The economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. It is time to design a new one.

By George Monbiot / theguardian.com

For most of my adult life I’ve railed against “corporate capitalism”, “consumer capitalism” and “crony capitalism”. It took me a long time to see that the problem is not the adjective but the noun.

While some people have rejected capitalism gladly and swiftly, I’ve done so slowly and reluctantly.

Part of the reason was that I could see no clear alternative: unlike some anti-capitalists, I have never been an enthusiast for state communism.

I was also inhibited by its religious status. To say “capitalism is failing” in the 21st century is like saying “God is dead” in the 19th: it is secular blasphemy. It requires a degree of self-confidence I did not possess.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognise two things. First, that it is the system, rather than any variant of the system, that drives us inexorably towards disaster. Second, that you do not have to produce a definitive alternative to say that capitalism is failing. The statement stands in its own right. But it also demands another, and different, effort to develop a new system.

Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.

Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. Last week a paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.

A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.

This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.

The second defining element is the bizarre assumption that a person is entitled to as great a share of the world’s natural wealth as their money can buy. This seizure of common goods causes three further dislocations. First, the scramble for exclusive control of non-reproducible assets, which implies either violence or legislative truncations of other people’s rights. Second, the immiseration of other people by an economy based on looting across both space and time. Third, the translation of economic power into political power, as control over essential resources leads to control over the social relations that surround them.

In the New York Times on Sunday, the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz sought to distinguish between good capitalism, which he called “wealth creation”, and bad capitalism, which he called “wealth grabbing” (extracting rent). I understand his distinction. But from the environmental point of view, wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth, intrinsically linked to the increasing use of material resources, means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations.

To point to such problems is to invite a barrage of accusations, many of which are based on this premise: capitalism has rescued hundreds of millions of people from poverty – now you want to impoverish them again. It is true that capitalism, and the economic growth it drives, has radically improved the prosperity of vast numbers of people, while simultaneously destroying the prosperity of many others: those whose land, labour and resources were seized to fuel growth elsewhere. Much of the wealth of the rich nations was – and is – built on slavery and colonial expropriation.

Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good. Just as we have found means of generating useful energy that are better and less damaging than coal, so we need to find means of generating human wellbeing that are better and less damaging than capitalism.

There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism.

Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit.

Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.

So what does a better system look like? I don’t have a complete answer, and I don’t believe any one person does. But I think I see a rough framework emerging.

Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben.

Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.

I believe our task is to identify the best proposals from many different thinkers and shape them into a coherent alternative. Because no economic system is only an economic system but intrudes into every aspect of our lives, we need many minds from various disciplines – economic, environmental, political, cultural, social and logistical – working collaboratively to create a better way of organising ourselves that meets our needs without destroying our home.

Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

The post Dare to Declare Capitalism Dead – Before It Takes Us All Down With It appeared first on Void Network.

CALL OUT for actions

The post EXARCHIA: Solidarity to squats and all spaces of struggle- ASSEMBLY Announcement appeared first on Void Network.

The post ARGENTINA: The Consequences of Mr Macri- by LUCIANA ZORZOLI appeared first on Void Network.

Other criticisms confuse a theoretical thesis for a political standpoint, waiting for the famous contradiction between “capital and labor” to go out in the streets in pure form, in a class-struggle devoid of grey areas. Alongside come the expected accusations of being “petty-bourgeois” and “inter-classist”, as if it is possible to have a mass uprising which is not heterogeneous or as if it is impossible to have problems, demands and claims which may not be strictly “proletariat” but nonetheless concern an important part of the working class.

Even more so today, where the generalization of phenomena like indebtedness and precarity have created a wide gamut of common affects and impasses among the middle and lower stratums of capitalist social formations. There are of course critiques which are sensible and insightful, highlighting real contradictions and problems, like the presence of far-right groups, which is enabled by some identifiable features of the movement. It is also astutely stressed that despite the intensity of riots, on the level of political discourse, there is no critique or questioning of the state as the guarantor of right and wellbeing, nor of capital as a social relation. Having said that, it needs to be stressed that the “populist” rhetoric about privileged elites and a disenfranchised people or about the division between rich and poor is not “wrong” in some descriptive sense, that is why after all it has proved time and again successful as a discursive representation of social divisions. The problem with this type of discourse rather lies on the analytical and political level, that it does not pose the issue of the relations and forms that constitute the material presupposition of the separation between people/elite and rich/poor. Here though is the real quandary: even if they are correct, the externality of these critiques relative to the struggles and what is at stake for those who participate in them, reveals the weakness of those who do the criticism to have any meaningful influence in mass movements. Thus, the critique acquires a two-way direction, returning to its source. In fact, the problem does not concern only the ultra-left, but spreads throughout the left hemisphere, since what has become manifest once again is the weakness of the Left and of Anarchy to exercise real hegemony, that is, to affect (political) culture.

To be sure, it is necessary here to move beyond a prescriptive standpoint and try to understand this weakness as a historical phenomenon. Nonetheless, if a small leftward turn can be traced, it has partly to do with the fact that leftists and anarchists did participate in the yellow vests instead of simply passing judgments on them. Regardless how we would like things to be, the fact that red and black flags have not been waving in the thousands does not make the yellow vests movement reactionary by default.
The same is true for the presence of national flags, so much so of the French flag which concentrates multiple and conflicting significations and meanings. This is not to say that the presence of national symbols is not potentially problematic, especially in the sense that it tends to assert the division between native citizens and foreigners upon which the modern national state rests. Having said that, the presence of xenophobic elements must not be overstressed. Neither the identity nor most of the demands and claims of the movement are xenophobic or nationalist. Everyone can on principle become a yellow vest, which is why it has been relatively easy for different social groups to flow into the movement. Moreover, the latter addresses issues which concern many people regardless of their ethnic identity. For is there a wage earner that does not want a better wage or anyone living in a given community who would not benefit from greater access to decision making?

It is such economic and political demands and aspirations pertaining to social justice and civic recognition that provide the material ground for an international/polyethnic unity on a mass scale, and without which calls for such unity remain evocative but idealistic declarations of what should happen. Even if from our perspective such demands and aspirations are not enough, radicalization can only happen as a dialectical process immanent to the movement.

The yellow vests are a popular uprising – plebeian is an equally valid term – in the full sense of the term: a representative part of “the people” have risen against a life that becomes increasingly difficult to live. Obviously, at a first level, the expectations and demands of the movement cannot but express the reality of the people who compose it, since this very same reality is determined by an established economy of desire. Indeed, the fact that – despite the extensive mechanisms of consensus and integration that exist in modern capitalist societies – social experience is never unitary, nor even within the same class, helps explain the plurality of desiring flows permeating the movement, thus also its inner tensions and contradictions. Yet even if the yellow vests remain for the most part attached to a social reality against which they rebel but beyond which they cannot see, the core claims and aspirations of the movement are not reactionary. Nor has the far-right been able to acquire hegemony, no matter if after the end of the movement Le Pen or other rightwing groups will be able to draw votes from it. Moreover, as long as they exist social movements are by definition not static. Apart from the already manifested and noteworthy capacity for mass scale, horizontal direct action, there has been also a marked radicalization as well as a move towards a more “leftwing” direction.

Where can the whole thing lead to? It cannot go unnoticed that the movement has forced Macron, self-styled as a hard-poised reformer who will “not back down”, to make concessions and (perhaps even more crucially) recognize the movement and its concerns. On the other hand, there are signs of fatigue and demassification and it is possible that the yellow vests have started encountering the same limits that other movements in the recent cycle of struggles have stumbled upon. We cannot fail to notice especially that no organs and institutions capable of acting as “dual power” have emerged. Thus, while their persistent refusal to enter negotiations and be represented is a strength of the movement and a source of potential, the lack of representative organs leads to an impasse, since the current structures of representation are not challenged on the level of an alternative. Again, balancing between critical comprehension and a prescriptive standpoint is the key for an effective political intervention. We cannot of course simply will a movement to follow our desired course and if the revolt in France shows something, just like the anti austerity movement in Greece (not to speak of the much more minoritarian movements in other western countries), is that a revolution is not in the ordre du jour. Having said that, the transformation of social relations is a macro-historical process, which passes though failed expectations, mass unrest and uprisings of wide intensity and extensity.

The yellow vests are such an uprising. In fact, they have a crucial characteristic, which adds to their significance: their class composition is nothing less than the social backbone of contemporary capitalist societies. To this extent, they indicate the depth of the current crisis. Equally important, the movement has managed to reveal the non-correspondence between a people and its state/juridical representation. This has further verified that the greatest threat for a state is always its population. It follows that although in the short-term the yellow vests may not be the harbingers of spring, or worse they may be the spasms of a long winter, they nonetheless foretell of a possible revolutionary outbreak. After all, no matter what the content of a revolution may be, it will concern much more than the actions of small and ideologically compact groups. Not because everything that is of mass scale is necessarily positive and experiments on the molecular level irrelevant, far from it. But it is politically absurd to advocate revolution and dismiss mass movements that fight for an improvement of life and also have horizontal/egalitarian qualities and conversely valorize small and ideologically homogeneous spaces as prefigurations of a grand communist future. Instead of an either/or logic, the question should be how the latter political milieus can positively contribute on the former movements. Nor can revolutionary change be reduced to a wave of irregular attacks from “the excluded”, as fantasized by romantic representations of the marginalized proletariat living in the ghettos, banlieues and slums of the modern metropolis. While, the latter groups obviously must be empowered, we simply cannot talk seriously about a social transformation of wide scale – and in face of what takes place but also of what is coming is there anything less needed? – that does not embrace broad segments of the middle and working classes. It is from this viewpoint that we insist that the yellow vests, both in what they have done as well as in all those things that they could (not) have done, are not only a sign of the times but an image of an uncertain future which germinates with hope.

