Editorial - From Heiligendamm to Heathrow

“The decision to go to Heathrow was wrong!” This was the impulsive thought that was playing on our minds as we followed eight politicians and herds of protesters to Germany; to meet Shift contributors, eat in squats, sleep in tents and on dirty floors, drink 50p-a-bottle beer with ‘the movement’, and of course to “shut them down” – again. Throughout the journey, this impulse became a much reflected upon certainty (avoiding the quick guilty trip by plane allowed us the luxury of 26 hour-a-go bus journeys and plenty of time to think). Yes the aviation industry is a major problem, as the fastest growing source of C02 emissions plans for expansion fly in the face of any commendable efforts to tackle climate change. Heathrow seemed an obvious choice simply because of its size and expansion plans. But to make radical politics work, we need to come up with more than just big=evil!

Sometimes the Camp for Climate Action transcended such simple equations, but more often than not it presented itself as a protest for austerity. If the anti-G8 mobilisation in Germany showed anything, it was that protest is not necessarily progressive. Opposition to neoliberal globalisation did not only come from the Left. Anti-consumerist and “Bush go home” slogans were also heard on neo-Nazi marches. The common target on both sides of the political spectrum was the greed of a few causing unemployment, ecological disaster, widespread poverty and imperialist war. The German far Right had mobilised against a profit-driven system run by multinationals, America and Israel. Sound familiar?

But there are no puppeteers holding the strings of the world in their hands. Capitalist society is characterised by more hidden and complex forms of domination that underlie all aspects of our lives. Bush, Brown and BAA are all too easily depicted as greedy fat cats with a master plan for environmental destruction and world domination. But capitalism is not a conspiracy of a few politicians and airport bosses. The anti-globalisation focus on the opaque power of the rich and famous neglects the social aspects of capitalism.

This is where the choice of the aviation industry as the prime target of this summer’s Climate Camp is flawed. Sure, from a moral perspective, we need to switch to less carbon intensive modes of transport. However, it seems to reduce our critique to one that simply contrasts the ‘ethical’ lifestyle to an ‘unethical’ one. Instead of showing the interconnectedness of the Social and the Ecological, Climate Camp has picked the individual as the point of attack. Of course, the mass action targeted BAA’s corporate power and not individual passengers, but the message remained: “Fly less”.

This disrespect of the social aspect of our lives seems to us reminiscent of a Thatcherism that stood firmly against the assertion of social classes in the 1980s. For Thatcher, the Social was no more than the accumulation of individual behaviour, denying the existence of society. This green Thatcherism is one that we can see in the UK’s political centre. Cameron, Miliband and Co. are its true inheritors, with policy proposals that are aimed at consumer behaviour. Accordingly, Hillman, Monbiot and other movement theorists demand government action to make individuals comply with a more ‘ethical’ lifestyle. Yet, society is not just the sum of its individuals; it is shaped by social relations. The focus on individual consumption ignores the peculiarity of the social processes intrinsic to capitalism.

The campaign against the aviation industry is an ethical and moral undertaking worthy of support. And Climate Camp brings forward convincing arguments against the unequal distribution of power in society as one of the root causes of climate change. However, we also need to explore criticisms that go beyond moral and ethical positions. With this magazine we want to intervene into movement discourses, from the G8 to Climate Camp and beyond, and to force open spaces for a more radical analysis of capitalist domination.

Capitalism is no conspiracy, it exploits on an everyday level and there is no ‘do or die’. From this perspective, the emerging social movement against climate change is as radical as an ethical lifestyle guide.

Are we armed only with peer-reviewed science? - John Archer

This year the Camp for Climate Action apparently came ‘armed only with peer reviewed science’. In a society that hasn’t quite given up the idea that it should be governed rationally, this approach wins respect. However, whilst crucial to know the best available science, this shouldn’t eclipse the need for political discussion. The neglect of the latter was palpable at the camp: Were we a lobby group with faith in the oligarchy, or did we want to work towards dissolving the social and economic structures that caused this mess? The former came through strongest. The manner in which environmentalists are currently utilizing science may have unforeseen consequences. Of most importance, it leaves us vulnerable to cooption with agendas antithetical to the emancipatory ideals outlined in the original aims of the camp. An unlikely source of useful criticism on this matter comes from the writers of Spiked, vociferous critics of all things green. If you can stomach the numerous ideological divergences and their ‘interesting’ epistemological orientations, their demands to put the politics back into environmental issues are worth listening to.

