Η δολοφονία του νεαρού 16χρονου Ρομά στη Θεσσαλονίκη μας υπενθυμίζει για πολλοστή φορά τον βασικό χαρακτήρα της αστυνομίας. Παρόλες τις διαφορές που παρουσιάζουν μεταξύ τους τα έθνη-κράτη ως προς τους πολιτικούς πολιτισμούς τους, οι οποίοι δημιουργούν διαβαθμίσεις στην αστυνομική βαναυσότητα, ο ρατσισμός της αστυνομίας παραμένει σταθερά αναλλοίωτο γνώρισμα σε όλες τις χώρες του κόσμου και είναι άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένος με τον διάχυτο ρατσισμό που δηλητηριάζει τις κοινωνίες μας.
Έτσι εκπληρώνεται μια ανομολόγητη αλλά βασική κοινωνική λειτουργία της: παντού και πάντα η αστυνομία αποτελεί εστία αναπαραγωγής του μίσους απέναντι στη διαφορά, εθνοπολιτισμική ή άλλη, σημείο που αποτυπώνει και τη συνάφειά της με συγκεκριμένες ιδεολογίες που βρίσκονται εγκιβωτισμένες μέσα της καθώς μεταγγίζονται σε αυτήν αδιάκοπα οι πιο σκοτεινές πολιτισμικές αντιλήψεις της κυριαρχίας. Το ότι η ΕΛ.ΑΣ στελεχώνεται συστηματικά από ακροδεξιούς πιστολέρο και νεοναζί είναι γνωστό σε ολόκληρη την ελληνική κοινωνία, όπως και το γεγονός ότι μεταπολεμικά στα σώματα ασφαλείας η διαχωριστική γραμμή ανάμεσα στο βίαιο αντικομμουνιστικό κράτος και τους παρακρατικούς συνεργάτες των ναζί ήταν αδιόρατη.

Η αστυνομία δεν «προστατεύει και υπηρετεί» τους πολίτες, όπως διατείνεται το γνωστό καλιφορνέζικο σλόγκαν. Έχοντας τη βία ως καταστατική, συγκροτητική του πράξη ο αστυνομικός θεσμός διατηρεί τον πλήρη έλεγχο του αληθινού εδάφους στoν αστεακό χώρο και την ύπαιθρο ως θεμελιακό σκοπό του. Στην πραγματικότητα υπάρχει μέσα από και για την δυνατότητα να ορίζει και να επιβάλλει το φάσμα του «κανονικού», δηλαδή ποιές κοινωνικές κατηγορίες ανθρώπων και συμπεριφορές μπορούν να εμφανίζονται σε ένα δεδομένο χώρο. Το να προσδιορίζει καταστασιακά ποιός μπορεί να βρίσκεται πού και ποιός όχι, και τι συμπεριφορές μπορεί να εκδηλώσει. Αυτή είναι η ισχύς που διαμορφώνει την αστυνομία. Κατέχοντας την σχεδόν αποκλειστική ευθύνη να θέτει τα όρια του διανοητού σε ένα δεδομένο πλαίσιο, όπως κανείς άλλος συλλογικός δρων ή οργανισμός, η αστυνομία καθίσταται η απτή και υλοποιημένη μορφή της εξουσίας, φορέας-αναμεταδότης των αντιλήψεων της αντίδρασης και μόνιμος φρουρός της ταξικής ιεραρχίας. Ως τοποτηρητής της «τάξης» που η ίδια στην πραγματικότητα ορίζει, η αστυνομία ελέγχει με απόλυτο τρόπο νοήματα πολλαπλά –ποιος άνθρωπος ή κατάσταση θεωρείται τί και πότε- και μετατοπίζει διαρκώς τα όρια του νόμου, κάτι που μόνο ο αστυνομικός θεσμός μπορεί να πραγματοποιήσει. Το σύγχρονο κράτος θα ήταν ίσως αδύνατο να επιβάλλει το οτιδήποτε στην επικράτειά του χωρίς τον συγκεκριμένο θεσμό. Αυτός είναι και ο λόγος που η αστυνομία έχει τη δυνατότητα να αυτονομείται από το κράτος. Και το κάνει διαρκώς, χωρίς φυσικά ποτέ κανείς από τους εκπονητές του κρατικού λόγου να δηλώνει ότι εκείνη δρα ανεξέλεγκτη.

Ο σαδισμός δεν διδάσκεται ακόμη ως μάθημα στις αστυνομικές σχολές, γιατί βρίσκεται διάχυτος παντού μέσα στους εσωτερικούς κανονισμούς και τα εγχειρίδιά τους, όπως και η αλήθεια ότι πρόκειται πάντα και παντού για ένοπλη συμμορία με θεσμική υπόσταση που έχει την αυθαιρεσία ως προγραμματική αρχή της. Πρόκειται για το συστατικό στοιχείο χωρίς το οποίο ο αστυνομικός θεσμός δεν θα μπορούσε να υπάρχει. Είναι επειδή η πρακτική προηγείται της ταυτότητας –πρώτα ενεργούμε και μετά γινόμαστε οτιδήποτε θεωρούμε πως είμαστε- που τα γουρούνια επιτελούν το αστυνομικό τους έργο βασανίζοντας και σκοτώνοντας τους αδύναμους. Μέσα από τη βία αυτής της μορφής δεν γίνονται «κακοί αστυνομικοί», γίνονται «αστυνομικοί» σκέτο και μάλιστα με «Α» κεφαλαίο. Οι μπάτσοι γνωρίζουν καλά πως συμμετέχουν σε νόμιμη συμμορία. Γλωσσικά και σωματικά κρυπτογραφημένο, αυτό ακριβώς αντανακλάται σε ορισμένες δημόσιες επιτελέσεις της ισχύος τους, όπως στο αυστηρό ή ‘μάγκικο’ ύφος και στα ψέματα που πάντοτε αρέσκονται να λένε στους πολίτες κάθε φορά που κινδυνεύουν να εκτεθούν πως δεν ελέγχουν απόλυτα την κατάσταση, κάθε φορά που μοιάζουν περισσότερο αδύναμοι απ’όσο θέλουν κανείς να πιστεύει.

Εν τέλει, οι ίδιοι βιώνουν ως μέρος της δουλειάς τους αυτό που οι δικαστές, ως ανώτατοι λειτουργοί του νομικού πεδίου, αρνούνται να παραδεχτούν για να μην απωλέσουν το συμβολικό κεφάλαιο που με τόσο κόπο έχουν οικοδομήσει: πάνω από το νόμο και πέρα από οποιαδήποτε έννοια τυπικής δικαιοσύνης βρίσκεται η αστυνομία. Είναι πλέον γνωστό σε όλες τις γειτονιές του κόσμου ότι τα γουρούνια σκοτώνουν κατά βούληση, χωρίς ουσιαστικά να τιμωρούνται. Αυτή είναι η άλλη όψη της απανθρωποποίησης που αναγκαστικά υφίστανται κάθε φορά που οι ίδιοι δέχονται τις σφαίρες.

ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ [Ουτοπία, Θεωρία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες]

The post Ο 16χρονος ΡΟΜΑ Κώστας Φραγκούλης είναι νεκρός – Κενό Δίκτυο appeared first on Void Network.

Therefore, it is not enough to see the case of Ukraine only through the actions of a Russian authoritarian leader, nor through the prism of a violation of international law. This is for three reasons:

First, because we cannot ignore the presence of NATO, which after the fall of the USSR and in the context of the emerging “neoliberal consensus” became both a military vehicle of consolidation and a police institution against centrifugal forces. Thus, on the basis of the role of the US in this new phase of “globalisation”, NATO became essentially a mechanism for consolidating the US-led empire of capital. To put it in paradigmatic (and largely rhetorical) terms, what exactly did a supposed “defense alliance” do by bombing Yugoslavia without the approval of the Security Council, carrying out one of the largest military operations on European soil? How can it be denied that Yugoslavia was devastated by NATO for the interests of the US and its “New world order” doctrine? Did that event constitute war – at least some form of war – or a “special military operation”? Even if it is not just a powerful military instrument of the Americans, NATO cannot be conceived outside the imperialist policy of the USA. It is worth noting, in this context, that the inter-state relations between Russia and the US over the last 30 years have been largely structured by the initial assurances of the NATO alliance that they did not intend to expand the alliance eastwards and the gradual breaking of these promises. That these assurances, as Spinoza reminds us, have no substantive force outside of actual power relations and their historical unfolding points to the heart of the matter (something we will return to).

Second, war between states in its modern form tends to involve the clash, and therefore the intensification of two or more nationalisms. This is because nationalism is the ideology of the contemporary nation-state and therefore one of the inevitable languages of justification for a state of war. As a determinate historical form, the modern state relied on war for its birth and the organization of society on the scale it proposed: the boundaries of the state as a legal order of sovereignty to coincide with the geographical boundaries of the nation. It is truly an outrageous idea that continues to leave humanity blood-drenched, to produce cultural difference, and to systematically lead to tragedies and ethnic cleansing. Linking soil with blood: a genius German conception! Even the republican conception of the nation that draws on the American and French revolutions, and which admittedly provided the language for an entire revolutionary tradition, inevitably tends, after the consolidation of the state form, to become a language of legitimation of domination, exclusion, violence and expansion.

In the case of the Greek state, nationalism led to the tragedy of Smyrna with the help of the great fantasy – yet one with entirely material consequences – that we called the “Great Idea”. Nationalism is also responsible for the tragedy that Cypriot society has been experiencing for so many decades on both sides of the island. Rhetoric about living space was indeed used by Hitler and is now being used by Putin. But the difference is that the former was a Nazi and as such burned anyone who was not  ‘of aryan race’ in the crematoria, while the latter is the authoritarian leader of a country that sacrificed 20 million people to stop the Nazis. The difference is staggering. And it is a difference of content as much as of form: for all the autocracy, corruption and constant human rights violations that define the dysfunction of official institutions and the huge democratic deficit in the country, Russia is not a fascist state. This, of course, does not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because whatever the context, it is an invasion. But we must be strict in the analogies and comparisons we make because they determine our perspective and therefore our political stance.

It is also worth pointing out that the identification of Russia with the USSR is untenable, at least in the ideological field. On the other hand, on the geopolitical and economic front, things are clearly more complex, since the USSR (from one point onwards) became to a considerable extent the continuation of the Russian state; thus the Russian Federation, together with its satellites, inherits the treaties left by the USSR. Putin’s rise to power is also the expression of this “continuity of the state”, against the aggressive (and destructive for the plebeian masses) disintegration that preceded it. Besides, apart from some fascists like Georgiades, who else considers “the communists” dangerous and still dreams of exile (really, “dangerous” for whom?). Despite the special symbolic weight of communism in the construction of various identities and perceptions, all countries, in one way or another, move to the rhythm of the capitalist organisation of the economy and society. So does Russia. Within this global system, nationalisms continue to develop and the great powers continue to compete with each other in national terms, without reference to the political-ideological differences of the past. The competition today, similar to some extent to the imperialist competition before the First World War, is about power within the globalised capitalist system. But political-economic competition is always conducted through a multitude of ideological-cultural mediations, de facto historically determined.

Thus, it is difficult to abandon the idea that the cultural representation of Russia in the ‘West’ passes through the imaginative conception (and constitution) of difference. At the state level, the hostility towards Russia clearly has as an objective basis, Russia’s independent hegemonic geopolitical and economic role and ambition (the political expression of which is precisely ‘Putinism’). Also, in the social imaginary (as mediated, of course, by spectacular media representations) the emerging suspicion and hostility towards Russia is due to Putin’s current attempt to regain the country’s old imperial power. On both (related) levels, however, the hostility is fueled by the stereotypical construction of Russia as a threatening authoritarian power coming from the barabaric East. It is within this cultural construction of otherness that the reflexive and endemic anti-communism that some Western military officers and diplomats have long since internalized, finds its functional place.

In this intense interface between the political and economic aspirations of the hegemonic centres and their ideological investments, obsessions and prejudices, international law can only be respected on a case-by-case basis and according to the interests at stake – sometimes invoked and sometimes ignored. Liberals and social democrats of all stripes and tendencies will retort that there is a whole material system of rules, deliberations, agreements, decisions, institutions and bodies which produces what we call ‘international law’, and which has a regulative role; even when it is ignored by some states, its actuality allows us to criticise this attitude while at the same time giving to Right an institutional and therefore practical status (i.e. clearly defining what ‘ought to be done’ and ‘how’ it can be done).

This is certainly not the place for an extended discussion of international law, which de facto presupposes a broader analysis of law in general. Its violation, however, as a fact systematically carried out by the powerful, makes the interpretation of reality on the basis of international law alone a symptom of a normative formalism that does not help explain a complex situation and the dynamics it contains. Founded on the liberal legalist logic that systematized it, international law is utterly incapable of both regulating the actual relations of states and providing a theoretical basis for understanding them. The same can be said differently: vis-à-vis ‘powerful players’, international law is a weak tool and therefore, especially in times of crisis, it is not sufficient either to dictate and organise the practical activity of the powerful, or to take it as the main unit of analysis in understanding complex historical processes, that shape inter-state rivalries and international balances. Unless we want to become the unhappy consciousness of this world, along with liberals and a significant part of the Left. 

The third reason why we need to be careful in our perspective is related to the collective self-identifications and the character of Ukrainian nationalism. It helps us to understand the complexity of Ukrainians’ perception of the Russian invasion, i.e. ultimately how they perceive the ethnic ‘self’ and the ethnic ‘other’ in this particular case. This clearly makes the way in which the invasion of Ukraine is presented by Western officials and the ‘Western’ media very problematic, i.e. as an attack by a foreign power on a fully distinct ethnic society. The empirical data that anyone who knows anything about Ukrainian society can cite suggests something quite different.

Between Russia and Ukraine there is a strong cultural affinity, with deep historical roots, reaching back to the very constitution of Tsarist Russia as the hegemonic political form of the Slavic ethnic group. Even today a large percentage of families in both Ukraine and Russia are mixed, and kinships spread beyond their borders. To this significant part of the population, this particular war seems rather like a civil war. Especially in the east, where there has been secession, a large percentage of Ukrainians have no particular problem with the political attachment to ‘Mother Russia’, which is why Russian forces initially met little resistance by advancing into the country.

On the other hand, colonial control and inequality has been a key index in this complex historical relation. Naturally, the Ukrainian nation-state de facto established its identity in against Russian domination, of which the USSR period was considered a part. This “anti-Russian” national narrative intensified after the events of 2014 in the country, when the balance was disturbed by the violent political shift towards the West and therefore NATO. In this context of geopolitical and economic restructuring, Ukrainian nationalism is becoming radicalized and seems to be gaining traction in the social sphere. Even so, until recently it is doubtful whether, outside the extreme nationalist circles, of which the neo-Nazis of the so-called ‘Right Sector’ (Pravyy Sektor) with their black and red flags or the even broader and more diverse ‘Azov Battalion’, which is part of the Ukrainian national army, most Ukrainians wanted to fight against Russia (which is also true in reverse). This is precisely what Russian expansionism is now decisively reversing, further fomenting Ukrainian nationalism.

In ‘Western’ media and in the mainstream discourse in general there is a deafening silence about the internal political balances and collective identity in Ukraine. In fact, the attack on Ukraine strikes at the pan-Slavic narrative – a central feature of ethnoromanticism there – replacing it with nationalist hatred. Is this not contradictory to the fact that Russia appears to be the main political exponent of this ethno-romantisism? But also, the hybrid character of the collective, national identity in Ukraine, or the fact that it is presented as ambivalent in terms of the distinction between ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’ nation and the related sense of collective belonging, is a catalyst for the attack. If, in terms of ethno-cultural relations and collective identities, similarity and affinity rather than ethnic difference prevail, without one group necessarily identifying or assimilating the other, the attack from Russia’s perspective ceases to be seen as an invasion. If, even more than in other countries of the former Soviet Union, Ukrainians are, in a sense, in an identity transition, since the process of Ukrainian nation-state building is unstable and ongoing, the attack on Ukraine may have had as an intrinsic purpose to radically interfere in the process. And the instability of the Ukrainian political system and the dysfunction of its democratic institutions actually contributes to this attempted rapprochement with Russia (for a country whose president is a former actor who played the president in a Ukrainian T.V series [!]). Therefore, in the face of the project of stabilising Ukrainian institutions and democracy within the EU. -which seems to have been the main claim of the 2014 protests and which necessarily took the form of anti-Russianism, thus opening up space even for nationalism drawn from the collaborators of the Nazi invasion- Russian imperialism, faced with the very real danger of Ukrainian attachment to NATO (i.e. the expansion of the latter), responded with an operation to strengthen the link with Russia. Of course, since the Russian surprise didn’t last long and the war drags on, it’s hard to see how a regime change could bring anything but instability.