In all events, from a distance, every judgment, praise and critique are easy. However, because many of us have found ourselves in a similar position, the question faced by the politicized minorities that still raise red and black flags remains: can we participate in something that exceeds us, in struggles that pose the problem of organization and justice on the level of a historical stake, to find ourselves next to people that we do not agree nor identify with, to risk, to err, to be disappointed? If the answer is negative, we can verbalize about revolution, but we will not be one of its productive vectors.

__________________

Text by Void Circle – political assembly of Void Network / member of Anarchist federation in Greece

VOID NETWORK (Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts) https://voidnetwork.gr

The post VOID NETWORK- Signs of the times / Images from the future: Thoughts on the “yellow vests” and the revolt in France. appeared first on Void Network.

A new study by Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill in the journal Psychological Bulletin finds perfectionism is on the rise. The authors, both psychologists, conclude that “recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves.”

When identifying the root cause of this growing appetite for excellence, Curran and Hill don’t mince words: it’s neoliberalism. Neoliberal ideology reveres competition, discourages cooperation, promotes ambition, and tethers personal worth to professional achievement. Unsurprisingly, societies governed by these values make people very judgmental, and very anxious about being judged.

Psychologists used to talk about perfectionism as though it were unidimensional — only directed from the self to the self. That’s still the colloquial usage, what we usually mean when we say someone’s a perfectionist. But in the last few decades, researchers have found it productive to broaden the concept. Curran and Hall rely on a multidimensional definition, encompassing three types of perfectionism: self-oriented, other-oriented, socially prescribed.

Self-oriented perfectionism is the tendency to hold oneself to an unrealistically high standard, while other-oriented perfectionism means having unrealistic expectations of others. But “socially prescribed perfectionism is the most debilitating of the three dimensions of perfectionism,” Curran and Hall contend. It describes the feeling of paranoia and anxiety engendered by the persistent — and not entirely unfounded — sensation that everyone is waiting for you to make a mistake so they can write you off forever. This hyper-perception of others’ impossible expectations causes social alienation, neurotic self-examination, feelings of shame and unworthiness, and “a sense of self overwhelmed by pathological worry and a fear of negative social evaluation, characterized by a focus on deficiencies, and sensitive to criticism and failure.”

In an attempt to gauge how culturally contingent the phenomenon of perfectionism is, Curran and Hall performed a meta-analysis of available psychological data, looking for generational trends. They found that people born in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada after 1989 scored much higher than previous generations for all three kinds of perfectionism, and that scores increased linearly over time. The dimension that saw the most dramatic change was socially prescribed perfectionism, which increased at twice the rate of the other two. In other words, young people’s feeling of being judged harshly by their peers and the broader culture is intensifying with each passing year.

Curran and Hall attribute this change to the rise of neoliberalism and its cousin meritocracy. Neoliberalism favors market-based methods of assigning worth to commodities — and it designates everything it can as a commodity. Since the mid-1970s, neoliberal political-economic regimes have systematically replaced things like public ownership and collective bargaining with deregulation and privatization, promoting the individual over the group in the very fabric of society. Meanwhile, meritocracy — the idea that social and professional status are the direct outcomes of individual intelligence, virtue, and hard work — convinces isolated individuals that failure to ascend is a sign of inherent worthlessness.

Neoliberal meritocracy, the authors suggest, has created a cutthroat environment in which every person is their own brand ambassador, the sole spokesman for their product (themselves) and broker of their own labor, in an endless sea of competition. As Curran and Hall observe, this state of affairs “places a strong need to strive, perform, and achieve at the center of modern life,” far more so than in previous generations.

They cite data showing that young people today are less interested in engaging in group activities for fun, attending instead to individual endeavors that make them feel productive or fill them with a sense of achievement. When the world is demanding that you prove yourself worthy at every turn, and you can’t shake the suspicion that the respect of your peers is highly conditional, hanging out with friends can seem less compelling than staying in to meticulously curate your social media profiles.

One consequence of this rise in perfectionism, Curran and Hall argue, has been a series of epidemics of serious mental illness. Perfectionism is highly correlated with anxiety, eating disorders, depression, and suicidal thoughts. The constant compulsion to be perfect, and the inevitable impossibility of the task, exacerbate mental-illness symptoms in people who are already vulnerable. Even young people without diagnosable mental illnesses tend to feel bad more often, since heightened other-oriented perfectionism creates a group climate of hostility, suspicion, and dismissiveness — in which the jury is always out on everyone, pending group appraisal — and socially prescribed perfectionism involves an acute recognition of that alienation. In short, the repercussions of rising perfectionism range from emotionally painful to literally deadly.

And there’s one other repercussion of rising perfectionism: it makes it hard to build solidarity, which is the very thing we need in order to resist the onslaught of neoliberalism. Without healthy self-perceptions we can’t have robust relationships, and without robust relationships we can’t come together in the numbers it would take to rattle, much less upend, the whole political-economic order.

It’s not hard to see parallels between the three dimensions of perfectionism and so-called “call-out culture,” lately the hegemonic tendency on the Left: a condition in which everyone watches everyone else for a fatal slip-up, holding themselves to impossibly high standards of virtuous self-effacement, and being paralyzed with the secret (again, not unfounded) fear that they’re disposable to the group, that their judgment day is around the corner. The pattern is of a piece with other manifestations of neoliberal meritocratic perfectionism, from college admissions to obsessive Instagram curation. And because it divides rather than unites us, it’s no way to build a movement that ostensibly seeks to strike at the heart of power.

Perfectionism makes us scornful of each other, afraid of each other, and unsure of ourselves at best. It prohibits the types of solidaristic bonds and collective action necessary to take on neoliberal capitalism, the very thing that generates it. The only possible antidote to atomizing, alienating perfectionism to reject absolute individualism and reintroduce collective values back into our society. It’s a gargantuan task — but with the vise-grip of neoliberalism tightening on our psyches, it’s the only way forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin.

The post Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss- by. MEAGAN DAY appeared first on Void Network.

Από τη δεκαετία του ’70 έως και σήμερα, κεντρική πολιτιστική επιταγή είναι η σχετικοποίηση των πάντων και μια τάση ριζικής αποδόμησης κάθε θεσμού -με την ευρύτερη δυνατή έννοια. Οτιδήποτε το σταθερό και ριζωμένο, που έστω και δυνητικά αντιστέκεται στο «αναπόφευκτο» αύριο, που μπορεί να παρέχει ισχυρούς πυρήνες νοήματος, ή αλλιώς «αξίες», εκλαμβάνεται αυτόματα ως μια «κακή μεταφυσική» που πρέπει να καταστραφεί. Όμως μια εποχή που ρέει αδιάκοπα, χωρίς να αναγνωρίζει συνδετικά νήματα δεν είναι δυνατό να «παράγει ιστορία». Εδώ βρίσκεται ένα παράδοξο, διότι εάν δεχτούμε έναν στοιχειώδη ορισμό της ιστορίας ως Χρόνο + Νόημα, τότε ο μεταμοντερνισμός είναι η αναγγελία του τέλους κάθε χρόνου. Σήμερα μιλάμε για μια εποχή που δεν ακολουθεί πλέον ούτε τη γραμμική τάση της χριστιανικής εκδοχής, ούτε την κυκλική της αρχαίας ελληνικής σκέψης, αλλά ρέει σε ένα σπειροειδές μοτίβο, που βιδώνεται στον εαυτό του.

Ως ένα σημείο της ύστερης νεωτερικότητας η σχέση γονέα-παιδιού, είχε ως στόχο, εκτός των άλλων, να μεταβιβαστούν εκείνοι οι άγραφοι κανόνες, οι «κώδικες» και ένας γενικός νοηματικός ορίζοντας για την χαρτογράφηση του κόσμου. Αυτή η μεταβίβαση υπήρξε μάλιστα ένα κοινό στοιχείο σε όλα τα «πολιτισμικά» πλάτη και μήκη της ανθρωπότητας. Ακόμη και στο πιο «χαμηλό» πολιτισμικό επίπεδο, υπάρχει πάντα ένας νοηματικός ορίζοντας που πρέπει να μεταβιβαστεί. Ανεξάρτητα από τους πόνους, τις εντάσεις και τα δάκρυα που μπορεί να ενέχει αυτή η μεταβίβαση, πρόκειται για ένα νήμα που συνδέει μεταξύ τους τις γενιές στον ιστορικό-κοινωνικό ιστό του ανθρώπου. Τη στιγμή όπου το παιδί ξεπερνά την κατάσταση απόλυτης εξάρτησης από τους γονείς του γίνεται μια υπέρβαση η οποία όμως δεν μπορεί παρά να εκφραστεί μέσα από την εκ νέου επεξεργασία και ερμηνεία κανόνων που προϋπάρχουν. Ακόμη και ο πιο «επαναστάτης και αντάρτης» γιος, υπό μια έννοια, «καταδικάζεται» να είναι στο τέλος ένας καλός γιος «φτιαγμένος» από τα ίδια υλικά με τον πατέρα του. Σε αυτή τη σχέση γονέα-παιδιού σήμερα φαίνεται κάτι να αλλάζει· η παύλα ανάμεσα στις δυο λέξεις που διακρίνει, αλλά δεν χωρίζει τον γονέα από το παιδί, γίνεται όλο και πιο ισχνή. Δεν είναι πλέον γονέας-παιδί, αλλά γονέας «και» παιδί. Δύο ξεχωριστές οντότητες και, αν είναι δυνατόν, ριζικά ανεξάρτητες μεταξύ τους. Ο γονέας σταδιακά δεν έχει τίποτα να μεταβιβάσει, καμία παράδοση που μπορεί να επηρεάσει καθοριστικά το σήμερα. Αυτό γιατί οι παραδόσεις, οι συνήθειες, τα ήθη και τα έθιμα είναι ιστορικά «αντικείμενα», ενώ η εποχή του μεταμοντερνισμού είναι η μια μη ιστορική εποχή.

