What is the Question to which Expropriation is the Answer? A conversation between Jacob Blumenfeld and Pavlos Roufos

The second episode in our Radio als Forum: Property, Appropriation, Expropriation series sees researchers and activists Jacob Blumenfeld and Pavlos Roufos discuss the current housing crises plaguing major cities around the world, and Berlin specifically. Blumenfeld and Roufos discuss the philosophical, economic, legal frameworks buttressing the property-form, Marx’s theory of expropriation, and the vicissitudes of current political struggles (including Berlin’s anti-gentrification struggle) and what it might mean to “expropriate the expropriators”.

Jacob Blumenfeld is a philosopher and translator based in Berlin. He teaches at FU, and works on property, climate change, and critical theory.

Pavlos Roufos is a doctoral candidate at Kassel University researching German political economy, ordoliberalism and central banking.

Articles discussed in the show:

Jacob Blumenfeld – “Expropriate Everything”

– “Expropriation of the Expropriators”

Hyo Yoon Kang – “Patent Capital in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Critical Intellectual Property Law”

Further resources:

Deutsche Wohnen enteignen! campaign

A recent dialogue on Expropriation from Critical Theory in Berlin (in German)