Here it rather seems that we have two sides – Russia and the ‘West’ – that fear and perceive each other as a threat in terms shaped on the one hand by the history of conflicting expansionist nationalisms-imperialisms and on the other hand by the reality shaped by the capitalist economy in its modern globalised version. We will therefore support neither of them! A further reason for not supporting either one is evident from the fact that within the framework of once – but no longer – fringe theories like those of the 4th political theory, we are faced with the possibility of the creation of a deeply authoritarian informal coalition of disparate countries (from North Korea to Iran and China) on an ascending trajectory of conflict with the whole of a distinct civilization now defined in their eyes as “the West”.

Neutrality, by highlighting the community of those from below, with class characteristics and our dynamic peace-promoting practices is, in our opinion, the appropriate attitude in this case and therefore has nothing to do with an abstract refusal of war. This is all the more true since the consequences of such a war will affect us all. In this light, the revival of the international anti-war movement, which has been extinct for over 15 years (better proof of its total absence during the Syrian civil war) could perhaps have some positive influence on developments. However, judging by the content of public discourse, the low dynamics of collective action today and, above all, the proxy nature of the conflict between NATO and Russia, this possibility should not be considered particularly likely. Nevertheless, the anti-war demand for global nuclear disarmament is proving to be extremely necessary today.

Under the weight of developments in Ukraine there is no doubt that this is a moment of paramount historical importance. We are witnessing a direct violent challenge to the balance of power of the hegemonic centres, which is very interestingly linked to the economic challenge being waged by China. Something that has been discussed for a long time may be happening, but the outcome is really uncertain, especially since the ‘first move’ was made by the Russian military state. At a time when many people, while realising the role of planetary domination in the ongoing social and environmental decline, no longer have the courage to speak out, the conflict in Ukraine paints an extremely contradictory picture that has emerged particularly strong in the pandemic and is of immense value both for the left libertarian forces of our time and for radical forces in general. On the one hand we seem to not know how to survive without some kind of state organization, on the other hand the state leads us to social, health, economic and environmental destruction. How do we pragmatically manage such a complex reality?

The dystopia of a nuclear holocaust or a large-scale ecological (hence social) collapse may still seem distant (?), but we cannot ignore the fact that the forces that gave birth to these prospects as a technical possibility and political-military possibility are precisely the dominant forces today: capital, technocracy and all kinds of military-industrial complexes, nationalism and the modern state.

We conclude with some observations which will shed more light on the rationale that leads us to consider the neutrality stance in this war as the only appropriate option from the point of view of social emancipation. Like any authoritarian leader who wages war, Putin, by attacking Ukraine, is undermining, or at any rate endangering, his own power. However, its end will hopefully come with an internal uprising of the Russian people, especially the most oppressed social groups. Ukraine may of course be the occasion for this, but the battle for its downfall cannot be fought on Ukrainian soil. Among other things, because in this case national war and multilateral conflict signify not only the death of soldiers and civilians who have never supported Russia’s authoritarian regime, but also the nuclear threat. This, of course, implies that the phenomenon of Putin’s authoritarian rule cannot be reduced to the realm of individual psychology and personality, as the liberal position, that presents anti-democrats as ‘madmen’, deliberately and with artificial levity tries to sustain. The problem is not that Putin is “insane”. The problem is that the very juxtaposition of democracy and authoritarianism is now losing the formal validity it once had (which historically has always been more complex, of course).

Democratic political systems and their institutions all over the world, regardless of their specifically national versions, are subjected with undiminished intensity to the web of relations and practices that we call ‘capitalism’. So while states continue to be active forces, the contemporary globalised and interconnected world of transnational relations and antagonisms is regulated by the active presence of capital and the imperatives of accumulation and value valorization that define it. So along with a contradiction – transnational competition tends to undermine the capitalist totality that allows it to exist – there is also a truth that the adherents of liberal discourse cannot bear to hear, as it is a truth that calls for political displacement and personal engagement but also for the questioning of multiple cultural constants and perceptions. The configuration of democratic institutions and their articulation with the legal order and the economy allows for the simultaneous and perpetual reproduction, that is, the permanent co-existence, of representation, authoritarianism and inequality in many social fields and in decision-making. It is also a dynamic relationship that today is increasingly unable to take the formal form of democracy. Modern liberal democracies are technocratic oligarchies separated simply by the presence of a social liberalism (which is also challenged by the neo-right reaction).

The pacified societies of the ‘developed’ world in Europe and America are more likely to abandon Ukraine to the expansionist ambitions of a rising Russia than to fight for it. It is not only the experience of two world wars that is, fortunately, frightening. Material affluence, the ideology of producing and consuming infinite objects, the complete commodification of the world and the trivialization of multiple aspects of life by advertising – all of it, that is, which describe the hegemonic conception of ‘growth’ – guarantee (apart from ecological destruction) that war is removed from the range of culturally available options, not only for the sterile upper classes of ‘Western’ societies, but also for the lower classes and subordinate social groups.

And while we could not rule out the resurgence of European and US nationalisms in the face of a common antagonist, we can hardly imagine European citizens sacrificing themselves on the battlefields fighting against the Russians. Especially when everyone knows that the new ‘cold war’ we have already entered is exclusively a game of the powerful for the control of resources and wealth.

But unfortunately, it is even more difficult, to imagine the oppressed fighting an internationalist, anti-nationalist and anti-colonial battle for the equality of people in all corners of this world. This is despite the fact that from the pandemic and the impending ecological collapse to the devastating war in Ukraine, the great issue at stake is the power of the modern state and of capital, the complete inability to control and be controlled.

The question then becomes more crucial than ever and is this: at the dawn of a new ‘cold war’ and in the era of ecological crisis, will the left libertarian forces of our time be able to present a culturally convincing vision to make people believe again in a different way of organizing collective life that includes as its central point the symbiosis of all beings? Or will they forever distance themselves from people by adhering to simplistic rhetorical schemes that are of little interest to anyone? The questions, though theoretically profound, are primarily practical.

Active neutrality in the war raging in Ukraine is our position, the continuation of the global social war against all those who destroy life and freedom is our promise.

Solidarity with the antifascist anarchists in Ukraine and Russia.

DEATH TO TYRANTS –

LONG LIVE ANARCHY- FIGHT FOR GLOBAL FREEDOM

VOID NETWORK – http://voidnetwork.gr

The post The State, Nationalism and the War in Ukraine appeared first on Void Network.

Η αλήθεια του διαγγέλματος του Πρωθυπουργού το βράδυ της Τρίτης 9/3/2021 – την ίδια ώρα που οι ένστολοι συμμορίτες, που συγκρότησε η κυβέρνηση, αλώνιζαν σε μια άδεια (πλέον) πόλη – βρίσκεται όχι μόνο στα λόγια του αλλά και στην εικόνα του: στον λόγο που απειλεί και κηρύσσει και στο σώμα που πιέζεται και φοβάται. Οι δύο αυτές αντιφατικές όψεις της πρωθυπουργικής επιτέλεσης, αντιστοιχούν και εκφράζουν τη διπλή όψη της πολιτικής συγκυρίας που βρισκόμαστε, όπως και τη μεταξύ τους διαλεκτική: δηλαδή, τη στρατηγική της έντασης που η κυβέρνηση ακολουθεί και τον κοινωνικό ξεσηκωμό που προκαλείται από την κυβερνητική πολιτική.

Η έκκληση σε μια ενότητα που επιβάλλεται δια του τσακίσματος του εσωτερικού εχθρού είναι γνωστή, και στην Ελλάδα ειδικά κουβαλάει όλη την ιστορία του εμφύλιου και του εθνικόφρονος μετεμφυλιακού κράτους. Πέρα όμως από τα όποια ιστορικά και συμβολικά τους συμφραζόμενα, οι δηλώσεις του Μητσοτάκη εντάσσονται σε μία συγκεκριμένη στρατηγική έντασης που η κυβέρνηση ακολουθεί πιστά και που η μετέπειτα επέμβαση στο ΑΠΘ (ενώ η κατάληψη έληγε το ίδιο πρωί) επιβεβαίωσε. Οι λόγοι που επιλέχθηκε μία τέτοια στρατηγική έχουν ήδη αναλυθεί και από άλλους· σε πρώτο επίπεδο αφορά μικροπολιτικούς λόγους κομματικής συσπείρωσης, μπροστά στην αποτυχημένη έως εγκληματική διαχείριση της πανδημίας.

Την ίδια στιγμή, η στρατηγική εντάσσεται στον συνολικότερο στόχο περιθωριοποίησης της Αριστεράς και καταστολής του αναρχικού/αντί-εξουσιαστικού χώρου. Ο στόχος αυτός με τη σειρά του, ενώ προφανώς μεσολαβείται από βαθιά ιδεολογική έχθρα, αφορά την παγίωση του ολιγαρχικού καθεστώτος που χτίζεται και την εξουδετέρωση των πολιτικών δυνάμεων που μπορεί να απειλήσουν το καθεστώς, εκφράζοντας και ενισχύοντας (σε διαφορετικά επίπεδα) τις όποιες κοινωνικές αντιδράσεις προκύψουν. Στην καρδιά της τρέχουσας στρατηγικής υπάρχει το “τραύμα” της περιόδου 2008-2015, το οποίο συνεχώς αναφαίνεται στα λόγια των κυβερνώντων και των παρατρεχάμενων τους, που ξορκίζουν τα φαντάσματα που άφησε (Δεκέμβρης 2008, «πλατείες» και Αγανακτισμένοι, δημοψήφισμα, δομές αλληλεγγύης στις γειτονιές, φοιτητικοί αγώνες κ.α.) Κάπως έτσι, οι πολιτικοί στόχοι της Δεξιάς εγγράφονται σε μία ευρύτερη ιστορική ολότητα καπιταλιστικής κρίσης και αναδιάρθρωσης: το νέο-συντηρητικό καθεστώς που επιχειρεί να χτίσει η ΝΔ σε συνεργασία με την αστική ολιγαρχία είναι η ηγεμονική έκφραση που προσλαμβάνει την παρούσα φάση η εν λόγω (νεοφιλελεύθερη) αναδιάρθρωση και το κράτος ασφάλειας που τη διαμεσολαβεί.

Το ότι συντελείται μέσα σε μια καθορισμένη συγκυρία υποδεικνύει την εσωτερική δυναμική αλλά και τα αδιέξοδα της πολιτικής “Νόμου και Τάξης” που οδηγούν στην τρέχουσα στρατηγική έντασης. Αφού δεν υπάρχει προοπτική ουσιαστικών κοινωνικών μεταρρυθμίσεων και δημόσιων επενδύσεων ή αμφισβήτησης του δόγματος δημοσιονομικής σταθερότητας, τι εναλλακτικές υπάρχουν; Ούτε είναι τυχαίο ότι μετά τις συγκρούσεις στη Νέα Σμύρνη στις 10/3, μαζί με την επιβεβαίωση της αστυνομοκρατίας, υπήρξε και άλλο ένα ακόμα διάγγελμα του Ηγέτη για οικονομικές ενισχύσεις. Μάλιστα, η ήπια έως ανύπαρκτη παρουσία της αστυνομίας στις πολυπληθείς συγκεντρώσεις ενάντια στην κρατική αυθαιρεσία που διοργανώθηκαν σε πλατείες σε όλη τη χώρα (13-14/3), δείχνει έναν ελιγμό μπροστά στον κίνδυνο μιας μη-ελεγχόμενης όξυνσης που θα φορτωθεί στην κυβέρνηση. Αυτό δείχνει αν μη τι άλλο ότι η στρατηγική της έντασης δεν είναι γραμμική ούτε η κυβέρνηση παντοδύναμη.

Την ίδια στιγμή όμως, το ότι επιλέχθηκε εξ αρχής μια στρατηγική έντασης δείχνει την αίσθηση δύναμης απέναντι στον εχθρό που η κυβέρνηση έχει. Αν δεν πίστευαν ότι έχουν την πολιτική και υλική υπεροπλία ή την απαραίτητη κοινωνική υποστήριξη δύσκολα θα είχαν ακολουθήσει αυτόν τον δρόμο. Αυτή ακριβώς την αίσθηση τραυμάτισε η συγκρουσιακή πορεία στη Νέα Σμύρνη. Διότι όχι μόνο αποτύπωσε το απτό ενδεχόμενο μιας εξέγερσης που μπορεί να ξεφύγει από τον έλεγχο αλλά και το γεγονός ότι η ίδια η κυβερνητική πολιτική οδηγεί προς αυτήν την κατεύθυνση. Από αυτήν την σκοπιά, τα γεγονότα στη Νέα Σμύρνη ήταν πολιτική ήττα για την κυβέρνηση και ένα μικρό βραχυκύκλωμα του κράτους ασφάλειας.

Καθόλα αναμενόμενη επομένως η επικοινωνιακή δυσφήμηση των κοινωνικών κινημάτων που συνοδεύει την κρατική καταστολή, σε τέτοιο βαθμό που οι καθεστωτικοί κονδυλοφόροι ανέσυραν την έννοια του «συμμοριτοπόλεμου». Το τηλεοπτικό δράμα με τον «άτυχο νεαρό αστυνομικό» στις συγκρούσεις της Νέας Σμύρνης δεν λειτούργησε προς όφελος των κυρίαρχων. Χιλιάδες άνθρωποι στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης καταδεικνύουν συνεχώς την καθημερι νή απάνθρωπη βία της αστυνομίας (αν και η πραγματικότητα έχει πάψει εδώ και καιρό να εμποδίζει την κυρίαρχη προπαγάνδα). Αναμενόμενό επίσης είναι, ότι ο Σύριζα συνεπικουρεί στη δυσφήμηση των ταραχών· ως επίδοξος προοδευτικός διαχειριστής του κράτους ασφάλειας που περιμένει τη σειρά του, ο Σύριζα απεύχεται ακόμα περισσότερο από τη ΝΔ μια κοινωνική έκρηξη.