Οι οντότητες «γονέας» και «παιδί» αγωνίζονται να αναγνωρίσουν η μια την άλλη, σαν να είχε αυξηθεί περισσότερο από κάθε άλλη φορά η απόσταση των γενεών σε σύγκριση με το χάσμα που υπήρχε σε προηγούμενες εποχές. Μοιάζουν με δυο υπάρξεις ριγμένες στο ίδιο τσουβάλι, χωρίς καμία θέσμιση των μεταξύ τους σχέσεων. Έτσι, η σχέση γονέα-παιδιού γίνεται τελικά μια σχέση δύο ατόμων που μοιράζονται κυρίως βιολογικά, δευτερευόντως συναισθηματικά και σπάνια θεσμικά και ιστορικό-πολιτιστικά στοιχεία. Σταδιακά από την αμοιβαία εξάρτηση και την υποχρέωση περνάμε στην αντιπάθεια και σε συγκρούσεις που αγγίζουν τα όρια ενός σκληρού διαγενεακού ανταγωνισμού. Από αυτή την άποψη γονέας και παιδί δεν είναι κάτι παραπάνω από δυο ξένοι που μέχρι κάποια στιγμή της ζωής τους μπορούν να ζουν στην ίδια γεωγραφική θέση και ίσως κάτω από την ίδια στέγη -μέχρι να απαλλαγούν οριστικά ο ένας από τον άλλο.

Στις υπεραναπτυγμένες χώρες της Δύσης το φάντασμα του αυτοδημιούργητου ανθρώπου, δηλαδή η ιδέα ότι ο καθένας μπορεί και πρέπει να βασίζεται μόνο στον εαυτό του για να δημιουργήσει τη ζωή του από το μηδέν, τώρα πρέπει να προεξοφληθεί με προσύμφωνο και με «καθαρούς λογαριασμούς». Μάλιστα σε αυτό το φάντασμα δίνονται και ονόματα όπως «ελευθερία», «ανεξαρτησία», «αυτονομία». Οι (συν)δεσμοί με την ιστορία ή με τους θεσμούς για τα νέα άτομα του σήμερα νοούνται μόνο από ψυχαναλυτική άποψη και μόνο ως απαρχαιωμένες εντολές που θέτουν όρια στην απόλαυση και στην υποκειμενική τους βούληση. Είναι αλυσίδες που πρέπει να σπάσουν, ώστε να απελευθερωθεί το άτομο στην ασταμάτητη ορμή του You Only Live Once (YOLO) και του Follow Your Heart. Αυτή είναι η εποχή του ασταμάτητου τώρα! Δηλαδή το τέλος κάθε χρόνου, όπου όλα είναι ένα συνεχώς επιταχυνόμενο σήμερα [2]. Το άτομο είναι πλέον αποκομμένο από το παρελθόν του, από τις ρίζες του, και φυσικά και από το μέλλον του, διότι το μέλλον το αναλαμβάνουν οι αλάθητες αγορές. Η αρχαία αντίληψη του χρόνου μεταβάλλεται σε μια χρονική κουκίδα που απλά διαστέλλεται και ενίοτε ξεφουσκώνει -η συνέχεια με το χθες και το αύριο εξαφανίζεται. Έτσι γίνεται περιττή κάθε χαρτογράφηση του κόσμου η οποία μπορεί να κληρονομηθεί. Εάν δεν υπάρχει καμία ανάγκη στον άνθρωπο να ζει μέσα σε ένα πλαίσιο αξιών! Όλα είναι «καταπίεση» και «πατριαρχικά γνωρίσματα». Για τον μεταμοντερνισμό δεν υπάρχει καμία ηθική κρίση που να είναι αντικειμενικά ορθή ή λανθασμένη και αν κάποια φαίνεται πιο ορθή είναι λόγω της πίεσης που ασκείται για να προωθηθεί αυτή αντί για άλλες. Είναι σαν να προσπαθούμε να αναγεννήσουμε τον κόσμο εξ ολοκλήρου από γενιά σε γενιά, σε μια αέναη δημιουργία εκ του μηδενός (creatio ex nihilο).

Όμως η καλή λειτουργία μιας πολιτικής κοινότητας εξαρτάται από την σχέση που υπάρχει ανάμεσα στην υποκειμενική και στη αντικειμενική ελευθερία. Υποκειμενική ελευθερία θα μπορούσαμε να ορίσουμε εκείνο τον ατομικό χώρο που επάξια υποστήριξε η πρώιμη νεωτερικότητα, ενώ η αντικειμενική ελευθερία σχετίζεται με τα καθήκοντα που απορρέουν από το πλαίσιο των κοινών εθίμων και πρακτικών. Η παραπάνω ισορροπία, που βασίζεται στον αυτοπεριορισμό, δεν μπορεί να επιτευχθεί χωρίς ένα συγκεκριμένο πλαίσιο: δηλαδή μια κορνίζα που περιλαμβάνει όρια ενεργειών και δράσης, άγραφους κανόνες, νόρμες και κώδικες συμπεριφοράς. Αντιθέτως αυτοί που ζουν σε μια διάσταση καθαρής και «ανοιχτής» δυνατότητας είναι οι έφηβοι. Επειδή είναι άτομα που, κυρίως στις σύγχρονες δυτικές κοινωνίες, δεν έχουν ακόμη ένα σαφή κοινωνικό ρόλο. Η κοινωνική τους ταυτότητα είναι συνεχώς υπό κατασκευή. Ως εκ τούτου, παρουσιάζουν την τάση να κινούνται στο δημόσιο χώρο -τον ψηφιακό και τον πραγματικό- εκτός πλαισίων αναφοράς, διότι στην πράξη δεν έχουν επιφορτιστεί με αντικειμενικά καθήκοντα. Ένα παράδειγμα όπου μάλλον αυτό το μοντέλο «αιώνιας εφηβείας» σταδιακά έγινε η κυρίαρχη κοινωνική κατάσταση είναι η Σουηδία. Κατάσταση στην οποία έπαιξαν καθοριστικό ρόλο και τα κινήματα της δεκαετίας του ‘70 που βασίστηκαν στον αντικομφορμιστικό νεολαιϊσμό. Ο νέος έπαψε να είναι ο μαθητευόμενος πολίτης και μετατράπηκε στον ανατρεπτικό έφηβο που εφόσον αυτός είναι το μέλλον, πρέπει να του προσφερθεί κάθε ευκαιρία, έτοιμη στο πιάτο. Κι έτσι φτάνουμε σε μια γενιά (snowflake generation) όπου οι νέοι ενώ έχουν τα πάντα, ζητάνε ακόμη περισσότερα, φωνάζοντας συνέχεια «καταπίεση». Στην ουσία πρόκειται για μια διαστρέβλωση του Ρομαντισμού, και μάλιστα στη χειρότερη εκδοχή του.

«Δεν ταλαντευόμαστε σε θέματα αρχών, ούτε θα υποκύψουμε σε απειλές ή εξαναγκασμούς. Αν κάνουμε κάτι τέτοιο, θα ήταν καταστροφικό για το μέλλον της Σουηδίας. […] «Δεν είμαστε δογματικοί στα αιτήματά μας. Αυτό που επιζητούμε είναι ισορροπία ανάμεσα στις δυνάμεις της αγοράς και τα δικαιώματα των εργαζομένων.» […] «Όμως: Αν σταματήσουμε να είμαστε οραματιστές, αν σταματήσουμε να αναζητούμε την ουτοπία, αν σταματήσουμε να δημιουργούμε στόχους για τους πολίτες, τότε όλη μας η προσπάθεια θα εξανεμιστεί και μαζί θα χαθεί η ηθική και η ιδεολογική μας δύναμη. Τότε το κόμμα μας θα χάσει την αίγλη του και την εμπιστοσύνη του λαού.» (Olof Palme) [3]

Στο μανιφέστο του σοσιαλδημοκρατικού κόμματος το 1972 υπό την καθοδήγηση του Olof Palme, περιγράφεται το τέλεια οργανωμένο σύστημα κοινωνικής πρόνοιας, στόχος του οποίου ήταν να προσφέρει στο μέλλον, σε όλους του Σουηδούς, μια εντελώς αυτόνομη, ελεύθερη και ανεξάρτητη ζωή. Ωστόσο η μετα-φορντιστική Σουηδική σοσιαλδημοκρατία από ένα ρεύμα υπέρ των φτωχών, καταλήγει να προστατεύει όχι την εργασία μέσω του κράτους πρόνοιας, αλλά το ίδιο το κράτος πρόνοιας από την εργασία. Σαράντα πέντε χρόνια μετά από αυτό το μεγαλόπνοο σχέδιο αρχίζουμε, έστω και δειλά, να μιλάμε όχι πλέον για την υπέροχη Σουηδία της ευημερίας, που ανοίχτηκε με «ορθό» τρόπο στις αγορές , και που μας παρουσιάζεται στα τηλεοπτικά κανάλια, αλλά για την πραγματική Σουηδία που δείχνει με τον φακό του ο Ιταλός σκηνοθέτης Erik Gandini στην ταινία ντοκιμαντέρ The Swedish Theory of Love (2015).

Δεν πρόκειται για την Σουηδία με την πλέον πρωτοποριακή ευρωπαϊκή κοινωνία, από τις πιο προηγμένες όσον αφορά την πρόοδο, την ευημερία και την κοινωνική πρόνοια. Πρόκειται για την Σουηδία με τις αμέτρητες μονογονεϊκές οικογένειες, την τεχνητή γονιμοποίηση, και με όλη αυτή τη μανία για ακραία ανεξαρτησία και χειραφέτηση. Μια κοινωνία γεμάτη μοναξιά και δυστυχία, με ανθρώπους καταθλιπτικούς, απόμακρους και σιωπηλούς που πεθαίνουν μόνοι και άγνωστοι. Το ανθρωπολογικό όραμα της δεκαετίας του ‘70 τελικά διαπέρασε για δεκαετίες ολόκληρη τη σουηδική κοινωνία και τα αποτελέσματά του σήμερα είναι ορατά. Πράγματι κατά την δεκαετία του ’70 η σουηδική σοσιαλδημοκρατία ένιωσε την ανάγκη να αλλάξει την αντίληψή της για τις ανθρώπινες σχέσεις. Ελευθέρωσε τις γυναίκες από τους άνδρες, τους ηλικιωμένους από τα παιδιά, τους εφήβους από τους γονείς. Όλα έγιναν μια ξέφρενη απελευθέρωση και ξεκίνησε ένα ασταμάτητο κυνήγι απόλαυσης, δικαιωμάτων και κατανάλωσης.

