The community of Acapatzingo (Photo by José Luis Santillán/Creative Commons)

Walking through La Polvorilla on the southeastern fringes of Mexico City, a rare sense of ordered calm fills the neighborhood. The eye lingers on posters announcing workshops and classes for local residents and the rust-colored peaks of Montaña de Alvarado and Volcán Xaltepec, jutting up a short distance away. The community’s open spaces, clean streets, abundant greenery, and uniformly built, well-maintained two-story houses stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding area of the Iztapalapa borough, which is the most crime-afflicted and one of the most impoverished of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs. La Polvorilla is a kind of oasis wedged within the chaos and disorder that defines much of the built environment in Mexico City’s neglected periphery.

The difference between the two is the result of the popular struggle for housing, democracy, and a better life for Mexico City’s urban poor. La Polvorilla, officially known as La Comunidad Habitaciónal Acapatzingo, is an autonomous community with more than 4,000 residents. Hailed by Raúl Zibechi as “one of the most important autonomous experiences in Latin America,” La Polvorilla was founded in 1994 when the socialist Frente Popular de Francisco Villa (FPFV) organized a land invasion and squat. Previously a quarry and mining area, the land had become a dumpsite for debris after the devastating 1985 earthquake. In 1998, the movement leading the occupation bought the land with a combination of funds the organization raised and credit from Mexico City’s housing institute, Instituto de Vivienda del Distrito Federal (INVI).

Two years later, in 2000, residents began building permanent housing, transforming their make-shift squat—constructed out of rubber, wood, sheet metal, and cardboard—into buildings made of sturdier materials. The neighborhood also self-constructed a clinic, a library, a pirate radio station, soccer fields and basketball courts, greenhouses, and other urban infrastructure. Once a literal dump, La Polvorilla is now an active, safe, and militant neighborhood, committed to building a socialist society grounded in collectivist practices of mutual aid and autonomy from the state, government institutions, and political parties. [See also: Building Homes, Building Lives in Mexico City in NACLA’s Winter 2019 print issue].

Today, La Polvorilla is affiliated with the Organización Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente (OPFVII), an offshoot of the FPFV. Apart from La Polvorilla, the OPFVII has self-constructed nine other communities in which a total of 3,000 people live, all in the southeast of Mexico City. The OPFVII is distinct from most urban popular social movement organizations in Mexico City in its absolute commitment to organizational autonomy. It is both a strategic and ideological answer to the key question that Mexican social movements have faced since the 1980s: To what extent, if any, should a movement organization collaborate with the state? 

A soccer game in the community (Photo courtesy of OPFVII)

Roots of the Urban Popular Movement

The debate over social movement cooperation with the state was and is salient because cooptation was the longstanding preferred method of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to demobilize social movements that threatened its dominance. PRI presidents governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and created organizations to represent different sectors: workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, the urban poor, and others. The government also worked to incorporate those organizing outside official party or state channels through clientelism. In the urban periphery, this would look like a PRI representative offering a community help in acquiring basic urban infrastructure in exchange for political support—in other words, materials to build a road could be provided, if the community delivered votes, attended rallies, and canvassed for the party. In addition to clientelism, outright violence was a key way the PRI demobilized social movements, most famously illustrated by the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.   

This system began unraveling for the PRI in the 1980s, most of all in the urban peripheries of Mexico’s rapidly growing cities. Already the sector of the population least incorporated into the PRI’s clientelistic networks, the urban poor completely abandoned the party. State neglect of rural areas combined with a development plan that heavily centralized economic activity and opportunity in Mexico City led to roughly 500 migrants arriving daily to the capital from the countryside between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. Many of these migrants settled on the margins of the city, especially in the southeastern boroughs of Iztapalapa, Ixtapaluca, and Tláhuac, where the OPFVII organizes today. 

The rural to urban migration boom alone would have posed a huge challenge to the PRI’s ability to expand urban services and infrastructure, but it also coincided with a full-blown economic crisis. Reeling from a near-default in 1982, double-digit unemployment, and yearly increases in the price of dietary staples of around 300 percent, the PRI implemented severe austerity while prioritizing foreign debt payments over the basic needs of its citizens. According to statistics compiled by Diane Davis in her book Urban Leviathan, between 1984 and 1985, the government reduced spending by 12 percent on transport, 25 percent on potable water, 18 percent on health services, 26 percent on garbage collection, and 56 percent on land regularization, which would mark the beginning of Mexico’s transition to neoliberalism. Spending reductions diminished the state’s capacity to create and sustain the clientelistic networks that defined the PRI’s corporatist mode of governing. On top of that, when the 1985 earthquake destroyed thousands of buildings and major infrastructure in Mexico City, the PRI failed to respond in any meaningful way, laying bare its corruption and incompetence. Support for the party in Mexico City completely collapsed. 

In this context, major mobilizations of the urban poor were demanding housing, infrastructure, and a democratization of urban governance. In 1988, the center-left Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) party, riding the energy and many of the organizational networks behind the mobilizations, fell just short of the presidency in an election the PRI has since admitted was fraudulent. The PRD would subsequently capture power in Mexico City. The same racket returned: The PRD collected support from the urban poor in exchange for often-empty promises. Now, however, organizations that had previously been on the forefront of popular uprisings served as intermediaries.   

The decision of many urban popular organizations previously unaffiliated with political parties to engage in electoral politics and subordinate themselves to the PRD was a major factor in the movement’s demobilization. The departure of reform and electorally-minded movement leaders for state bureaucracy and elected positions left much of the movement without leadership. But it also served to consolidate the more radical currents of the movement. These organizations used direct action tactics like land invasions, articulated their goals in explicitly socialist vocabulary, and developed a comprehensive critique of clientelism, state corruption, and the corporatist mechanisms of political representation that disenfranchised the urban poor. They also demanded urban services and housing, as well as autonomy from the state and political parties. This is the tradition from which the OPFVII and La Polvorilla emerged. 

Autonomy and Self-Governance

Organizations that emphasize autonomy in a project of developing unused land for the urban poor share several traits, which are referred to as autogestión across the Spanish-speaking world: direct and popular participation in the planning, construction, and administration of the community; a robust commitment to internal bottom-up democracy; and the rejection of government technical experts in favor of experts who are members of the organization or likeminded allies. These organizations also use land invasion and squatting—usually on state-owned or ejido land—as a means to initially acquire territory, which they then militantly defend from state eviction efforts. Marches and sit-ins will often accompany the negotiating process with city government to both avoid eviction and eventually legally acquire the land.

Community members participate in construction efforts (Photo courtesy of OPFVII)

For the OPFVII, autonomy encompasses more than self-constructing housing and infrastructure. If this were the case, it would simply be a kind of real estate development cooperative for the urban poor. “Housing is the principle demand for all the compañeros that join the organization. It is the pretext for organizing,” said Rosario Hernández Aldaco, a member of the OPFVII’s political commission. The organization politicizes the lack of housing and infrastructure for the urban poor as the initial step in project to remake social relations based on horizontality, cooperation, collective work, and solidarity. “Not just a project for housing, but a project for life,” is a common refrain among the organization’s leadership. For the OPFVII, building a democratic and collectivist movement culture is as important as building housing.

Housing and community construction also forms an important foundation in creating this movement culture. When regular people build a neighborhood together—relying on each other rather than on a political party, NGO, or corrupt government—they witness and experience their capacity to meet their individual and communal needs through working collectively. “The construction process creates a consciousness that we have to come together and organize to create a better life,” said Hernández Aldaco.

However, the primary way that OPFVII builds movement culture is through the organization’s structure, which ties individual members to one another in different groupings and at different levels of the organization. The basic units of the organization are the brigades, which are each comprised of 25 families. The brigades send members to each of the commissions responsible for different work in the communities: communication, education and culture, health, maintenance, finance and administration, and security. Each housing settlement also has a general assembly, which takes place monthly in La Polvorilla, and weekly in some of the other communities. At these assemblies, the elected representatives of each commission report back on the work being carried out and its plans for future work. Finally, the entire organization participates in a Congress every two years. At the most recent Congress last May, 692 delegates attended, signaling that the OPFVII has a large tier of mid-level leadership. The presence of a sizeable group of leaders is extremely important to the OPFVII, which views it as a sign of the membership’s ideological development as well as an important contribution to the organization’s ability to continue growing into the future.

From initial recruitment phases, which are aimed at friends and family members of existing members, the organization tells potential residents that joining the community marks a life-long commitment to building a democratic and socialist society.A common problem for urban popular movements that build housing is keeping members mobilized after construction is complete. Many urban autonomy projects exhaust themselves in the process of introducing urban service and regularizing their land tenure. OPFVII combats the tendency towards stasis in a few ways, but most simply it manages to do so because the organization’s raison d’être encompasses far more than housing. The membership is keenly aware of this. From initial recruitment phases, which are aimed at friends and family members of existing members, the organization tells potential residents that joining the community marks a life-long commitment to building a democratic and socialist society. A consistent stream of new people joining the organization keeps it fresh, while each individual community’s leeway to make its own decisions about how to operate decentralizes power. The overall effect is a militant organization of the urban poor rapidly growing in a moment when nearly all other popular organizations have become ossified, fragmented, and part of the bureaucracy of the PRD, PRI, or MORENA, the center-left party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The OPFVII has nearly doubled in size in the last 10 years while claiming nine new territories. While the organization has no plans of slowing down, conditions for its organizing have changed. Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s mayor from the MORENA party that won power in 2018, recently disqualified social organizations from receiving funds from the city’s housing agency, INVI. After protests from urban popular organizations, like OPFVII, that access these funds, Sheinbaum announced plans to once again revise INVI’s rules. Sheinbaum then removed the director of INVI, Pedro Sosa Álvarez, and replaced him with Rodrigo Chávez Contreras, most recently a leader of the MORENA-aligned social housing development organization Asamblea de Barrios. Contreras’s appointment signals the continuation of an 80-year-old pattern in Mexican politics: Administrators award public resources to popular organizations in exchange for electoral support.

Alternative in Practice

Refusing to play the game has made obtaining credit from INVI a challenge for the OPFVII since its inception. “Accessing the credit and resources provided to build housing has always been a problem for us,” said Hernández Aldaco. The over three years of contradictory decisions, information, and delays the OPFVII endured in obtaining credit from INVI to build La Polvorilla is a stark example. Meanwhile, other social housing organizations with “neither a blueprint nor land, but a good relationship with an official” were awarded credit, explained Enrique Reinoso, an OPFVII leader at La Polvorilla in the 1990s. In this regard, the OPFVII’s leadership expects their relationship with authorities to be the same, if not worse, with MORENA’s government.

But the OPFVII is not discouraged: two new communities are under construction, one of which is almost finished and the other just beginning. The nearly finished community, named Zapotlán, will have 80 housing units after two years of construction—a far quicker turn around time than a real estate corporation or the state would need for the project. The organization also feels it achieved the greatest autonomy from the state yet with this specific construction process by managing all aspects of administration and labor for the project. Another step the OPFVII is taking to increase autonomy from the state and its institutions is developing community-centered justice systems so that disputes can be handled according to the organization’s principles and ideology. Police only are admitted into OPFVII territories if they are unarmed and with with prior permission from the given community.

The crest of the OPFVII movement (Photo by Evan Neuhausen)

OPFVII’s total rejection of collaboration with political parties and near-total rejection of the state have guided it over the last 25 years and will continue to be one of its defining characteristics as it autonomously and democratically develops unused land in Mexico City. It offers a refreshing alternative to the clientelism that has defined Mexico’s politics—and especially its urban politics—for 80 years.

The OPFVII poses a question of if and how autonomous projects may excuse the neoliberal retrenchment of a state that answers to foreign capital above the basic needs of its urban poor. From a certain cynical point of view, autonomous housing projects “justify” the government’s lack of investment. This viewpoint is far too narrow a conception of what autonomous movements do.

What becomes clear from the OPFVII experience is that for the people involved, organizing is a struggle for freedom that, in Reinoso’s words, shows that “there are other ways to live and build” communities. These alternative possibilities, in which people look to each other rather than the state or political parties as caregivers, will be part of any movement that succeeds in transforming Mexico City into a more just and equitable city. The OPFVII will not be stopping anytime soon. As Hernández Aldaco said, “The project for life lasts a lifetime.”