Environmentalists have become used to discursive marginality, having spent most of their time simply trying to persuade others to take anthropogenic global warming (AGW) seriously. Suddenly hoards of unlikely people want to be seen to be green.

For some, it’s too little, too late, and too insincere. However, most campaigners see cause for celebration. Even ‘radical’ environmentalism no longer causes controversy. Campaigning has become like pushing at an opening door.

Whilst not discounting crucial advances in awareness, there are grounds for caution. Few people are asking important questions about the social implications of our responses to climate change. Where does the door being pushed lead to? What kind of world are we trying to save? Whose world? If politics is continually overshadowed by science rather than complemented by it, and all eyes are kept fixed upon carbon emissions, terrible things may happen in the background.

Many consider the situation urgent enough to warrant almost any measures. At the Camp for Climate Action this year, authoritarian and market-orientated proposals dominated at a forum for progressive, libertarian solutions. Intentionally or not, the affair became a dramatic single-issue mass lobby for punitive state intervention. Friends of the earth with D-locks. Campaigners concerns may not so much be accepted as co-opted, providing leverage for agendas antithetical to those outlined in the original aims of the camp.

Millenarian fantasies aside, capitalism and the state apparatus supporting it could survive climate change, though in uglier forms. Barring a clean energy revolution, this would entail cutting energy consumption by ensuring only a minority carry on consuming: Deepening inequality coupled with exclusion through green taxation; the poor being forced to sell energy quotas to survive; prevention of infrastructure development in nations hit hardest by climate-change under the ruse of sustainability, whilst rich nations aided by stolen majority world resources - including land to grow bio-fuels and organic vegetables - create fortress-like border controls.

‘Cut the carbon by any means necessary’ campaigners seem asleep to this, but what should be a nightmare is a fast approaching reality.

Those associated with Spiked-Online usually appear in environmentalist discussions as vilified ‘denialists’, neoliberal stooges, or Trotskyite entryists. Beyond such hasty assumptions, there is more to Spiked than mischievous contrariness and a social-constructivist approach to science. They’re one of few voices in the climate-change debate that touch upon issues outlined above. Their contribution provides a much-needed demand for reflection upon the political strategies of radical environmentalism, or the dangers inherent to the lack of them.

Reclaiming the human subject

Many core contributors to Spiked and associated organisations were once active Revolutionary Communist Party members. The RCP formed in the mid 70’s as an expelled faction of The International Socialists. Contrary to orthodox socialist peers, they perceived the working class as too indoctrinated to harbour revolutionary potential, and so instead concentrated on creating an intellectually combative and upwardly mobile vanguard. Following electoral failure, focus shifted towards elite intellectual realms of the media and academia. The principle vehicle for this was their publication, Living Marxism, later re-branded LM. Bankrupted by a libel case, LM became Spiked-Online. Many ex-RCP now write for leading newspapers, make prime-time documentaries, commentate on national television and radio, or organize high-profile conferences.

By 1996 the RCP had been disbanded, conventional political avenues declared redundant, and distinctions between left and right irrelevant. The key struggle was instead between those seeking to extend human freedoms and progressive enlightenment values, and those undermining them. With an unacknowledged anti-progress alliance spanning the political spectrum, the dominant spirit of the age is pessimistic about human potential to overcome adversity, obsessed with manipulative exaggeration of risks, fearful of material, technological and social progress, and inclined towards infantilising society through increased regulation, surveillance and state interference.