«Η καταναλωτική κουλτούρα σαγηνεύει τα παιδιά από την πιο πρώιμη ηλικία, μέσα από μια ατέλειωτη προπαγάνδα εμπορευμάτων. Κι έτσι τα κάνει να μην μπορούν πλέον να υπομένουν τη γονική πειθαρχία, καθώς ενισχύει την τάση τους να αντιστέκονται σε οποιονδήποτε νιώθουν πως προσπαθεί να επέμβει στη δική τους ευχαρίστηση. Η κουλτούρα της κατανάλωσης δε διαφθείρει μονάχα τα παιδιά με άμεσο τρόπο, αλλά υπονομεύει, μακροπρόθεσμα, και την ίδια την οικογένεια, καθώς ανεβάζει διαρκώς το θεωρούμενο ως αποδεκτό επίπεδο ζωής της μεσαίας τάξης.» (Christopher Lasch) [4]

Ο Gandini, δείχνει, ομολογουμένως με αρκετή ειρωνεία, τους σιωπηλούς τοίχους μέσα στους οποίους κάποιος πεθαίνει στη απόλυτη ανωνυμία. Ειδικές υπηρεσίες αναζήτησης ψάχνουν την ταυτότητα του πτώματος που βρέθηκε μετά από εβδομάδες σε μια πολυκατοικία της περιφέρειας. Ο νεκρός είναι τελείως ξεχασμένος από παιδιά και συγγενείς, κανείς δεν γνωρίζει ποιος ήταν αυτός ο άνθρωπος, ποιον αγαπούσε και ποιος τον αγαπούσε, απλά ερωτήματα που δεν βρίσκουν καθόλου εύκολα απάντηση. Ένας άντρας αυνανίζεται μόνος σε ένα λευκό δωμάτιο για να δώσει το σπέρμα του στην τράπεζα και ένα κορίτσι αυτογονιμοποιείται με ένα ειδικό κιτ, ολοκληρώνοντας χωρίς εξουσιαστικές παρεμβάσεις την «θηλυκοποίησή» του (girling of the girl σύμφωνα με την Βutler). Διαδικασίες λιγότερο «αυταρχικές», πολύ πιο αποτελεσματικές, ασφαλείς και τεχνολογικά αποδοτικές, αλλά δίχως την προσωπική σχέση μεταξύ των δυο φύλων· χωρίς καμία αλληλεπίδραση και δέσιμο. Αν και με μια δόση υπερβολής, σε άλλο σημείο, μέσα από τα μάτια ενός Σουηδού χειρουργού που εργάζεται στη Αιθιοπία, φαίνεται ο κοινωνικός πλούτος της φτωχής αφρικανικής κοινότητας σε αντίθεση με την πλούσια, αλλά κοινωνικά άγονη Σουηδία. Το ντοκιμαντέρ συνολικά καταφέρνει να αναδείξει ότι η μέγιστη χειραφέτηση μοιάζει να συμπίπτει με τη μέγιστη απομόνωση.

«Τί είναι η αυτονομία; Είναι να μπορούμε ανά πάσα στιγμή να πούμε: είναι δίκαιος αυτός ο νόμος; Ετερονομία έχουμε όταν το ερώτημα «δεν εγείρεται», όπως λέμε στα δικαστήρια. Το ερώτημα δε θα τεθεί, απαγορεύεται.» (Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης)

Υπάρχει επομένως μια σύγχυση σημασιών, καθώς χρησιμοποιούνται κατά το δοκούν δύο παραπλανητικά παρόμοιες έννοιες: η «ανεξαρτησία» και η «αυτονομία». Η αυτονομία υπήρξε η ουσία του μοντερνισμού, ένα έργο που ήταν το προοίμιο μιας άλλης κοινωνίας στην οποία τα σχέδια ζωής δεν θα παρεμποδίζονταν, ή θα εξαρτώνταν όλο και λιγότερο, από τις κληρονομούμενες συνθήκες (επιβεβλημένες από την γέννηση) και από ετερόνομες και σκληρές ηθικές. Το νόημα της ζωής, της ουτοπίας ή της υποκρισίας, δεν θα ήταν απολύτως προκαθορισμένο. Για τον Καστοριάδη αυτόνομο άτομο είναι αυτό που αναγνωρίζει στους νόμους της κοινότητας τους δικούς του νόμους, πράγμα που μπορεί να γίνει μόνο με την συμμετοχή στην θέσμιση αυτών των νόμων και όχι με την τυφλή αποδοχή ή απόρριψη κάθε επιταγής [5]. Απλουστευτικά μπορούμε να πούμε ότι στην «Σουηδική θεωρία» -μια ολόκληρη κοινωνική οντολογία που αναγνωρίζεται μέσα από τον μεταμοντερνισμό- το βασικό στοιχείο δεν είναι η αυτονομία αλλά η μη εξάρτηση από τους άλλους, δηλαδή η ανεξαρτησία και η απομάκρυνση από καθετί που θεωρείται αυτομάτως «παρωχημένη αντίληψη». Η ανεξαρτησία του ενός από τον άλλο ακούγεται συχνά στο ντοκιμαντέρ του Gandini ως η απαραίτητη προϋπόθεση για χειραφέτηση. Έτσι η αυτονομία (δηλαδή η ελευθερία) καταλήγει να επισκιάζεται και να συμπιέζεται από την ανεξαρτησία. Πράγμα που οδηγεί στο να θεωρείται ο κάθε άλλος ως ένας εχθρός της ατομικής ανεξαρτησίας.

Όμως οι άνθρωποι, επειδή δεν θέλουν και δεν αντέχουν την μοναξιά, καταλήγουν να μισούν το γεγονός ότι οι άλλοι προσπαθούν να απομακρυνθούν, αλλά ταυτόχρονα κάνουν και οι ίδιοι το ίδιο πράγμα: απομακρύνονται, εγκλωβισμένοι μέσα σε έναν στρεβλό μηχανισμό αποξένωσης. Μοιάζουν με καρικατούρες ατόμων χαμένες σε έναν τεράστιο ωκεανό χωρίς νόημα, φυλακισμένες στην επιφανειακότητα της στιγμής, του ασταμάτητου και βαρυσήμαντου τώρα! Ίσως ο φόβος της προδοσίας και του ψυχικού τραυματισμού να είναι τα κυρίαρχα συναισθήματα που γεννά, σε τέτοιο βαθμό, αυτό το σύστημα. Στην πραγματικότητα η εξαιρετικά εξελιγμένη αυτή κοινωνία έχει να αντιμετωπίσει πολύ σοβαρά θέματα που οι περισσότεροι άνθρωποι, εκτός Σουηδίας, δεν γνωρίζουν. Η έννοια της λέξης «απομόνωση» έχει περάσει σε μια πραγματικά άλλη διάσταση, ενώ η «ανεκτικότητα» σε μια χώρα που οι πολίτες της με το ζόρι αντέχουν ο ένας τον άλλο, μοιάζει με καφκικό ανέκδοτο -πόσο μάλλον εάν αρχίζουμε να συζητάμε για φιλοξενία μεταναστών και προσφύγων [6]. Εάν, υποθετικά, μια ημέρα γίνουμε όλοι Σουηδοί και η μεταμοντέρνα ιδέα του κόσμου γίνει μια καθολική «φυσική» κατάσταση, μπορεί να ξυπνήσουμε και να συνειδητοποιήσουμε ότι μια κοινωνία απόλυτης ανεξαρτησίας, χωρίς πραγματικούς ανθρώπινους δεσμούς, δεν είναι τίποτα περισσότερο από το άθροισμα των μοναξιών που συνθέτουν μια συλλογική δυστυχία.

[1] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, 2000.

[2] βλ. Η επιτάχυνση στην κοινωνία των προφίλ, Respublica.gr 2017.

[3] βλ. άρθρο, Ούλοφ Πάλμε – Η πολιτική είναι θέμα αρχών, Ελευθεροτυπία 2013.

[4] Christopher Lasch, “Hillary Clinton, Child Saver: What She Values will not Help the Family”, Harper’s Magazine, Οκτώβριος 1992.

[5] Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης, Η Φαντασιακή Θέσμιση της Κοινωνίας, Ράππα, Αθήνα 1981.

[6] Χαρακτηριστική φαίνεται να είναι η πορεία των Sweden Democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats

ΚΕΙΜΕΝΟ: Γιώργος Κουτσαντώνης
ΠΗΓΗ: http://www.respublica.gr

Δυστυχώς οι υπότιτλοι δεν είναι σωστοί αλλά υπάρχει λινκ για κατέβασμα της ενδιαφέρουσας αυτής ταινίας στις πληροφορίες του βίντεο

The post Η Σουηδία και ο σοσιαλδημοκρατικός μεταμοντερνισμός- Γιώργος Κουτσαντώνης appeared first on Void Network.

The first one is that equality is not a goal to be reached. It is not a common level, an equivalent amount of riches or an identity of living conditions that must be reached as the consequence of historic evolution and strategic action. Instead it is a point of departure. This first principle immediately ties up with a second one: equality is not a common measure between individuals, it is a capacity through which individuals act as the holders of a common power, a power belonging to anyone. This capacity itself is not a given whose possession can be checked. It must be presupposed as a principle of action but it is only verified by action itself. The verification does not consist in the fact that my action produces equality as a result. It enacts equality as a process. I act, we act as if all human beings had an equal intellectual capacity. Emancipation first means the endorsement of the presupposition: I am able, we are able to think and act without masters. But we are able to the extent that we think that all other human beings are endowed with the same capacity. Second, emancipation means the process through which we verify this presupposition. Equality is not given, it is processual. And it is not quantitative, it is qualitative.