Written by Evan Neuhausen – a researcher, translator, and archivist. He lives in New York.

Source: https://nacla.org/news/2019/12/30/Polvorilla-mexico-city-housing

The post A housing Project for Life in Mexico City appeared first on Void Network.

Registration & more info: www.taalahooghan.org/iac

Schedule & workshop/discussion descriptions: www.taalahooghan.org/iac-workshops/

We welcome Indigenous, Black, People of Color for this gathering.

From the base of Dóókoosłiid we call for those also seeking a fulfilling life free from domination, coercion, & exploitation to gather around this fire.

For those sickened by fascinations with dead white-men’s thoughts (and their academies and their laws), reformist & reactionary “decolonial activisms”, and the uninspired merry-go-round of leftist politics as a whole.

For all those ungovernable forces of Nature, we invite you to gather as we fiercely push, pull, gnash our teeth, sharpen our claws, and dig deeply, so that we can find each other and see what comes from the circles around our fires.

Please register (even if it’s one name for your group) as our venue has limited capacity.
If you have any questions or issues with the online form please email us at taalahooghan@protonmail.com.

Indigenous Anarchist Convergence
Workshops

All Colonizers Are Bastards: Towards a World Without Prisons or Police
1h 30m | Open discussion
From community response networks that intervene in ICE raids, to transformative and restorative justice practices, this will be a facilitated discussion for participants to share stories and practical actions for a world without prisons or police.

Autonomous Organizing Against Borders 
2h | Presenters: O’odham Anti-Border Collective, Contra Viento y Marea, Tornillo the Occupation, Hecate Society, Casa Carmelita, Food not Walls and No Más Muertes/No More Deaths
This is a necessary discussion and presentation if you have been asking yourself How do I support border resistance? What is it like on our southern border dealing face to face with the imperial machine? How do I get involved? What is going on? 
Nellie Joe David from O’odham Anti-Border Collective will address Indigenous Mobilization, Convergence, Education, and Action to Protect O’odham Sites. She will also discuss mobilization to stop the border wall and tower construction. 
Representatives from the Border Resistance Tour will provide first hand accounts from QTBIPOC grassroots organizers about the last 8 months of Direct Action and Mutual Aide in the Border towns of Juarez/El Paso and Tijuana/SanDiego.
This will be broad and strategic discussion on how folks can plug into work that is actually working towards dismantling concentration camps and US-funded genocide.

Another World is Possible: an Indigenous Governing Council and Zapatista Proposal
1h 30m | Presented by the Semillero Collective
This workshop deconstructs Indigenous Philosophy and practice. We discuss the importance of an Indigenous concentrated approach to organizing and autonomous living vs. the western, liberal lens that often co-opts movements for liberation and continues to replicate colonized standards and norms. We center our conversation around collective resistance and our natural inheritance to the land.

Autonomous Foods & Medicine
1h | Presented by Rez Family Farms/Red Ink
This workshop will help Indigenous peoples to better understand how to interact with their own landscapes to harvest foods and medicine. We will address how to safely approach working with the landscape, responsible food and medicine harvesting, and sharing both stories and samples of foods/medicines.

Autonomously & With Conviction: A Metis Refusal of State-led Reconciliation
1h | 
Jaydene
This workshop will address Canadian state-led reconciliation, why it’s fucked up to support it, and why anarchism holds the only true solution for decolonization.

BIPOC, Geographies of Struggle, & the Relevance of Decolonial Anarchy
2h | La Selva Collective
This workshop session will be held with a few members of a new decolonial anarchist media and writing collective called La Selva. Part of the workshop will be devoted to an introduction to the group, as to why they felt the need to organize as a group and produce content they feel is missing in the broader revolutionary sphere. Another part of the workshop will be a small presentation on the possibilities of spatial struggles outside of the metropolis, and into racially and economically marginalized spaces where few efforts are rooted in. This will then transition into a wider discussion facilitated by the collective on questions pertaining to the moment and needs for action.

Harm Reduction for the Community
1h | Presented by Sonoran Prevention Works
Marginalized communities have been disproportionately impacted by the drug war and have fewer resources to treat Substance Use Disorder and blood-borne diseases like HIV and Hepatitis. We must often be our own first responders, so overdose recognition and response are critical, life-saving skills. In this workshop we’ll discuss stigma and harm reduction strategies to minimize the negative consequences associated with substance use, how to support our relatives struggling with addiction, and learn how to use naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses. Participants will receive free naloxone and fentanyl testing kits.  

Against Settler Colonial Politics
1h 30m | Presenters: Little Black Cart crew & TBA
This is a discussion for those who revel in rousing leftist tensions. A good space to attack Marxism and other European leftist ideologies, a bad space for people who vote and think politicians will save them.

Locating an Indigenous Anarchism 
2h 30m | Panelists: Aragorn!, Amanda Lickers, Louise Benally, Rob Los Ricos, and more TBA.
What is meant, and what is not meant, when we assert “Indigenous Anarchism?” 
This panel will be initiated by Aragorn! who wrote Locating an Indigenous Anarchism in 2005, it was one of the first pieces of writing that articulated an Indigenous Anarchism.

Organizing Indigenous Radical Spaces
1h 30m | Presenters: Táala Hooghan Infoshop & Ké’ Infoshop
There are two Indigenous infoshops located in so-called Arizona, Táala Hooghan was founded in 2007, Ké’ was founded in 2017. Join collective members of these projects to explore the fun and challenges with organizing, sustaining, dealing with conflicts, strategies, and other shenanigans with these spaces. We will also be discussing a proposal for a Southwest editorial collective for Black Seed, an Indigenous Anarchist paper.

Solidarity Means Action, Anti-colonial-Struggle Means Attack!
2h | Open panel with representatives from Protect the Peaks, Haul No!, and more TBA
From Big Mountain to Palestine, Charlottesville to Ferguson, Mauna Kea to Standing Rock, the San Francisco Peaks and beyond, this is a critical discussion on meaningful solidarity, strategies and tactics, and proposals.

The post Indigenous Anarchist Convergence 16-18/8/2019 – Flagstaff USA appeared first on Void Network.

Sometimes, when I write scary essays, I encourage you not to read them. This one’s different. It’s going to be brutal, scary, jarring, and alarming. But if you want my thoughts on the future, then read away.

It strikes me that the planet’s fate is now probably sealed. We have just a decade in which to control climate change — or goodbye, an unknown level of catastrophic, inescapable, runaway warming is inevitable. The reality is: we’re probably not going to make it. It’s highly dubious at this juncture that humanity is going to win the fight against climate change.

Yet that is for a very unexpected — yet perfectly predictable — reason: the sudden explosion in global fascism — which in turn is a consequence of capitalism having failed as a model of global order. If, when, Brazil elects a neo-fascist who plans to raze and sell off the Amazon — the world’s lungs — then how do you suppose the fight against warming will be won? It will be set back by decades — decades…we don’t have. America’s newest Supreme Court justice is already striking down environmental laws — in his first few days in office — but he will be on the bench for life…beside a President who hasn’t just decimated the EPA, but stacked it with the kind of delusional simpletons who think global warming is a hoax. Again, the world is set by back by decades…it doesn’t have. Do you see my point yet? Let me make it razor sharp.

My friends, catastrophic climate change is not a problem for fascists — it is a solution. History’s most perfect, lethal, and efficient one means of genocide, ever, period. Who needs to build a camp or a gas chamber when the flood and hurricane will do the dirty work for free? Please don’t mistake this for conspiracism: climate change accords perfectly with the foundational fascist belief that only the strong should survive, and the weak — the dirty, the impure, the foul — should perish. That is why neo-fascists do not lift a finger to stop climate change — but do everything they can to in fact accelerate it, and prevent every effort to reverse or mitigate it.

But I want to tell you the sad, strange, terrible story of how we got here. Call it a lament for a planet, if you like. You see, not so long ago, we — the world — were optimistic that climate change could be managed, in at least some way. The worst impacts probably avoided, forestalled, escaped — if we worked together as a world. But now we are not so sure at all. Why is that? What happened? Fascism happened — at precisely the wrong moment. That shredded all our plans. But fascism happened because capitalism failed — failed for the world, but succeeded wildly for capitalists.

Now, this will be a subtle story, because I want to tell it to you the way it should be told. Let me begin with an example, and zoom out from there.

The world is in the midst of a great mass extinction — one of just a handful in history. Now, if we had been serious, at any point, really, about preventing climate catastrophe, we would have made an effort to “price in” this extinction — with a new set of global measures for GDP and profit and costs and tariffs and taxes and so on. But we didn’t, so all these dead beings, these animals and plants and microbes and so on — strange and wonderful things we will never know — are “unpriced” in the foolish, self-destructive economy we have made. Life is literally free to capitalism, and so capitalism therefore quite naturally abuses it and destroys it, in order to maximize its profits, and that is how you get a spectacular, eerie, grim mass extinction in half a century, of which there have only been five in all of previous history.

But biological life was not the only unpaid cost — “negative externality” — of capitalism. It was just one. And these unpaid costs weren’t to be additive: they were to multiply, exponentiate, snarl upon themselves — in ways that we would come to find impossible to then untangle. (And all this was what economists and thinkers, especially American ones, seemed to whistle at and walk away, anytime someone suggested it.)

You see, capitalism promised people — the middle classes which had come to make up the modern world — better lives. But it had no intention of delivering — its only goal was to maximize profits for the owners of capital, not to make anyone else one iota richer. So first it ate through people’s towns and cities and communities, then through social systems, then through their savings, and finally, through their democracies. Even if people’s incomes “rose”, cleverly, the prices they paid for the very same things which capitalism sold back to them with the other hand, the very things they were busy producing, rose even more — and so middle classes began to stagnate, while inequality exploded. Let’s specify the unpaid costs in question: trust, connection, cohesion, belonging, meaning, purpose, truth itself.

These were social costs — not environmental ones, like the mass extinction above. And I will make the link between the two clear in just a moment. First I want you to understand their effect.

A sense of frustration, of resignation, of pessimism came to sweep the world. People lost trust in their great systems and institutions. They turned away from democracy, and towards authoritarianism, in a great, thunderous wave, which tilted the globe on its very axis. The wave rippled outward from history’s greatest epicenter of human stupidity, America, like a supersonic tsunami, crossing Europe, reaching Asia’s shores, crashing south into Brazil, cresting far away in Australia. Nations fell like dominoes to a new wave of fascists, who proclaimed the same things as the old ones — reichs and camps and reigns of the pure. People began to turn on those below them — the powerless one, the different one, the Mexican, the Jew, the Muslim— in the quest for just the sense of superiority and power, the fortune and glory, capitalism had promised them, but never delivered.

The capitalists had gotten rich — unimaginably rich. They were richer than kings of old. But capitalism had imploded into fascism. History laughed at the foolishness of people who once again believed, like little children hearing a fairy tale, that capitalism — which told people to exploit and abuse one another, not hold each other close, mortal and frail things that they are — was somehow ever going to benefit them.

Now. Let me connect the dots of capitalism’s unpaid social and environmental costs, and how they are linked, not additively, 2+2=5, but with the mathematics of catastrophe.

When we tell the story of how capitalism imploded into fascism, it will go something like this: the social costs of capitalism meant that democracy collapsed into neo-fascism — and neo-fascism made it unlikely, if not outright impossible, that the world could do anything at all about climate change, in the short window it had left, at the precise juncture it needed to act most. Do you see the link? The terrible and tragic irony? How funny and sad it is?

The social costs of capitalism weren’t just additive to the environmental costs — they were more like multiplicative, snarled upon themselves, like a great flood meeting a great hurricane. The social costs exponentiated the environmental, making them now impossible to reduce, pay, address, manage. 2+2 didn’t equal 4 — it equalled infinity, in this case. Both together made a system that spiralled out of control. Wham! The planet’s fate was being sealed, by capitalism imploding into fascism — which meant that a disintegrating world could hardly work together anymore to solve its greatest problem of all.