Even capitalism, driver of growth, innovation and desire for self-improvement, has succumbed to the era’s guilt-ridden miserabilism, and is fighting rearguard actions to present itself as ‘caring’. Spiked is unwavering in advocating unfettered free market capitalism, with virtually all state intervention negative.

Nonetheless, branding them neoliberal stooges is neglectful of their complexity. A parallel is their assumption that all environmentalists must be misanthropic, authoritarian, anti-development, and enthralled to a proto-religious vision of Gaia. Prominent in their coverage of the camp, Spiked often resort to predictable slurs, stereotyping, and building straw men out of superficial environmentalist arguments. A little attention deficit disorder aside perhaps, it’s easy to see what provokes such hostility.

If the majority of relevant scientists are correct, climate-change demands recognition of limits to certain human activities. ‘Externalities’ may not remain external, while ‘nature’ might not be eternally bent to humankinds will; a spanner-in-the-works for believers in permanent material progress. Passionate humanists also react aggressively to suggestions of another stage in the inevitable erosion of anthropocentricism.

Crisis? What Crisis?

In light of these difficulties, Spiked’s first approach to the environmental crisis is to question its existence. They are usually armed only with standard sociological critiques of scientific knowledge. Examples include funding bodies encouraging certain results, scientists holding culturally formed opinions that sway research, ‘science’ being methodologically incoherent, the paradox of permanent discovery and absolute certainty, and social factors delaying paradigm shifts. Josie Appleton, for example, states that the veracity of scientific discoveries depends almost entirely upon the “circumstances in which such science is produced”. Echoing others at Spiked, she claims that AGW theories “[owe] more to the anxious zeitgeist than to climate realities.”

I hope they’re right, and not simply missing the limitations of critiques that are, as post-modernist science critic Bruno Latour asserts, “useless against objects of some solidity”. You cannot deconstruct the reflective properties of carbon dioxide molecules. Likewise, past unreliability in the field should not entail automatic rejection of all climate modelling.

Nonetheless, there is not always the certainty many environmentalists claim. As Brendan O’Neill observes of the climate camp, “If, possibly, perhaps, risk…all these caveats are expunged by the protestors who declare simplistically ‘the science says we have 10 years to SAVE THE WORLD!’ Simultaneously, it is rarely considered necessary to know which scientists and which studies are being cited. Scientists say so. End of discussion.

The scientific consensus is often invoked to stamp out moral and political rather than scientific debates, providing a screen for environmentalist moral and political evaluations. There are two pertinent examples. Firstly, the individual moralization of carbon emissions; whilst necessary to a degree, it does as Spiked commentator Sadhavi Sharma points out, ‘completely let off the hook our social and economic systems’. An almost inevitable result of holding the camp at Heathrow, it made us seem, as Nathalie Rothschild recognised, “more like new puritans than radicals”. Secondly, descriptions of human activity in terms of a rapacious virus display misanthropy by locating the cause of environmental destruction in ‘greed’ central to the human condition, rather than as results of the social and economic systems people live within.

Both implicitly encourage increased state coercion to ensure the malevolent majority is forcefully controlled, and could easily transfer into horrific policies towards the rapidly industrializing majority world.

Spiked also aren’t averse to muddling science for political purposes. Whilst most climate-scientists are portrayed as unreliable cultural pessimists, paradoxically we should trust ‘science’ for solutions to climate-change. Humanity can invent its way out of any corner. This is exemplified in their stance toward GM technology; of course GM crops are safe, they’ll feed the world, even if half the cultivatable land becomes desert. Just don’t mention agribusinesses breathing down the necks of genetic researchers!

‘Armed’ with science?

A lead banner at the camp read, ‘we are armed only with peer reviewed science’. Armed indeed, scientific credibility is a vital weapon for marginalized campaigners. ‘The Sciences’ provides more than a baseline for climate-change discussions, it stuns critics and provides space for political manoeuvre. ‘The science’ that marchers were carrying was a report on contraction and convergence, which is primarily a political solution to climate change, not an assessment of it.

Numerous different commentators were simultaneously claiming that ‘the science’ leaves no solution but theirs. This included Mayar Hillman’s well-received proposals for the virtual suspension of democracy.

