, skill levels and working hours of staff, could be dropped to make our NHS more profitable to US firms. The language of the US negotiating objectives clearly indicates this is their goal. Indeed, this is already underway and needs to be reversed.
• Public health measures, for instance around sugary drinks or tobacco, could be blocked by trade deals, especially ISDS.
• Trade deals also have wider implications in terms of food standards, climate change, protection for the environment and for workers. Government needs the ability to regulate to protect public health in general.
• As things stand, parliament has no power to veto a trade agreement, even if the majority of MPs knew that a deal would destroy the NHS.

We need proactive legislation now to protect our NHS so that all of these issues can be dealt with, BEFORE any trade deal with the US or anyone else.

Please write to your MP to ask that legislation to protect the NHS and associated services is drawn up and implemented as a matter of urgency.

This campaign is supported by We Own It, Keep Our NHS Public, OurNHS openDemocracy, 999 Call for the NHS, Health Campaigns Together, Change.org, Public Matters, the Socialist Health Association, Global Justice Now and Trade Justice Movement.

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The corporation is an extraordinary social institution. Endowed with a set of expansive legal privileges that enable it to structure external capital investment, produce profits and accumulate wealth, its productive capacity has created the world we live in. Yet in its current form the modern corporation is profoundly undemocratic, and acts as a driving force for inequality in the heart of our economy. Both the uneven wealth of society and the depth of crises confronting us are consequently inseparable from the corporation.

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Any attempt to overcome the democratic neutering, economic inequality, and accelerating forms of planetary breakdown endemic to capitalism must therefore have a strategy for transforming the corporation. It is in this light that the importance of Labour’s Inclusive Ownership Fund – which a recent Financial Times analysis suggested would redistribute corporate wealth and spread share capital to workers worth up to £300bn over a decade – becomes clear. It is a part of a wider progressive policy agenda for transforming and democratising the corporation and therefore reshaping wealth and power in society.

Reimagining how the corporation operates requires us to go beyond the policy tools of a regulatory or redistributive state into rearranging the distribution and nature of property, governance and control rights that shape its behaviour. This is because how the corporation is owned and governed fundamentally affects how it operates and in whose interest. Today, a combination of shareholder primacy in the governance of the company, the intermediation of corporate ownership by rentier-like financial institutions, and the deep financialisation of the corporation has turned many companies into engines of wealth extraction, detached from their original purpose.

Yet in an economy marked by low levels of investment, a decade of sluggish real wage growth, and a prolonged productivity crisis, we urgently need companies that are purposeful, democratic, and inclusive by design. Shifting to more generative forms of enterprise will require a deep institutional turn in the ownership and control of companies.

The Inclusive Ownership Fund is an attempt to reshape the corporation toward those ends. The policy would require large companies to issue 1% of outstanding equity annually into a locked fund, democratically controlled by the workforce, which would grant dividend and voting rights equal to the Fund’s equity share. By diluting stock, rather than expropriating existing shareholders, it would not adversely impact the working capital of the company but would broaden income and control rights within it, ensuring everyone within it had a genuine stake and a say. There are important debates over design but its direction is clear.

Instead of the governance of the firm being dominated by external investors and their managerial agents, many of whom hold important ownership stakes in their own right, the Funds would help ensure labour had a powerful voice in shaping strategic decision-making. Alongside wider corporate governance reforms and the strengthening of organised labour, it would democratise the governance of the firm. Through broadening ownership via new collective forms of property, the Funds could act as a powerful mechanism towards the redistribution of resources and power within companies and wider society. By removing a growing proportion of corporate ownership from financial intermediation – and the short-termism and poor decision-making that often occurs as a result – the ownership funds could act as a powerful steward for the sustainable creation of value, helping foster a more prosperous and inventive economy. In short, the funds could help enable a more generative and committed company form to emerge.

Reimagining patterns of income and control within the firm may appear radical. Yet the privileges ascribed to the corporation and the powerful governance and income rights assigned to shareholders – in contrast to labour – are socially assigned and politically mediated. As Katrina Pistor demonstrates in her brilliant new book, the law produces new forms of capital through the encoding power of legal instruments. How capital is produced, and for whom, is malleable and a site for political struggle. We have before and must again remake the governance of the firm and how it distributes its surplus. At the same time, it is also worth noting the existing scale of share issuance to senior management through remuneration in shares and share options. In many ways this process mimics the mechanisms of Inclusive Ownership Funds, but in ways that deepen inequality and narrow power.

Strategies for democratising ownership – not just through ownership funds but through an array of interventions to thicken out and scale up a richer ecology of company forms that are democratic and inclusive by design and that radically broaden capital ownership in society – is also a critical step in moving beyond neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is many things: a mode of governance and rationality, an often-contradictory strategy for regulating capitalism, a reshaping of the state to enforce market-based forms of measurement and evaluation into ever-more domains of life, and an ideology and class project that has extracted wealth and power upwards. Yet at its core, in every form, it is a conscious strategy to insulate the economic from the political, to zone off the economy from democratic intervention.

As Quinn Slobodian demonstrates in Globalists, his superb history of the end of empire and the birth of neoliberalism, the neoliberal project was and is a constructive project, based on creating rules, institutions, and law to protect property from the demos, maintaining and amplifying existing hierarchies of wealth and power that flow from the nature and unequal distribution of capital. By insisting on the plasticity of the corporation as a social institution, its political ordering, and hence its capacity for change, interventions to reshape the nature and distribution of property in the economy can reassert our ability and need to consciously design economic life in ways that provide the conditions for universal flourishing. After all, if capitalism is in part a set of exploitation rights related to an asset – from the landlords right to extract rent to the right of shareholders to control a company’s surplus – then a post-capitalist political economy will be anchored in new arrangements of ownership and control that deepen and extend social and economic freedom and prioritise generative forms of enterprise.