Let me sharpen all that a little. By 2005, after a great tussle, much of the world had agreed on a plan to reduce carbon emissions — the Kyoto Protocol. It was just barely enough — barely — to imagine that one day climate change might be lessened and reduced enough to be manageable. Still, there was one notable holdout — as usual, America. Now, at this point, the world, which was in a very different place politically than it is today, imagined that with enough of the usual diplomatic bickering and horse-trading, maybe, just maybe, it would get the job done. And yet by 2010 or so, the point of all this, which was to create a global carbon pricing system had still not been accomplished — in large part thanks to America, whose unshakeable devotion to capitalism meant that such a thing was simply politically impossible. So by this point the world was behind — and yet, one could still imagine a kind of success. Maybe an American President would come along who would see sense. Maybe progress was going in the right direction, generally. After all, slowly, the world was making headway, towards less carbon emissions, towards a little more cooperation, here and there.

And then — Bang! America was the first nation to fall to the neo fascist wave. Instead of a President who might have taken the country into a decarbonized future, Americans elected the king of the idiots (no, please don’t give me an apologia for the electoral college.) This king of the idiots did what kings of idiots do: he lionized, of all things…coal. He questioned whether climate change was…real. He packed the government with lobbyists and cronies who were quite happy to see the world burn, if it meant a penthouse overlooking a drowned Central Park. He broke up with allies, friends, and partners. Do you see the point? The idea of a decarbonizing future was suddenly turned on its head. It had been a possibility yesterday — but now, it was becoming an impossibility.

Before the neofascist wave, the world might have indeed “solved” climate change. Maybe not in the hard sense that life would go on tomorrow as it does today — but in the soft sense that the worst and most vicious scenarios were mostly outlandish science fiction. That is because before the neofascist wave, we could imagine nations cooperating, if slowly, reluctantly, in piecemeal ways, towards things like protecting life, reducing carbon, pricing in the environment, and so on. These things can only be done through global cooperation, after all.

But after the neofascist wave, global cooperation — especially of a genuinely beneficial kind, not a predatory kind — began to become less and less possible by the day. The world was unravelling. When countries were trashing the United Nations and humiliating their allies and proclaiming how little they needed the world (all to score minor-league wins for oligarchs, who cashed in their chips, laughing )— how could such a globe cooperate more then? It couldn’t — and it can’t. So the neofascist wave which we are now in also means drastically less global cooperation — but less global cooperation means incalculably worse climate change.

So now let’s connect all the dots. Capitalism didn’t just rape the planet laughing, and cause climate change that way. It did something which history will think of as even more astonishing. By quite predictably imploding into fascism at precisely the moment when the world needed cooperation, it made it impossible, more or less, for the fight against climate change to gather strength, pace, and force. It wasn’t just the environmental costs of capitalism which melted down the planet — it was the social costs, too, which, by wrecking global democracy, international law, cooperation, the idea that nations should work together, made a fractured, broken world which no longer had the capability to act jointly to prevent the rising floodwaters and the burning summers.

(Now, it’s at this point that Americans will ask me, a little angrily, for “solutions”. Ah, my friends. When will you learn? Don’t you remember my point?

There are no solutions, because these were never “problems” to begin with. The planet, like society, is a garden, which needs tending, watering, care. The linkages between these things — inequality destabilizing societies making global cooperation less possible — are not things we can fix overnight, by turning a nut or a bolt, or throwing money at them. They never were. They are things we needed to see long ago, to really reject together, and invest in, nurture, protect, defend, for decades — so that capitalism did not melt down into fascism, and take away all our power to fight for our worlds, precisely when we would need it most.

But we did not do that. We were busy “solving problems”. Problems like…hey, how can I get my laundry done? Can I get my package delivered in one hour instead of one day? Wow — you mean I don’t have to walk down the street to get my pizza anymore? Amazing!! In this way, we solved all the wrong problems, if you like, but I would say that we solved mechanical problems instead of growing up as people. Things like climate change and inequality and fascism are not really “problems” — they are emergent processes, which join up, in great tendrils of ruin, each piling on the next, which result from decades of neglect, inaction, folly, blindness. We did not plant the seeds, or tend to our societies, economies, democracies, or planet carefully enough — and now we are harvesting bitter ruin instead. Maybe you see my point. Or maybe you don’t see my point at all. I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a tough one to catch sight of)

The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — at least given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is. They are quite overjoyed to have found the most spectacular and efficient and lethal engine of genocide and devastation known to humankind, which is endless, free natural catastrophe. Nothing sorts the strong from the weak more ruthlessly like a flooded planet, a thundering sky, a forest in flames, a parched ocean. A man with a gun is hardly a match for a planet on fire.

I think this much becomes clearer by the year: we have failed, my friends, to save our home. How funny that we are focused, instead, on our homelands. It would be funny, disgraceful, and pathetic of me to say: is there still time to save ourselves? That is the kind of nervous, anxious selfishness that Americans are known for — and it is only if we reject it, really, that we learn the lesson of now. Let us simply imagine, instead, that despite all the folly and stupidity and ruin of this age, the strongmen and the weak-minded, in those dark and frightening nights when the rain pours and the thunder roars, we might still light a candle for democracy, for freedom, and for truth. The truth is that we do not deserve to be saved if we do not save them first.

Umair Haque- October 2018

source: Eudaimonia & Co

The post How Capitalism Torched the Planet by Imploding Into Fascism- by Umair Haque appeared first on Void Network.

Void Network
http://voidnetwork.gr
presents 
VIVA LA ANARGUIA
music and video 
by Nelipot 
(d.j. Crystal Zero remix)
https://soundcloud.com/nelipot-stef

Oid mortales el grito sagrado,
De anarquia y solidaridad.
Oid el ruido del pueblo que estalla,
En defensa de la libertad.
El obrero que sufre proclama la anarquia,
De mundo al traves,
Porque sigue sufriendo la injusticia,
Hoy en dia igual que ayer.

El maldito clero a la cara te escupe,
Y el que manda te aplica su ley,
Y el burgues tu sudor te arrebata,
Y te mandan la patria y el rey.
Viva la anarquia, ¡viva!
Viva el pueblo productor,
Libertad, Igualdad, y Armonia,
Arte, Paz, Justicia y Amor.


Hear the sacred cry Of Anarchy and Solidarity
all you mortals
Hear the noise of people exploding
in defense of Freedom.
The worker who suffers proclaims Anarchy
in all across the world,
cause we continue to suffer in injustice,
today like yesterday.
The fucking clergy spit on your face,
And the boss will enforce its own law
And the bourgeois is stealing the fruits of our work,
And they give us kings and separate countries.

Long live anarchy! Viva!

Long Live the people that produce
Liberty, Equality, and Harmony,
Art, Peace, Justice and Love.

Ακούστε θνητοί, την ιερή κραυγή,
της Aναρχίας και της Αλληλεγγύης.
Ακούστε τον ήχο των ανθρώπων που ξεσπάνε
για την υπεράσπιση της Ελευθερίας.
Ο εργαζόμενος που υποφέρει διακηρύσσει την θέληση του να υπάρξει
Αναρχία σε όλο τον κόσμο,
γιατί συνεχίζουμε να υφιστάμεθα την αδικία,
σήμερα, όπως και χθες.

Ο βλάσφημος κλήρος μας φτύνει στο πρόσωπο,
Και το αφεντικό επιβάλλει το νόμο του,
Και ο αστός αρπάζει τον ιδρώτα μας,
Και μας δίνουν ξεπουλημένους πολιτικούς και χωριστές πατρίδες.
Ζήτω η Αναρχία, ζήτω!
Ζήτω ο ανθρωπος που παράγει
Ελευθερία, Ισότητα, και Αρμονία,
Τέχνη, Ειρήνη, Δικαιοσύνη και Αγάπη.

FOR MORE INFO
http://voidnetwork.gr

The post “Viva La Anarquia” Nelipot (remix by Crystal Zero) – video clip by Void Network appeared first on Void Network.

Αυτό που ακολουθεί είναι μετάφραση μιας ανακοίνωσης των συντρόφων μας στη Βραζιλία σχετικά με την τρέχουσα και πολιτικά επείγουσα κατάσταση εκεί. Καθώς η Βραζιλία κλυδωνίζεται από οικονομική ύφεση, κοινοβουλετικά πραξικοπήματα και σκάνδαλα, εισχώρησε στο κενό και ο ακροδεξιός υποψήφιος για την προεδρία Jair Bolsonaro². Κερδίζοντας τον πρώτο γύρο των προεδρικών εκλογών, προχωρά προς τον δεύτερο στις 28 Οκτωβρίου όπου θα βρεθεί αντιμέτωπος με τον υποψήφιο του Κόμματος των Εργατών (PT) Fernando Haddad. Συγκρινόμενος συχνά με τον Τραμπ, ο Bolsonaro είναι στην πραγματικότητα πολύ πιο επικίνδυνος με μια πολύ πιο συνεκτική και αντιδραστική ιδεολογία που εξυμνεί τα βασανιστήρια και την προηγούμενη στρατιωτική δικτατορία στη Βραζιλία.

Για να ξεκαθαρίσουμε τη γλώσσα και τις αναφορές που ίσως είναι μη οικείες στο κοινό στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες, έχουμε προσθέσει κάποιες σχετικές σημειώσεις στο τέλος του κειμένου. Η αρχική ανακοίνωση, με τίτλο “Ανακοίνωση για το σενάριο της τρέχουσας ταξικής πάλης στη Βραζιλία”, μπορεί να βρεθεί εδώ και μια μετάφραση στα Ισπανικά εδώ. Συνιστούμε επίσης μια συνέντευξη με τον Βραζιλιάνο αναρχικό Hugo Souza. Γι’ αυτούς που βρίσκονται στην Νέα Υόρκη, η Black Rose/Rosa Negra–NYC θα φιλοξενήσει μια εκδήλωση με ομιλητές από τη Βραζιλία το Σάββατο 20 Οκτωβρίου, λεπτομέρειες εδώ.

Το τρέχον πολιτικό σενάριο για τη Βραζιλία απαιτεί μεγάλη διαύγεια και ψυχραιμία από τις λαϊκές οργανώσεις και την ανάλυσή τους για την πραγματικότητα. Εμείς, ο Βραλιάνικος Αναρχικός Συντονισμός (Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira), με μετροέπεια, επιδιώκουμε να συνεισφέρουμε στην κατανόηση της ταραγμένης κοινωνικής και πολιτικής κατάστασης, η οποία καθορίζεται από το νομικό-κοινοβουλευτικό πραξικόπημα που καθαίρεσε την πρόεδρο του Κόμματος των Εργατών (PT) Dilma Rousseff από την εξουσία. Πρόσφατα βιώσαμε την κατάρρευση τουαποκαλούμενου συμφώνου της “Νέας Δημοκρατίας” από το 1988³. Αυτό το σύμφωνο διατήρησε τον κοινωνικό αποκλεισμό στη βάση ενώ, την ίδια στιγμή, εγγυήθηκε ένα ελάχιστο νομικών δικαιωμάτων, σε έναν συνασπισμό που περιελάμβανε αστούς πολιτικούς, μεγάλες επιχειρήσεις, τις ένοπλες δυνάμεις και ένα μέρος των ρεφορμιστικών δυνάμεων της Αριστεράς.

Η κατασκευή του Βραζιλιάνικου κράτους, όμως, έχει υπάρξει πάντα πιο κοντά στα συμφέροντα των μεταλλασσόμενων ιμπεριαλιστικών δυνάμεων παρά σ’ αυτά του ίδιου του πληθυσμού του. Η ποινικοποίηση των φτωχών από το κράτος ήταν πάντα μια κανονικότητα της θεσμικής αστικής δημοκρατίας. Οι καθοδηγούμενες από τοΚόμμα των Εργατών κυβερνήσεις έχουν ενισχύσει την ποινική μηχανή της δημόσιας τάξης που λειτουργεί κάτω από ολόκληρο το νομικό και δικαστικό σύστημα, αναπαράγοντας την υπερ-φυλάκιση του φτωχού και μαύρου πληθυσμού και διατηρώντας, ταυτόχρονα, έναν κατασταλτικό μηχανισμό που επιτίθεται στους κοινωνικούς αγώνες.