Ο εύκολος στόχος στην παρούσα συγκυρία είναι οι «χούλιγκαν», των οποίων η παρουσία στην πορεία εμφανίζεται ως κάτι παρασιτικό και οι πρακτικές τους ως άλογη αντικοινωνικότητα. Στην πραγματικότητα, η κατασκευασμένη καρικατούρα του «χουλιγκάνου» δαιμονοποιεί ένα ολόκληρο κομμάτι της φτωχοποιημένης νεολαίας και της εργατικής τάξης ενώ συγχρόνως αρνείται τον θετικό ρόλο που μπορούν να παίξουν οι οργανωμένοι οπαδοί σε μία κοινωνική εξέγερση, κάτι που όμως έχει αποδειχθεί επαρκώς σε πρόσφατες εξεγέρσεις ανά τον κόσμο. Ούτε αλλάζει κάτι το γεγονός ότι ένα κομμάτι των οργανωμένων οπαδών, ειδικά αυτοί που εντάσσονται στην ακροδεξιά, μπορεί να γίνουν παρακρατικοί βραχίονες. Απλά υποδεικνύει τις αντιφάσεις και διαιρέσεις της συγκεκριμένης κοινωνικής φιγούρας, που σε μια εξέγερση θα βρουν το σημείο έκρηξης τους. Ποια όμως κοινωνική ομάδα σήμερα στερείται αντιφάσεων και διαιρέσεων, που θα καταστούν εξίσου ορατές όταν η κοινωνική ειρήνη διαρραγεί; 

Κάθε συζήτηση για τις ταραχές που θέλει να είναι στοιχειωδώς σοβαρή οφείλει να ξεκινάει από την θεωρητική και πολιτική τους αναγνώριση: ότι είναι ένας τρόπος να συγκροτούνται οι πληβείοι ως υποκείμενα δικαίου έξω από τις κυρίαρχες θεσμικές διαμεσολαβήσεις. Δεν είναι ο μόνος τρόπος. Οι μαζικές ειρηνικές πορείες για τα δικαιώματα, σαν και αυτή που έγινε στις 11/3, όπως και οι πολυπληθείς διαδηλώσεις σε ένα μεγάλο αριθμό πλατειών και γειτονιών σε όλη τη χώρα στις 13 και 14/3/2021 είναι ένας άλλος τρόπος συλλογικής εμφάνισης των κοινωνικών κινημάτων σήμερα. Αντί να τα βλέπουμε όλα αυτά αντιπαραθετικά πρέπει να τα συλλάβουμε ως όψεις μιας διαλεκτικής κίνησης, που εκφράζει τη διογκούμενη κοινωνική δυσφορία στον επελαύνοντα αυταρχισμό και κυοφορεί την εξέγερση που έρχεται.

Γνωρίζουμε από παλιότερες μάχες με το καθεστώς πως αυτή η σύγκρουση δεν είναι στρατιωτικού χαρακτήρα, μιας και είναι οφθαλμοφανής η υπεροπλία του κράτους σε αυτό το επίπεδο. Η δύναμη των κοινωνικών κινημάτων βρίσκεται στην ικανότητα τους να φέρνουν στην επιφάνεια τις αντιφάσεις ενός συστήματος που ενώ διατείνεται πως φροντίζει- καταστρέφει, ενώ ευαγγελίζεται την ελευθερία- καταστέλλει και δολοφονεί, ενώ υπόσχεται ασφάλεια και ευημερία – παράγει φτώχεια και αναπαράγει υποταγή και θλίψη. Όταν αυτή η διαρκής στρέβλωση παύει να γίνεται ανεκτή στα πλήθη, καμιά αστυνομία δεν μπορεί να τα καθυποτάξει.

Αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι της κίνησης αυτής είναι και η πληβειακή (αντί)βία. Ενίοτε επιτιθέμενη ενίοτε αμυνόμενη, ενίοτε μεγάθυμη ενίοτε εκδικητική, ενίοτε υπολογισμένη ενίοτε άμετρη, η ύπαρξη της θέτει σημαντικά ζητήματα που δεν μπορούν να απαντηθούν με τσιτάτα, διαγγέλματα και νουθεσίες. Η απόρριψη της όμως από κάποιους, στηρίζεται σε μια φετιχιστική (και ειδικά στο πλαίσιο της Ελλάδας εντελώς αβάσιμη) πίστη στους θεσμούς του αστικού κράτους. Ακόμα χειρότερα, αρνείται μια ενεργή δυνατότητα για αυτονομία των καταπιεσμένων του παρόντος και του μέλλοντος.

Πάνω σε αυτή τη βάση μπορεί να γίνει μια κριτική εκτίμηση των προοπτικών και δυνατοτήτων που ανοίγονται από τη διάρρηξη της κοινωνικής ειρήνης που βλέπουμε να συντελείται. Είναι ξεκάθαρο πως στην παρούσα φάση οι εξεγέρσεις σε διεθνές επίπεδο δεν εγγράφονται σε μια ενεργή ακολουθία επαναστατικού μετασχηματισμού. Ούτε συνεπώς μια εξέγερση στην Ελλάδα μπορεί να γίνει καταλύτης ενός επαναστατικού συμβάντος, ούτε οι όποιες αντί-θεσμίσεις εμφανιστούν μπορούν να θέσουν άμεσα πολιτειακό ζήτημα. Στη τρέχουσα συγκυρία, μία εξέγερση και οι ταραχές που τη συνοδεύουν, εφόσον ανακρούσουν το κύμα καταστολής, μπορούν να λειτουργήσουν ως καταλύτες κοινωνικών μεταρρυθμίσεων ή αλλαγής διαχειριστών του πολιτικού καθεστώτος. Ακόμα και εκεί τα πολύ στενά όρια εκδημοκρατισμού που τα κράτη σήμερα επιδέχονται είναι πασίδηλα, χωρίς αυτό να σημαίνει ότι μια τέτοια αλλαγή πρέπει να υποτιμάται. Η ήττα του τελούμενου αυταρχισμού στον δρόμο είναι εξαιρετικής σημασίας, όχι απλά ως παρακαταθήκη για το μέλλον αλλά για τις ζωές μας στο παρόν.

Από την άλλη, η σημασία μιας εξέγερσης δεν μπορεί να περιοριστεί στις άμεσες επιπτώσεις που έχει σε κεντρικό πολιτικό επίπεδο. Διότι πέρα από αυτό που μια εξέγερση αρνείται υπάρχει και αυτό που η εξέγερση εκδηλώνει, δηλαδή, σχέσεις, εμπειρίες, υποκείμενα, μνήμες, αντι-δομές, κοινότητες αγώνα,  συσχετισμοί και δυναμικές που δημιουργούνται. Και αυτό που σήμερα μοιάζει μικρό, αύριο μπορεί να εμφανίζεται ως μια στιγμή από κάτι πολύ μεγαλύτερο που ερχόταν. Προς μια τέτοια κατεύθυνση φυσικά χρειάζεται και πολιτική δουλειά, μαζική συμμετοχή και προσωπική ευθύνη, δημιουργικότητα, συντονισμός, αποφασιστικότητα, φαντασία και δέσμευση από τη μεριά των εξεγερμένων.

Αυτό απαιτεί όμως πρώτα από όλα να ξέρεις σε πιο στρατόπεδο ανήκεις.

Η ΝΔ προσπαθεί να συσπειρώσει γύρω της, πέρα από την αστική τάξη που για την ώρα εκπροσωπεί σχεδόν πλήρως, όσους από τα μεσαία στρώματα ακόμα απολαμβάνουν κάποια σχετικά προνόμια μαζί με τα συντηρητικά κομμάτια των κατώτερων τάξεων.

Για εμάς, από την άλλη, δεν υπάρχει κανένα δίλημμα. Θα είμαστε δίπλα σε αυτές και αυτούς που εξεγείρονται αλλά και σε όσες και όσους δυσφορούν και πνίγονται με την παρούσα κατάσταση, όσους βλέπουν στον αναδυόμενο κοινωνικό ξεσηκωμό μια πνοή αξιοπρέπειας, μια ανάσα ελευθερίας, μια μορφή δικαίωσης και μια νέα ελπίδα.

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ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ [Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες] http://voidnetwork.gr

The post ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ- Για τη στρατηγική της έντασης και την εξέγερση που έρχεται appeared first on Void Network.

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One more death of a black person by the police. One more state murder. One more time the streets are filled with a raging demand for justice. One more time justice has a name -Justice for George Floyd…

But the demand is also faceless, generic, universal in the most concrete of senses. For the face is enmeshed in the numbers, the obnoxious body count, without being reduced to a statistic; a universal figure emerges, the figure of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the subaltern, the underside of every state’s and every empire’s narrative of law and order. In the United States the story is age old and known. Strange fruits once hanging in the trees, segregated in the South, marginalized in urban ghettos, turned into an underclass and left to kill each other or drug themselves to death. But also black bodies reverberating with dignity, bodies that have never stopped resisting, mobilizing, fighting, screaming out loud that their lives matter; bodies that have refused to be objects of law and have become subjects of justice. America likes to remember the civil rights movement, but it has been forced to recall also its long hot summers, in our age of new movements and new riots.

Decades of affirmative action, of well-meaning or not so well meaning reforms, attempts to integrate. Things have improved, they say. Yet, things also remain the same; the streets continue to fill with blood and dead bodies and then with rage, again and again and again. It does not take a political scientist to see that the violence the black population suffer is systemic and institutionalized or that their marginalization and exclusion is embedded to the operations of the capitalist system. Class and race merging to create bodies that can be killed; but also bodies that revolt. Conservatives will call them criminals; liberals will call them misguided; a few leftists will feel they are justified but will still prefer to sing vacuous praises about the “force of non-violence” or make a virtue out of victimhood. But for the downtrodden of history, riot and fire has always been one of their ways of enacting justice, of becoming justice. It may be neither solution nor revolution. But by making nights brighter it lights the path towards a different future.

It is not our job or to our taste passing judgments from up high on bodies that fight for their lives. Nor are the images of riots foreign or exotic to us; bodies are also exploited and marginalized all over the world; bodies encamped, criminalized, but also killed.

George Floyd shouted

I CAN NOT BREATHE-

Now all of us we shout

WE CAN NOT BREATHE

The revolt in Minneapolis does not have “our sympathy”, it inspires us.

FIGHT THE POWER!

Solidarity to the Minneapolis uprising against police violence and institutionalized racism!

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts]

ATHENS / LONDON / NEW YORK / RIO DE JANEIRO

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READ MORE:

Minneapolis: Now This Fight Has Two Sides

What the Riots Mean for the COVID-19 Era

https://crimethinc.com/2020/05/28/minneapolis-we-have-crossed-the-rubicon-what-the-riots-mean-for-the-covid-19-era

The post VOID NETWORK- Justice for George Floyd … and Justice for all appeared first on Void Network.

“Seek ye first for food and clothing, then the kingdom of God will fall to you also”

G.W.F. Hegel, letter to Knebel, 30 August 1807

We watch in horror, as the global explosion of the Sars-CoV-2 virus continues. The spreading medical emergency starkly reveals the real wages of neoliberalism and its extractive austerities. Gutted national healthcare systems that put profit over lives have left millions of people without access to medical care – a de facto death sentence for many. Every day now, we see where that leaves us in a pandemic. The healthcare crisis unfolds within a larger context of crisis: the underlying economic crisis of late capitalism and the planetary ecological crisis of late capitalist modernity. In the Covid19 emergency, the next crisis to arrive, before the medical crisis is over and just as the economic one begins to kick in, is likely to be a crisis in the capitalist food system.

The growing, picking, processing, packing and delivery of our food is vulnerable at many points in the long supply and delivery chains that stock the shelves in our grocery stores. Farmworkers, food processors and delivery workers are asked to work in unprotected conditions that often make social distancing impossible. Pickers on the industrial farms, many of whom are undocumented or precarious migrants, typically travel from squalid work camps to the fields in tightly packed buses. Workers at Amazon, the largest corporation dominating the end-delivery chains, have begun walkout strikes as Covid19 spreads through their warehouse workplaces. It is hard to see how breaks and bottlenecks in the global flows of food will be avoided without cynically sacrificing the workers who feed us. We need to understand and anticipate this, because food is at the center of life and social reproduction. The struggles for food sovereignty that will soon come to the fore will not only help to keep us alive – they highlight values of care, mutuality, gender equality, and climate and environmental justice that can orient the fight against fascism  and the refusal to go back to normal, when all the dead are buried. If the Covid-19 pandemic is pushing us to think an alternative form of social and natural symbiosis, food production is an essential facet of this operation, even more, a nodal point for its utopian and practical dimensions.

For an End to Big Agriculture

The capitalist food production system is ecocidal and genocidal; paradoxically, extinction is its immanent drift. The rupture of Covid19 is at least an opportunity to overthrow a destructive and unsustainable mono-industrial paradigm and replace it, everywhere, with more localized systems of polyculture and agroecology. Founded on the 17^th century slave plantation system and forced on the world from the 1950s on under the obscene misnomer “the green revolution,” the current capitalist food system is dominated by large transnationals that grow cash crops for export on huge monocultural farms and neo-plantations. These “Big Ag” monopolies are fossil fuel dependent, are heavy with pesticides and chemicals, waste precious water (70-90 % of all freshwater used by modern society!), drive bees and other needed pollinators as well as birds and other small predators to collapse and extinction, and discharge toxic runoff that causes red tides and dead zones when it reaches the seas. Moreover, capitalist food production is fully implicated in driving global warming and climate chaos:

Agriculture is also the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions from society, collectively accounting for about 35 % of the carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide we release….The energy used to grow, process and transport food is a concern, but the vast majority of emissions comes from tropical deforestation, methane released from animals and rice paddies, and nitrous oxide from over fertilized soils.

We must add that this food system, which eats its own tail in a classic dialectic of enlightenment, is embedded in imperialist relations. More or less in step with the rise of neoliberalism, the World Bank, IMF and Big Ag capital have forced every country in the world to attack its bases of food sovereignty in small-hold farming and to chain itself to the world commodity markets. The global debt system was the lever to force this new phase of “original accumulation,” with deadly applications of violence to repress local resistance to these new enclosures, especially in the Global South. All this arrives every day, in our kitchens and on our plates! The idiocy of this “consensus” may soon be returning to haunt us, just as the idiocy of destroying public health structures returns in the continuous blare of sirens around New York City’s overwhelmed hospitals. Finally, in what should be the nail in the coffin of capital’s control over our food, Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu, has taught us exactly how the capitalist food system is implicated in the cross species jumps that loosed Sars-Cov-2.

For Agroecology and a Food Sovereignty Popular Front

There are better ways, and the struggles to defend and spread them have been ongoing for many decades – indeed, as our Indigenous comrades tell us, for 500 years! Traditional growing practices preserve hard-won local experience and knowledges and tend to work with, rather than try to dominate, local ecologies. As a result, their decentralized polycultures are far more sustainable, frugal, versatile and resilient – just what we need in our food systems in a time when climates are weirding in response to capital’s flogging of the planet. In Europe and the Global North, organic “foodies” and Slow Food enthusiasts are often perceived as luxury hobbyists of the privileged classes. In fact, these lifestyle trends are distant echoes of the intense grassroots struggles for food sovereignty being waged across Latin America and Africa by the largely Indigenous-led network La Via Campesina, in Brazil by the Marxist-inspired Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), and in India by numerous peasant movements.

La Via Campesina in particular has coined and elaborated the idea of food sovereignty into a program for justice from below. It claims an inalienable right of all peoples to define and realize their own food systems, and to defend those systems from coercive invasions and extractive enclosures by imperialist capital. The international network of small and cooperative farmers, peasants, pastoralists and fisherfolk have also worked out and broadcast a body of practices and values they named agroecology. Similar in some respects to permaculture, agroecology embodies a whole approach to social reproduction based on values of care, mutuality and – let’s not be afraid of the word – kinship with the natural world. Many scientists have understood that agroecology offers more sustainable practices than industrial monoculture, and as a result the UN has to some extent appropriated and advocated for the concept, giving it a top-down, technocratic inflection that La Via Campesina has had to criticize. Agroecology is not just a set of practices that can be monetized for profit or adopted without changing anything else in anthropocentric, patriarchal capitalist class society:

Agroecology is a way of life of our peoples, in harmony with the language of Nature. It is a paradigm shift in the social, political, productive and economic relations in our territories, to transform the way we produce and consume food and to restore a socio-cultural reality devastated by industrial food production. Agroecology generates local knowledge, builds social justice, promotes identity and culture and strengthens the economic viability of rural and urban areas.

The urgent point is this: the knowledge commons for sustainable local alternatives to capitalist food production already exist and are readily accessible and sharable. Certainly, agroecological and permacultural approaches are possible in Greece. We only need to ensure that collective projects in this direction are grounded in solidarity with grassroots struggles for food sovereignty and climate and environmental justice – and in a communist horizon for a just and classless world. This is also to say, that acro-ecology is not a backward-looking idealization of the past, it is a forward-looking practice that can be in tune with the best aspects of the current techno-scientific knowledge and capacities. 