Indeed, environmentalist appeals for regulating, controlling, and reducing, assimilate more easily with authoritarian than libertarian political systems. As George Monbiot pointed out in his seminar, ‘there has never been a riot for austerity, but that’s what we’re asking for’. Most revolutions ask for more, principally more freedom to live according to ones desires. What form a libertarian-green revolution would take is a difficult question.

Subsequently, Spiked present environmentalism and ‘the science’ as a sinister anti-politics project. Josie Appleton suggests we base approaches to climate-change, ‘not on scientific facts but political critique’. Meanwhile, Spiked editor Mick Hume pointed out that traditionally protestors go armed with political arguments. Though political discussion without reference to relevant aspects of material reality is dangerous idealism, at the camp the focus was on science, with politics comparatively untouched, effectively handing the matter to the government.

Climate Science can deceitfully blend with politics and morality, become a distraction from necessary political discussions, or perilously ignored. Efforts must be made to integrate them more appropriately.

Acceptable risks?

‘Risk’ said Ulrich Beck, ‘is the moral statement of a scientised society’. Considering the scientific consensus on climate change, the lives at stake, and lack of technological solutions available, it might appear that only the callously immoral would risk continuing the carbon economy. For Spiked however, such notions display apocalyptic obsessions symptomatic of perverse cultural attitudes towards risk, and negative appraisals of the human subject. The precautionary principle embodies a society afraid of itself and its creations. Environmentalism, according to Furedi, is the work of “fear entrepreneurs” exploiting anxieties for political gain. We should reject this emasculating tendency to view uncertain futures “through the prism of fear”, and instead reclaim the human ability to triumph against adversity.

To environmentalists however, this may seem an article of blind faith, asserting humanism as the true successor to Christianity. The need for more debate that Spiked plead for acts as a long-grass into which the climate change ball can be thrown, as it was throughout the 90’s. Furthermore, this call is easier made when residing in a position of ignorance or little personal risk.

Spiked are however right to point out that the frenzied ‘act-now or we all die tomorrow’ routine could have harmful consequences for what little democracy we have. ‘The time for debate’ it is often said, ‘is over’. Does this refer to science or politics? Again, too often the two are confused.

Common ground

Ironically, as much as Spiked lament the onset of scientific green-authoritarianism, beneath a newfound green-sheen the establishment are not taking climate change as seriously as the scientists. Far from timidly backing away from that particular notion of ‘progress’, growth remains a priority over all others, as demonstrated by the Heathrow question. Far from opting in to the culture of pessimism, risky optimism remains central.

Beyond differing assessments of AGW and interpretations of ‘progress’, Spiked may share considerable unrecognised common ground with environmentalists. Sanctimonious and misanthropic elements aside, most environmentalist campaigners are true humanists, believing in the potential for rational intervention to change the world for the better of all humanity.

Many might also agree that cultural pessimism is at work in their movement, manifest in the immediate inclination to align with existing political and economic structures in the search for a solution, rather than facing them as part of the problem and looking forward.

It needn’t be so. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and so hybrid politics can arise in times of crisis. Effort is needed to overcome the apparent contradiction between emancipatory social change, and the challenges posed by climate change. The best available science provides context, but should not distract from political tasks. Far from climate science destroying politics and debate, it can throw it wide open again by bringing to light new matters of concern, new problems coupled with new opportunities as flaws in contemporary society’s orthodoxies are laid bare.

The root causes of this crisis are not particular buildings, particular corporations, or particular politicians, but the wider social, political and economic structures within which we live, our cultural priorities, and the dominant ideologies of our time. It is a ‘battle of ideas’, and this movement needs to wade in with more courage.

i Josie Appleton: Measuring the political temperature http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/3366/
ii Bruno Latour: Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern, Critical Inquiry 30, 225-248. 2004
iii Brendan O’Neill: Let the puritans protest http://spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3682/
iv Nathalie Rothschild: Heathrow Protest: Not so Happy Campers. Http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3730/
v Josie Appleton: Measuring the political temperature http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/3366/
vi Mick Hume: These self righteous clowns at Heathrow. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/mick_hume/article229... viiUlrich Beck: Risk Society: towards a new modernity. Sage, 1992
viii Frank Furedi: The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3053/

John Archer is based in Manchester, and writes and campaigns on a variety of issues, including the Camp for Climate Action. Amongst other things, he is interested in the relation between science and power. The issues raised by climate change leave him utterly confused.