Το αποκαλούμενο σύμφωνο της ταξικής συμφιλίωσης “έσπασε” και η ατζέντα της συνεργασίας [του κοινωνικού συμβιβασμού] διαρρήχθηκε για να αντικατασταθεί από μια ατζέντα του χρηματιστικοποιημένου καπιταλισμού. Αυτή αντικατέστησε πράγματα όπως τα κοινωνικά δικαιώματα, σχετικές ελευθερίες και δημόσια αγαθά που, θα έπρεπε να θυμόμαστε, είναι ιστορικά επιτεύγματα των λαϊκών κινημάτων.

Η Αυτοκρατορία δείχνει τα “δόντια” της⁴

Δεν μπορούμε να κατανοήσουμε την παρούσα ιστορική στιγμή στη χώρα μας απομονωμένα από την γεωπολιτική πραγματικότητα της Λατινοαμερικάνικης ηπείρου. Θα πρέπει να “καλιμπράρουμε” τα αναλυτικά μας εργαλεία και να τοποθετήσουμε καλλίτερα τη Βραζιλία ως ένα περιφερειακό έθνος μέσα στο παγκόσμιο σύστημα, για να καταλάβουμε τι διακυβεύεται. Η χώρα έχει συνεχίσει να διατηρεί την πρωταρχική βιομηχανία αγροτικών εξαγωγών και έχει ευθυγραμμιστεί με το Σχέδιο IIRSA (Initiative for the Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure, που τώρα ονομάζεται COSIPLAN)⁵. Αυτό το σχέδιο επιδιώκει να μεγιστοποιήσει την εκμετάλλευση των φυσικών μας πόρων και να επιταχύνει τη διαδικασία της τροφοδότησης των διεθνών αγορών προς όφελος των πολυεθνικών επιχειρήσεων. Αυτό το σχέδιο είναι μια καινούρια επίθεση στην ίδια γραμμή με τις συμφωνίες ελευθέρου εμπορίου ανάμεσα στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες και χώρες της περιοχής. Είναι μια προσπάθεια να επεκταθεί το νεοφιλελεύθερο μοντέλο στην Νότια Αμερική, με την υποστήριξη προοδευτικών και κεντροαριστερών κυβερνήσεων.

Η κρίση του 2008 δημιούργησε μείζονες δυσκολίες στις ΗΠΑ σε σχέση με τη διατήρηση της διεθνούς τους ατζέντας, η οποία μετά την κατάρρευση των Δίδυμων Πύργων [με την επίθεση της 11/9/2001], άρχισε να παρουσιάζει ως κύριο στόχο της την εξασφάλιση της παγκόσμιας ηγεμονίας τους, όπως καταδεικνύεται από τις πολυάριθμες επιθετικές στρατιωτικές επεμβάσεις της Αυτοκρατορίας. Είναι επίσης φανερό ότι ο ιμπεριαλισμός καθοδηγεί τον εαυτό του με την ιδέα ότι “εκεί που πάει η Βραζιλία, πάει και η Λατινική Αμερική”. Είναι φανερό ότι η ήπειρός μας, η Λατινική Αμερική, θεωρείται ένα στρατηγικό απόθεμα πόρων (πολιτικών, φυσικών, ενεργειακών) για την χρήση τους από τις ΗΠΑ, και αυτό είναι που καθιστά την πολιτική κατάσταση στη Βραζιλία τόσο σημαντική για την Ουάσιγκτον.

Το πραξικόπημα του 2016 όχι μόνο διέλυσε τα μικρά οφέλη της προηγούμενης περιόδου, καθώς ισχυροποίησε τον οικονομικό και διεθνή έλεγχο της εθνικής οικονομίας, μέσω της αγοράς περιουσιακών στοιχείων. Οι προσαρμογές αυτές πρέπει να γίνουν από τη δικαστική τάξη, ιδιαίτερα τους ίδιους τους δικαστές, κάτι που μπορεί να δει κανείς από το γεγονός ότι η διερεύνηση της υπόθεσης Lava-Jato⁶ ευθυγραμμίζεται με τον ιμπεριαλισμό, μέσα από τη χρήση τηςστρατηγικής του νομικού πολέμου⁷. Αυξάνει επίσης τον έλεγχο των υποδομών, της ανανεώσιμης ενέργειας, των υπηρεσιών, της υγείας και της εκπαίδευσης από Βορειοαμερικάνικες και κινέζικες επιχειρήσεις. Σε σχέση με το πετρέλαιο, 13 πολυεθνικές έχουν ήδη ιδιοποιηθεί το 75% του pre-salt πετρελαίου⁸, ιδιαίτερα η Shell και η BP, οι τελευταίοι γύροι δημοπρασιών των οποίων έλαβαν χώρα τον περασμένο Οκτώβριο. Από πολιτική άποψη, η δράση του ιμπεριαλισμού έγκειται στην διάλυση οποιασδήποτε δυνατότητας να αποτελέσει η κατάσταση στη Βραζιλία (ακόμα κι αν η χώρα κυβερνιέται από μια κεντροαριστερή ρεφορμιστική κυβέρνηση) οποιαδήποτε απειλή για τα συμφέροντά του σε ηπειρωτικό επίπεδο. Είναι σημαντικό να ξεκαθαρίσουμε ότι το αποτέλεσμα της τρέχουσας εκλογικής κούρσας θα επηρεάσει σημαντικά την κρίση στο καθεστώς της Βενεζουέλας, συμβάλλοντας πιθανόν στην πολιτική αποσταθεροποίηση ή ακόμα και στην πιθανότητα μιας στρατιωτικής επέμβασης.

Το νέο Δόγμα Εθνικής Ασφαλείας: πολιτική και απειλές από τους στρατιωτικούς

Θα πρέπει να παρατηρήσουμε ότι μερικά χρόνια πριν, υπό την κυβέρνηση του Εργατικού Κόμματος με τον Lula, εγκαινιάστηκε ένα νέο Δόγμα εθνικής ασφαλείας με τον στρατηγό Etchegoyen [ο οποίος διορίστηκε Υπουργός Ασφαλείας από τον Temer]. Αυτό το δόγμα αντιμετωπίζει ομάδες συνδεόμενες με την διακίνηση ναρκωτικών, ΜΚΟ για τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα ή το περιβάλλον, κυβερνητικούς “ιδεολογικούς φορείς” και κοινωνικά κινήματα συνδεόμενα με ένα αριστερό όραμα, ως εσωτερικούς εχθρούς. Άλλα στοιχεία αυτού του δόγματος είναι το άδειασμα του ρόλου των πανεπιστημίων και της έρευνας, μια σκληρότερη στάση σχετικά με τον ποινικό κώδικα, συνέχιση και επέκταση μαζικών φυλακίσεων, υιοθέτηση μέτρων αντικατασκοπείας. Το δόγμα χρησιμοποιεί μέσα ελέγχου της επικοινωνίας, τη διάδοση φημών, την απαξίωση των κατηγορουμένων και την χρήση ψευδών τεκμηρίων. Η προαγωγή απεργιών, οι αποκλεισμοί δρόμων, η κατάληψη γης και κτιρίων και ο αγώνας για κοινωνικά δικαιώματα για τις πολιτικές μειοψηφίες, χαρακτηρίζονται ως “τρομοκρατικές ενέργειες”.

Αυτό το καινούριο δόγμα ήταν υπεύθυνο για τον αντιτρομοκρατικό νόμο που έγινε δεκτός από την Ρούσεφ. Ο στόχος του ήταν η δημιουργία ενός νέου συμφώνου, μιας “νέας Δημοκρατίας”, στην οποία ο στρατός παίζει έναν ενεργό ρόλο στη γεωπολιτική της ηπειρωτικής και εθνικής πολιτικής.

Για να συνοψίσουμε: το “Έννομο Δημοκρατικό Κράτος”⁹ προσαρτάται στην κορυφή ενός κράτους εξαίρεσης για τις “επικίνδυνες τάξεις” και είναι αυτή τη στιγμή στη διαδικασία επαναδιαμόρφωσης των παιχνιδιών εξουσίας των κυρίαρχων τάξεων (σε μερικές περιοχές του ναρκο-κράτους), και αναδύεται από αιτίες εσωτερικές στο ίδιο το κράτος και τις σχέσεις του με τα συμφέροντα του ιμπεριαλισμού. Κάτω από αυτές τις περιστάσεις, αντιδραστικοί παράγοντες λειτουργούν ως αστυνομικό κράτος. Μια προσαρμογή που πάει τόσο βαθιά στην σάρκα του λαού και αυξάνει τόσο τις φιλοδοξίες της τάξης των καπιταλιστών και των λακέδων της, προστάζει, αργά ή γρήγορα, ασφάλεια προς όφελός της και επεκτείνει τον χώρο εξαίρεσης για να επανακαθορίσει την κανονικότητα του συστήματος.

Η Κεντροαριστερά ποντάρει τα πάντα στις κάλπες

Η βραζιλιάνικη αριστερά και κεντροαριστερά στοιχηματίζουν την τύχη τους στις κάλπες περιμένοντας από την αστική δημοκρατία να τις διασώσει, να προστατεύσει τα δικαιώματά τους και να περιορίσει τον στραγγαλισμό και την ήττα του ιμπεριαλισμού. Ενώ το σύστημα σηκώνει το σκόπευτρο και φορά την τήβεννο ή την στολή για να ασκήσει την εξουσία, αυτό γίνεται πάντα με την υποστήριξη από την αμερικάνικη κυβέρνηση. Τα κινήματα αντίθεσης στην αριστερά, που προέκυψαν μετά το νομικο-δικαστικό πραξικόπημα και βγήκαν στους δρόμους τώρα, προσχωρούν, δυστυχώς, στην πραγματιστική λογική του κράτους και της κυβέρνησης, σύμφωνα με την οποία ο εχθρός, που είναι η ακροδεξιά, υποτίθεται ότι θα ηττηθεί από τις κάλπες και την ψήφο.

Η κεντροαριστερά πασχίζει να διοχετεύσει αυτές τις προσπάθειες σε εκλογική ενίσχυση, ξοδεύοντας όλη της την ενέργεια στις θεσμικές διαμάχες και το σάπιο παιχνίδι των εκλογικών κομμάτων, ζημιώνοντας έτσι τους ταξικούς αγώνες. Η πολιτική σκηνή της Βραζιλίας αλλοιώνεται από την απάτη μιας αντιπροσώπευσης που για τους φιλελεύθερους αστούς έχει υπάρξει πάντα ένας μηχανισμός σφετερισμού της συλλογικής δύναμης και των κοινών αγαθών από την ισχυρή θέληση κάποιων μειοψηφιών. Αλλά ξέρουμε ότι το σύστημα διαστρέφει το σύνταγμα και λιώνει το γράμμα του νόμου όταν έχει να κάνει με την υπεράσπιση των συμφερόντων των κυρίαρχων τάξεων.

Θα πρέπει να δουλέψουμε μακροπρόθεσμα για να καταδείξουμε ότι τα συνδικάτα και οι λαϊκές οργανώσεις είναι η πιο σωστή εναλλακτική για τον λαό ώστε να υπερασπιστεί τα δικαιώματά του και να συμμετέχει στην πολιτική ζωή, βαθαίνοντας την άμεση δημοκρατία, αποκηρύσσοντας την ταξική συμφιλίωση και πολεμώντας χωρίς καμμιά ανακωχή τον πρωτο-φασισμό¹⁰.

Ο πρωτο-φασισμός ως μια Υπερδοσολογία του προγράμματος της Ελίτ

Μια τέτοια διαμόρφωση πολιτικής δύναμης υποστηρίζεται επίσης από τακτικές προπαγάνδας και άμεση δράση από τα κομμάτια της αντίδρασης και τις συναφείς ιδεολογικές ομάδες στην ακροδεξιά, οι οποίες γενικά έχουν την κάλυψη των δυνάμεων επιβολής του νόμου. Ένας παράγοντας που έχει επιπτώσεις στους δρόμους και που όλα δείχνουν ότι θα αυξηθεί, ανοίγοντας χώρο στους φορείς του να καταστείλουν την εθνική πολιτική σκηνή και να την ευθυγραμίσουν με αυτό που συμβαίνει σε ηπειρωτικό επίπεδο.