The idea of emancipation dismisses the opposition made by the so-called “liberal” tradition between freedom thought of as the inner autonomous power and dignity of the individual and equality thought of as the constraint of the collective over individuals. “Free” is just like “equal”: it does not designate a property of individuals. It designates the form of their action and of their relation to other individuals. The presupposition of equal capacity is a principle of shared freedom opposed to the presupposition that the human beings can only act rationally as individuals and cooperate rationally in a community according to a principle of subordination. “Autonomy” has been a key concept in modern emancipatory politics. But it must be understood correctly. It does not mean the autonomous power of a subject as opposed to external forces: it means a form of thinking, practice and organization free from the presupposition of inequality, free from the hierarchical constraint and the hierarchical belief. It means the opposition of two kinds of commonsense and two common worlds, one based on the process of verification of inequality and the other based on the process of verification of equality. This is what is entailed in the concept of disagreement that I proposed to conceptualize the political conflict. Disagreement is not a conflict of forces, nor even a conflicts of ideas and values. It is a conflict between two common worlds or two common senses. This is what is meant by the scenario of secession of the Roman plebeians on the Aventine that I put at the center of my analysis of what “disagreement” means. In the commonsense which grounds the domination of the patricians, there can be no discussion between the patricians and the plebeians because the plebeians do not speak. They just make noise. The presupposition of inequality is not a simple idea, it is embodied in the concrete reality of a sensory world so that the plebeians must not simply argue that they are speaking beings too but also invent a whole dramaturgy to create the sensory world where the heretofore unthinkable- and even imperceptible- fact that they speak is made perceptible.

This idea of emancipation makes us think of politics in terms of conflict of worlds in contrast to the dominant idea that assimilates it to a conflict of forces. It is a conflict of common worlds. Social emancipation is not the choice of community against individualism. The very opposition of community to individualism is pointless. A form of community is always a form of individuality at the same time. The point is not about the presence or absence of social links, it is about their nature. Capitalism is not the reign of individuality: it organizes a common world of its own, a common world based on inequality and constantly reproducing it, so that it appears as the world – the real existing world in which we live, move, feel, think and act. It is the already existing world with its mechanisms and its institutions. In front of its sensible evidence the world of equality appears as an always tentative world that must be perpetually re-drawn, reconfigured by a multiplicity of singular inventions of acts, relations and networks which have their proper forms of temporality and their proper modes of efficiency. That’s why the secession of the plebeians on the Aventine is paradigmatic: the world of equality is a “world in the making”, a world born of specific breaches in the dominant commonsense, of interruptions of the “normal” way of the world. It implies the occupation of specific spaces, the invention of specific moments when the very landscape of the perceptible, the thinkable and the doable is radically reframed. The conflict of worlds is dissymmetrical in its principle.

But the fact is that this dissymmetry has long been obscured by the evidence of a middle term that seemed to be common to the world of equality and the world of inequality and also to designate at the same time a world and a force. That term was work- with its twin, named labour. On the one hand, work was the name of the force that capitalism gathered and organized for its own benefit and the reality of the condition of those who were exploited by capitalism. But, on the other hand, it was the force that could be re-assembled against that capitalist power, reassembled both as a force of struggle in the present and the form of life of the future. In such a way the world of labour appeared to be both the product of inequality and the producer of equality. The two processes were made one single process. The Marxist tradition set up this conjunction within the “progressive” scenario according to which inequality is a means, a historical stage to go through, in order to produce equality. Capitalism was said to produce not only the material conditions of a world of equal sharing of the common riches but also the class that would   overthrow it and organize the common world to come. To play this role, the workers’ organisation had to take up and internalize, first in the present of struggle, next in the future of collective production the virtue that had been instilled into them by capitalism, the virtue of factory discipline.

The anarchist tradition opposed to that view of inequality producing equality another view emphasizing the constitution of free collectives of workers anticipating the community to come through both egalitarian forms of organization and the constitution in the present of forms of cooperative work and other forms of life. But this counter-position still rested on the idea of the “middle term”: the idea of work as being at once a form of life, a collective force of struggle and the matrix of a world to come. It is clear that work can no more be posited to-day as the identity of a force and a world, the identity of a form of struggle in the present and a form of life of the future. Much has been said about either the end of work or its becoming immaterial. But capitalism did not become immaterial even if part of its production is knowledge, communication, information and so on. Material production did not disappear from the common world that it organizes. Instead it was relocated, far from its ancient locations in Old Europe, in new places where the work force was cheaper and more used to obeying. And immaterial production also implies both classic forms of extraction of plus-value from underpaid workers and forms of unpaid labour provided by the consumers themselves. Work did not disappear. Instead it was fragmented, torn out and dispersed in several places and several forms of existence separated from one another so as to constitute no more a common world.

Along with this economic disruption came the legislative reforms adopted all over the world to make work again a private affair. Those reforms  did not simply remove  the rights and the social benefits acquired by the workers’ struggles of the past, they tended to turn work, wages, job contracts and pensions into a mere individual affair, concerning workers taken one by one and no more a collective. Work has not disappeared but it has been stripped of the power that made it the materially existing principle of a new world, embodied in a given community. This means that we are now obliged to think of the process of emancipation, the process of equality creating its own world as a specific process, disconnected from the transformations of the global economic process. We are also facing the difficulty of dealing with this situation. I think that this new situation and the difficulty to deal with it are perfectly expressed by the slogans that have resonated in several languages during the recent movements: “democracia real ya”, “Nuit debout”, “occupy everything” or “Na min zisoume san douli”. All of them take their efficiency in an ambiguous interface between the logic of the conflict of forces and a logic of opposition of worlds.

“Occupy” and “occupation” are the most telling examples of this ambiguity.  They come from the historical tradition of working class struggle. The “sit-in strikes” of the past strikes when workers occupied the workplace, made a conflict of forces identical with a demonstration of equality. Not only did the strikers block the mechanism of exploitation but also  they affirmed a collective possession of the workplace and the instruments of work and they turned the place dedicated to work and obedience into a place for free social life. The new “occupation” takes up the principle of transforming the function of a space. But this space is no more an inside space, a space defined within the distribution of economic and social activities. It is no more a space of concrete fight between Capital and Labour. As Capital has increasingly become a force of dislocation which destroys the places where the conflict could be staged, occupation now takes place in the spaces that are available: those buildings that the contingencies of the real estate market has left empty or the streets which are normally destined to the circulation of the individuals and the commodities – and sometimes to the demonstrations of the protesters. The occupying process transforms those spaces destined to the circulation of persons, goods and value into places where people stay and affirm by the very fact of staying their opposition to the capitalist powers of circulation and dislocation.

The name “occupation” is still the same and it still about perverting the normal use of a space but the occupying process is no more a conflict of forces to take over a strategic place in the process of economic and social reproduction. It has become a conflict of worlds, a form of symbolic secession that is both materialized and symbolised in a place aside. Occupy Wall Street took place in a park situated besides the center of this financial power that has destroyed the factories that previously were the site of occupation movements. The Spanish movement of the Indignados created, during an electoral campaign, assemblies presenting themselves as the seat of “real democracy now”. Real democracy was pitted against the self-reproduction of the representative caste. But “real democracy” also was, in the Marxist tradition, the future of material equality opposed to bourgeois “formal democracy”. It was a future promised as a consequence of the takeover of the State power and the organisation of collective production. Now it designates a form of relation between human beings that must be practiced in the present both against and besides the hierarchical system of representation. Real democracy in a sense became more formal than the “formal democracy” stigmatized by the Marxist tradition. Not only did it equate the enactment of equality with the form of the assembly where all individuals have an equal right but it imposed a number of rules such as the equality of time allowed to all speakers and the power for individuals to block the decision of the majority.

Occupation has become the name of a secession. But that secession is no more the action of a specific community claiming their rights. Instead it appears to be the materialization of an aspiration to the common, as if the common were something lost, something that had to be reconstructed through the specific act of the assembling of a multitude of anonymous individuals publicly performing their being equal as the same as their being-in-common. That’s why that secession, that being-aside, was expressed in paradoxical terms, and notably by the strange slogan adopted by many assemblies as the affirmation of real democracy: ”Consensus instead of leaders”. It seems paradoxical to posit consensus as the specific virtue of the dissensual assembly gathered in occupied spaces. It can be objected that the dissensus precisely consists in the constitution of another form of community based on horizontality and participation. But the problem of democracy is not so much about the number of people that can agree on the same point as it is about the capacity to invent new forms of collective enactment of the capacity of anybody.

By underlining this paradox, I am not willing to disparage those movements. Some people have pitted against the pacifism of the consensual assemblies the necessity of violent action directly confronting the enemy. But the “confrontation with the enemy itself” can be thought of and practiced in different ways and most of the forms of direct action opposed to the pacific assemblies – for instance destructions of bank automats, shop windows or public offices – had the same character as them: they were also symbolic expressions of an opposition of worlds rather than strategic actions in a struggle for power.  Other people have precisely criticized this lack of strategy; they said that those movements could change nothing to Capitalist domination and they made new calls for the edification of avant-garde organizations aimed at taking over the power. But such an answer is unable to solve the paradoxes of emancipation. The strategic world view that sustains it is a view of inequality producing equality. That strategy has been enacted by the communist parties and the socialist states of the XXth century and we all know their results. Inequality only produces inequality and it does it ceaselessly. Moreover this strategic world view has lost the basis on which it rested, namely the reality of work/labour as a common world.