Climate camp hijacked by a hardcore of liberals - Jessica Charsley

Introduction

The Camp for Climate Action landed with a thud at Heathrow this summer, directly in the path proposed for a third runway, at the busiest airport in Europe. I experienced both of the UK’s Climate Camps from the starting point of local level preparations. In this article, I do not knock those who put blood, sweat and tears into the camp, because it was a valiant effort and an incredibly inspiring experience. Whilst I had a fantastic time, I also think that if we are for ’social change’, it is essential that we critically analyze along the way, so this article will cover my hopes and fears before the camp and whether they were realised. I focus in particular on the messages that the camp gave out and the nature of political debate within the camp.

Mixed Messages

In the run-up to the camp, much promotional material included the message that ‘we can not trust governments and corporations to solve the problem of climate change’. This message was the result of discussion meetings had before the Drax camp and the Heathrow camp, on an open, consensus basis. The result of these discussions was that the Camp would take a fairly radical stance on the solutions to climate change, and present alternative ideas to those proposed in the mainstream. The platforms for the latter are huge, for example, the voices of major NGO’s, the government, corporations and the mass media. However, green voices in these situations are severely constrained by the very platforms they stand upon. ‘Legitimate’ organizations are rarely able to host voices of dissent. Legality, hierarchy, government and corporate influences are the issues that the climate camp originally homed in on as fundamentally linked to the problem of climate change, and these are the very issues that the mainstream ideas cannot confront, because their existence depends upon these concepts being intact. For example, an NGO would be liable for inciting illegal direct action.

The camp therefore set about building its own platform. The method of organization aspired to replace the hierarchical models we are accustomed to with horizontal systems. Rather than a pyramidal hierarchy, horizontal organizing allows participants equal ownership over and responsibility for a process. Whilst tasks can be divided, they are not delegated down to others and significant decisions must be reached via consensus because it is a rejection of leadership. Devolving responsibility for the camp required an enormous amount of time, with frequent open meetings held around the country throughout the year. This is not to say that the organization was inefficient, rather, that incredible effort was put into carefully constructing the platform in a manner that corresponded with the ideals of the camp.

Desiring inclusivity, mainstream voices were welcomed, and the camp attracted people with a variety of political persuasions, predominantly liberal. In other words, many people came with a desire for moderate social and political change, expressed in opposition to a third runway, for example. All who attended the camp were sufficiently worried about environment issues - and open-minded enough - to leave the realm of conventional lobbying tactics and legality. So what did the camp present to them as an alternative to government action? What were the radical alternative visions of those who agreed that the camp would not trust them the government to act? Unfortunately, from my perspective, the case against the government and capitalist social relations was not explored enough, never mind made strong enough. It was there, but only in glimpses, so the mainstream voices were again the loudest.

Granted, regardless of the camps’ message, the mainstream media would only have picked up on soundbites, so the camp did do well to get journalists reporting a criticism of economic growth. But, for the people who attended the camp, criticism of economic growth, corporations, and the government could have been the starting point for crucial debates and ideas sharing. The odd dig at corporations and the government can only hold up with a home audience. Meanwhile, the lack of emphasis on social change left us vulnerable to attack. For example, the camp put major emphasis on lifestyle change, even though most passers by could tell us that it is impossible to live sustainably in today’s society. Compost toilets and grey water systems are not things that the majority of the general public can opt into, so what remained was the demand for them to opt out of other actions, such as flying. Hence, one message of the camp appeared to be a call to ‘riot for austerity’, in contrast to calls that have historically rallied mass movements around a desire for prosperity.

