Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸
Political Economist | Dravidian Marxist | TikTok: comrade_ashok | twitter: broseph_stalin
monopsonycapitalism.com
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸It is the pause after the question that kills me.
- Calling a fight over Greenland a “world war” is idiotic. It would be a squabble over ice between dead empires and a rotting one. No brown or black bodies to use as cannon fodder this time. The only real outcome is the collapse of the Atlantic pact that’s defined the last 80 years.
- US withdraws all military forces from Iraq’s federal territory after 23 years.
- Went on LBC Topics covered: Tens of thousands without drinking water for nearly a week. Bills exploding. Public health emergencies. Renationalising water polls at 90%. The Greens are right. Starmer remains loyal to a failed privatised model and the companies that profit from it Renationalise water!
- 1/10 🧵 Worth engaging with the full Politics Theory Other episode. Richard Seymour offers a familiar critique of corruption, repression, and the exhaustion of Chavismo. These are real issues the left should not ignore.
- 2/10 But his response shifts away from what my intervention was doing. I wasn’t offering a purity test for “real socialism,” or holding up Maduro’s Venezuela as a model.
- 3/10 I was responding to an academic demand to name a single progressive left policy of the Maduro government. That is an empirical question, not a definitional one.
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View full thread10/10 Bottom line: I’m not asking anyone to canonise Maduro or deny degeneration. I’m pushing back against a left habit of treating countries under economic warfare as failed thought experiments. Sanctions are economic warfare. Dismissing welfare under siege launders regime change.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸It's imperialism, stupid! Natural resources are not the reason the US wants control over Greenland. I explain why in my new @theconversation.com article on Greenland's critical raw materials and fossil fuels in US expansionist ambition. Read the article here: theconversation.com/why-greenlan...
- Spoke to The Independent on Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs on any country trading with Iran. It is economic warfare. This kind of erratic trade coercion raises the risk of doing business with the US, accelerates its isolation, and fuels global de-dollarisation www.independent.co.uk/news/world/m...
- One year of Trump’s tariffs. Higher prices, global disruption, and political theatre. I unpack what happened to the US and world economy on Al Jazeera:
- Why Venezuela? Oil isn’t the whole story. Talking to L’Humanité about what’s actually at stake.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸Primitive accumulation, plunder, slavery, colonial extraction and exploitation are all part of the same capitalist mechanisms that built Britain. The state-backed companies that led this are the same that continue to steal workers’ share of the products of their labour today.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸"Genuine question..."
- Just went on the BBC. The other guest was former adviser to disgraced opposition figure Juan Guaidó, brought on to launder Washington’s fallacious justifications for outright thuggery in Venezuela.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸What if the urgency surrounding Trump’s attack on Venezuela is not just about oil, but about the end of US oil? What if this is a desperate attempt to hold onto US oil dominance after loosing the fight to dominate green capitalism? 1/6
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View full threadReposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸As @brosef-stalin.bsky.social set out nicely in @the-breakdown.bsky.social , oil majors are consolidating as the price of exploration and extraction is increasing - consolidation a sure way to retain market share and profitability after the oil boom is over tinyurl.com/5xy5scv8 5/6
- Unlike what we’re told to believe in Britain, class isn’t an identity. It’s a relation.
- Who are the working class in Britain?
- It’s simple: the US has waged a decades-long economic war on the Venezuelan people since Hugo Chávez nationalised the oil, because Venezuela insists its natural resources belong to its people, not Chevron.
- 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸She started malfunctioning 🤔
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸the state of british media my god
- Yemen’s blockade of the Red Sea against Israel’s genocide was the first successful naval blockade in history carried out by a force with no navy. Here’s how it happened. It’s open access: doi.org/10.1111/anti...
- Julia Hartley-Brewer: Why is colonialism bad? Me: “When Britain arrived in 1700s, India had 27% of global GDP. After 200 years of theft and millions starved to death, by 1947 India had 3% of global GDP, 90% living below the poverty line, a literacy rate of 17% and life expectancy of 27”
- Just got the new issue of BreakDown. I’ve got an essay in it on the strategic vulnerabilities and liabilities of fossil capital. Read it and the rest of the issue here: www.break-down.org/merging-to-s...
- Britain doesn’t need a cookie cutter of Zohran Mamdani. It needs politicians who serve the people, not the machine. Who’d rather lose power than lose conviction. We had that with Jeremy in 2017. We have it again with Zack Polanski. Me on LBC:
- To mark David Harvey’s 90th, Verso is releasing a collection of reflections on his remarkable body of work. They invited me to write about The Condition of Postmodernity, a book that reshaped how we think about capitalism and culture.
- I’m presenting some new work on factory machinery, gender, and social reproduction, how the rhythms of the machine rewire the rhythms of life. Historical Materialism, London Thurs Nov 6, 4:30 – 6:15.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸My article in @the-breakdown.bsky.social is now free to read online! While far-right parties have traditionally ignored climate, I explore how the Sweden Democrats embrace it as a wedge issue, creating redistributive conflicts around class & urban-rural divides: www.break-down.org/petrol-for-t...
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸"The more disruption occurs, the more financial models adapt to expect it. This means that every disruption is effective, whether or not it stops a project outright. Even when it looks like we’re losing, we’re shifting the risk landscape"
- I wrote an extended essay on the transformation of the fossil fuel industry and the key vulnerabilities it exposes. These weaknesses are baked into the industry’s own logic of risk. In essence, every disruption matters. Here: t.co/tQvg4qDeJe
- My dad on South Indian TV, tore into the criminal Zionist state, shredding the US empire’s lies, and hailing Iran and Yemen as the last ones with a spine for Palestine. Watch: youtu.be/jI30B0-t3Zc?...