We are now facing again the dissymmetry between the process of equality and the process of inequality. Equality does not make worlds in the same way as inequality. It works, as it were, in the intervals of the dominant world, in superimposition to the “normal” – meaning the dominant – hierarchical – way of world making. And one of the main aspects of the dissymmetry is precisely the fact that the process of equality dismisses the very separation of the ends and the means on which the strategy of inequality producing equality is predicated. This is what freedom means ultimately .Freedom is not a matter of choice made by individuals. It is a way of doing.  A free action or a free relation is an action or a relation that finds its achievement in itself, in the verification of a capacity and no more in an external outcome. In the hierarchical societies of the past it was the privilege of a small category of human beings, called the “active men” in contrast to all those who were subjected to the reign of necessity.  In modern times, freedom was democratized first in the aesthetic domain with the Kantian and Schillerian category of free play as an end in itself and a potentiality belonging to everyone. Then the young Marx did more as he made it the very definition of communism that he equated with the end of the labour division: communism, he said in the Paris Manuscripts means the humanisation of the human senses; it is the state of things in which this capacity of humanisation is deployed in itself instead of being used as a simple means for earning one’s living. And he illustrated it with the case of these communist workers in Paris who gathered at a first level to discuss their common interests but did it more deeply to enjoy their new social capacity as such.

True enough Marx’s analysis relied on the identification of work as the essential human capacity. When work can no more play this role, the task of creating a world where the ends of the action are no more distinct from their means may seem to become paradoxical in itself. The free and equal community is something that can no more rely on a given empirical substratum. It must be created as an object of will. But, on the other hand, this will can no more be posited in the terms of the means and ends relation. That’s why it tends to become a global desire for another form of human relations. This turn was best illustrated in the Occupy Wall Street movement by the multiple extensions of the use of the verb “occupy” that made it the signifier of a global conversion to another way of inhabiting the world: “occupy language”, “occupy imagination”, “occupy love”, and eventually “Occupy everything” which seems to mean: change your way of dealing with everything and with all existing forms of social relationships. Perhaps this enigmatic slogan finds its best translation in the Greek slogan “Na min zisoume can douli” (“Don’t live any more like slaves”). This sentence did not only invite to rebel against the intensification of the capitalist rule. It invited to invent here and now modes of action, ways of thinking and forms of life opposed to those which are perpetually produced and reproduced by the logic of inequality, the logic of capitalist and state domination.

I think that this request found a response in the invention of this form called “free social space” – a form that took on a particular cogency in the social movements of this country. What makes this notion significant in my view is that it calls into question the traditional oppositions between the necessities of the present and the utopias of the future or between harsh economic and social reality and the “luxury” of “formal “democracy. Those who opened such spaces made it clear that they did not only wanted to respond to situations of need, dispossession and distress created by the intensification of the capitalist rule. They did not want only to give shelter, food, health care, education or art to those who were deprives of those goods but to create new ways of being, thinking and acting in common. We can draw from this a wider definition of this form: a free social space is a space where the very separation of spheres of activity – material production, economic exchange, social care, intellectual production and exchange, artistic performance, political action, etc. – is thrown into question. It is a space where assemblies can practice forms of direct democracy intended no simply to give an equal right of speech to everybody but to make collective decisions on concrete matters. In such a way a form of political action tends to be at the same time the cell of another form of life. It is no more a tool for preparing a future emancipation but a process of invention of forms of life and modes of thinking in which equality furthers equality.

What this sentence asks us to do is to change all the forms of organization of life and the modes of thinking that are determined by the logic of inequality, the logic of capitalist and state domination.

Of course we know that these cells of a new social life are constantly subjected to internal problems and external threats. This “already present future” is always at once a precarious present. But it is pointless, I think, to see there the proof that all is vain as long as a global revolution has not “taken” the power and destroyed the Capitalist fortress. This kind of judgement is a way of putting the fortress in our heads, of instituting a circle of impossibility by proclaiming that nothing can be changed before everything has been changed. Emancipation has always been a way of inventing, amidst the “normal” course of time another time, another manner of inhabiting the sensible world in common. It has always been a way of living in the present in another world instead of deferring its possibility. Emancipation only prepares a future to the extent that it hollows in the present gaps which are also grooves. It does so by intensifying the experience of other ways of being, living, doing and thinking. The free social spaces created by the recent movements inherit the world forms – cooperatives of production and forms of popular education – created by the workers’ movements of the past and notably by anarchist movements. But our present can no more share the belief that sustained the forms of self-organization of the past. It can no more rely on the presupposition that  Capitalism produces the conditions of its own destruction and that work constitutes an organic world of the future already in gestation  in the belly of the old world. More than ever the world of equality appears to be the always provisory product of specific inventions. Our present urges us to rediscover that the history of equality is an autonomous history. It is not the development of strategies predicated on the technological and economic transformations. It is a constellation of moments- some days, some weeks, some years which create specific temporal dynamics, endowed with more or less intensity and duration. The past left us no lessons, only moments that we must extend and prolong as far as we can.

*The present text is the speech of Jacques Rancière at B-FEST (International Antiauthoritarian Festival of Babylonia Journal) that was held on 27/05/17 in Athens with the title “Democracy, Equality, Emancipation in a Changing World”. The Greek translation can be found here.

source: http://www.babylonia.gr/2017/06/11/jacques-ranciere-democracy-equality-emancipation-changing-world/

The post Jacques Rancière: Democracy, Equality, Emancipation in a Changing World- talk at Bfest 2017 appeared first on Void Network.

Σε ένα περιβάλλον συνολικής επίθεσης κράτους και αφεντικών με την επίθεση στον κόσμο της εργασίας, το πετσόκομμα των μισθών, τη διάλυση της κοινωνικής ασφάλισης και τη μείωση των δαπανών για κοινωνικές ανάγκες, έρχεται να προστεθεί και η αναδιάρθρωση των Μέσων Μαζικής Μεταφοράς. Ο ΟΑΣΑ ισχυρίζεται ότι δε βγαίνει – την ίδια στιγμή που στελέχη του λεηλατούν τα ταμεία του- και δίνει εκατομμύρια ευρώ για την υλοποίηση αυτών των μέτρων (πολλές χιλιάδες ευρώ θα δοθούν μόνο για τη διαφημιστική καμπάνια της εν λόγω αναδιάρθρωσης, ώστε να πείσουν για την αναγκαιότητά της).

Ενώ το κεφάλαιο δεν θα μπορούσε να είχε τα αντίστοιχα κέρδη χωρίς ένα δίκτυο γρήγορων μετακινήσεων, για μας τους από τα κάτω τα μέτρα αυτά συνεπάγονται τον αποκλεισμό μας από μια βασική μας ανάγκη, τη μετακίνησή μας στη μητρόπολη, αφού χωρίς τα ΜΜΜ δεν μπορούμε να πάμε στην εργασία, την εκπαίδευση, τη διασκέδασή μας. Ιδιαίτερα στο Μετρό, ο αποκλεισμός αυτός συμβαίνει με τρόπο άμεσο, σωματικό: Γυάλινες μπάρες ορθώνονται μπροστά μας κατά την είσοδο και την έξοδό μας, στερώντας μας την επιλογή να μην πληρώνουμε εισιτήριο.

Παράλληλα, η επιχειρούμενη αναδιάρθρωση θα ήταν λειψή αν δεν συμπεριελάμβανε τη διαινώνιση του ελέγχου και της επιτήρησης σε όσους/ες χρησιμοποιούμε τα ΜΜΜ: από το φακέλωμα με ηλεκτρονικά εισιτήρια και κάρτε που δείχουν τη συνολική διαδρομή της μετακίνησης μέσα στην πόλη, τους τραμπουκισμούς από τους ελεγκτές, τα πρόστιμα, τους security/μπάτσους μέσα σε σταθμούς, μέχρι την εγκατάσταση καμερών σε λεωφορεία και συρμούς.

Για τους παραπάνω λόγους κατά την πρώτη πρωινή ώρα της Κυριακής 11 Ιούνη επιλέξαμε να επιτεθούμε στο σταθμό του Μετρό στον Κεραμεικό σπάζοντας τις μπάρες εισόδου/εξόδου, τα επικυρωτικά μηχανήματα (παλιού και νέου τύπου), τα ηλεκτρονικά μηχανήματα έκδοσης εισιτηρίων και τα ΑΤΜ.

Θα μετακινούμαστε ελεύθερα όπου, όποτε και με όποιον τρόπο θέλουμε. Αρνούμαστε τον έλεγχο στις μετακινήσεις (κάμερες, μπάρες, security, ελεγκτές) και δίνουμε τον δικό μας “τόνο” στην εναλλακτική νυχτερινή Αθήνα σπάζοντας εμπράκτως τα εμπόδια και δείχνοντας τον βασικό ωφελημένο από τη λειτουργία τους: το Κεφάλαιο και τη διατήρηση της κερδοφορίας του.

Το στοίχημα για τις ελεύθερες μετακινήσεις είναι διαρκές και ανοιχτό. Ο αγώνας για αυτές δεν σταματά το καλοκαίρι και συνεχίζεται με κάθε τρόπο. Δε θα περιμένουμε την εφαρμογή των μέτρων για να αντιδράσουμε. Δείχνουμε από τώρα τις προθέσεις μας και λέμε πως εμείς θα επιλέγουμε πάντα το χρόνο και το τόπο για να εξαπολύσουμε τις αρνήσεις μας στη σχεδιαζόμενη αναδιάρθωση στα ΜΜΜ.

Θα τα ξαναπούμε.

ΣΑΜΠΟΤΑΖ ΣΤΑ ΣΥΣΤΗΜΑΤΑ ΕΛΕΓΧΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΕΠΙΤΗΡΗΣΗΣ ΣΤΑ ΜΜΜ

ΞΥΛΟ ΣΤΟΥΣ ΕΛΕΓΚΤΕΣ

ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΕΣ ΜΕΤΑΚΙΝΗΣΕΙΣ ΓΙΑ ΟΛΟΥΣ/ΟΛΕΣ
Αναρχικοί/Αναρχικές

The post Ανάληψη ευθύνης από Αναρχικούς για την επίθεση στο Μετρό – στάση Κεραμεικός appeared first on Void Network.