Food Sovereignty, Migrant Rights and Anti-Fascism

In the current crises, the struggle for food sovereignty brings forward the exploitation of migrant farmworkers and links up directly to the current terrain of anti-fascist struggle. As already noted, the workers whose labor power is exploited in the fields, slaughter yards and packing houses of capitalist agriculture are very often undocumented or precarious migrants whose status makes them especially exposed to extreme exploitation and coercive violence. Certainly this is true in Europe and many parts of North America. Their workplaces were always likely to be toxic, but now with Covid19 they are often forced to labor in mortal danger. Adequate protections, including face masks, gloves, sanitation gear and testing is a matter of life and death for the women and men who bring our food to table.

We can and must say more: racist anti-migrant and anti-refugee scapegoating is the common denominator of the hard-right turn in global politics. Indeed, racist nationalism dominates the toxic concoction that is resurgent fascism, and has been widely adopted in the rhetoric and policies of rightist governments around the world. This turn reflects tendencies towards authoritarian statism that, among others, have been long developing and were noted and forecast decades ago by Nicos Poulantzas. And it now unfolds in a situation of multiple systemic crises whose class character was vividly described by Mike Davis as a “planet of slums” and whose political logic Christian Parenti has analyzed incisively as “the politics of the armed lifeboat,” which tends towards full-blown “climate fascism.” Such is the moment we live in. We need to be clear about the links between all of these crises and social struggles, and shape our actions across them.

Toward Dual Power

Food sovereignty is the material and metabolic basis for an organized counter-power to capitalist terror and climate fascism. There have been many helpful discussions of mutual aid and calls for dual power initiated by autonomist comrades in the social emergency of Covid19. And Marxist feminist comrades have called for us to meet the emergency with a “social reproduction revolution.” Now we need to anticipate the coming crisis of the capitalist food system, and begin discussing how we will prepare our reaches for food sovereignty. To consider this a backup plan to help get us by in lean times misses the point. The dominant capitalist classes are certainly preparing to force us back into our places, however far this deadly pandemic goes. Before it exploded, anti-austerity insurrections were already rocking the global system; for the moment the solidarity of social distancing has emptied our streets and arrested the face-to-face and breath-to-breath forms of our politics. This will change, but fallout from Covid19 is still just beginning. The danger of disruptions to the food supply and delivery chains is real, for the reasons indicated above. Even in social distancing, we need to begin the discussions about what we will do, if that happens. Bread riots, a trigger of past revolutions, will come; will there also be pitchforks?

The rupture in normality also brings its opportunities – call it “disaster communism” or whatever you like. Many are aware now, and many more are learning it through the pandemic, that capital’s logic of accumulation is a dead end – literally as well as metaphorically. Degrowth, with a communist-autonomist horizon, is the actual imperative, given the deep structural crisis of planetary meltdown. Degrowth does not mean primitivism nor it is against the development of humanity’s creative forces. It means sustainable symbiosis, thus, a different form of social and environmental justice. Neo-fascism will be the form of desperate violence aiming to block any social transition that threatens capitalist class power. We know this. Either we resign ourselves to go back to our places and work away at our own mutual destruction, or we push this break further, exactly where social reproduction meets anti-fascism and anti-imperialism.

Growing tomatoes, herbs and earthworms on the balcony is no doubt a wonderous thing. But what is called for now is to collectivize the possibilities in all directions. The point is that food sovereignty is the material and metabolic (energy) basis for everything else, as we would quickly realize if we began to go hungry. Agroecology and permaculture are real possibilities in Greece, which need to be explored and built out from below. Some comrades are already actively engaged in this direction. And again: this can’t be a mere withdrawal to rural communes, it has to be a reorientation that feeds the struggles. For now, we should start discussing and sharing knowledge and practices and brainstorming possibilities.

Simple models for collectivizing growing can be organized among friends and small groups and planted wherever there is access to land. Access may be through family plots in villages or, in extremis, by other direct and time-tested means. Growing co-ops can be set up to share the work on a part-time basis, as was done before in many difficult moments of history. Urban gardens will undoubtedly be appearing in unexpected places. The deeper values of agroecology, in their close connection to social struggle and the long resistance to capitalist enclosure, can orient this turn. Whatever happens, we should build out these possibilities as far as we can, because doing so will both support and enact the politics of solidarity and mutuality that we believe in.

VOID NETWORK (Athens-Greece) written by Gene Ray and George Sotiropoulos

*George Sotiropoulos is Doctor of Political Theory and author of A Materialist Theory of Justice: the One, the Many, the Not-Yet.

*Gene Ray is Associate Professor of Critical Theory and author of Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 and Beyond.

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Sustainable Ways of Living: Food Production & Distribution- Mutual Aid

Interviews with comrades in Frankfurt practicing collective food production and alternative ways of distribution based on mutual aid and social awareness, experimenting with ecological, alternative and sustainable ways of living. Research by VOID NETWORK / Tasos Sagris & Sissy Doutsiou https://voidnetwork.gr

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The post Feeding Dual Power: Food Sovereignty, Anti-Fascism and other Pandemic Struggles appeared first on Void Network.

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“I didn’t think the Apocalypse would have this much admin”

– A teacher from Hastings

Setting aside the more technical and delicate issues of agency and intentionality, a virus, like the by now notorious Coronavirus (aka SARS-CoV-2), has a certain mode of being, with its peculiar rhythms and refrains. To a substantial extent, in a modernized society, the comprehension of the ontic structure of a virus, of its “being” or even better of its becoming (indeed quite a dynamic one, with a marked capacity to mutate)falls within the cognitive domain of the natural sciences.One of the lessons that the pandemic should have brought home to social and political theorists is that reducing scientific discourse to its aspects of power and control or to its formal structure as a “language-game” can become a recipe for a Black Death-level of disaster. This is not to deny the intricate and institutionalized links between scientific knowledge and capitalism or the modern state, which go much deeper than a simple misuse, nor their occasionally catastrophic consequences. Science, like any other system of knowledge, is a social practice, that cannot be entirely disembedded from the sociopolitical relations within which it operates. Nevertheless, the contents of scientific knowledge are not simply reducible to the wants and needs of capital, nor would the abolition of capitalist relations of production immediately make defunct quantum physics, thermodynamics, evolutionary biology etc.For the case at hand, that systems of scientific knowledge have developed a capacity (far from complete to be sure) to delineate the composition and behavior of pathogens is a major break through in terms of their containment and treatment. If a leftist politics is to challenge the dominant administration of the crisis, it must be able to take the “hard sciences” into consideration, and to build channels of cooperation and mutual feedback –which can be critical and transformative in its scope – as well as provide spaces for their fruitful advancement.

Then again, from the perspective of critical theory this (if left to stand on its own) is an inadequate inference, since it tends to yield skinless and arbitrary comparisons between different social-historical periods, effectively reproducing a naïve liberal progressivism a la Steven Pinker,which amasses statistics and graphs to assert how much better things are today(whilst drowned and encamped bodies pile up at the borders of enlightened Europe).A virus’ epidemiological journey is not only a biological process, it is a social phenomenon, which in fact, as the recent pandemic reveals, may well reach the status and intensity of an event. This generic proposition holds true whether the site of a virus’appearance is a local ecosystem somewhere in the Amazon or an industrial megacity like Wuhan.In fact, the distinction is mainly analytical, for “nature”as sentient materiality is already social, in that it contains structured forms of community as one of its main determinations,just like “society”, from a hunter-gatherer tribe to the most technologically advanced social formation,never stops partaking in the physical strata of the world, the microbiological substrata included–yet another painful reminder of the coronavirus pandemic.The task of critical theory therefore must be to sublate– which is not quite the same as to abolish – the distinction between the natural and the social in order to study the material environment within which SARS 2 has emerged and which the latter subsequently affects in its various dimensions.

A brief sojourn in the epigenesis of a social crisis

“The bug, whatever its point of origin, has long left the barn, quite literally.”

– Robert Wallace, Big Farms Make Big Flu

That the material environment of today’s world, hence the spread of the viral strains it breeds, is conditioned to an unprecedented scale by human agency,in particular by the systematic activity of the techno-industrial complex, is not a distinctly Marxist claim, being registered also by scientific research funded and conducted within mainstream institutional channels. Nor is there anything leftist or radical in asserting that the coronavirus pandemic would be impossible without the forms and processes of social and economic connectivity and integration that go by the term “globalization”. What critical theory can add(among other things) is a delineation of the social force that acts as a singular and potent determination of the material environment on a global scale, and which can consequently be legitimately considered a key catalyst both of macro-historical processes, like climate change,and short-term yet recurrent phenomena like epidemics;and this social force is none other than capital.

To be sure, “Capital”(especially when writ large) can be used in an entirely abstract manner, explaining everything and nothing, which can be at the same time a pretty vulgar and moralistic manner, which turns a complex process into the grand villain of history. Yet, there is nothing abstract, simplistic or moralizing when theoretical analysis attends to the ways the production and circulation of viruses is conditioned by the forms of mass production, circulation, exchange, and consumption through which capital actualizes itself today.Intensive monocultures and huge concentration of live-stock, systematic contacts between humans and other animals, unsanitary working and living conditions (chiefly in the industrial peripheries), expansive markets, incessant flows of goods and humans, crowded megacities; in brief, the real movement and spatialized actuality of capital valorization and accumulation, embedded as they are into distant social formations and a world-market that brings them together,do not only facilitate zoonotic transfer and the rapid spread of viruses, they create evolutionary pressures for the development of its more virulent forms. To quote from the brilliant text of Chuang:

“the basic logic of capital helps to take previously isolated or harmless viral strains and place them in hyper-competitive environments that favor the specific traits which cause epidemics, such as rapid viral lifecycles, the capacity for zoonotic jumping between carrier species, and the capacity to quickly evolve new transmission vectors”.

Although much more unpacking is certainly required, the parallel with neoliberal forms of subjectification and financialization – which also require flexibility, adaptability, rapidness, transferability (and quite often virulence) as key capacities for thriving in the hyper-competitive environment of the world market – is too attractive not to be highlighted. Nor should we avoid drawing the provocative inference: the material environment of late capitalism fosters the development of highly self-assertive forms of individuation, which are potentially damaging to the communities that host them. How far this analogy can be drawn should be left open. It certainly must not be taken to mean that entrepreneurs are parasites or financialization a viral strainn or conversely that viruses are driven by the “spirit of capitalism”, much less by anything like ambition.But it cannot go unnoticed how among different life-forms or, more generically, forms of being,homologous patterns of behavior are developed as a response to the pressures exercised and the opportunities provided by current socioeconomic conditions. To this extent, regardless how we tackle it theoretically and philosophically, we are not dealing here with a superficial resemblance but with a substantial analogy: similar to the way individual entrepreneurs or enterprises tend to stand out in the“free market”precisely because of their competitiveness, viral strains “tend to stand out precisely because of their virulence”.

Following this materialist line of thought, Chuang astutely conceives of the coronavirus pandemic as a social contagion, whose various contours need to be mapped out. The more immediate of these contours is of course the one that concerns health. That the outbreak is serious in an out-of-the-ordinary way cannot be measured simply by the death toll – even though, as numbers increase exponentially, the mortality rate of Covid-19 weighs heavily as a potent factor – but by the outbreak of a virus for which there is neither herd-immunity nor vaccines or medicine and which consequently has a high degree of penetrance. In this respect, as Wallace remarks, statistical comparisons with the influenza (when they are made for the purpose of explaining away the pandemic as an “exaggeration”, driven by ulterior motives and interests) are an entirely misplaced “rhetorical device”.Then again, that the epidemic journey of a viral strain morphed into a worldwide health crisis is not irrelevant to social context, specifically to the condition of health care systems in countries where the outbreak has spread. It is unlikely that any healthcare system would not be strained by a sudden and exponential increase of people in need of hospitalization. Yet, as it has been widely argued,e.g. by Mike Davis and David Harvey, neoliberal policies (with their consistent devaluation of public health care systems and their“just-in-time”management) combined with the near total domination of the pharmaceutical sector by corporations (driven by profit and underfunding research aimed at prevention) has made states ill-prepared for a potential pandemic, despite warnings to the contrary. Coupled with the initial underestimation of the threat by governing authorities, the lack of discipline on the social basis (again mainly at the eastly phases) and sprinkled with good doses of anti-Chinese propaganda and orientalism, many factors came together to ensure that a health crisis with global reach would break out. Alain Badiou is adamant that, virulent as the viral strain may be, there is nothing novel or worthy of critical thought in the pandemic, save its spread to the “comfortable” West. Even this fact should not be underestimated though, for the outbreak of a lethal and rapidly transmitting viral strain to the center of today’s hyper-connected world, inevitably gave rise to the specter of a crisis that we have been accustomed to see on screens. Infecting our dystopian imaginary as much as our bodies, Covid-19 has elicited an affective mass transmission of vulnerability and insecurity.

Serious as the health-crisis may be (and it looks quite serious), what makes the social contagion sufficiently disruptive to pass the threshold of an “event” are its wider consequences.In these terms, it hardly takes a Marxist to realize that, having emerged within and circulated through the worldmarket, the coronavirus was bound to affect the extensive and intensive circuits of production, exchange and consumption that constitute today’s globalized economy. Some in fact have been quick to pinpoint in economic interests and calculations the true cause behind the façade of global epidemic, confidently exclaiming (in the words of an autonomist’s poster in Athens) that the coronavirus “is not a flu but a commercial war”. For sure, against vacuous invocations of an international community standing together in solidarity, it is sensible to expect that the pandemic will aggravate existing economic and geopolitical rivalries. Reductions of the pandemic to economic interests however actually mar this issue by soaking it in a conspiratorial logic, which assumes an impossible intentionality and control over a torrent of events – even more so, events involving nonhuman factors. Factories, businesses, shops, industries have ceased operating or started operating far below their usual velocity, while,receiving the vibes of the shutdown, the stock market commencedits own free fall; the overall result has been a major shockwave affecting all the key domains of the capitalist market: supply, demand and finance.This surely does not stop individual enterprises, even entire economic sectors,from profiting or profiteering (the line between the two being blurred as the mechanism of “supply and demand”receives input from the spreading social contagion).There is nothing novel here: in all major social crises, be it wars, natural disasters or even popular uprisings, some find an opportunity to make“big bucks”. Yet, just like the fact that during the Second World War some companies profited does not alter the equally recorded fact of widespread economic devastation in whole continents, neither the increased profit of individual companies nor even the accelerated activity of economic sectors to day excludes the occurrence of an unexpected “great deceleration”.

“Unexpected” does not mean “out of the blue” or “ex nihilo”. Pretty much like national healthcare systems, even the more robust economy would be put to the test by a shutdown of such scale,much more so a global economy that was having enough troubles to allow predictions of a new cycle of recession and crisis to achieve wide circulation. In this respect, even though multiple scenarios can still be made, depending on the standpoint of the speaker,SARS 2, a true “agent of chaos”, is going to reveal and aggravate the chronic problems and systemic weaknesses of the current economic system, both on a global/international and on a national level – something that clearly allows for diversity in form and intensity. Granting the open nature of the events and the different outcomes they may yield, the salient point is that, along with a health crisis, the social contagion the coronavirus has spurred takes the shape of an economic crisis of potentially gigantic proportions. And since by “economy” we refer not only to some figures on a balance sheet but to the social (re)production of life, just like “health” refers not only to the well being of individual bodies but to the smooth operation of a structured yet vulnerable collective assemblage, we can ultimately grasp why the unfolding social contagion marks the epigenesis of a generalized social crisis. Expectedly, faced with the reality and,no less important,the specter of disruption that such an extensive crisis necessarily entails, the state as ultimate guarantor of the smooth and proper functioning of contemporary societies has been called upon.