Αλλά υπάρχουν κι άλλα. Μαζί με τα παραπάνω έρχεται η οικονομική απογοήτευση, η αποτυχία των πολιτικών λύσεων μέσω της αντιπροσώπευσης και η αποσταθεροποίηση των αξιών που σχετίζονται με τις θέσεις εξουσίας στην οικογένεια, την κουλτούρα και την εκπαίδευση. Βλέπουμε επίσης μια συντηρητική υποκειμενική παραγωγή που χρησιμοποιεί θρησκευτικούς ευαγγελιστές ως λαϊκή βάση διάδοσης. Αυτή η νέα δεξιά μετατοπίστηκε από μια ρητορική κατά του Εργατικού Κόμματος σε μια ριζοσπαστικοποιημένη αντιπολιτική και αντισυστημική ρητορική, θέτοντας τον εαυτό της ως δεξιά που δεν μιλά μόνο για τις ελίτ αλλά και για τα λαϊκά και άλλα περιφερειακά τμήματα της κοινωνίας. Δρα στο κοινωνικό κενό που άφησε η κεντροαριστερά, η οποία βάζει τον εαυτό της μόνο στη θέση της υπεράσπισης της αστικής δημοκρατίας.

Η αποτρόπαια φιγούρα του Bolsonaro είναι μέρος αυτής της προσπάθειας να βαθύνει η καταστροφή των κοινωνικών δικαιωμάτων και η πατριαρχική βία ενάντια στις γυναίκες, τα LGBT άτομα, τους αυτόχθονες, τους μαύρους και τους μελαμψούς. Βία που έχει υλοποιηθεί σε αρκετές επιθέσεις σ’ ολόκληρη τη χώρα, υπό την καθοδήγηση οπαδών του Bolsonaro, μία από τις οποίες είχε σαν αποτέλεσμα τη βάρβαρη δολοφονία του Capoeira Master Moa of Katendê στο Salvador¹¹. Χωρίς καθόλου να μειώνουμε την βαρβαρότητα που αντιπροσωπεύει ο Bolsonaro, είναι απαραίτητο να τον τοποθετήσουμε μέσα στη λογική της εφαρμογής της προσαρμογής [του νεοφιλελευθερισμού], του ιμπεριαλιστικού επαναποικισμού της χώρας, μ’ έναν ρυθμό ταχύτερο από αυτόν κάτω από μια κεντροαριστερή κυβέρνηση.

Οι εκλογές δεν νικούν τον Ιμπεριαλισμό, τις φορο-μεταρρυθμίσεις και τον πρωτο-φασισμό!

Το αποτέλεσμα των εκλογών δεν λύνει το πολύπλοκο πλαίσιο που συνθέτει ο συσχετισμός δυνάμεων αντίθετων στην εργατική τάξη. Όλα τα σενάρια συμβάλλουν μόνο στο βάθεμα της ταξικής πάλης και στον αγώνα ενάντια στην καταπίεση. Η “χρήσιμη ψήφος” ενάντια στον Bolsonaro το πολύ να δώσει μια παράταση, οδηγώντας σε μια “τρίτη βάρδια”, που δεν θα αποφασιστεί στις κάλπες. Ο αγώνας μακροπρόθεσμα είναι η οικοδόμηση μιας ταξικής και μαζικής εναλλακτικής που δεν θα παραδίνεται στη λογική του κράτους, της κυβερνησιμότητας και των συμφωνιών υποταγής στην Αυτοκρατορία. Αλλά πρέπει επίσης να είναι μια κοινωνική δύναμη ικανή να νικήσει τη μπουρζουαζία, τον ιμπεριαλισμό και τις επιθέσεις τους.

Πρέπει να υψώσουμε τις ταξικές μας σημαίες αυτή τη φορά ενάντια στην επίθεση του πρωτο-φασισμού και του νεοφιλελευθερισμού. Δεν πρέπει να υποκύψουμε στον πανικό και τον φόβο που προκαλείται από τις αντιδραστικές ελίτ. Ο ρόλος μας είναι να αντισταθούμε ενεργά, να δυναμώσουμε την ταξική αλληλεγγύη, να διασφαλίσουμε τον αγώνα στον δρόμο και την μόνιμη κινητοποίηση από τα κάτω!

Έτσι, υπερασπιζόμαστε:

• Την αντιφασιστική ενότητα πέρα από τις κάλπες, στο επίπεδο της βάσης και του δρόμου – η πάλη είναι αυτό που θα την καθορίσει. Η ενότητα θα δημιουργηθεί στη δράση και στις κινητοποιήσεις ενάντια στις επιθέσεις του νεοφιλελευθερισμού και τη βαρβαρότητα που προάγουν ο Bolsonaro και οι υποστηρικτές του.

• Αγώνας για τα κοινωνικά δικαιώματα. Αγώνας ενάντια στις ιδιωτικοποιήσεις και τις επιθέσεις στους “από κάτω”. Αγώνας ενάντια στις επιθέσεις στην εκπαίδευση, ενάντια στη μεταρρύθμιση του κράτους πρόνοιας, αγώνας ενάντια στο αυξανόμενο κόστος διαβίωσης, την ποινικοποίηση των κοινωνικών κινημάτων και τη διαδικασία γενοκτονίας των μαύρων, των αυτοχθόνων και των λαών στις περιφέρειες.

• Οργάνωση μιας γενικής απεργίας ενάντια στο προχώρημα του φασισμού και τις επιθέσεις στα δικαιώματα των εργατών, που αποτελούν την ατζέντα του ιμπεριαλισμού και των επιχειρηματικών ελίτ για την επόμενη περίοδο, ανεξάρτητα από τις εκλογές.

Η Δύναμη του λαού μπορεί να σταματήσει τον Φασισμό!
Παλέψτε και Οργανωθείτε ενάντια στην νεοφιλελεύθερη βαρβαρότητα!

The post Τα δόντια της Αυτοκρατορίας, η άνοδος του Φασισμού: Ανακοίνωση των Βραζιλιάνων Αναρχικών για τον Bolsonaro appeared first on Void Network.

Seven years after the revolution of 2011, which toppled the dictator, Tunisia is going from bad to worse! All key economic and social indicators are at their lowest levels. The economy continues to idle, fueling the crisis in all sectors. Deficits and underperformance are beating all previous records. The index of industrial activity, the budget deficit, the government debt ratio, the trade deficit, the current account deficit and foreign exchange reserves are at alarming levels. The local currency (the dinar) has lost more than half of its value against the euro and the dollar, and inflation is breaking records.

This economic crisis, the longest and most serious in the country’s contemporary history, feeds the corruption that is becoming a pandemic. It is creating favorable conditions for the spread of smuggling and criminal activity.

The crisis is also hitting the working classes very hard. The most terrible manifestations of the social crisis are above all high levels of unemployment and underemployment and a continuous erosion of the purchasing power of wage earners and of the labouring classes in general. The processes of impoverishment, marginalisation and social exclusion are in full swing.

Tunisia experienced nearly a quarter of a century of a regime that combined political repression with policies of neoliberal capitalist economic and social restructuring. Now the country is torn between two sets of interests: on the one hand the legitimate economic and social demands of the working classes, after the revolution. On the other hand, neocolonial capitalist interests.

Continuing imperialist dictatorship

Imperialist control of Tunisia is today at its strongest since the end of the colonial era. The main imperialist states and the international financial institutions exert a real dictatorship over the country. Despite a victorious revolutionary social uprising, the labouring classes and youth have failed to reorient the country in the right direction. Tunisia continues to be forced to walk in the wrong direction, that of neocolonialist economic interests.

Over the last thirty years, the key words in the vocabulary of colonialism in Tunisia have been ‘free trade’, ‘structural reforms’ and ‘austerity’. Once the shockwave of the revolutionary insurrection was over, the counter-revolutionary forces managed to reinforce their political control of the country. They were helped by the weakness of social consciousness among the exploited classes, their lack of political experience and the inadequacy of their self-organisation.

On two occasions, in 2013 and 2016, the government concluded an agreement for the extension, strengthening and acceleration of structural adjustment programs and fiscal austerity measures.

Structural adjustment programmes are based on loans from the International Monetary Fund ((IMF) and World Ban. These loans are given on strict conditions which include privatisation, deregulation and austerity.

This powerful neocolonial takeover was promoted, in particular, by the crisis of public finances, the decline of economic activity, and the absence of an alternative social agenda enjoying broad social support.

The pace of austerity hots up

The current government, headed by Y. Chahed (YC), in place since August 2016, was yet another attempt to stop Tunisia’s downward spiral. YC began his mandate by acknowledging the seriousness of the crisis, but affirming that the only remedy was to pursue the same policy while accelerating the pace of structural reforms.

A promise is a promise! After a chaotic first year, YC decided to take the bull by the horns and put forward a battery of anti-social measures through the 2018 Finance Act. These include tax measures such as an increase in the rate of VAT and taxes or customs duties on various products and services. A new spike in prices followed. Inflation is up from 3.8% in August 2016 to 7.1% today!

Among the new measures is the introduction of a new 1% tax on income, called “social solidarity participation.” At the same time, other new measures have been designed to lower state subsidies on certain basic foodstuffs.

With these measures, YC knows that he is entering a minefield! Not only because of their unpopularity, but also because of the extent of the criticism coming from everywhere against this government and its very disappointing record. The critics come not only from the opposition but also from within the ruling coalition, and even his own party.

Trying to justify austerity
This is why the YC government has been careful to spread the application of its measures throughout the current year, in order to reduce the risks of a new social explosion. He has also made great efforts at communication, to try to justify them.

YC and his ministers often refer to the negative balance sheet they inherited from previous governments. They also invoke the sacrifices they have to impose so that the country can emerge from the crisis and achieve an economic recovery. But the recovery is slow in coming. Finally, YC and his ministers, running out of stories to reassure Tunisians in the face of the dramatic deterioration of their living conditions, are predicting an early end to their sacrifices. He claims that 2018 will be the last year of the crisis, and that 2019 will see Tunisia emerge from the long tunnel of the crisis and return to growth.

Resistance grows

But it’s a wasted effort! The seriousness and persistence of the economic crisis, the scale of the social disaster and, above all, the long list of unfulfilled promises of a “better tomorrow” have been too much even for the patience of Tunisians, leaving room only for feelings of bitterness and anger.

During the week of January 8, the country experienced new unrest in response to the anti-social measures contained in the 2018 Finance Act. There was a week of protest and sometimes very violent clashes with the police. Among the demonstrators, one died, there were a thousand arrests and more than one hundred wounded on both sides (demonstrators and police). A precarious calm prevails again across the country. The worsening social crisis continues to fuel frustrations and discontent among large sections of the population. At any time, the anger can resurface.

The latest social explosion has strongly challenged a government that is running out of steam, increasingly abandoned by its political allies, and overtaken by its failure to cope with the country’s dramatic situation.

Indeed, the YC government seems to be on hold and its days are numbered. It is cracking from within. The internal dissension is no longer a secret to anyone. The few supporters who remain loyal to YC are the Islamist party Ennahdha, whose support is purely opportunistic, and the leadership of the all-powerful UGTT trade union centre, whose secretary general finds nothing better to say than that Tunisia has had enough of the repeated changes of government. But this support is short-lived, because within the executive of the UGTT the tone is more and more threatening. In addition, the strike movements in important sectors such as education and the public service are becoming more and more militant. Added to this is a strike by young doctors and medical students that has lasted more than a fortnight. There is also the total shutdown, lasting about twenty days, of activities related to the extraction and processing of phosphate.

Over the last thirty years, the working classes have gone through several states as they cope with the multiple and continuous social assaults from a decadent capitalist regime. The Tunisian working classes have experienced everything, or almost:
– from resignation at political oppression to revolutionary insurrection,
– from democratic elections to manipulation by regressive and counter-revolutionary forces.

But far from weakening the determination and combativity of the working classes, these experiences have been beneficial to them in terms of political education and growth in awareness of their interests as dominated and exploited classes. The revolutionary insurrection of 2011 opened the way for social change in Tunisia. This road of social and national relief is a sinuous one, strewn with pitfalls. Nothing seems to indicate today that these classes will stop midway. The weeks and months ahead are rich with positive promises.