Το Grassroots Economics Foundation (Ίδρυμα Οικονομικών Από Τα Κάτω) είναι μία οργάνωση στην Κένυα που εργάζεται για να ενδυναμώσει τις τοπικές κοινότητες να αναλάβουν δράση για τα δικά τους μέσα διαβίωσης και το οικονομικό τους μέλλον. Η Grassroots Economics επικεντρώνεται στην ανάπτυξη της κοινότητας μέσω της οικονομικής ενδυνάμωσης μέσα από προγράμματα κοινοτικών νομισμάτων. Εκατομμύρια ανθρώπων σε κοινότητες χαμηλού εισοδήματος έχουν αγαθά και υπηρεσίες για εμπόριο, αλλά δεν έχουν πρόσβαση σε μετρητά ή σε πίστωση. Αυτές οι τοπικές πρωτοβουλίες χρειάζονται έναν τρόπο ανταλλαγής αγαθών και υπηρεσιών χωρίς να βασίζονται σε εθνικά νομίσματα ή πιστωτικές γραμμές υψηλού επιτοκίου. H καθιέρωση ενός κοινοτικού νομίσματος, μηδενικού κοινοτικού επιτοκίου που υποστηρίζεται από δίκτυα πωλητών, αγροτών, βιοτεχνών και σχολείων, καθιστά δυνατή και προωθεί την τοπική ανταλλαγή.

Η Caroline Dama μάχεται για την χειραφέτηση των γυναικών. Μέσω της οργάνωσης Grassroots Economics, επιδιώκει να ενδυναμώσει κοινότητες χαμηλού εισοδήματος και σχολεία να εκδίδουν τοπική αμοιβαία πίστωση στην Κένυα.

Το FairCoop είναι ένας ανοιχτός παγκόσμιος συνεταιρισμός, αυτο-οργανωμένος μέσα από το διαδίκτυο, ο οποίος παραμένει εκτός κρατικού-εθνικού ελέγχου.

Ο στόχος του είναι να κάνει τη μετάβαση σε ένα καινούριο κόσμο, να μειώσει τις οικονομικές και κοινωνικές αδικίες ανάμεσα στους ανθρώπους, και την ίδια στιγμή, σταδιακά να συνεισφέρει στο νέο παραγόμενο οικονομικό πλούτο που θα είναι προσβάσιμος σε όλη την ανθρωπότητα σαν κοινό αγαθό.

Το FairCoop υποστήριζει ότι η μετάβαση σε ένα πιο δίκαιο νομισματικό σύστημα είναι το στοιχείο κλειδί. Γι’ αυτό το λόγο, προτάθηκε και το FairCoin ως το κρυπτονόμισμα πάνω στο οποίο βασίζει τις δράσεις αναδιανομής των πόρων του και το χτίσιμο ενός νέου παγκόσμιου οικονομικού συστήματος.

Το FairCoop αποδέχεται το κάλεσμα για ολοκληρωμένη επανάσταση.

Είναι ένα κάλεσμα σε όλους εσάς που αντιστέκεστε στην κυριαρχία και στην υποδούλωση, ένα κάλεσμα για να ενωθούμε κάτω από μία συνειδητή προσωπική και συλλογική δράση, για τη βελτίωση και την ανάκτηση όλων των κεκτημένων και των αξιών που μας επιτρέπουν να ζήσουμε μια ζωή από κοινού. ‘Ενα κάλεσμα για την κατασκευή νέων τρόπων οργάνωσης και δομών σχετικών με όλες τις πτυχές της ζωής μας, που θα διασφαλίζουν την ισότητα και τη δικαιοσύνη όσον αφορά στην κάλυψη ζωτικών αναγκών.

Δίκαιες σχέσεις που στηρίζονται στην ελευθερία
Αυτο-οργάνωση και κυρίαρχες λαϊκές συνελεύσεις
Δημόσια και κοινά αγαθά
Επανάκτηση της κοινής περιουσίας ως ένα κοινό αγαθό, κάτω
από κοινωνικό έλεγχο και ιδιοκτησία
Χτίσιμο ενός συνεργατικού και αυτο-διαχειριζόμενου δημόσιου
συστήματος με αμοιβαία υποστήριξη
Απελευθέρωση της πρόσβασης στην πληροφορία και τη γνώση
Μια νέα οικονομία που στηρίζεται στη συνεργασία και τις στενές
σχέσεις
Αρμονία με το φυσικό περιβάλλον και τη ζωή

Η τέχνη του FairCoop στα ελληνικά βρίσκεται εδώ:
https://fair.coop/el/faircoop/ https://fair.coop/el/principles/

Civil Disobedience and active Self Organization of the Economy-
Occupied theater Embros (Riga Palamidi 2 -Psiris area- Athens)
Wednesday 21/6 at 21.00

Grassroots Economics Foundation is a Kenian organization which works for empower local communities to take charge of their own livelihoods and economic future. Grassroots Economics focuses on community development through economic empowerment via community currency programs. Millions of people in low income communities have goods and services to trade, but they lack accessible cash or credit. These local initiatives need a way to exchange goods and services without relying on scarce national currency or high interest credit lines. By introducing a Community Currency, a zero interest communal credit backed by networks of vendors, farmers, craftspeople and schools, it enables and promotes local exchange

Caroline Dama is a strong believer in women’s empowerment. Her organization Grassroots Economics, seeks to empower low income communities and schools to issue a localized mutual credit in Kenya.

more info
http://grassrootseconomics.org/

Fair.coop is an open global cooperative, self-organized via the Internet and remaining outside nation-state control.

Its aim is to make the transition to a new world by reducing the economic and social inequalities among human beings as much as possible, and at the same time gradually contribute to a new global wealth, accessible to all humankind as commons

Fair.coop understands that the transformation to a fairer monetary system is a key element. Therefore, Faircoin was adopted as the cryptocurrency upon which to base its resource-redistribution actions and building of a new global economic system.

Faircoop embraces the call for integral revolution

A call to all of you who resist being dominated and enslaved, to get together under one conscious personal and collective action for the improvement and recovery of the qualities and values that enable us to live a life together, as well as the construction of new organizational forms and structures in all aspects of life to ensure equality and equity in the coverage of vital needs.

Equitable relationships based on freedom
Self-organization and sovereign popular assemblies
Public and commons
Retrieve common property as the common good, under popular possession and control
Build a cooperative and self-managed public system from mutual support
Freeing up access to information and knowledge
A new economy based on cooperation and close relationships
Cooperate with life and nature

more info
https://fair.coop/el/

The post Κοινωνικη Ανυπακοή- οικονομική αυτοοργανωσή στην πράξη-ομιλία / Civil Disobedience and active Self Organization of the Economy- Occupied theater Embros Wednesday 21/6 at 21.00 appeared first on Void Network.

Climate change, a crippled welfare state, the financial crisis, skyrocketing income inequality, political disappointments reaching back decades, terrible superhero movies grossing billions of dollars, Facebook and Tinder—these are just a few of the sins attributed to neoliberalism. But what exactly is neoliberalism? An economic doctrine? The revenge of capitalism’s ruling class? Or something even more insidious?

Booked is a monthly series of Q&As with authors by Dissent contributing editor Timothy Shenk. For this interview, he spoke with Wendy Brown about her new book Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2015).

Wendy Brown takes up these questions, and more, in her latest work, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. A searching inquiry, the book is part historical study, part philosophical treatise, and part engaged polemic. Scholarship on neoliberalism is booming, but Undoing the Demos highlights a subject too often neglected: the political consequences of viewing the world as an enormous marketplace. Her conclusions are grim, but that makes grappling with them all the more urgent.

Timothy Shenk: You note early in Undoing the Demos that while references to “neoliberalism” have become routine, especially on the left, the word itself “is a loose and shifting signifier.” What is your definition of neoliberalism?

Wendy Brown: In this book, I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is “economized” and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification and monetization everywhere—that’s the old Marxist depiction of capital’s transformation of everyday life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres—such as learning, dating, or exercising—in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value.

Moreover, because neoliberalism came of age with (and abetted) financialization, the form of marketization at stake does not always concern products or commodities, let alone their exchange. Today, market actors—from individuals to firms, universities to states, restaurants to magazines—are more often concerned with their speculatively determined value, their ratings and rankings that shape future value, than with immediate profit. All are tasked with enhancing present and future value through self-investments that in turn attract investors. Financialized market conduct entails increasing or maintaining one’s ratings, whether through blog hits, retweets, Yelp stars, college rankings, or Moody’s bond ratings.

Shenk: Discussions about neoliberalism often treat it as an economic doctrine, which also means that they concentrate on its economic ramifications. You shift the focus to politics, where, you argue, neoliberalism has “inaugurate[d] democracy’s conceptual unmooring and substantive disembowelment.” Why does neoliberalism pose such a threat to democracy?

Brown: The most common criticisms of neoliberalism, regarded solely as economic policy rather than as the broader phenomenon of a governing rationality, are that it generates and legitimates extreme inequalities of wealth and life conditions; that it leads to increasingly precarious and disposable populations; that it produces an unprecedented intimacy between capital (especially finance capital) and states, and thus permits domination of political life by capital; that it generates crass and even unethical commercialization of things rightly protected from markets, for example, babies, human organs, or endangered species or wilderness; that it privatizes public goods and thus eliminates shared and egalitarian access to them; and that it subjects states, societies, and individuals to the volatility and havoc of unregulated financial markets.

Each of these is an important and objectionable effect of neoliberal economic policy. But neoliberalism also does profound damage to democratic practices, cultures, institutions, and imaginaries. Here’s where thinking about neoliberalism as a governing rationality is important: this rationality switches the meaning of democratic values from a political to an economic register. Liberty is disconnected from either political participation or existential freedom, and is reduced to market freedom unimpeded by regulation or any other form of government restriction. Equality as a matter of legal standing and of participation in shared rule is replaced with the idea of an equal right to compete in a world where there are always winners and losers.

The promise of democracy depends upon concrete institutions and practices, but also on an understanding of democracy as the specifically political reach by the people to hold and direct powers that otherwise dominate us. Once the economization of democracy’s terms and elements is enacted in law, culture, and society, popular sovereignty becomes flatly incoherent. In markets, the good is generated by individual activity, not by shared political deliberation and rule. And, where there are only individual capitals and marketplaces, the demos, the people, do not exist.