The immunological Urstaat and the new normal

“Build Babylon, the task you have sought. Let bricks for it be moulded and raise the shrine”

– Enuma Elish, 57-58

There is a veritable assumption– a true “myth” in the Barthian sense – among advocates of the free market that the forms of competitive interaction composing this institution are structured by a mechanism of self-regulation,capable of achieving and maintaining in the long-run a certain homeostatic balance. The committed evangelists of this idea are willing to embrace the “creative destruction”necessarily entailed in the process– after all they are rarely affected personally by it. Moreover, with the exception of the true zealots, free-market advocates (those widely regarded as apostles of neoliberalism included) acknowledge the need of public law as a safeguard to property and capital accumulation, as well as some form of state regulation and intervention, which may not be restricted to the role of a “watchdog”, as it extends to institutional and legal facilitation, but which, if need be, can become considerably intensive and repressive, e.g. establish a military dictatorship that makes “commies” disappear. Why should the principle change when the threat posed to the market comes not from communists and unruly workers but from a viral strain? After all, historically, communism has been depicted as a “bacillus”, leading a century ago to the establishment of a “sanitary zone” meant to contain the epidemic in Russia, which had already fallen victim to the disease.“Biopolitics”, and the intermingling of medical and political discourse that it entails, can be a component of international relations and foreign policy as much as of domestic policies directed to the population living inside a given territory.

The inference to be drawn from all these is that the extensive state intervention which we are witnessing, and which seems to follow the exponential growth rates of Covid-19, in no way spells the sudden “death” of neoliberalism, even less so of capitalism. In sharp contrast, even if it is accepted that the “normal” political form of a capitalist society is that of a liberal state (a contested claim), highly authoritarian forms of statism are still not just a digression but a condition for the reproduction of the capitalist market, either at a national or even at a“world-system” level. To put it schematically, the crisis of reproduction of capitalist social relations, and by extension of parliamentarism as a form of political mediation, generates an objective tendency towards authoritarian regimes of regulation. Moreover, since we are dealing with mutations of the state form, a formal antithesis between authoritarianism and democracy can be misleading, for it fails to comprehend how the two intermingle and morph into each other. The transition from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian regime (or vice versa)is usually crisis-laden, yet it still takes place within the state form; which is to say, the latter absorbs the interplay between the two as moments of its own reproduction and history. There is thus a certain duality or to be more precise a two-in-one operating in times of crises of social reproduction: what from one perspective is an act of preservation, of dominant social relations,constitutes also an act of re-composition, unified in a singular process of restructuration, where the dissolution of identity is prevented only through its self-differentiation– thus, self-negation.

How far have we moved towards such a direction of regime change today?The recent self-suspension of Parliament in Hungary is certainly something to take note of, as it shows how the social contagion enables an immunological re-composition of the state towards more authoritarian forms. Nevertheless, talk about a “new totalitarianism” or “fascism” may look premature or even forced by a gaze predisposed to see them.What can be said with certainty is that most affected states have responded to social contagion by declaring a state of emergency and since then managing it through a varied mix of sovereignty and governmentality. The aspect of sovereign power is not hard to grasp, it is the very capacity to declare emergency and any measures that follow thereafter. This is the key point of Carl Schmitt’s infamous definition: no matter if the emergency is“real” or simply a fabrication, sovereignty is the power to declare it and thus assume the responsibility of its administration and resolution. That said, even sovereign power, insofar as it is exercised, has a dimension of relationality; and although its form is vertical and mainly defined by imposition, the exercise of sovereign power still requires a degree of acceptance. Therefore, while during an emergency the normative aspects of the state recede in favor of its prerogative dimension, normativity does not disappear, it is rather invested in the sovereign, who does not simply do what is “needed” but also what ought to be done e.g. save lives, businesses and jobs. The obvious problem here, highlighted virtually by everyone who has engaged with the phenomenon, is that in the process the forms of sovereign power that appeared during the state of emergency can be entrenched, completing the dialectic of preservation/ re-composition/ restructuration highlighted above.

Picking up on this fact, at an earlier phase of the pandemic, commentators on the left, like Giorgio Agamben, have criticized the emergency declared as a disproportionate, hence unwarranted, act, whose real purpose was to enhance the grip of government on citizens, taking one more (big) step towards an authoritarian state. In retrospect, it is easy to say that this was a very hasty assessment of the Covid-19 epidemic. In fact,such an indictment is not enough; what needs to be added, going back to a point made at the beginning, is a deeply worrying tendency in critical theory to undermine as a matter of principle the veracity of scientific discourse,or worse the materiality of the physical world, in the name of a sweeping critique of power and a vulgar social constructivism, which end up seeing everywhere domination and machinations meant to entrench it. As suggested earlier, this attitude can lead to dangerous paths,which start from seemingly innocuous claims that Covid-19 is simply a “heavy flu” and all that is needed is to wash your hands(!) but which can then arrive at a total disregard for science under a pose of radical resistance.On the other hand, this “critique of the critique” also risks missing a key point, which concerns the political effects and affects of the pandemic, namely the affirmation and justification (in a substantial sense) of the state’s capacity to adopt authoritarian measures and hence assume more authoritarian shapes.

Although it is quite unclear when the pandemic will end, we can be relatively assured that the more severe emergency measures will not outlive it, since no state can possibly aim at empty cities with highly reduced economic activity as the norm. Whatever valid critique can be made on the curfews that states have imposed, and there are criticisms even from the World Health Organization about their efficacy, it is exceedingly naïve to reduce all such measures taken to a sinister ploy by “state and capital”. One is hard-pressed to seriously imagine any collective form that would not have to implement some restrictions in face of an epidemic, which politically means to give its invested powers an authoritarian twist. Equally difficult is to see how hierarchy can be entirely replaced with horizontality, on an institutional level, without at the same time reducing scientific knowledge to opinion. This is not to say that people lack the capacity to discipline themselves without patronizing or appreciate expertise without imposition (though in our era of social media it is astonishing how much obscurantism if not plain idiocy circulate asknowledge).It is only to stress that in times of emergency the institutional forms mediating communal existence are pressed to adopt and develop more authoritarian lines of operation.Yelling“power”or “state of emergency” does not constitute a political event and the axiomatic assumption that “horizontality” is preferable in all possible situations, along with its underside  assumption that hierarchy is on principle an expression of injustice, are ideologemes that can be as dogmatic and damaging as authoritarianism. How would it be possible to respond to the epidemic and stop the rapid escalation of the viral strain if some institutional organs (either composed by scientists or receiving input by scientific committees) were not invested with a real power to swiftly decide and act, but instead such power was diffused in a meshwork of local assemblies in thrall of voices declaring with passionate conviction that the virus is a heavy flu or a commercial war (not to mention assemblies in thrall of other voices declaring that the holy communion does not disseminate the virus)?

Yet from a materialist viewpoint, it is precisely the objectivity of authoritarian measures in times of crises which makes them more dangerous, for it creates an affectively fertile situation for the suspension of critique and the immunization of sovereign power. To assert that not everything can be decided during an emergency –perhaps also in ordinary times, but this is another issue – through mass popular assemblies requiring unanimity or consensus is one thing; to claim that democracy is a luxury and, instead of fostering public dialogue and accountability of representative organs, to join calls from the right for  uncritical public obedience is wholly another. Moreover, no matter how deeply periods of emergency suspend the normal temporality and spatiality of a community, they always leave traces on collective memory and the institutional forms that retain it and manage it. The administration of the unfolding social contagion is not going to be washed away like an antiseptic, it instead produces a certain experience, upon which states will be able to build in case of another emergency. This is no dystopian speculation, for states always (try to) absorb a crisis as a moment of their history, so that even when a re-composition is performed, the continuity of the state-form will be affirmed. The administration of the unfolding social contagion itself, no matter how exceptional some of the measures may be, falls within a well-established process of securitization, that has been defining of state policy for decades. Riots, mass migration flows, extreme climatic phenomena, financial bubbles, indebtedness, epidemics and now a global pandemic; from the perspective of the existing capitalist order, hence of the state that sustains it, these phenomena share a key feature, they are sources of instability and factors of disruption to the smooth functioning of society; hence they are necessarily experienced as security threats – “security” being precisely the condition whereby a being can feel comfortable persevering in its current state. This is the backbone of the shift from the rule of law to a state of security, which takes it upon itself to constantly declare emergencies and suspend rights that are constitutional, hence theoretically part of a state’s normative structure. Security also provides the necessary affective basis for social acceptance and mass support, as it leads individuals or entire social groups affected by insecurity to desire the presence of more state, even in full militarized form. From this angle, the coronavirus pandemic may radicalize the historical trend of securitization that has been underway, and the authoritarianism it breeds. Given that the duration of the social contagion is indefinite, the critical notion of a state of emergency becoming the norm needs to be taken seriously, although its contours require further unpacking.

The overall process is buttressed by the second facet of the biopolitical emergency currently in operation, which pertains to governmentality. Alongside a staggering show of sovereign power, all affected states have in one way or another incorporated personal responsibility in their policy,stressing the duty of citizens to perform social distancing and “#stay home”. There is no need again to evoke a masterplan devised and executed by an omnipresent Power in order to grasp the tendency at work and the wider process it is embedded. The whole idea of “governmentality” was to conceptually grasp forms of power that do not operate through the vertical diagrammatic lines of a sovereign power that commands, but in a more diffused and horizontal way, integrated to the autonomous activity of individuals. Towards this end, a key mediating role has been played by new digital technologies, which individuals carry as an integral part of their own social and personal identity: cards and their pins, mobile phones and their tracking devices(either physical or preference tracking), social media and their accounts;these are only the more obvious manifestations of a technology that, the very same moment it is said to facilitate individual autonomy, enhances the capacity of political power to keep individuals accountable – by making them (keep an) account– of their actions. Recognizing the role of technology, we must still not be carried away by the dystopian version of techno-fetish, since even in states like Greece where biopolitical emergency is not as high-tech, similar (if less effective) patterns and forms of governmentality have emerged, blurring the boundaries between discipline, control and autonomy. For sure,the insistent stress on the role of personal responsibility in the “battle” against the coronavirus, may well be a policy calculated to displace discussion from the shortages of national healthcare systems or from other governmental policies – e.g. the scandalous tolerance shown to heavy industry in Italy and big call centers in Greece where all major tech-companies outsource their customer service, which have been allowed to operate without even ensuring that they keep the necessary measures of protection for workers. Moreover, the point here is not to dispute that people do have a responsibility to practice social distancing or that the latter is actually an act of solidarity towards other people, rather than an expression of petty bourgeois survivalism. Nevertheless, the consistency of the discourse of personal responsibility as a governmental policy, alongside the unspecified time horizon of the quarantine,carries a long-term dynamic of adaptation that can act as a catalyst for the systematization of a state of affairs where tracking and surveillance are not experienced as infringements but as a civic duty and a condition for the exercise of individual freedom, the boundaries of which will have been of course determined in advance.

While important to recall that we are mapping out tendencies, not finalized actualities, an overall picture still emerges: the biopolitical emergency that the unfolding crisis has generated raises the specter of a “new normal”, which among other features will contain recurrentrestrictions to movement and association, partly imposed from above partly accepted as an act of self-responsibility. While the regime that will embody this new normality will surely be authoritarian,there is much more involved than an increase in the levels of state repression, that is, a quantitative change; there is rather a qualitative re-composition underway (tentative, open and still fragile, to be sure)through which the spatial domains of the state and of individual autonomy are reconfigured. From a left wing perspective there is something unsettlingly dystopian in this path,heading towards a future that only science-fiction has visualized: a fully administered society that has effectively collapsed the distinction between heteronomy and autonomy, servitude and freedom, that is, the key distinctions upon which our politics has been premised.Yet this is not entirely accurate as a critical anatomy; for in their very novelty, these biopolitical spatializations are evoking political images and landscapes that are age-old and that, moreover, are not figments of a dystopian imagination but expressions of a veritable, utopian imaginary.

The notion of the Urstaat, proposed by Deleuze and Guattari , is possibly problematic as a genetic account of state-formation, but grasps compactly a key characteristic of the state-form, highlighted also by other, more historically nuanced, analyses: states may be structures of domination, yet from its earliest appearance the state-form and, more specifically, the cities that stand as its political, administrative, economic, cultural and ideological epicenter have a markedly utopian dimension, not standing as an ideological superstructure but overcoding the state’s everyday activities. At the heart of this utopia –every state’s essence, dream and fetish, is Order: in distributing rights and duties, in keeping records, in setting boundaries and limits, in caring for the needy and punishing trespassers, state is ordering a territory to assume its proper form. Needless to say, there is hardly any state that has lived up to its self-image, with phenomena like corruption, nepotism and clientelism being typical of states, past and present; so typical indeed that they can be considered endemic to the hierarchical structures and mechanisms of the state-form. Yet even the most corrupt and ruthless state needs to maintain at least the institutional skeleton of a normative order. It follows that, although states will tolerate their own corruption (always promising to improve),they need to eliminate or at least contain and control every autonomous source of disorder, either internal or external. But while every state loathes disorder, it also requires it and invites it as a condition for its consolidation; which is to say, states see reflected in disorder not only their Other, but the reason and righteousness of their own being. This is precisely what Foucault has grasped in his analysis of the disciplinary measures taken on the occasion of a plague outbreak in the 17^th century; as an embodiment of disorder, the plague fed into a “political dream”, “the utopia of the perfectly governed city”.

That similar measures are taken currently by states may well have to do with their instrumentality for an effective containment of epidemics; yet, in its very necessity, the biopolitical emergency of today may nourish a similar political imaginary,of a well-ordered, hence rational, society in which the state ensures that we all stay where we must and only act for identifiable reasons. From this point of view, the specific set of measures taken by governments and their debatable character is secondary – though far from unimportant; what chiefly matters is that the state appears as the necessary guarantor of order, hence, as the absolute condition of justice and right: “I the State, I am Order, I am Justice”. At a time of intensive securitization and growing authoritarianism, a flaring up of such a political imaginary is considerably dangerous, since at its endpoint stands the fantasy of total territorialization – the most potent historical form of which in modern times is none other than fascism.

It is necessary to insist here that the Urstaat, in its historical actuality as well as utopian proclivity, does not concern the realization of a homogeneous substance, but the reterritorialization of heterogeneous externalities in a hierarchical field of interiority, externalities which serve to give to the state its historical form.

Yet another thing that the coronavirus pandemic has served to remind is that even at the time of the so-called “Anthropocene”, where humankind is supposed to have become the chief macro-historical agent, there are numerous nonhuman externalities, from the climatic to the microbiological levels, invading states, affecting their civic body, subverting their stability, creating leaks and short-circuits. Point granted, equally arguable is that, today, the most powerful and potent externality is capital, which the state needs to integrate, regulate and ensure its valorization as a condition for its own stability. A relation of codependence is thus formed, yet the relation never reaches a full identity, either logical or historical;there remains an excess from the side of capital, whose global spatiality puts pressures to the territoriality of states (even the most powerful ones), and an autonomy from the side of the state, which allows it to take initiatives – even if these are to serve the interests of capitalists, as it happens in Greece currently with many of the measures taken by the government, aiming to ensure that businesses will not simply remain viable but will sustain or quickly recapture their profitability.

What all these points concretely mean is that the (re)composition and (re)structuration of a new normal is necessarily mediated by the effective immunological management of the spreading social contagion, in its twofold valence as a health and economic crisis.As far as the first is concerned, policies more sophisticated and targeted than the current quarantine should be expected to appear sooner or later. Nevertheless, as long as a vaccine is not available and no herd-immunity exists, Covid-19 will carry on being a haunting presence, a threat to public health and a source of anxiety and insecurity affecting social relations. It is hard for a state, even more so states evoking human rights and popular sovereignty as key legitimizing principles, to totally disregard the affective imprint of mass insecurity, anxiety, fear or the pain of regular loss that a pandemic brings. Moreover, irrespective of whether we use biopolitics as a catchword, no state can ignore public health, since it is a necessary feature of order hence a potential source of disorder; what will indeed happen if healthcare systems collapse? Panic, fear and insecurity can creep into the state machine as much as to the individual psyche, hindering its calculating rationality. Yet it increasingly becomes clear that the looming economic crisis starts to preoccupy authorities as much as the health crisis, nay it becomes their center of concern. To be sure, the two crises, being precisely the salient expressions of a social contagion, are connected even in terms of their administration. For the chief response of states and relevant agents, notably the EU, is to pour large sums of money in order to halt the effects of the great deceleration, whilst allowing systematic social distancing to continue. In the long run however, this tactic is unviable and bound to aggravate the economic crisis, by soaring deficits and turning private insolvency into a huge public debt. Simplistic as it sounds, at some point some will be called to pay the bill.