____________________________________________________

Fathi Chamkhi is a Member of the Assembly of People’s Representatives and a Member of the Central Council of the Popular Front.

Translated from the original French by Richard Fidler, a Canadian activist who blogs at http://lifeonleft.blogspot.co.za/

source: http://aidc.org.za/tunisians-rise-up-against-austerity/

The post Tunisians rise up against austerity! appeared first on Void Network.

Often, this is simply disingenuous rhetoric from those who prefer for movements to limit themselves to well-behaved appeals. When we pursue an agenda they’d rather not acknowledge, they charge that we are irrational or incoherent. Compare last year’s People’s Climate March, which united 400,000 people behind a simple message while doing so little to protest that it was unnecessary for the authorities to make even a single arrest, with the Baltimore uprising of April 2015. Many praised the Climate March while deriding the rioting in Baltimore as irrational, unconscionable, and ineffective; yet the Climate March had little concrete impact, while the Baltimore riots compelled the chief prosecutor to bring almost unprecedented charges against police officers. When was the last time 400,000 people were anywhere in New York without the police arresting anyone? That was protest not just as pressure valve, but as active pacification—as a way of diminishing the friction between protesters and the order they oppose. You can bet if 400,000 people responded to climate change the way a couple thousand responded to the murder of Freddie Gray, the politicians would change their priorities.

Even those who demand demands out of the best intentions usually misunderstand demandlessness as an omission rather than a strategic choice. Yet today’s demandless movements are not an expression of political immaturity—they are a pragmatic response to the impasse that characterizes the entire political system.

If it were so easy for the authorities to grant protesters’ demands, you’d think we’d see more of it. In fact, from Obama to Syriza, not even the most idealistic politicians have been able to follow through on the promises of reform that got them elected. The fact that charges were pressed against Freddie Gray’s killers after the riots in Baltimore suggests that the only way to make any headway is to break off petitioning entirely.

So the problem is not that today’s movements lack demands; the problem is the politics of demands itself. If we seek structural change, we need to set our agenda outside the discourse of those who hold power, outside the framework of what their institutions can do. We need to stop presenting demands and start setting objectives. Here’s why.

Making demands puts you in a weaker bargaining position.

Even if your intention is simply to negotiate, you put yourself in a weaker bargaining position by spelling out from the beginning the least it would take to appease you. No shrewd negotiator begins by making concessions. It’s smarter to appear implacable: So you want to come to terms? Make us an offer. In the meantime, we’ll be here blocking the freeway and setting things on fire.

There is no more powerful bargaining chip than being able to implement the changes we desire ourselves, bypassing the official institutions—the true meaning of direct action. Whenever we are able to do this, the authorities scramble to offer us everything we had previously requested in vain. For example, the Roe vs. Wade decision that made abortion legal occurred only after groups like the Jane Collective set up self-organized networks that provided affordable abortions to tens of thousands of women.

Of course, those who can implement the changes they desire directly don’t need to make demands of anyone—and the sooner they recognize this, the better. Remember how people in Bosnia burned down government buildings in February 2014, then convened plenums to formulate demands to present to the government. A year later, they’d received nothing for their pains but criminal charges, and the government was once again as stable and corrupt as ever.

Limiting a movement to specific demands stifles diversity, setting it up for failure.

The conventional wisdom is that movements need demands to cohere around: without demands, they will be diffuse, ephemeral, ineffectual.

But people who have different demands, or no demands at all, can still build collective power together. If we understand movements as spaces of dialogue, coordination, and action, it is easy to imagine how a single movement might advance a variety of agendas. The more horizontally structured it is, the more capable it should be of accommodating diverse goals.

The truth is that practically all movements are wracked by internal conflicts over how to structure themselves and how to prioritize their goals. The demand for demands usually arises as a power play by the factions within a movement that are most invested in the prevailing institutions, as a means of delegitimizing those who want to build up power autonomously rather than simply petitioning the authorities. This misrepresents real political differences as mere disorganization, and real opposition to the structures of governance as political naïveté.

Forcing a diverse movement to reduce its agenda to a few specific demands inevitably consolidates power in the hands of a minority. For who decides which demands to prioritize? Usually, it is the same sort of people who hold disproportionate power elsewhere in our society: wealthy, predominantly white professionals well versed in the workings of institutional power and the corporate media. The marginalized are marginalized again within their own movements, in the name of efficacy.

Yet this rarely serves to make a movement more effective. A movement with space for difference can grow; a movement premised on unanimity contracts. A movement that includes a variety of agendas is flexible, unpredictable; it is difficult to buy it off, difficult to trick the participants into relinquishing their autonomy in return for a few concessions. A movement that prizes reductive uniformity is bound to alienate one demographic after another as it subordinates their needs and concerns.

A movement that incorporates a variety of perspectives and critiques can develop more comprehensive and multifaceted strategies than a single-issue campaign. Forcing everyone to line up behind one set of demands is bad strategy: even when it works, it doesn’t work.

Limiting a movement to specific demands undermines its longevity.

Nowadays, as history moves faster and faster, demands are often rendered obsolete before a campaign can even get off the ground. In response to the murder of Michael Brown, reformists demanded that police wear body cameras—but before this campaign could get fully underway, a grand jury announced that the officer who murdered Eric Garner would not be tried, either, even though Garner’s murder had been caught on camera.

Movements premised on specific demands will collapse as soon as those demands are outpaced by events, while the problems that they set out to address persist. Even from a reformist perspective, it makes more sense to build movements around the issues they address, rather than any particular solution.

Limiting a movement to specific demands can give the false impression that there are easy solutions to problems that are actually extremely complex.

“OK, you have a lot of complaints—who doesn’t? But tell us, what solutiondo you propose?”

The demand for concrete particulars is understandable. There’s no use in simply letting off steam; the point is to change the world. But meaningful change will take a lot more than whatever minor adjustments the authorities might readily grant. When we speak as though there are simple solutions for the problems we face, hurrying to present ourselves as no less “practical” than government policy experts, we set the stage for failure whether our demands are granted or not. This will give rise to disappointment and apathy long before we have developed the collective capacity to get to the root of things.

Especially for those of us who believe that the fundamental problem is the unequal distribution of power and agency in our society, rather than the need for this or that policy adjustment, it is a mistake to promise easy remedies in a vain attempt to legitimize ourselves. It’s not our job to present ready-made solutions that the masses can applaud from the sidelines; leave that to demagogues. Our challenge, rather, is to create spaces where people can discuss and implement solutions directly, on an ongoing and collective basis. Rather than proposing quick fixes, we should be spreading new practices. We don’t need blueprints, but points of departure.

Making demands presumes that you want things that your adversary can grant.

On the contrary, it’s doubtful whether the prevailing institutions could grant most of the things we want even if our rulers had hearts of gold. No corporate initiative is going to halt climate change; no government agency is going to stop spying on the populace; no police force is going to abolish white privilege. Only NGO organizers still cling to the illusion that these things are possible—probably because their jobs depend on it.

A strong enough movement could strike blows against industrial pollution, state surveillance, and institutionalized white supremacy, but only if it didn’t limit itself to mere petitioning. Demand-based politics limits the entire scope of change to reforms that can be made within the logic of the existing order, sidelining us and deferring real change forever beyond the horizon.

There’s no use in asking the authorities for things they can’t grant and wouldn’t grant if they could. Nor should we give them an excuse to acquire even more power than they already have, on the pretext that they need it to be able to fulfill our demands.

Making demands of the authorities legitimizes their power, centralizing agency in their hands.

It is a time-honored tradition for nonprofit organizations and leftist coalitions to present demands that they know will never be granted: don’t invade Iraq, stop defunding education, bail out people not banks, make the police stop killing black people. In return for brief audiences with bureaucrats who answer to much shrewder players, they water down their politics and try to get their less complaisant colleagues to behave themselves. This is what they call pragmatism.

Such efforts may not achieve their express purpose, but they do accomplish something: they frame a narrative in which the existing institutions are the only conceivable protagonists of change. This, in turn, paves the way for additional fruitless campaigns, additional electoral spectacles in which new candidates for office hoodwink young idealists, additional years of paralysis in which the average person can only imagine accessing her own power through the mediation of some political party or organization. Rewind the tape and play it again.

Real self-determination is not something that any authority can grant us. We have to develop it by acting on our own strength, centering ourselves in the narrative as the protagonists of history.

Making demands too early can limit the scope of a movement in advance, shutting down the field of possibility.

At the beginning of a movement, when the participants have not yet had a chance to get a sense of their collective power, they may not be able to recognize how thoroughgoing the changes they want really are. To frame demands at this point in the trajectory of a movement can stunt it, limiting the ambitions and imagination of the participants. Likewise, setting a precedent at the beginning for narrowing or watering down its goals only increases the likelihood that this will happen again and again.

Imagine if the Occupy movement had agreed on concrete demands at the very beginning—would it still have served as an open space in which so many people could meet, develop their analysis, and become radicalized? Or would it have ended up as a single protest encampment concerned only with corporate personhood, budget cuts, and perhaps the Federal Reserve? It is better for the objectives of a movement to develop as the movement itself develops, in proportion to its capacity.

Making demands establishes some people as representatives of the movement, establishing an internal hierarchy and giving them an incentive to control the other participants.

In practice, unifying a movement behind specific demands usually means designating spokespeople to negotiate on its behalf. Even if these are chosen “democratically,” on the basis of their commitment and experience, they can’t help but develop different interests from the other participants as a consequence of playing this role.

In order to maintain credibility in their role as negotiators, spokespeople must be able to pacify or isolate anyone that is not willing to go along with the bargains they strike. This gives aspiring leaders an incentive to demonstrate that they can reign in in the movement, in hopes of earning a seat at the negotiating table. The same courageous souls whose uncompromising actions won the movement its leverage in the first place suddenly find career activists who joined afterwards telling them what to do—or denying that they are part of the movement at all. This drama played out in Ferguson in August 2014, where the locals who got the movement off the ground by standing up to the police were slandered by politicians and public figures as outsiders taking advantage of the movement to engage in criminal activity. The exact opposite was true: outsiders were seeking to hijack a movement initiated by honorable illegal activity, in order to re-legitimize the institutions of authority.

In the long run, this sort of pacification can only contribute to a movement’s demise. That explains the ambiguous relation most leaders have with the movements they represent: to be of use to the authorities, they have to be capable of subduing their comrades, but their services would not be required at all if the movement did not pose some kind of threat. Hence the strange admixture of militant rhetoric and practical obstruction that often characterizes such figures: they must ride the storm, yet hold it at bay.

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a movement is for its demands to be met.

Reform serves to stabilize and preserve the status quo, killing the momentum of social movements, ensuring that more thoroughgoing change does not take place. Granting small demands can serve to divide a powerful movement, persuading the less committed participants to go home or turn a blind eye to the repression of those who will not compromise. Such small victories are only granted because the authorities consider them the best way to avoid bigger changes.

In times of upheaval, when everything is up for grabs, one way to defuse a burgeoning revolt is to grant its demands before it has time to escalate. Sometimes this looks like a real victory—as in Slovenia in 2013, when two months of protest toppled the presiding government. This put an end to the unrest before it could address the systemic problems that gave rise to it, which ran much deeper than which politicians were in office. Another government came to power while the demonstrators were still dazed at their own success—and business as usual resumed.

During the buildup to the 2011 revolution in Egypt, Mubarak repeatedly offered what the demonstrators had been demanding a couple days earlier; but as the situation on the streets intensified, the participants became more and more implacable. Had Mubarak offered more, sooner, he might still be in power today. Indeed, the Egyptian revolution ultimately failed not because it asked for too much, but because it didn’t go far enough: in unseating the dictator but leaving the infrastructure of the army and the “deep state” in place, revolutionaries left the door open for new despots to consolidate power. For the revolution to succeed, they would have had to demolish the architecture of the state itself while everyone was still in the streets and the window of possibility remained open. “The people demand the fall of the regime” offered a convenient platform for much of Egypt to rally around, but did not prepare them to take on the regimes that followed.

