التفكير الاجتماعي في أزمنة التحولات الكبرى

Social Thinking in Times of Great Transformations

SifR

What is needed are forces that translate Palestine into questions of power and livelihood — not rhetorical solidarity while neoliberalism devours the rest.

Social Thinking in Times of Great Transformations

The left must translate Palestine into questions of power and livelihood — not rhetorical solidarity while neoliberalism devours the rest.

“The Architecture of Empire”: Writing as Resistance to Fascism

Roy and Traboulsi dissect how neoliberalism and religious nationalism reinforce each other — from India's caste architecture to Lebanon's captured resistance — and ask what writing can do when the state controls the story.

عكس السير – القراءة السياسية للاقتصاد. سلطة المال وسلطة السياسة

Against the Current - A Political Reading of the Economy: The Power of Money and the Power of Politics

SifR

Reverse direction: the political reading of economics — the ruling class uses power to build its interests, and the state is a tool of accumulation, not development.

بدايات تختتم عيدها العاشر وتعلّق الصدور مؤقتًا

Bidayat Concludes Its Tenth Anniversary and Temporarily Suspends Publication

Bidayat

After ten years of publication, “Bidayat” magazine is temporarily suspending its work due to funding challenges, hoping to find a qualitative shift that ensures its continuity or concludes its venture.

المقابلة – فوّاز طرابلسي: توجد دولة ولكن لا توجد معارضة 

The Interview - Fawwaz Traboulsi: There Is a State but There Is No Opposition

SifR

The interview challenges dominant narratives of the Lebanese crisis, asserting that the state exists and serves an oligarchy, and that the real problem lies in the absence of an organized opposition.

المبادئ الاقتصادية والاجتماعية في الدستور اللبناني

The Economic and Social Principles in the Lebanese Constitution

SifR

The Lebanese constitution was neoliberal before the word existed — we beat Pinochet by decades.

هذا العدد

This Issue

Bidayat

200 individuals control Lebanon's economy and the "consortium" connects to the president's family — corruption is a capital-power partnership.

عن الطوائف والطبقات والحروب الاهلية

On Sects, Classes, and Civil Wars

The weakest expression of societal and power relations is the political one — manufacturing experience demands tools beyond politics.

نحن وين؟ || فقر أم إفقار مع د. فواز طرابلسي أوان | Awan

Where Are We? Poverty or Impoverishment with Dr. Fawwaz Traboulsi - Awan

Awan

The Lebanese situation is not mere poverty, but systematic impoverishment resulting from deliberate policies that concentrated wealth among the few at the expense of the majority, fundamentally altering our understanding of the crisis and the responsibility of those who engineered it.

هذا العدد

This Issue

Bidayat

This issue delves into neoliberalism and consumer society, revealing how they reshape cities, transport, and social relations, leading to segregation, privatization, and new forms of wealth display.

قراءة غرامشي في العصر النيوليبراليّ

Reading Gramsci in the Neoliberal Age

Gramsci in the neoliberal age: hegemony through consent, not coercion — "common sense" makes the ruling class's interests seem natural.

الحرية ضد العدالة والمساواة نقاش لأفكار فون هايك النيوليبراليّة

Freedom Against Justice and Equality: A Discussion of Friedrich von Hayek's Neoliberal Ideas

Bidayat

The article discusses Friedrich von Hayek's neoliberal ideas, which prioritize individual liberty over justice and equality, showing how his concept of market "spontaneity" ignores the role of human struggles in achieving justice and transforms the market into a speculative "casino."

ما هي النيوليبرالية؟

What Is Neoliberalism?

Bidayat

Neoliberalism is a comprehensive ideology that governs our lives without being named, presenting itself as a natural, inevitable doctrine, while being the economic face of new American imperialism and responsible for major crises.

هل الاقتصاديات العربية ريعية؟ حالتا مصر ولبنان

Are Arab Economies Rentier? The Cases of Egypt and Lebanon

Bidayat

The concept of "rentier economy" is inverted from a negative symptom to an inherent feature of capitalism, where exploitation extends beyond production to strongly impact the market.

أزمة الانفجار وانفجار الازمات اللبنانية

The Explosion Crisis and the Explosion of Lebanese Crises

Bidayat

The Beirut explosion, a "crime of negligence," laid bare a system of corruption and unaccountability, whose repercussions are now escalating into political, economic, and sovereign crises.

من يوميّات الحراك الشعبي

From the Diaries of the Popular Movement

Bidayat

The October 17 uprising erupted as popular anger against a corrupt ruling class, but it is threatened with co-optation or suppression unless it organizes itself and adopts clear demands to confront austerity plans and overcome sectarianism.

السودان، الجزائر، إلخ. استئناف البدايات

Sudan, Algeria, Etc.: Resuming the Beginnings

Bidayat

The popular movements in Sudan and Algeria represent a resumption of the 2011 uprisings, posing the challenge of achieving genuine change that expresses the will of the people in the face of authoritarian regimes and the interference of old and external powers.

Ce n’est pas le multiconfessionnalisme, mais un système oligarchique qui gouverne le Liban – Interview Mediapart

It Is Not Multi-Confessionalism, but an Oligarchic System That Governs Lebanon - Mediapart Interview

Mediapart

An interview with Mediapart: it is not the confessional system that governs Lebanon but an oligarchy in which the political and capitalist classes have fused—and sectarianism is the ideal system for whitewashing everything.

Mamdouha Bobst Center for Peace and Justice – Princeton lecture

A Princeton lecture: neoliberalism banned "social justice" for a quarter century—and the Arab revolutions diagnosed the problem: unemployment, despotism, class inequality. No military solution to ISIS, only drying up its social sources.

Social Justice Lecture

A lecture: the Arab revolutions are a critique-in-practice of neoliberalism—the World Bank forgot about job creation, and "we are ruled by Ali Baba and the forty thieves—and they don't even reach forty."

الطبقات الاجتماعية في لبنان نقاط استدلال منهجية

Social Classes in Lebanon: Methodological Reference Points

Bidayat

In Lebanon, the existence of social classes is denied by externalizing poverty and wealth or by concealing exploitation behind sectarianism, while neoliberalism redefines justice and poverty to obscure class distinctions.

Social Classes and Political Power in Lebanon

Heinrich Boll Stiftung

In Lebanon, where classes are denied, economic and political power intertwine in a rentier and sectarian system that deepens exploitation and leads to a "mafiocracy" increasing social polarization.

مارغريت ثاتشر – الارث والجنازة 

Margaret Thatcher - The Legacy and the Funeral

As-Safir

The "milk snatcher" privatized everything; Ken Loach proposed privatizing her funeral — more consistent with her legacy.