Expectedly, a growing number of voices, even in more tactful ways than Trump and the republican Right of the United States, begin to openly state that the economy needs to start running again in more regular velocities, which in capitalism of course can only mean constant acceleration. The trouble here is that a relaxation of social distancing in order to re-stimulate economic activity will most likely lead to another spike in viral infections. No clearly worked out plan exists for this quandary, and it is more than likely that states will adopt different policies, depending also on the political outlook of their government and the configuration of social powers reflected therein. Whatever its details though, the response will have to amount to nothing less than a reboot. As a matter of fact, the latter may have already been initiated and current configurations could move from being exceptional to become a component of the new normal: a working-force of “connected/domesticated”subjects working from home while another mass of “mobile/disposable” subjects working to provide for them, the result being a division of labor where roles are complementary but the immediate interests antagonistic. Point granted,many more sectors of the economy need to resume their regular velocities in order for the global market to be back on its feet; amidst a pandemic which may have not yet peaked this is far from easy. To an even greater extent probably than the health crisis, the climax of the economic crisis lays ahead of us. In this context, the tension that is already operating today will escalate its intensity: namely the tension between health and economy or in other words between the value of life and the objectified value that is capital. Even if the health crisis is overcome the tension will continue, because we can be certain that amidst an unraveling economic crisis the ruling class will attempt to shift the burden to the plebeian masses. Possibly this will entail a reaffirmation of neoliberal orthodoxy and a new round of austerity; perhaps a deeper re-composition and restructuration will have to transpire, even some revamped Keynesianism may have its window of opportunity. In either case, the first moment of the dialectic will be always operative, the preservation of the current order of things – for the Order that the state maintains concerns concrete social relations and their identifiable hierarchies and privileges. The wager here for the state will be to maintain the full initiative so that it can block experiences of injustice (along with the accompanying despair, anger and resentment) passing from the affective level to that of organized critique; repression of dissent and muting of criticism through the control of media outlets will be one means to this end,state benefits coupled with organized charity by the wealthy can be another. In all cases, the utopia of the Urstaat, that is, the apotheosis of the state-form as the embodiment of Order, will as much depend on the successful management of the crisis as it will be boosted by its escalation. In such a scenario, biopolitical emergency will frequently resume as a way to deal with another expression of the social contagion, which will be all the more likely to break out as the tension between the two other expressions, health and economy, grows to become a proper historical contradiction: mass insurgencies from below.

All (quiet) rise in the plebeian front.

“It’s time to build the brigades”.

– Commune

The streets of Athens, as of so many other cities in the world, are empty, offering at times a truly post apocalyptic imagery, filled with silent fear, hidden trauma and sad beauty.And yet,behind this serene and terrifying stillness, there is movement on the social basis: much of it is unfolding in digital space, but a significant part erupts and flows in excepted institutional spaces: in prisons, camps and workplaces. It is no sign of Marxist stubbornness to insist on the significance of the strikes that are taking place in various countries after the pandemic broke out. Struggles in the workplace at a time such as this are crucial for a number of related reasons: they pierce the ideological crust of national unity to unveil a material reality of exploitation and the class nature of (a significant part of) the governmental measures; they mark out the essential role of labor for social reproduction in any given situation as well as the significance of the body as a source of social value; last but not least, they are practical reminders that a state of emergency does not suspend the class-struggle and that even during the Apocalypse justice will play out as a contentious practicality. Who must work? Why and for whom do we work? How long and where do we work? What is the value of work? Who is to decide on such issues and on what criteria? Ongoing working-class struggles block the reduction of these questions to their functional and technical aspects (real at these may be) and unveil their irreducible political character.

Working-class struggles will most likely intensify in the coming months. And there should be little doubt that if these struggles infringe seriously on the economic reboot underway, the biopolitical emergency can be invoked to quell them. In such a context, it will be vital to build bridges of solidarity between the different segments of the working class: the mobile precariat, the domesticated cognitariat and the proletarian mass of unemployed that is expected to skyrocket. Such a unity is difficult and painstaking to achieve, requiring among other things a set of concrete demands that can be shared and a common political vision to bring them together. As far as practical demands are concerned two will stand out: universal healthcare for sure and possibly a basic income disconnected from market performance. These demands can be plausibly expected to contribute in a concerted challenge to the neoliberal gospel that has waxed lyrical in recent decades and lend support to a reconstruction of the social state, since without the latter it is hard to see how they can be realistically satisfied.But would they not then join the orchestra that signs of the state as the necessary guarantor of a well-ordered society? Which is to say, has the pandemic painfully revealed that, if we want today proper healthcare and descent living conditions for everyone, we need to depose the vision of a stateless society,which has fed the utopian imaginary at least since the 19^th century,to the altar of the Urstaat and become the apostles of its left wing version?

If demands for large scale reforms seem to be irresistibly pulled towards the state, the other major form of grassroots activity to have emerged during the pandemic attempts to maintain a critical distance from centralized power and invest on the powers of social self-organization. Despite the objective difficulties that social distancing and extensive quarantine pose, a whole array of practices and infrastructures has been flourishing on the social basis, having as their common buzzword “mutual aid”.

Regardless of their specific content, these practices and infrastructures have a twofold valence: first, they resist the atomization that dominant forms of governmentality advance and negotiate with the acceptable forms of social distancing, beyond the familial bond. As such, apart from the concrete aid they offer to people in need, they provide outlets for an affective discharge of anxiety and depression as well as conduits for the development of more positive and politically fertile affects. Second, horizontal self-organization offers a version of biopolitical emergency that makes the restriction of individual autonomy an occasion for fostering common responsibility, collective action and active participation in mutual well being. Which is to say, responding to the pandemic, a type of alternative biopolitics has emerged, which,instead of administering from above the well being of individual lives under a statistical concept of public health, proliferates activities from below that see in the active, mutual care for individual members of the community an essential facet of the collective good.

On account of their difference, this grassroots biopolitics has been politically invested with an antagonistic valence vis-à-vis the dominant management of the pandemic and its mix of sovereignty and governmentality. Could we indeed regard the practices and infrastructures of mutual aid in operation today as fulcrums of dual power, capable of breaking the spell of the Urstaat that encroaches societies? Unfortunately, affirming as much would be an exaggeration. All these infrastructures and practices quite simply lack the resources, know how and institutional means to adequately respond to the requirements of the pandemic on a mass, non-local, scale. Moreover, they lack representative power, which could allow them to issue effective calls and injunctions. Without such a capacity to mobilize the masses it is hard to see what “dual power” they have. To this extent, although they may provide an alternative diagrammatic form of operation to the vertical administration of the state, at present they can only be at best complementary to the latter. Thus, while their significance in breaking the state monologue should not be underestimated, their limitations testify at the same time to the necessity of demands directed at the state, such as those concerning healthcare and a basic income.

It should hardly be a surprise thus that many anarchist and far-left groups embrace these demands. Equally necessary though is not to shy away from the political inference such support implies: at the current conjuncture, social struggles cannot simply be “against the state”, still conceived as an 19^th century Leviathan with high-tech gear, but about improving vital aspects of social reproduction that the state has integrated.How can this be done without fueling the political imaginary of the Urstaat and its looming authoritarianism? An answer would be to insist on the democratization of the state mechanism as a parallel process to the reconstruction of the social state.Yet, the last cycle of struggles suggests that current states, not to mention interstate and international institutions like those composing the EU, have become immune to democratic flows coming from below. Under conditions of expanding crisis and securitization the trend towards an entrenched authoritarianism should be expected to grow not recede its intensity, absorbing popular demands born out of the experience of the pandemic as a moment of its further consolidation.

In this context it seems all the more necessary to maintain the autonomy of grassroots forms of activity and strengthen them towards the direction of a real dual power, even if this entails articulating demands that require state mediation – broaching in turn the issue of the collective form(s) of transversal between these two political domains. Without pressing this point too far, the following seems a sensible strategy at the moment: cultivating collective forms that can intervene in the intermittent system failures that lie ahead, helping overcome their worst aspects while at the same time preparing for and being ready to carry the wave of systemic collapse.

Ultimately, the forms of struggle that are going to appear or more prescriptively need to be forged in the coming cycle of events cannot be separated by the broader question of what type of society and what type of world we want to live in. Massive as they sound, these questions are being forced upon us. The escalation of the economic dimension of the social contagion will tend to link even more clearly and painfully with the environmental crisis. Given what was said at the start about the conditions fostering the outbreak of viral strains, the pandemic must be indeed seen as a “dress rehearsal”. More than one dystopian path is thereby opened up, one of them being what Christian Parenti has named the “politics of the armed lifeboat,” or climate fascism, which will complete the current trend of securitization and authoritarianism and establish its statist utopia, the Urstaat of the 21^st century.

Yet, there is also the pathway of a radically different, sustainable form of symbiosis with the world and amongst us, which will transform the crisis laden and crisis ridden material environment of today. No system failure will bring such large-scale change automatically and even less does it make sense to think of SARS 2 as a political “ally” or even worse as a blessing. Still, the social contagion and social crisis generated unintentionally by the long journey of a microscopic pathogen have made the necessity of thinking and naming such an alternative form of symbiosis all the more urgent. Disaster communism? Yes please…

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia. Empathy, Ephemeral Arts]

https://voidnetwork.gr

_________________

*George Sotiropoulos is Doctor of Political Theory and author of A Materialist Theory of Justice: the One, the Many, the Not-Yet.

*Gene Ray is Associate Professor of Critical Theory and author of Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 and Beyond.

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We are facing a pernicious virus that terrifies the world. To comfort our anxiety, we say to ourselves, that if we take precautions, we will survive. In the meantime, we try to reduce the hours we watch television. In fact, watching the news has become an essential activity to get through the day. Our traumas from the fake news, and our lack of trust in the media, have been replaced by a deeper wound, that of the constant briefing on a pandemic affecting us all.

Each one of us, upon reflection, confronts his or her own fears, engages in a dialog with themselves and redefines the meaning of life under the current circumstances. We exchange thoughts and make an effort to find a solution, a way-out. A plethora of articles and analyses are getting written. No doubt, we are up against the limits of capitalism, the limits of the commercialized-consumerist world.

How can we manage our lives and help in the lives of our fellow humans? What steps need to be taken in the light of compassion and happiness? Besides the deadly virus, we ought to confront alienation and to accept the inability of the governments worldwide to provide love, health, care, warmth, healing. For, all of these are needed, when a person is scared, when one’s life is in danger.

In what way can we deter our fear, now that our world has changed abruptly in one day? When will this threat end? And when we go back to our jobs, will we be thankful that this system of exploitation and social inequality is working again until its next crisis?

THE REAL THREAT IS OUR WAY OF LIVING

A global concern, a global fear daunts people. Fortunately, there is black humor and all those who continue to observe and reflect upon phenomena, come-up with texts and analyses, videos, independent news, social media comments and guidance, bottom-up information; all sources of communication beyond the establishment media.

When society is in a state of panic, individuals experience panic too. When society is in prosperity, individuals barely fulfill their basic needs. When society faces a virus, individuals get sick.

Looking at the past and the future through the eyes of a tree or a bird living on the tree’s branches, we should only look for happiness, joy and health. Where is freedom in times of crisis? Society, institutions, laws, the lifestyle of the modern individual are reproduced in the consciousness and the sub-consciousness. What exactly is happening in the free market now that all we want is to live and all that matters is the health of our loved ones? The instinct of life and the understanding of death counterbalance, in our minds.

When a lifeline is destabilized and a living organism is weakened, then the feeling of insecurity and anxiety prevails. We must, by all means, protect our sense of harmony, our love for life, our ability to think and understand events. We need to make a decision: this is what we are living in now, and we are here united to face it and change it. It’s not absurd. Capitalists have for centuries threatened the lives of all living beings – global capitalism has been making this threat increasingly more dangerous worldwide. The industrialization and destruction of nature, the pain of the war refugees, poverty, the competition and the daily struggle for survival have spread over our lives as an epidemic, for some time now; we must finally learn new ways to resist and support each other.

The Romantics envision a social uprising carried out by the plebeians, with expropriations and secret encounters in secret parts of the city. Radicals look forward to the collapse of capitalism, and social-justice analysts predict a militarized society, a totalitarian world.

AND WE ALL WONDER: “But, What sort of life is this?”

Those of us who are passionate with love for social justice – and not just our own individualistic survival – are constantly looking for the wrong, for the broken cog of the machine. We are looking for another way of living, a new language, new meanings, new relationships and ways to relate to one another and ways to fight against injustice. What we experience today will surely change us. Let us change for the best, be more compassionate and not phobic and racist towards our fellow humans. Let generosity become a way of living. Ecological awareness is essential in order to be able to breathe in a suffocating world that kills life and industrialises the Earth. Rediscovering ourselves is interlinked with the political world. What have we understood and what are we going to understand about the social conditions of our existence? What are we going to understand about ourselves? Personal difficulties, problems and stress can all provide an opportunity to understand that:

Harmony is gained by emancipation.

And what does ’emancipation’ mean? Absolute self-determination – to make decisions for your own life and those decisions ought to be for the benefit of others – no one, after all, can be happy on his own. The purpose of helping one another, and attaining supreme joy, entails gratitude to nature and equitable cooperative relationships.

But what am I thinking of now? At the moment, the world is severely wounded, and I’m thinking about self-determination? Yes, because my body and soul are trying to fight this fear. I know that one relationship is necessary for our survival, the relationship between humanity and nature. Our body is the actual intersection between humans and nature. Now that our body is getting sick, the whole body of society has become ill; we must take care not to disturb our minds with thoughts that are utterly dystopian and suffocating. I hope that dignity is safe-guarded and strengthened for it cares for the sick and the virus carriers and does not treat them like pests. My hope is that we do not treat coronavirus patients, the same horrible way, as we treated war-refugees; and way we battle coronavirus will give us the opportunity to understand the pain of others including all others who are in pain and suffering.

WORKPLACES & PLACES OF CONSUMING ARE DEADLY TRAPS NOW AND EVER

How is it possible to achieve quarantine in a world where our basic needs depend on an economic system based on exploitation and the ownership of the means of production and the market supply of goods is owned by individuals, with a predominant profit motive? Getting our food right now requires a job and a supermarket. In the coronavirus regime, we are obliged – now and ever – to constantly throng around potential sources of virus-spread, work places and supermarkets – in any case, that is all we are allowed to do anymore.

To buy your food you are advised to wear gloves, keep a safe distance from other consumers and wear a surgical mask. But what if we all had a garden in our house, on our terrace, on our roof, in our neighborhood? How many of us have a small field, a farmland with vegetables, fruit, and spices – wasn’t this, anyway, the reason for the democratic uprising in ancient Athens? The modern man – or better from the era of feudalism onwards – is forced to bind himself to a one-sided order of things, a one-dimensional activity – that of labor and consumption for the sake of private profit and the suppression of the infinite possibilities of each one of us separately, and of our collective strength.

Now we live in this swamp of profit and control. And now we have to get used to the interior travel restrictions as the best solution for our survival. We got used to our work being a tormenting suffering and bittering, money is scarce and never enough, the time is hard to pass – our work has now become a place that puts our lives at risk. There are no ‘unnecessary strolls’ and walks, there are many, far too many, useless and pointless jobs, all of which we are forced to do, just to keep the profit engine running, destroying our land and our lives.

QUESTION THOSE WHO DESTROY OUR LIVES AND NATURE

It is not unreasonable at this moment to question the existing social system and seek the path to liberation. All of these virus protection measures the states are taking at a global level are cruel, coup d’état-like in some cases, frightening and incomplete on the other – since they do not cater for the care of those who are not considered first-class citizens (such as the homeless, the mentally ill, the poor, the prisoners, the refugees and the socially excluded), and work is repeated day after day within the boundaries of incarceration and insanity. Which are the people that are seen, by social institutions, as parasites, and for this are unable to access sanitary facilities and practices? Do they all have a house to stay in? Can everyone leave their work to stay at home or work remotely?