In Brazil in 2013, the MPL (Movimento Passe Livre) helped catalyze massive protests against an increase in the cost of public transportation; this is one of the only recent examples of a movement that succeeded in getting its demands met. Millions of people took to the streets, and the twenty-cent fare hike was canceled. Brazilian activists wrote and lectured about the importance of setting concrete and achievable demands, in order to build up momentum by incremental victories. Next, they hoped to force the government to make transportation free.

Why did their campaign against the fare hike succeed? At the time, Brazil was one of the few nations worldwide with an ascendant economy; it had benefitted from the global economic crisis by drawing investment dollars away from the volatile North American market. Elsewhere—in Greece, Spain, and even the United States—governments had their backs to the wall no less than anti-austerity protesters, and could not have granted their demands even if they wished to. It was not for want of specific demands that no other movement was able to achieve such concessions.

Scarcely a year and a half later, when the streets had emptied out and the police had reasserted their power, the Brazilian government introduced another series of fare hikes—bigger ones this time. The MPL had to start all over again. It turns out you can’t overthrow capitalism one reform at a time.

If you want to win concessions, aim beyond the target.

Even if all you want is to bring about a few minor adjustments in the status quo, it is still a wiser strategy to set out to achieve structural change. Often, to accomplish small concrete objectives, we have to set our sights much higher. Those who refuse to compromise present the authorities with an undesirable alternative to treating with reformists. Someone is always going to be willing to take the position of negotiator—but the more people refuse, the stronger the negotiator’s bargaining position will be. The classic reference point here is the relation between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X: if not for the threat implied by Malcolm X, the authorities would not have had such an incentive to parley with Dr. King.

For those of us who want a truly radical change, there is nothing to be gained by watering down our desires for public consumption. The Overton window—the range of possibilities considered politically viable—is not determined by those at the purported center of the political spectrum, but by the outliers. The broader the distribution of options, the more territory opens up. Others may not immediately join you on the fringes, but knowing that some people are willing to assert that agenda may embolden them to act more ambitiously themselves.

In purely pragmatic terms, those who embrace a diversity of tactics are stronger, even when it comes to achieving small victories, than those who try to limit themselves and others and to exclude those who refuse to be limited. On the other hand, from the perspective of long-term strategy, the most important thing is not whether we achieve any particular immediate result, but how each engagement positions us for the next round. If we endlessly defer the questions we really want to ask, the right moment will never arrive. We don’t just need to win concessions; we need to develop capabilities.

Doing without demands doesn’t mean ceding the space of political discourse.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument in favor of making concrete demands is that if we don’t make them, others will—hijacking the momentum of our organizing to advance their own agendas. What if, because we fail to present demands, people end up consolidating around a liberal reformist platform—or, as in many parts of Europe today, a right-wing nationalist agenda?

Certainly, this illustrates the danger of failing to express our visions of transformation to those with whom we share the streets. It is a mistake to escalate our tactics without communicating about our goals, as if all confrontation necessarily tended in the direction of liberation. In Ukraine, where the same tensions and momentum that had given rise to the Arab Spring and Occupy produced a nationalist revolution and civil war, we see how even fascists can appropriate our organizational and tactical models for their own purposes.

But this is hardly an argument to address demands to the authorities. On the contrary, if we always conceal our radical desires within a common reformist front for fear of alienating the general public, those who are impatient for real change will be all the more likely to run into the arms of nationalists and fascists, as the only ones openly seeking to challenge the status quo. We need to be explicit about what we want and how we intend to go about getting it. Not in order to force our methodology on everyone, as authoritarian organizers do, but to offer an opportunity and example to everyone else who is looking for a way forward. Not to present a demand, but because this is the opposite of a demand: we want self-determination, something no one can give us.

If not demands, then what?

The way we analyze, the way we organize, the way we fight—these should speak for themselves. They should serve as an invitation to join us in a different way of doing politics, based in direct action rather than petitioning. The people in Ferguson and Baltimore who responded to the murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray by physically confronting the police did more to force the issue of police violence than decades of pleading for community oversight. Seizing spaces and redistributing resources, we sidestep the senselessly circuitous machinery of representation. If we must send a message to the authorities, let it be this single, simple demand: Don’t mess with us.

Instead of making demands, let’s start setting objectives. The difference is that we set objectives on our own terms, at our own pace, as opportunities arise. They need not be framed within the logic of the ruling powers, and their realization does not depend upon the goodwill of the authorities. The essence of reformism is that even when you win something, you don’t retain control over it. We should be developing the power to act on our own terms, independent of the institutions we are taking on. This is a long-term project, and an urgent one.

In pursuing and achieving objectives, we develop the capacity to seek more and more ambitious goals. This stands in stark contrast to the way reformist movements tend to collapse when their demands are realized or shown to be unrealistic. Our movements will be stronger if they can accommodate a variety of objectives, so long as those do not openly conflict. When we understand each other’s objectives, it is possible to identify where it makes sense to cooperate, and where it doesn’t—a kind of clarity that does not result from lining up behind a lowest-common-denominator demand.

From this vantage point, we can see that choosing not to make demands is not necessarily a sign of political immaturity. On the contrary, it can be a savvy refusal to fall into the traps that disabled the previous generation. Let’s learn our own strength, outside the cages and queues of representational politics—beyond the politics of demands.

The post Why we don’t make demands- by Crimethinc appeared first on Void Network.

For two thousand years, the peoples residing in Zomia — the mountainous region that stretches from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India — have fled the organized state societies in the valleys. Far from being ‘remnants’ left behind by civilizing societies, they are “barbarians by choice”, peoples who have deliberately put distance between themselves and lowland, state-centers.

James Scott, director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination.

The event was Cornell’s eighth Frank H. Golay Memorial Lecture.

____________________________________

You can READ the book The art of not being governed : an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia – by Scott, James C here:

https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/LTW-Scott.pdf

Zomia is a new name for virtually all the lands at altitudes above roughly three hundred meters all the way from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India and traversing five Southeast Asian nations (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma) and four provinces of China (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and parts of Sichuan). It is an expanse of 2.5 million square kilometers containing about one hundred million minority peoples of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety. Geographically, it is also known as the Southeast Asian mainland massif. Since this huge area is at the periphery of nine states and at the center of none, since it also bestrides the usual regional designations (Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia), and since what makes it interesting is its ecological variety as well as its relation to states, it represents a novel object of study, a kind of transnational Appalachia, and a new way to think of area studies.

My thesis is simple, suggestive, and controversial. Zomia is the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states. Its days are numbered. Not so very long ago, however, such self-governing peoples were the great majority of humankind. Today, they are seen from the valley kingdoms as “our living ancestors,” “what we were like before we discovered wet-rice cultivation, Buddhism, and civilization.” On the contrary, I argue that hill peoples are best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare.

_______________________________________

More books about Anarchism in Void Network Library: https://voidnetwork.gr/library/

The post The Art of Not Being Governed: Hill Peoples and Valley Kingdoms in Mainland Southeast Asia appeared first on Void Network.

In this section of the FAQ we will give an outline of what an anarchist society might look like. Such a society has basic features — such as being non-hierarchical, decentralised and, above all else, spontaneous like life itself. To quote Glenn Albrecht, anarchists “lay great stress on the free unfolding of a spontaneous order without the use of external force or authority.” [“Ethics, Anarchy and Sustainable Development”, pp. 95-117, Anarchist Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 110] This type of development implies that anarchist society would be organised from the simple to the complex, from the individual upwards to the community, the bio-region and, ultimately, the planet. The resulting society, which would be the outcome of nature freely unfolding toward greater diversity and complexity, is ethically preferable to any other sort of order simply because it allows for the highest degree of organic solidarity and freedom. Kropotkin described this vision of a truly free society as follows:

“We foresee millions and millions of groups freely constituting themselves for the satisfaction of all the varied needs of human beings . . . All these will be composed of human beings who will combine freely . . . ‘Take pebbles,’ said Fourier, ‘put them in a box and shake them, and they will arrange themselves in a mosaic that you could never get by instructing to anyone the work of arranging them harmoniously.’” [The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution, pp. 11-12]

Anarchist opposition to hierarchy is an essential part of a “spontaneously ordered” society, for authority stops the free development and growth of the individual. From this natural growth of individuals, groups and society as a whole anarchists expect a society which meets the needs of all — for individual and social freedom, material goods to meet physical needs and free and equal social relationships that meet what could be termed “spiritual needs” (i.e., mental and emotional wellbeing, creativity, ethical development and so on). Any attempt to force society or individuals into a pre-determined structure which restricts their liberty will produce dis-order as natural balances and development is hindered and distorted in anti-social and destructive directions. Thus an anarchist society must be a free society of free individuals, associating within libertarian structures, rather than a series of competing hierarchies (be they political or economical). Only in freedom can society and individuals develop and create a just and fair world. In Proudhon’s words, “liberty is the mother of order, not its daughter.”

As the individual does not exist in a social vacuum, appropriate social conditions are required for individual freedom to develop and blossom according to its full potential. The theory of anarchism is built around the central assertion that individuals and their organisations cannot be considered in isolation from each other. That is, social structures shape us, “that there is an interrelationship between the authority structures of institutions and the psychological qualities and attitudes of individuals” and that “the major function of participation is an educative one.” [Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 27] Anarchism presents this position in its most coherent and libertarian form. In other words, freedom is only sustained and protected by activity under conditions of freedom, namely self-government. Freedom is the only precondition for acquiring the maturity required for continued freedom: “Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will be learn to think and move, and give the very best in him.”[Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks, p. 72]

As individual freedom can only be created, developed and defended by self-government and free association, a system which encourages individuality must be decentralised and participatory in order for people to develop a psychology that allows them to accept the responsibilities of self-management. Living under the state or any other authoritarian system produces a servile character, as the individual is constantly placed under hierarchical authority, which blunts their critical and self-governing abilities by lack of use. Such a situation cannot promote freedom, and so anarchists “realise that power and authority corrupt those who exercise them as much as those who are compelled to submit to them.” [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 249]

Looking at capitalism, we find that under wage labour people sell their creative energy and control over their activity for a given period. The boss does not just take surplus value from the time employees sell, but the time itself — their liberty, their ability to make their own decisions, express themselves through work and with their fellow workers. Wage labour equals wage slavery as you sell your time and skills (i.e. liberty) everyday at work and you will never be able to buy that time back for yourself. Once it is gone; it is gone for good. It also generates, to quote Godwin, a “sense of dependence” and a “servile and truckling spirit”, so ensuring that the “feudal spirit still survives that reduced the great mass of mankind to the rank of slaves and cattle for the service of the few.” [The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin, pp. 125-6] This is why anarchists see the need to “create the situation where each person may live by working freely, without being forced to sell his [or her] work and his [or her] liberty to others who accumulate wealth by the labour of their serfs.” [Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 208]

Thus the aim of anarchism is to create a society in which every person should have the material and moral means to develop his humanity” and so to “organise society in such a way that every individual . . . should find . . . approximately equal means for the development of [their] various faculties and for their utilisation in [their] work; to create a society which would place every individual . . . in such a position that it would be impossible for [them] to exploit the labour of anyone else” and be “enabled to participate in the enjoyment of social wealth” as long as they “contributed directly toward the production of that wealth.” [Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 409] As such, anarchists would agree with George Orwell: “The question is very simple. Shall people . . . be allowed to live the decent, fully human life which is now technically achievable, or shan’t they? Shall the common man be pushed back into the mud, or shall he not?” [Orwell on Spain, p. 361]

Anarchism, in summary, is about changing society and abolishing all forms of authoritarian social relationship, putting life before the soul-destroying “efficiency” needed to survive under capitalism; for the anarchist “takes his stand on his positive right to life and all its pleasures, both intellectual, moral and physical. He loves life, and intends to enjoy it to the full.” [Bakunin, Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 101] Thus, to quote Emma Goldman, “all human-beings, irrespective of race, colour, or sex, are born with the equal right to share at the table of life; that to secure this right, there must be established among men economic, social, and political freedom.” [A Documentary History of the American Years, vol. 2, p. 450] This would be a classless and non-hierarchical society, one without masters and servants, one based on the free association of free individuals which encourages and celebrates individuality and freedom:

“The phrase, ‘a classless society’, no doubt has terrors for any thoughtful person. It calls up immediately the image of dull mediocrity . . . all one uniform scale of self-sufficient individuals, living in model-houses, travelling in uniform Fords along endless uniform roads . . . But . . . the sharing of this wealth would not produce a uniformity of life, simply because there is no uniformity of desire. Uniformity is an unintelligent nightmare; there can be no uniformity in a free human society. Uniformity can only be created by the tyranny of a totalitarian regime.” [Herbert Read, Anarchy and Order, pp. 87-8]

Anarchists think that the essential social values are human values, and that society is a complex of associations which express the wills of their members, whose well-being is its purpose. We consider that it is not enough that the forms of association should have the passive or “implied” consent of their members, but that the society, and the individuals who make it up, will be healthy only if it is in the full sense libertarian, i.e. self-governing, self-managed, and egalitarian. This implies not only that all the members should have a right to influence its policy if they so desire, but that the greatest possible opportunity should be afforded for every person to exercise this right. Anarchism involves an active, not merely passive, citizenship on the part of society’s members and holds that this principle is not only applied to some “special” sphere of social action called “politics” but to any and every form of social action, including economic activity.