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸Great talk, great moves, 10/10, Danish marxism recommend @brosef-stalin.bsky.social
- Had an incredible time in Aarhus. Huge thanks to the Danish Society for Marxist Studies (@dkmarxsoc.bsky.social) organizing committee for the kind invitation
- Had an incredible time in Aarhus. Huge thanks to the Danish Society for Marxist Studies (@dkmarxsoc.bsky.social) organizing committee for the kind invitation
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸Our second keynote is underway! @brosef-stalin.bsky.social is speaking on changing trends of factory capital, fossil capital, war capital, and maritime capital - and possibilities for disruption 👊💥
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸My first @dkmarxsoc.bsky.social conference in the books. Today’s keynote by @brosef-stalin.bsky.social was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend. Learned a lot & got to meet so many great people. I’ll definitely be back!
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸A wonderful and wild ride of a keynote by @brosef-stalin.bsky.social at this year’s conference by @dkmarxsoc.bsky.social, it’s 10th anniversary!
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸@brosef-stalin.bsky.social implicating Denmark at @dkmarxsoc.bsky.social . Great talk.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸A superb essay by Ashok Kumar from the latest issue of the BREAK–DOWN – a brilliant tour of the political economic terrain of fossil capital, from which springs essential strategic advice for activists. A must read!
- “The consolidation of fossil fuel firms is creating an ever more fragile and exposed system.” ASHOK KUMAR (@brosef-stalin.bsky.social) finds new points of leverage in a more concentrated fossil fuel industry for ISSUE #2 FRONTIERS. Read the full essay👇
- I wrote an extended essay on the transformation of the fossil fuel industry and the key vulnerabilities it exposes. These weaknesses are baked into the industry’s own logic of risk. In essence, every disruption matters. Here: t.co/tQvg4qDeJe
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸“The consolidation of fossil fuel firms is creating an ever more fragile and exposed system.” ASHOK KUMAR (@brosef-stalin.bsky.social) finds new points of leverage in a more concentrated fossil fuel industry for ISSUE #2 FRONTIERS. Read the full essay👇
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸Brilliant.
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸People broke out of their concentration camp. It’s extremely easy for people who are not living under occupation to throw stones.🤷♀️ I think of my ancestors. Britain hung and labelled the likes of Bhagat Singh as “terrorists.” A bit of a colonial speciality to do that to the resistance.
- Just a reminder: the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions make it clear: occupied peoples have the right to resist, even with arms. An occupier has no right to defend their occupation:
- I’m running a workshop on the arms industry at the day school this weekend. If you’re in Bristol, register and come along! Here: t.co/AAT6IYyjMd
- I go on this atrocious show purely for catharsis. It’s therapeutic to yell at a genocide apologist:
- Another part:
- Julia Hartley-Brewer and Benjamin Butterworth discuss me post interview “Ashok and I were at London School of Economics together and he was always talking about Palestine and hating Israel then” Yes, because it didn’t start on October 7
- Six months ago, I was invited to serve as an expert witness at the public hearing on Karnataka’s landmark gig workers bill, which has now passed. The law extends protections to over two million gig workers in the state. An important step, though it doesn’t go far enough
- Article: www.outlookindia.com/national/new...
- Pre-orders are now up for the newest issue of The Break-Down. I have an essay in there on fossil fuel infrastructure and disruption www.break-down.org
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸🚨COMRADES!🚨 It's finally time to register for the 10th Danish conference for marxist studies on oct.10th-11th through link below! This year the theme is on "Abolition" and we are so 🎉HYPED🎉 for this year's line-up which includes our great keynotes @genderhorizon.com and @brosef-stalin.bsky.social 🔥
- The people of Gaza live and chant “If they uproot one tree, we will plant ten in its place” as the zombie death cult approaches
- Accusations of antisemitism against Zarah and Jeremy don’t have the mileage they did in 2019. Back then, the press ran stories about Corbyn mispronouncing a pedophile’s name. Epstein. Ep-shtine. The real crime wasn’t sex trafficking, it was the wrong vowel Me for BreakThrough News:
- The choice we have in the new left party is simple: democracy or bureaucracy. Its founding conference must have one-member-one-vote, directly elected leadership, and a constitution written by members. If not, we risk repeating the failures of Labourism. Me for BreakThrough News:
- Spoke with Matt Myers for Jacobin about his new book The Halted March of the European Left, asking why the left’s surge stalled and what lessons it offers for today jacobin.com/2025/08/euro...
- I’ll be speaking at the Stop the War meeting at TUC Conference, September 9 in Brighton. If you’re there, come through
- 6 months ago, I was invited to serve as an expert witness during a hearing of this bill. Today, it’s passed! a big win for gig workers
- Reposted by Ashok Kumar 🇵🇸Thrilled to have Dr Ashok Kumar (@brosef-stalin.bsky.social) for tonights Normal Island. Make sure you watch us at 7:30pm! www.youtube.com/live/Z72zJcX...
- Half a million in! You’re not? Fix it: yourparty.uk
- France “recognising” Palestine is empty symbolism while they arm, fund, and enable Israel’s campaign of extermination. Words mean nothing without full sanctions. Now.