It is possible for all private and public sector workers, all freelancers and farmers to be protected from the virus. This can only be done if the state cuts down on all “unnecessary” spending, gives up “bullshit” jobs and allocates money – our money! – on the care and support of workers, young people, housewives, doctors, teachers, underprivileged artists and all who make up this society and their income is lost. There are European ‘culture’ programs – for example – that give millions and billions of euros to cultural enterprises and NGOs to implement ‘innovative ideas’, to promote ‘European values’ of ‘solidarity’ and ‘gender and race’ accessibility; all hypocritical slogans inviting million-dollar investors and sharks who live off the grants. Should we not demand that all these funds be distributed at once to those suffering from the plague of coronavirus and to social structures so that we will be able to take care of each other more effectively? There is no other way to save our civilization but to do all we can to help and save our fellow humans.

As regards the management of the spread of the virus, and its treatment the following question arises: What kind of management do we want? What kind of management can we have? Who will make the decisions? Surely we all wish to live in a society of well-being and prosperity, where we all are healthy and well-off. Have the states, the rulers, capitalism in recent years been able to offer this well-being without a catastrophic tradeoff? Are they now able to protect the population? Are they now able to create a safer, less tormenting way to deal with the virus? Is it not a sign of the total failure of the world capitalist system, the constant production of humanitarian, ecological, economic and social crises and disasters? How much more “austerity and patience” will we endure? How much more obedience will we show to politicians who hinder mankind from moving towards a fairer world?

OUR LIFE BELONGS TO US

A more all-round view of reality is needed. Human beings are facing a major health crisis and when at the same times are at the threshold of a totalitarian regime. Those who govern us choose – the one and only way to deal with this abundant crisis – to give orders and impose bans. This way, they shift the responsibility to us for everything they did and didn’t do all those years. Capitalism needs a state-suppressing machine to continue to destroy our lives. We need social structures of solidarity and mutual-aid; we neither need the state nor the capitalists.

The only suggestion that rulers dare to make to society is interior travel restriction. Enforcing upon us incarceration creates a sense of horror, vis-à-vis of the collapse of our personal freedom. What else does the future hold for us? Slavery cast upon all kinds, existing and non-existent enemies? Who is the one that chooses the enemies of this society every time?

Medical quarantine is necessary, at the same time though, it is a situation that is causing discomfort to an increasingly uncertain world. We are in a situation that perpetuates uncertainty and gives the government the right to decide on our every move.

We want a more humane civilization that respects our emotions. Mutual help can set us free from individualism and fear. It now becomes apparent that we are together in the same chapter of History, in the same boat, in the same stormy sea. We have to take on our responsibilities, protecting each other even staying away from each other for some time, until the cure and solution will be found. Let’s use these days to challenge the dominant way of thinking, to think about how a society could have a fully free Health System with thousands of beds and ICUs operating per city and per village, to help vulnerable groups of the population, to communicate our message all over the world, learning to spend time with ourselves, not to jeopardize the health of our fellow humans with our actions and choices, to discover new skills (reading, writing, painting, sewing), to cook for our neighbor in need, to learn new names of ancient medicinal plants, offer therapeutic massage to our partner, make love and talk to our loved ones.

And as I’ m all looking for what secret ritual will save my family and all of us from this pandemic. And I find only one:

Critical thinking is essential for all of us.

MUTUAL AID – LET’S OFFER EACH OTHER CARE AND POWER

Could the coronavirus destroy world capitalism? I don’t know, I don’t think so. But let’s at least question its structures and their content, let us pose tough questions to those in power and demand immediate answers. What takes over all of us, regardless of geographical hemisphere, is the anxiety for our daily survival; it makes us sick. This panic and anxiety that underlies every aspect of our social life reveals the inadequacy of the exploitative and authoritarian regimes to manage effectively the evil that has come upon us and all the rest that have forced us to live!

We would feel safer if we knew that our country and other countries had not destroyed public health for years, if we knew that we had free electricity, water and telephone in our homes, if we did not have to pay 80% of our wages each month for rent and bills. We would feel safer if we knew we had adequate Intensive Care Units, if we knew we had a large number of doctors, teachers, nurses, cooks, artists, poets and happy grandparents whispering to our children fairytales. There are many questions about how a society ultimately manages every health, economic and social crisis – what we consider important and what is insignificant. How do we meet the medical and living needs of the population? How do we protect the weak, the poor, the elderly from the speculators, the opportunists, the exploiters? How do we heal this world from social injustice?

Confronting the upheaving coronavirus epidemic cannot be a matter of restrictions, but of research for medication and for vaccines and of their free distribution for all; a matter of equipping the Health Care with the necessary medicines and protective equipment and the requisition of the private sector clinics, by strengthening the health system with human resources and new public hospitals. We need to produce and hand-out a completely free test for everyone – for, everyone has the right to know whether they are sick or not. Let’s be brave and think: Our living conditions are changing, today let us launch a new survival plan. Let society decide, not the rulers. Surely, from now on, anyone who talks about “private hospitals” will be considered a criminal. Surely, tenants must stop paying rent and bills until the crisis is over and demand a total rent reduction after the end of the pandemic. A huge rent strike is currently underway around the world. It is our duty to support it.

Let us express our deep gratitude and admiration to all medical staff, medical students, people working in welfare, those who participate in self-organized solidarity structures, and all those who will save human lives by risking their own, every single person in the neighborhoods who will help to alleviate the pain of others. Void Network as an affinity group promise that we will strive to be among those who will help in every possible way.

That’s what we need – care and treatment.

Long Live Human Freedom, Equality, Mutual-help and Love.

Each of us carries a story, of our own pain. Now we all have a common History. Let’s take these moments to get to know the world better. This whole adventure will be over, let us improve ourselves, let us create relationships and social structures for a more just and cooperative world – a world that stands against social injustice, inequality and the repression of liberties.

It takes patience; we need to look at life in a new way. We are sure we will meet again. Let’s prepare our future plans solely on the basis of love and kindness.

We will hug each other again!

LOVE – POWER

_____

Written by Sissy Doutsiou and Tasos Sagris

Translation in English:  Markos Bouketsides, Rodanthe Scourtelli

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts]

1990-2020 / 30 years of symbiotic fighting for Freedom

https://voidnetwork.gr

______________________________

READ ALSO:

https://crimethinc.com/2020/03/18/surviving-the-virus-an-anarchist-guide-capitalism-in-crisis-rising-totalitarianism-strategies-of-resistance

The post A message from Athens #Covid-19 appeared first on Void Network.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

__________________

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

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

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

[text: English/Greek]

Η καταστολή του κοινωνικού απελευθερωτικού κινήματος και των καταλήψεων προσφύγων και μεταναστών δεν θα μείνει αναπάντητη. Οι αστυνομικές επιδρομές  αποτελούν ιδανικό παράδειγμα για την πολιτική που επιθυμεί να επιβάλλει η κυριαρχία στην εποχή μας: όταν εμείς κοιμόμαστε το κράτος συνεχίζει να δουλεύει εναντίον όλων μας. Τα ξημερώματα της 13/3/2017 η Ελληνική αριστερή κυβέρνηση επέλεξε να εισακούσει τις εντολές της δεξιάς συντήρησης και τα νέο-φιλελεύθερα τσιράκια των Μέσων Μαζικής Εξαπάτησης και να επιτεθεί σε δύο καταλήψεις του ευρύτερου κοινωνικού κινήματος.

Η κατάληψη που εκκενώθηκε στο κτίριο του Δρακοπούλειου αιμοδοτικού κέντρου και βρίσκεται στην οδό Αλκιβιάδου 9, μαζί με την παραπλήσια κατάληψη της οδού Αχαρνών και Σουρμελή στην πλατεία Βάθης που συνεχίζει να αντιστέκεται, μπορούν να αποτελέσουν, με τις χαρές και τις λύπες τους, πραγματικά σχολεία για όλους τους αλληλέγγυους που πέρνουν μέρος στον τιτάνιο αγώνα προσφοράς βοήθειας στους πρόσφυγες έξω από καθεστωτικούς μηχανισμούς σαν άνθρωποι προς ανθρώπους. Οι καταλήψεις αυτές στο κέντρο της πόλης αποτέλεσαν και αποτελούν παράδειγμα άμεσης και αδιαμεσολάβητης αυτοργάνωσης των προσφύγων χωρίς την παρουσία και την συμμετοχή ντόπιων ακτιβιστών, αποτέλούν αυτοργανωμένους χώρους μεταναστών και προσφύγων  από τους ίδιους για τους ίδιους και για αυτό η κατάληψη της Αλκιβιάδου 9 χτυπήθηκε άμεσα από το κράτος.

Η κατάληψη της Βίλλα Ζωγράφου και του περιβάλλοντος πάρκου στην περιοχή Ζωγράφου αποτέλεσε ένα κοινωνικό κέντρο μιας γειτονιάς με πολύ έντονη συμμετοχή στην εξέγερση του 2008 αλλά και στα κινήματα που ακολούθησαν έως την τελική εξέγερση της 12  Φεβρουαρίου 2012. Σε μια εποχή ύφεσης των κινημάτων και αδράνειας από μεριάς της κοινωνίας το κράτος έρχεται να πάρει πίσω κάθε γωνία που κατέκτησαν τα κοινωνικά κινήματα την εποχή που αποπειράθηκαν να δώσουν αγωνιστικές απαντήσεις στην καπιταλιστική, ληστρική επιδρομή που παραπλανητικά ονομάστηκε από τους καταπιεστές μας ως “ΚΡΙΣΗ”.

Η απάτη της εκπροσώπησης των λαϊκών συμφερόντων στα έδρανα της βουλής από γελοίους πολιτικάντηδες και ξεπουλημένα κόμματα τελείωσε στην πλατεία Συντάγματος το καλοκαίρι του 2011. Η μαζική αυταπάτη της απελπισμένης πλειοψηφίας πως ο Σύριζα «θα μας σώσει» τελείωσε και αυτή εδώ και καιρό. Η απόδειξη πως η αριστερή διακυβέρνηση  δεν είναι τίποτα άλλο από μια ευθυνόφοβη και αντικοινωνική σοσιαλδημοκρατία είναι μπροστά στα μάτια όλων μας. Ο Σύριζα είναι ένα ζόμπι ΠΑΣΟΚ που αργοπεθαίνει βάζοντας κάθε λεπτό που περνά υποθήκη το μέλλον αυτής της κοινωνίας για να γραπωθεί στην εξουσία. Το κοινοβούλιο βρωμάει πανούκλα και όσοι θέλουν να το στηρίζουν με τις πλάτες τους και να το ποτίζουν με το αίμα τους να ξέρουν πως ζουν εις βάρος των παιδιών τους και ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΘΑ ΔΩΣΟΥΝ ΤΙΣ ΑΠΑΝΤΗΣΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΣ.

Το Μέλλον θα υπερασπιστεί τα δικαιώματα του και ΤΟ ΜΕΛΛΟΝ ΑΝΗΚΕΙ ΣΕ ΟΣΟΥΣ ΑΓΩΝΙΖΟΝΤΑΙ.

Επανακατάληψη όλων των καταλήψεων που χτυπιούνται από το Κράτος – Δημιουργία καταλήψεων και κοινωνικών κέντρων σε όλους τους πιθανούς και απίθανούς τόπους σε όλη την χώρα- Απελευθέρωση της καθημερινότητας μας από όλες τις ηλίθιες κοινωνικές υποχρεώσεις και τις κυρίαρχες κοινωνικές συμβάσεις – Άρνηση της κυρίαρχης κουλτούρας – Στελέχωση των κοινωνικών κινημάτων της εποχής μας και στήριξη των χώρων του κινήματος με την καθημερινή μας παρουσία-
ΣΥΜΒΙΩΣΗ / ΙΣΟΤΗΤΑ / ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ

Να στηρίξουμε με λόγο και πράξεις τις καταλήψεις.

Να συμμετέχουμε στις κινητοποιήσεις που καλούνται.

Καλούμε όλο το λαό του Ζωγράφου και τον κόσμο του αγώνα να στηρίξει ΤΟ ΚΑΛΕΣΜΑ ΓΙΑ ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΟΛΗ ΤΩΝ ΚΑΤΑΛΗΨΕΩΝ ΤΗ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΑ 13/3 ΜΕ ΠΡΟΣΥΓΚΕΝΤΡΩΣΗ στις 18.00 ΣΤΗΝ ΠΛΑΤΕΙΑ ΓΑΡΔΕΝΙΑΣ , 6η σταση (ΠΡΟΣΒΑΣΗ ΜΕ 230, 608,235).

ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ [Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες] https://voidnetwork.gr

2 SOCIAL CENTERS IN ATHENS UNDER ATTACK / Solidarity Announcement

The repression of social liberation movement and the destruction of the occupied spaces of  refugees and immigrants will not be left unanswered. The Greek Left government chose at the dawn of 13/03/2017 to listen to the commands of the conservative right and the neo-liberal Media of Mass Manipulation and attack against two occupations of the broader social movement in Athens Greece. Police raids are an ideal example of the policy imposed by the domination during our era: when we sleep the State continues working against all of us.

The occupation at the beginning of Acharnon Street (Alkiviadou 9) as also the nearby occupied building at Acharnon and Sourmeli that still resisting, both of them very near to the old Villa Amalias squat  in the center of Athens are – with the joys and sorrows of the past year- real schools for all the local solidarity activists that took part in the titanic struggle offering solidarity and help to refugees outside the mechanisms of the regime as humans to humans the last years. The occupations of Acharnon are the first examples of direct, autonomous and unmediated self-organization of refugees without the presence and participation of local activists. They are self-organized spaces of immigrants and refugees by themselves for themselves and this is why the occupation of Alkiviadou street was hit directly by the state.

The occupied park and castle of Villa Zografou in Zografou area was an important social center of a neighborhood with very strong involvement in the uprising of 2008 and the movements that followed until the final uprising of February 12, 2012. At a time of recession for the movements and inaction of the society State comes to get back every corner conquered by the social movements at the time they tried to give answers to the capitalist, predatory raid misleadingly named by our oppressors as “CRISIS”. The fraud of representation of popular interests in the parliament House by ridiculous politicians and sold out parties ended at Syntagma Square in the summer of 2011. The massive illusion of the desperate majority that Syriza will “save us” ended long time now. Proof that the left government is nothing more than another form of antisocial- “social democracy” is in front of us. Syriza is a zombie PASOK dying and putting every minute that passes the future of this society as mortgage to remain grasped on power.
The parliament stinks as plague and those ones who want to support it with their backs and to irrigate it with their blood they have to know that they live at the expense of their children and CHILDREN WILL GIVE THEIR ANSWERS. The Future will defend its rights and THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE STRUGGLING.

Re-occupation of all occupations hit by the State – Create squats and social centers across the country in all possible and unlikely places – Liberation of everyday life from all stupid social responsibilities and conventions – Refuse the dominant culture – Recruitment of social movements of our time – Support of the movement’s spaces with our daily participation

SYMBIOSIS / EQUALITY / TOTAL FREEDOM

Participate at the demonstrations organised in defense of the squats and social centers

Monday 13/3 at 18.00 Gardenia sq. Zografou area / 6th bus stand – BUS 230, 608,235.

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts] https://voidnetwork.gr

The post Επίθεση ενάντια σε 2 Κοινωνικά Κέντρα στην Αθήνα / Ανακοίνωση – 2 SOCIAL CENTERS IN ATHENS UNDER ATTACK / Announcement appeared first on Void Network.