So, as will be seen, the key concept underlying both the social/political and the economic structure of libertarian socialism is “self-management,” a term that implies not only workers control of their workplaces but also citizens’ control of their communities (where it becomes “self-government”), through direct democracy and voluntary federation. Thus self-management is the positive implication of anarchism’s “negative” principle of opposition to hierarchical authority. For through self-management, hierarchical authority is dissolved as self-managing workplace and community assemblies/councils are decentralised, “horizontal” organisations in which each participant has an equal voice in the decisions that affect his or her life, instead of merely following orders and being governed by others. Self-management, therefore, is the essential condition for a world in which individuals will be free to follow their own dreams, in their own ways, co-operating together as equals without interference from any form of authoritarian power (such as government or boss).

Perhaps needless to say, this section is intended as a heuristic device only, as a way of helping readers envision how anarchist principles might be embodied in practice. It is not (nor is it intended to be, nor is it desired to be) a definitive statement of how they must be embodied. The idea that a few people could determine exactly what a free society would look like is contrary to the anarchist principles of free growth and thought, and is far from our intention. Here we simply try to indicate some of the structures that an anarchist society may contain, based on the ideals and ideas anarchists hold, informed by the few examples of anarchy in action that have existed and our critical evaluation of their limitations and successes. As Herbert Read once put it, “it is always a mistake to build a priori constitutions. The main thing is to establish your principles — the principles of equity, of individual freedom, of workers’ control. The community then aims at the establishment of these principles from the starting-point of local needs and local conditions.” [Op. Cit., p. 51]

Moreover, we must remember that the state has changed over time and has not always existed. Thus it is possible to have a social organisation which is not a state and to confuse the two would be a “confusion” made by those “who cannot visualise Society without a concentration of the State.” Yet this “is to overlook the fact that Man lived in Societies for thousands of years before the State had been heard of” and that “large numbers of people [have] lived in communes and free federations.” These were not states as the state “is only one of the forms assumed by society in the course of history. Why then make no distinction between what is permanent and what is accidental?” [Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role, pp. 9-10] Similarly, the axioms of capitalist economics not withstanding, capitalism is but latest of a series of economies. Just as serfdom replaced slavery and capitalism replaced serfdom, so free (associated) labour can replace hired labour. As Proudhon noted, the “period through which we are now passing” is “distinguished by a special characteristic: WAGE-LABOUR.” Capitalism has not always existed nor need it continue. So while “the radical vice of political economy” is “affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition – namely, the division of society into patricians and proletarians” in reality, “in its present form, the organisation [of labour] is inadequate and transitory. “ [Property Is Theft!, p. 190, p. 174 and p. 170] Anarchists seek to make that transitory condition shorter rather than longer.

Ultimately, a free society based on self-managed communities and associated labour is, in many ways, a natural evolution of tendencies within existing society. For example, the means of production can only be used collectively, so suggesting that relations of equality and freedom based on associations of workers are a sensible alternative to ones based on hierarchy, exploitation and oppression based on masters and servants. It is the struggle against those oppressive social relationships which creates the very associations (workplace strike assemblies) which could expropriate the workplaces and make that possibility a reality.

So an anarchist society will not be created overnight nor without links to the past, and so it will initially be based on structures created in social struggle (i.e. created within but against capitalism and the state) and will be marked with the ideas that inspired and developed within that struggle. For example, the anarchist collectives in Spain were organised in a bottom-up manner, similar to the way the C.N.T. (the anarcho-syndicalist labour union) was organised before the revolution. In this sense, anarchy is not some distant goal but rather an expression of working class struggle. The creation of alternatives to the current hierarchical, oppressive, exploitative and alienated society is a necessary part of the struggle and the maintaining of your liberty and humanity in the insane world of hierarchical society. As such, an anarchist society will be the generalisation of the various types of “anarchy in action” created in the various struggles against all forms of oppression and exploitation (see section I.2.3 ).

This means that how an anarchist society would look like and work is not independent of the specific societies it is created from nor the means used to create it. In other words, an anarchist society will reflect the economic conditions inherited from capitalism, the social struggles which preceded it and the ideas which existed within that struggle as modified by the practical needs of any given situation. Therefore the vision of a free society indicated in this section of the FAQ is not some sort of abstraction which will be created overnight. If anarchists did think that then we would rightly be called utopian. No, an anarchist society is the outcome of social struggle, self-activity which helps to create a mass movement which contains individuals who can think for themselves and are willing and able to take responsibility for their own lives.

So, when reading this section please remember that this is not a blueprint but only possible suggestions of what anarchy would look like. It is designed to provoke thought and indicate that an anarchist society is possible. We hope that our arguments and ideas presented in this section will inspire more debate and discussion of how a free society could work and, equally as important, help to inspire the struggle which will create that society. After all, anarchists desire to build the new world in the shell of the old. Unless we have some idea of what that new society will be like it is difficult to pre-figure it in our activities today! A point not lost on Kropotkin who argued that it is difficult to build “without extremely careful consideration beforehand, based on the study of social life, of what and how we want to build — we must reject [Proudhon’s] slogan [that “in demolishing we shall build”] . . . and declare: ‘in building we shall demolish.’” [Conquest of Bread, p. 173f] More recently, Noam Chomsky argued that “[a]lternatives to existing forms of hierarchy, domination, private power and social control certainly exist in principle. . . But to make them realistic will require a great deal of committed work, including the work of articulating them clearly.” [Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide, p. 250] This section of the FAQ can be considered as a contribution to the articulating of libertarian alternatives to existing society, of what we want to build for the future.

We are not afraid that many will argue that much of the vision we present in this section of the FAQ is utopian. Perhaps they are right, but, as Oscar Wilde once said:

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.” [The Soul of Man Under Socialism, p. 1184]

However, we have attempted to be as practical as we are visionary, presenting realistic problems as well as presenting evidence for our solutions to these problems from real life where possible, rather than present a series of impossible assumptions which dismiss possible problems by definition. It is better to consider the worse possible cases for if they do not appear then nothing has been lost and if they do at least we have a starting point for possible solutions. So, all in all, we have tried to be practical utopians!

We must stress, however, that anarchists do not want a “perfect” society (as is often associated with the term “utopia”). This would be as impossible as the neo-classical economic vision of perfect competition. Rather we want a free society and so one based on real human beings and so one with its own problems and difficulties. Our use of the word “utopia” should not be taken to imply that anarchists assume away all problems and argue that an anarchist society would be ideal and perfect. No society has ever been perfect and no society ever will be. All we argue is that an anarchist society will have fewer problems than those before and be better to live within. Anyone looking for perfection should look elsewhere. Anyone looking for a better, but still human and so imperfect, world may find in anarchism a potential end for their quest.

So anarchists are realistic in their hopes and dreams. We do not conjure up hopes that cannot achieved but rather base our visions in an analysis of what is wrong with society today and a means of changing the world for the better. And even if some people call us utopians, we shrug off the accusation with a smile. After all, dreams are important, not only because they are often the source of change in reality but because of the hope they express:

“People may . . . call us dreamers . . . They fail to see that dreams are also a part of the reality of life, that life without dreams would be unbearable. No change in our way of life would be possible without dreams and dreamers. The only people who are never disappointed are those who never hope and never try to realise their hope.” [Rudolf Rocker, The London Years, p. 95]

One last point. We must point out here that we are discussing the social and economic structures of areas within which the inhabitants are predominately anarchists. It is obviously the case that areas in which the inhabitants are not anarchists will take on different forms depending upon the ideas that dominate there. Hence, assuming the end of the current state structure, we could see anarchist communities along with statist ones (capitalist or socialist) and these communities taking different forms depending on what their inhabitants want — communist to individualist communities in the case of anarchist ones, state socialist to private state communities in the statist areas, ones based on religious sects and so on. As Malatesta argued, anarchists “must be intransigent in our opposition to all capitalist imposition and exploitation, and tolerant of all social concepts which prevail in different human groupings, so long as they do not threaten the equal rights and freedom of others.” [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 174] Thus we respect the wishes of others to experiment and live their own lives as they see fit, while encouraging those in capitalist and other statist communities to rise in revolution against their masters and join the free federation of the anarchist community. Needless to say, we do not discuss non-anarchist communities here as it is up to non-anarchists to present their arguments in favour of their kind of statism.

So remember that we are not arguing that everyone will live in an anarchist way in a free society. Far from it. There will be pockets of unfreedom around, simply because the development of ideas varies from area to area. Anarchists, needless to say, are against forcing people to become anarchists (how can you force someone to be free?) Our aim is to encourage those subject to authority to free themselves and to work with them to create an anarchist society but, obviously, how successful we are at this will vary. We can, therefore, expect areas of freedom to co-exist with areas dominated by, say, state socialism, religion or capitalism just as we can expect to see different kinds of anarchism co-existing.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that just because there are many choices of community available that it automatically makes a society an anarchist one. For example, the modern world boasts over 200 different states. For most of them, individuals can leave and join another if it will let them. There is no world government as such. This does not make this series of states an anarchy. Similarly, a system based on different corporations is not an anarchy either, nor would be one based on a series of company towns and neither would a (quasi-feudal or neo-feudal?) system based on a multitude of landlords who hire their land and workplaces to workers in return for rent. The nature of the associations is just as important as their voluntary nature. As Kropotkin argued, the “communes of the next revolution will not only break down the state and substitute free federation for parliamentary rule; they will part with parliamentary rule within the commune itself . . . They will be anarchist within the commune as they will be anarchist outside it.” [Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, p. 132] Hence an anarchist society is one that is freely joined and left, is internally non-hierarchical and non-oppressive and non-exploitative. Thus anarchist communities may co-exist with non-anarchist ones but this does not mean the non-anarchist ones are in any way anarchistic or libertarian.

To conclude. Anarchists, to state the blindly obvious, do not aim for chaos, anarchy in the popular sense of the word (George Orwell once noted how one right-wing author “use[d] ‘Anarchism’ indifferently with ‘anarchy’, which is a hardly more correct use of words than saying that a Conservative is one who makes jam.” [Op. Cit., p. 298]). Nor do anarchists reject any discussion of what a free society would be like (such a rejection is usually based on the somewhat spurious grounds that you cannot prescribe what free people would do). In fact, anarchists have quite strong opinions on the basic outlines of a free society, always premised on the assumption that these are guidelines only. These suggestions are based on libertarian principles, developments in the class struggle and a keen awareness of what is wrong with class and hierarchical systems (and so what not to do!).

When reading this section of the FAQ remember that an anarchist society will be created by the autonomous actions of the mass of the population, not by anarchists writing books about it. This means any real anarchist society will make many mistakes and develop in ways we cannot predict. This implies that this is only a series of suggestions on how things could work in an anarchist society — it is not a blueprint of any kind. All anarchists can do is present what we believe and why we think such a vision is both desirable and viable. We hope that our arguments and ideas presented in this section of the FAQ will inspire more debate and discussion of how a free society would work. In addition, and equally as important, we hope it will help inspire the struggle that will create that society.

source: infoshop.org

The post What would an Anarchist society look like? – from Anarchist FAQ appeared first on Void Network.

The post SEEKING MAPS AT THE END OF THE WORLD appeared first on Void Network.