Accelerating environmental breakdown and the crisis of democratic capitalism makes transformative action the safest course. Twice before in living memory we have transformed how and for whom we organise our economy on a dimension and pace the moment now demands. Critically, both times it was radical changes in property and ownership that were fundamental to change, from the extension of public ownership that underpinned the post-war consensus, to the mass privatisation that was the tip of the spear of neoliberalism’s counter-assault. Any transformation of our economy in the decades ahead, albeit in radically different directions to the past – toward the deepening of democracy in all spheres of life – will depend on similarly deep shifts in ownership.

A new wave of anti-government mobilization has swept across the Eurasian countries that once comprised the Soviet Union. Crowds in Moscow have mobilised to call for free and fair city council elections this September. Despite massive arrests and police violence, the protestors have returned every weekend for seven weeks. Similarly, in June a new political movement “Oyan, Kazakhstan!” (Wake up, Kazakhstan) was founded by urban youths demanding political freedoms after the resignation of Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president for three decades. It now commands hundreds of followers across the country. Last year in Yerevan, Armenia, young activists led anti-government protests demanding the resignation of long-serving leader Serzh Sargsyan. The list goes on.

These activists are part of a generation that was born or came of age since the collapse of the Soviet regime. These 20- and 30-somethings seek to define their political landscape by wresting power from older, incumbent politicians who cling to the autocratic tendencies of communism. They are internet savvy and have traveled abroad. They now see themselves as agents of change, willing to risk more than their parents could stomach.

The activists draw from many resistance tactics and have different political agendas, ranging from wholesale political reforms to merely claiming the right to protest in public. For example, in Ukraine, young political activists mobilised into powerful professional networks after the violent regime change in 2014, pledging to collaborate with parliament and government agencies to implement democratic reforms. Ukraine’s newly formed government is the youngest in Europe, led by 35-year old prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk. By contrast, Kazakhstan’s young activists are just beginning to exercise their constitutional right of free assembly and normalise collective action in a public space.

Despite varying degrees of political freedoms, there are undeniable parallels across countries. Unlike the civil society groups of the 1990s and 2000s, these activists are not aided by international NGOs. Their funding is more likely to come from online crowdsourcing than from international donor organisations. Their repertoires of resistance emphasize performance through contemporary art displays, music, slogans and short videos. They adapt strategies from protesters in Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, and from neighbouring states with Soviet history. Some have backgrounds in feminist and environmental advocacy and are steeped in both local and global political discussions.

Recognising that asserting their civic rights in an authoritarian country comes with risks, they are fearless in the face of police arrests. “Activists have realized that even a 10-day detention is not that scary,” says Kassymkhan Kapparov, one of the founding members of “Oyan, Kazakhstan!”. Lyubov Sobol, an opposition candidate excluded from the ballot for a seat in the Moscow city Duma, live-streamed her speech to supporters as police broke down the doors of her office to detain her. The stream ended as she ordered the police to answer “On what basis [are you here]?”, once they finally entered her office.

By defying the government’s threat to use punitive action, these young activists test the boundaries of the state’s permissible use of violence and its other subversive means to tame resistance. Governments have begun to invent new ways to preempt or contain this new type of protest. In Russia, for example, parents who bring small children to protests were threatened to have their children taken away on the grounds of child abuse. In Kazakhstan, three young activists were called up for military service. However, none of these tactics have significantly deterred participation in future rallies.

Resistance against the status quo goes hand-in-hand with demands for a freer political future — a fair society with an accountable government. In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a dozen urban activists are fighting to end the influence that wealthy individuals’ hold over top political leaders ahead of parliamentary elections in 2020. In Chisinau, Moldova, young activists rallied against oligarchic corruption in politics ahead of the parliamentary elections last February. Youth collectives “Free Moldova” and “OccupyGuguță” united urban activists, including the Moldovan diaspora, who campaigned to inform the public about the scale of corruption among politicians running in the elections.

In Tbilisi, Georgia, activists protested against the visit of a Russian lawmaker Sergey Gavrilov, demanding the government to cut diplomatic ties with Russia, which occupied two Georgian provinces in 2008. Georgian police responded with violence against protestors, adding a grievous dimension to the ongoing protests.

The recent wave of activism reflects a long delayed post-colonial rejection of authoritarianism and revives the brief debate about civic resistance at the end of the old Tsarist regime. In Kazakhstan, activists invoke the memory of Alash Orda (1917-1918), an autonomous governance structure comprised of intelligentsia who resisted the Red Army. In Ukraine and Georgia, activists regard the Soviet era as a dark period in their history, vowing to shape a unique future for their counties that is free from Kremlin influence.

Going forward, this new generation of political activists will face challenges beyond economic development, the common issue of choice for post-Soviet elites. They must address migration, cultural conservatism, and the structural divide between urban and rural populations. As in the United States, parts of Europe, India, and Australia, large portions of the population leaning towards populism and nationalism over liberal democracy.

They must also contend with existing institutions ridden with inefficiency and corruption. Security structures, in particular, still rely on their Soviet-era playbook that favours allegiance over the rule of law. Militarised and politically loyal, the police, intelligence services, and judicial systems fallback on their punitive functions, despite the collapse of the communist regime. The new generation of activists will need to make these institutions accountable to the public not just to political incumbents.

Almost 30 years since the end of the Soviet regime, the political structure is poised for a dramatic change. Younger, mostly urban, individuals are trying to enter the political realm—and to force out the musty doddering incumbents. Political change may be slow and interrupted by police crackdowns, but the grievances and motivations of the new wave of activists are unlikely to subside. Their own futures are at stake.

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