Shenk: It’s easy to depict neoliberalism as a natural extension of liberalism, but you insist that the relationship is much more complicated than that. You illustrate the broad transformation by examining the intellectual history of homo oeconomicus, a term whose meaning you claim has shifted radically since the time of Adam Smith. How has “economic man” changed in the last century?

Brown: You’re right, the relationship is quite complicated, especially if one accepts Foucault’s notion that neoliberalism is a “reprogramming of liberalism” rather than only a transformation of capitalism. Here are the simplest things we might say about the morphing of homo oeconomicus. Two hundred years ago, this creature pursued its interest through what Adam Smith termed “truck, barter, and exchange.” A generation later, Jeremy Bentham gives us the utility maximizer, calculating everything according to maximizing pleasure, minimizing pain—cost/benefit. Thirty years ago, at the dawn of the neoliberal era, we get human capital that entrepreneurializes itself at every turn. Today, homo oeconomicus has been significantly reshaped as financialized human capital, seeking to enhance its value in every domain of life.

In contrast with classical economic liberalism, then, the contemporary figure of homo oeconomicus is distinctive in at least two ways. First, for neoliberals, humans are only and everywhere homo oeconomicus. This was not so for classical economists, where we were market creatures in the economy, but not in civic, familial, political, religious, or ethical life. Second, neoliberal homo oeconomicus today takes shape as value-enhancing human capital, not as a creature of exchange, production, or even interest. This is markedly different from the subject drawn by Smith, Bentham, Marx, Polanyi, or even Gary Becker.

Shenk: You mentioned Foucault just now, and you devote two chapters to him in the book, where you also call Birth of Biopolitics—the volume that emerged from lectures he gave in the late 1970s on neoliberalism—a “remarkable” work of “extraordinary prescience.” But he also comes in for a hefty amount of criticism. What do you think Foucault got right, and what did he miss?

Brown: What’s amazing about Foucault’s lectures is that he grasped neoliberalism as Europe’s present and future in the 1970s—before Reagan or Thatcher were elected, and before the Washington Consensus. What’s also extraordinary is his appreciation of neoliberalism as a form of political reason and governing that reaches from the state to the soul, and not simply as economic policy. Then there’s simply the fact that Foucault is a fearless, deep, and profoundly original political-historical thinker, who probes archives or a single utterance with equal brilliance and imagination. These features make Foucault’s lectures illuminating despite the fact that he is mostly discussing neoliberal ideas, not neoliberalism as it has unfolded over the past three decades.

But there are some distinctive gaps in Foucault’s account of what neoliberalism is and does resulting from his allergies to Marxism at the point in his life when he’s giving these lectures. For Foucault, as I said, neoliberalism is fundamentally a “reprogramming of liberalism,” not of capitalism, and there is astonishingly little discussion of the latter. He is also largely indifferent to my own central concern, democracy, which was true across his work. So one takes the useful insights and then builds on them. It would be silly to be an “orthodox Foucauldian” on the subject of neoliberalism, or for that matter, on any subject.

Shenk: What about the politics of Foucault’s analysis? There’s been a lot of debate recently about whether he was so attuned to neoliberalism’s rise because his own work was compatible with neoliberalism. What’s your position on this?

Brown: Well, on the one hand, Foucault’s degree of sympathy with what he was studying is not, for me, particularly important. The usefulness of certain historical accounts and theoretical formulations turns on their capacities for illumination, not on the theorist’s political affinities. (No one who mines the history of political theory to think about our present can draw only from theorists whose affinities line up with contemporary progressive values. None would survive the test, and that’s also a poor approach to learning from great minds.) Moreover, he didn’t and couldn’t have anticipated the neoliberal formations we are grappling with today. On the other hand, the idea that Foucault was deeply attracted to neoliberalism for its “emancipatory” dimensions strikes me as incompatible with a careful reading of his lectures where, among other things, he considers neoliberalism as a novel form of governing human beings that requires the individual, as human capital, to become a “portfolio of enterprises” and that makes us into both “producers and consumers of freedom.” Foucault’s signature theoretical move is to grasp human beings as produced by governing powers, not “freed” by them.

Shenk: Homo oeconomicus is a fairly common term; less common is the notion you oppose it to, homo politicus. What’s the genealogy of homo politicus, and how is it related to its more famous counterpart?

Brown: To understand what neoliberalism is doing to democracy, we have to return to the point that, until recently, human beings in the West have always been figured as more than homo oeconomicus. There have always been other dimensions of us imagined and cultivated in political, cultural, religious, or familial life. One of these figurations, which we might call homo politicus, featured prominently in ancient Athens, Roman republicanism, and even early liberalism. But it has also appeared in modern democratic upheavals ranging from the French Revolution to the civil rights movement. Homo politicus is inconstant in form and content, just as homo oeconomicus is, and certainly liberal democracy features an anemic version compared to, say, Aristotle’s account of humans as realizing our distinctively human capacities through sharing rule in the polis. But it is only with the neoliberal revolution that homo politicus is finally vanquished as a fundamental feature of being human and of democracy. Democracy requires that citizens be modestly oriented toward self-rule, not simply value enhancement, and that we understand our freedom as resting in such self-rule, not simply in market conduct. When this dimension of being human is extinguished, it takes with it the necessary energies, practices, and culture of democracy, as well as its very intelligibility.

Shenk: Some of the major interpreters of neoliberalism, especially those who approach it from a Marxist perspective, depict it as a straightforward byproduct of 1970s economic turmoil and backlash against welfare states led by a revanchist capitalist elite. It seems like you’re not satisfied with that interpretation. This is a big question, but do you have an alternative explanation for how we got here?

Brown: That’s too long and complicated a story to rehearse here but I can say this. For most Marxists, neoliberalism emerges in the 1970s in response to capitalism’s falling rate of profit; the shift of global economic gravity to OPEC, Asia, and other sites outside the West; and the dilution of class power generated by unions, redistributive welfare states, large and lazy corporations, and the expectations generated by educated democracies. From this perspective, neoliberalism is simply capitalism on steroids: a state and IMF-backed consolidation of class power aimed at releasing capital from regulatory and national constraints, and defanging all forms of popular solidarities, especially labor.

The grains of truth in this analysis don’t get at the fundamental transformation of social, cultural, and individual life brought about by neoliberal reason. They don’t get at the ways that public institutions and services have not merely been outsourced but thoroughly recast as private goods for individual investment or consumption. And they don’t get at the wholesale remaking of workplaces, schools, social life, and individuals. For that story, one has to track the dissemination of neoliberal economization through neoliberalism as a governing form of reason, not just a power grab by capital. There are many vehicles of this dissemination—law, culture, and above all, the novel political-administrative form we have come to call governance. It is through governance practices that business models and metrics come to irrigate every crevice of society, circulating from investment banks to schools, from corporations to universities, from public agencies to the individual. It is through the replacement of democratic terms of law, participation, and justice with idioms of benchmarks, objectives, and buy-ins that governance dismantles democratic life while appearing only to instill it with “best practices.”

Shenk: Undoing the Demos covers a sizable amount of ground in just over 200 pages, but, as your discussion of governance just now indicates, you also spend a lot of time with specific instances of neoliberalism in action. My favorite of these more focused studies is your extended analysis of Citizens United. What does that case tell us about neoliberalism more generally?

Brown: Progressives generally disparage Citizens United for having flooded the American electoral process with corporate money on the basis of tortured First Amendment reasoning that treats corporations as persons. However, a careful reading of the majority decision also reveals precisely the thoroughgoing economization of the terms and practices of democracy we have been talking about. In the majority opinion, electoral campaigns are cast as “political marketplaces,” just as ideas are cast as freely circulating in a market where the only potential interference arises from restrictions on producers and consumers of ideas—who may speak and who may listen or judge. Thus, Justice Kennedy’s insistence on the fundamental neoliberal principle that these marketplaces should be unregulated paves the way for overturning a century of campaign finance law aimed at modestly restricting the power of money in politics. Moreover, in the decision, political speech itself is rendered as a kind of capital right, functioning largely to advance the position of its bearer, whether that bearer is human capital, corporate capital, or finance capital. This understanding of political speech replaces the idea of democratic political speech as a vital (if potentially monopolizable and corruptible) medium for public deliberation and persuasion.

Perhaps what is most significant about the Citizens United decision, then, is not that corporations are rendered as persons, but that persons, let alone a people, do not appear as the foundation of democracy, and a distinctly public sphere of debate and discussion do not appear as democracy’s vital venue. Instead, the decision presents speech as a capital right and political life and elections as marketplaces.

Shenk: You’re clear that democracy is an ideal that deserves defending, but you’re skeptical about actually existing democracy, which you describe as a system where “the common rage of the common citizen has been glorified and exploited.” And you worry that matters could get much worse, with democracy as we know it giving way to “a polity in which the people are pawns of every kind of modern power.” Do you see a tension between your tributes to democratic ideals and your grim assessment of its current state?

Brown: Democracy is always incomplete, always short of its promise, but the conditions for cultivating it can be better or worse. My point was that democracy is really reduced to a whisper in the Euro-Atlantic nations today. Even Alan Greenspan says that elections don’t much matter much because, “thanks to globalization . . . the world is governed by market forces,” not elected representatives. Voting has been declining for decades everywhere in the Western world; politicians are generally mistrusted if not reviled (except for Varoufakis, of course!); and everything to do with political life or government is widely considered either captured by capital, corrupt or burdensome—this hostility to the political itself is generated by neoliberal reason. Thus, today, the meaning of democracy is pretty much reduced to personal liberty. Such liberty is not nothing, but could not be further from the idea of rule by and for the people.

Wendy Brown is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone Books).

Timothy Shenk is a graduate student in history at Columbia University and a Dissent contributing editor. He is the author of Maurice Dobb: Political Economist.

Source: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos

The post What Exactly Is Neoliberalism?- a talk with Wendy Brown appeared first on Void Network.