Η εκλογή του Ντόναλντ Τραμπ δημιούργησε σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο ένα φάσμα αισθημάτων: μούδιασμα, οργή, φόβο, ανασφάλεια. Με τον έναν ή τον άλλο τρόπο, υπάρχει μία γενικευμένη αίσθηση ότι συνέβη κάτι το οποίο μπορεί να έχει πολύ άσχημες επιπτώσεις για το μέλλον του κόσμου. Την ίδια στιγμή, η ορκωμοσία και οι πρώτες μέρες διακυβέρνησης του νέου προέδρου των ΗΠΑ συνοδεύονται από σημαντικές αντιδράσεις, τόσο στο επίπεδο των επίσημων θεσμών όσο και σε αυτό του δρόμου.  Χωρίς καμία υποτίμηση του συναισθηματικού επιπέδου εμπλοκής με τα γεγονότα είναι απαραίτητο να επιχειρηθεί μία θεωρητική κατανόηση όλων αυτών των συμβάντων – της εκλογής του Τραμπ και των αντιδράσεων ενάντια σε αυτή – στην ενότητα τους. Μόνο έτσι μπορούμε, αφενός, να εκτιμήσουμε τους κινδύνους και τις δυνατότητες που ελλοχεύουν στην παρούσα ιστορική συγκυρία και, αφετέρου, να συμμετέχουμε θετικά στον διεθνής κλίμακας αγώνα που διεξάγεται. Το κείμενο που ακολουθεί είναι μία μικρή συμβολή προς αυτήν την κατεύθυνση.

“Oh, my Trump! On the figures of the global civil conflict”
by Void Network

There is no reason goodness cannot prevail over evil, so long as the angels are organized as the mafia

                                                                                                                                – KurtVonnegut, Cat’sCradle

While protests and riots may not be unheard-of phenomena in the history of presidential inaugurations in the US, there is something distinct in the mass anti-Trump protests and the violent clashes that accompanied them (no matter how small the latter may have been). Surely, Trump’s personality has played its part, but there is much more at stake in the ongoing protests than the reaction to a person who deliberately chose to be vulgar and to provoke to get elected. Indeed, it is in thevery fact of the election of a person like Trump – which proves the success of his electoral campaign – that we get a glimpse of the significance of the anti-Trump protests. To put it briefly, the protests are not a response to who Trump is, but an expression of the division that Trump represents.

In the same way that Trump’s personality is insufficient as a cause, the importance of the protests cannot also be measured simply by analyzing the reasons motivating the mobilizations, although it is evident that no serious analysis can ignore this factor. Even if we add upthe individual intensions of all those who go to the streets to declare that Trump is “not my president”, or more recently to protest against his decrees, we would still not come up with the“message” or “meaning” of the demonstrations.Rather,it would be theirheterogeneity that would shine through, which, perhaps, may not be so easy to reconcile. The fact that some tendencies are dominant and others are marginal hardly changes this verdict.

Where is the significance of the anti-Trump protests if not (not primarily at least)in Madonna’s insults, in Charlize Theron’s tears,in Michael Moore’s self-righteous indignation or in the windows smashed by the Black Block? It is in the event, that is always more than the sum of its parts: in the fact that mass protests took place (and continue to occur) as a reaction to the election of the president of the United States of America.

If we conceive of democracy, or more specifically, of modern democracy, simply as the form of capitalist rule, as some Marxists do, or as a façade of domination, as some anarchists do, we will have missed something fundamental about it (it is no accident that Marxist and anarchist critiques, for all their merits, have a difficulty coming to terms with the capacity of modern democratic systems to absorb the tremors caused by crisis and unrest). The definition of democracy as “government by consent”, while very partial and inadequate if taken alone, grasps at least one essential element of modern democracies (perhaps of every type of democracy worthy of the name, but this is not an issue to enter in this article). Modern democracy has evolved as a pragmatic system of mediating social antagonisms and managing difference in a consensual way. For sure, the archives of liberal democracies, even in countries with a long democratic tradition like the United States, are littered with repression, violence, exclusion, discrimination, marginalization etc. Still, wherever functional representative democracies have been established, institutional inroads have been created which, for considerable periods of time and to a sufficient degree for the functionality of the system to be ensured, manage to channel collective interests and desires in non-violentforms of expression.Indeed, from a certain functional perspective, whether this aspect is“ideology” or “fact” is secondary; what matters is its presence which, even in its failures, allows democratic systems to function.

Associated to this consensual mediation of difference, although not identical to it, is another aspect of modern democracy, the generation through elections of legitimacy, or to be more precise of legitimate power and government. Once again, critiques of elections that concern the extent which they truly represent the will of the people, or their failure and inability to act as means of genuine democratic accountability, are beside the point (something of course that does not strip these critiques ofthevalue of being true).Through multiparty elections, modern democracies not only integrate and recognize political opposition, in a way that civil conflict is suspended; they also make representation “representative” and, thus,legitimate. In this sense, acceptance of the electoral process and of the majority principle on which it rests is essential to the stability of a democratic regime. This dimension of democracy as a process that generates legitimate government is what attaches it to the modern state, or to put it a bit more technically, this dimension concerns democracy as a state form (“democracy-state”).

These fundamental aspects of modern democracy are precisely what the anti-Trump protests challenge. To declare that Trump “is not my president”,although he has come to office through free elections, is much more than the expression of a personal sentiment about Trump (no matter how much he is resented as an individual); it is to subvert one of the essential principles and aspects of modern democracies. At the level of analysis that we are concerned, it is not crucial if this is a conscious act by those who protest, though, of course, it makes a huge difference if such subversion becomes a political agenda with hegemonic aspirations. In the case at hand, it is more than likely that most protesters do not want to challenge the American democratic state, much less democracy as a form of government or regime. They instead want to defend it from what they perceive to be a threat to it, Trump. On the other hand,it is no accident that Scarlet Johansson pleaded with Trump to prove worthy of his title so she can recognize him as “her president”. Neither is it out of idiosyncrasy that Moore felt compelled to stress that the protesters are the “real majority”. Of course, in this case the implication is that the electoral system may not be adequate to express the majority, which would simply imply the need for a better electoral system. In all cases, however, a certain anxiety is evident to defend the democratic credentials of the protests. Part consciously, part unconsciously, the act of challenging the President the day (after) he was inaugurated is taken for what it is: a subversion of an essential aspect of modern democracy. It is this subversive attitude that becomes manifest also in the pledge to become “ungovernable” that seems to be gaining ground.

One may question here whether the assertion above does not risk vindicating the supporters of Trump, who depict those who refuse to acknowledge him as antidemocratic elitists or, in the case of anarchists, antidemocratic vandals. The misgivings are legitimate. Having stated the thesis in a strong manner, it is imperative to modify it. After all, it would be unwise, both from a theoretical and from a political perspective, to ignore the widespread feeling among protesters that they defend democracy or, indeed, that they practice a more genuine democracy, a “real democracy” as the slogan of the squares-movement had it. If the protests and the calls to become ungovernable constitute a practical challenge to the capacity of democratic elections to generate legitimate government, they bring to the fore another dimension, which is attached to democracy not as a state form but as a movement from below: the critical capacity to generate rupture and dissent, what Jacque Rancièrehas called “dissensus”.[1] Democracy, in this historic configuration of the concept, expresses the social division that inheres in society, and more precisely, for class-society, the tensions and antagonisms that cannot be totalized in a harmonious order of representation, even a nominally democratic one.

From this angle, the protests are instances of a typical phenomenon, given that democracy as a movement of dissent is a frequent feature of modern societies. And yet, there is a crucial element that differentiates the anti-Trump protests and resistance movements from other recent democratic movements, like “Occupy!” and its European counterparts, the Indignados and the Aganaktismenoi. The ongoing protests and resistance respond, but also are a continuation, of the “dissensus” expressed already in the elections. That is to say, the pragmatic dimension of democracy, as a mediating principle of social difference,has been practically questioned in Trump’s victory. For sure, the latter at the same time manifests the power of modern democracy to absorb dissent and to promise change. But it must not be underestimated that Trump was elected by making the divisions that cut through American society into a programmatic principle. This is,ultimately, what Trump’s victory represents: a division and a tension that, as a result of the ongoing crisis, have reached sufficient intensity to assume the form of a political agenda capable of winning elections in the world’s (waning) superpower.

Conceptualizing Trump’s election in this manner also makes possible its contextualization. Staggering as it is for taking place in the “belly of the beast”, the United States of America, Trump’s victory is representative of a wider trend, of a crisis of political representation that spreads over many countries of the capitalist world-system, especially at its “center” (or at any rate its more developed parts). This crisis, in turn, is the current form that the more general crisis of capitalist relations has assumed, the previous expression being the wave of international struggles that reached a climax in the years 2010-2012.

For at least two decades, representative democracies in the more advanced capitalist states were functioning under a peculiar single-party system: no matter which was the specific electoral system, governmental power was shared and exchanged between two political parties that agreed on the essential direction that societies had to take, as epitomized in the system of neoliberalism, financialization and globalization. In the United States this role was played by the two parties which composed its traditional political class, while in Europe the two traditional political familiesof social-democracy andthe center-right (in its various subtypes, Christian-democracy, British conservatism etc.) played an equivalent role. From one election to the next, including the various referendums that have taken place recently, the waning influence of these parties and the correlative crisis of representation becomes manifest. For sure, in the United States, due to its deeply consolidated two-party system, the crisis could not take the form of a collapse of the Republicans and the Democrats but of the ascendancy within these two parties of underdogs coming from their margins, like Bernie Sanders and, of course, Trump. No matter its specific manifestations in each different state, the overall trend is clear and while, so far, it has not acquired the character of a crisis of the democratic state, the argument that voting as an act increasingly becomes an expression of crisis and a reaction to the present political system may prove to be all the more salient.

Along with the crisis of political representation, Trumps victory expresses the parallel phenomenon of the rise of far-right politics. Usually, the latter is designated under the banner of “populism”, a term that is deployed with the explicit intention to conceptualize together the far-right parties with leftwing powers that also arose to prominence because of the crisis, like Podemos and Syriza (until of course the latter assumed office, now Syriza belongs to the “responsible” political powers). The dominant use of the term and its political functions have severely limited the analytical value that populism once may have had. Yet, it may still be preferable than seeing Trump and his European equivalents in France, Austria etc. as a triumph of fascism. Not that they lack fascist elements. But these are tendencies that have still not taken the shape of an identifiable fascist politics, although this is one of the historical possibilities that open in front of us.

No matter how we call it, what is the essence of this ascendancy of the far-right and its “fascistic populism”? Judith Butler, in the article cited previously, correctly points out that there may not be a single reason, and that those who believe who have the answer, may be deluding themselves. For one, the victory of Trump does not mean that millions of Americans turned racist or even fascist. On the other hand, to identify in Trump simply a symptom of the economic crisis is to downplay that rightwing populism (or however else we wish to call it) is not simply an expression of the crisis but one of its political mediations. In simple words, American or French workers who vote for Trump and Marine Le Pen may not have become irremediably racist and fascist but they still invest in an explicitly nationalist and xenophobic vision, which entails a very aggressive policy towards the multinational proletariat of today’s world. This, to be sure, certainly does not justify the high-frowned and self-righteous dismissal that some leftists and anarchists commit. Still, from an internationalist, leftwing perspective, it can hardly be an occasion for jubilation.

What has historically defined leftwing politics of any kind, from the more radical to the more moderate, is that it promoted changes which were thought to be progressive (and perhaps part of the reason for the crisis that the Left finds itself is its failure to move beyond struggles of preservation, or indeed of restoration). In contrast, what distinguishes (far)right populism is that its critique of the elite, of corruption, etc.is not attached to a politics of transformation but a politics of restoration. That is to say, Trump and his likes do not promise to change the capitalist system, but to give to the present order it’s just, true, form. The fact that this form is identified with national sovereignty and glory gives to new far-right politics its full color: Trump’s version of isolationism is just one type of the many neo-archaisms that are in vogue, another example being of course the rise of ISIS (and with the “neo” being as crucial as the “archaic”, since we are concerned with truly [post]modern phenomena). In the face of a crisis which affects all aspects of their lives – their material wellbeing, their identity, their psychic balance – thousands of people invest on the restoration of familiar figures from the past. It is this essentially conservative psychosocial state that makes them receptive to the deeply reactionary rhetoric and political agenda of people like Trump.

It is on such a level of an economy of desire that we may also understand the forms that political antagonism assume nowadays and of the division that Trump stands for and aggravates. Those who oppose Trump, on the level of a mobilization from below, are the most forward looking and dynamic groups, who invest on progress, mobility and are ready to embrace change (at least to a certain degree). Not accidentally, most of them belong to the new middle class, which embodies all these qualities: educated and skilled, open minded in terms of social norms and human rights, mobile etc. To be sure, we most certainly do not deal with a unitary group, whether sociologically, politically, or ideologically. Some of the protesters are affluent and react to Trump mainly for identity issues, others have been hard pressed by the crisis, others belong to the youth who feels a lack of prospect, differences which can be traced also in the diverse political agendas and levels of radicalism. The picture becomes even more complicated when we broaden our scope to include in the anti-Trump camp members of the political and economic elite, who are fearful of the adverse economic consequences that Trump’s political agenda may have. Thus, parts of the progressive middle-class found themselves making a common cause – the election of Hilary Clinton – with parts of the political and economic establishment, whose essential aim and desire is to conserve the current neoliberal structures of governmentality and accumulation.

The substantial inference here is that the blocs which form political antagonism currently are not stable. They are fluid assemblages which may easily decompose and reassemble in a different configuration. It is certainly not wild imagination to conceive that parts of the working class who voted Trump could be drawn to an alternative left radical politics, just like it is far from being inconceivable to expect that an upsurge of radicalization and political instability could make parts of the middle-class who now oppose Trump to conceive him as the lesser evil and as a guarantee of stability. In this context, we cannot but note the absence, as a collective force, from the anti-Trump protests of the marginalized proletariat which has recently revolted in the ghettos of US. This social group cannot be accommodated in the liberal progressivism that stars of Hollywood embody, other than as an object of sympathy and welfare, instead of a subject of change. How could it be otherwise, given that its main modality of struggle is the riot,[2]which is almost by definition excluded from the liberal catalogue of legitimate political action?[3]

If we add all the pieces together: of the various (and antagonistic to each other) neo-archaisms that promote change through the aggressive restorationof an idealized past; of the movements that appear and disappear only to reappear again, in their struggle for a better future; of the riots that continue to erupt from one place to the other; of wars that, along with displacing millions of people, form an explosive global geopolitical configuration; of the new economic crisis that is lurking behind every new “bubble”; of the ever-growing inequality; all these make for a very volatile situation. It does not make much sense to evoke some unproblematic universal figure as a remedy to this extensive fragmentation, since the latter does not come in spite but because of theone only truly actualized universality, that of capital. To be sure,the fluid nature of political antagonismdoes not also imply political relativism; the antagonisms, the hopes, the anxieties, the fantasies of today continue to be haunted by familiar, age-oldspecters: justice, freedom,democracy, equality, popular power. Rather, however, than being a struggle for the realizationofperennial ideals, the ongoing globalcivil conflict is a struggle over their content.

In this context, Trump’s election is certainly a reason to worry. Not only he deploys notions like popular power in a way that drives them from their emancipatory content and potential; healso expresses and represents the truly fascist potential of turning division into the principle of an authoritarian and racist totality. For all that, we are not quite yet at the doorstep of doom. The recent elections are also the expression of a potential that is reflected negatively in the figure of Trump. It is this potential that becomes manifest in the streets, in the demonstrations, in becoming-ungovernable, in the little graffito of the torched black limo: “we the people”.

[1]J. Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, trans. S. Corcoran, London and New York: Continuum, 2010.

[2] J. Clover, Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings, London and New York: Verso, 2016.

[3] Sadly, for the most part, neither the more radical political currents fare any better on this score, although they are more ready to recognize subaltern riots in a positive manner. Hard as it may be, the establishment of political forms, infrastructures and processes that can embrace the marginalized proletariat and its forms of struggle remains a crucial stake that the current conjuncture posits. For all its shortcomings, the anarchist movement in Greece provides here an interesting and promising experience.

text written by George Sotiropoulos from Void Network / athens group

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts] https://voidnetwork.gr

The post “Oh, my Trump! On the figures of the global civil conflict” by Void Network appeared first on Void Network.