One of the more radical messages of the camp was the call for direct action. In this case, the concept rested on very murky ground, but was presented as one of our features to be most proud of. The whole camp was geared towards a day of direct action, so the topic came up in almost every interview and press release. Although encouraging a break from the destructive codes of conduct that we live by, such as deference to illegitimate authority, direct action alone does not an anarchist make. One problem is that it can be coercive, and has been employed readily by fascists. Another is that it can be confused as a dramatic lobbying technique. Both of these problems were significant at the camp, for example, tending towards the coercive, it was inevitable that we would be accused of wanting to disrupt holidaymakers. Secondly, the majority of actions taken were in fact more symbolic than direct, in terms of both the amount of disruption caused and their interpretation as a demand to the government. I had hoped that there would be a little more honesty at the camp about the potential of direct action, or, non-violent direct action, as political tools.

Green Authoritarianism

I first became concerned about the politics within the camp when I saw the workshop programme lead with four white middle class men who have no trouble getting their voices heard elsewhere; Lynas, Hillman, Monbiot and Kronick. The star status given to these people made me uneasy, but this quickly turned to anger as I began to realise that their ideas would be left relatively unchallenged. . In the lecture by Hillman, for example, he explained that his latest published work did not go far enough in terms of expressing the urgency of climate change and the severe measures necessary to deal with it. Interpreting the camp as a plea to the general public to change their lifestyles he told us that instead, our best efforts should be geared towards lobbying the government, for it is only the state that can save us now. The talk was well received, even when it hit the topic of authoritarianism, stating that we can not risk having elections in which one party will offer higher carbon incentives, so in effect what we want is a suspension of democracy.

Also on the topic of state intervention, such as carbon rationing, Monbiot apologized to ‘the anarchists in the crowd’, despite the Anarchist side of the argument being left virtually untouched. So, as much as I was surprised to see a lack of anarchist theory, I was shocked at the fervor with which green-authoritarianism was received. The call for direct action generally sat uncomfortably next to the call for more state intervention, which would require a higher degree of obedience. At best, I would say that the enthusiastic applause for increased state intervention may have been down to celebrity culture, a reflection of the sheer excitement at the gathering, or, more seriously, down to better formed arguments. Although, this does not explain why the Turbulence panel were not received with such enthusiasm when they raised points in a similar vein to in this article.

A classic argument against anarchist theory is the insufficient time for a complete overhaul of the way society functions, so we are better off trying to improve peoples’ lives directly. With a renewed sense of urgency over climate change, many climate campers seemed to be erring towards the side of ‘there is no time to have anarchist ideals, we must succumb to the system which is slowly destroying us’. I do not at all suggest that in the run up to the camp a deep critique of capitalism should have been agreed upon by consensus, rather, that debates should have been had at the camp, covering difficult questions such as:

How can one be for autonomous living and for closer policing of personal carbon counts? Why do many environmentalists talk about the problem of increasing global population without talking about redistribution and freedom of movement? If the public are infantilized by state intervention, how can it be the solution to getting people to take responsibility for their environment? If we offer more power to a government will we ever get it back? Will it ever be in the interests of an elite to minimize environmental damage to the poor? Can we reconcile ‘we want luxury for all’ with ‘we want sustainable luxury for all?’

The science tells us that the situation is urgent, so it is essential to think hard, for example, about what kind of world we are trying to save and for whom. There were opportunities at the camp to reveal another emancipatory layer to our desire for social change, for example, a demonstration at the nearby detention centre, but perhaps due to energy drain, they were not fully realised. I concede that the camp was a DIY project, so if I wanted anarchist theory to be more prominent then I should have done something about it myself, but it actually took the experience of the camp itself to make me realize this as a priority.

Conclusion

Whilst troubled by the difficulties ahead, I’m excited by the buzz around the emerging movement against climate change. Perhaps it could be the dawn of a mass realization that systemic change is necessary? If it is a climate for change in more ways than one, then let’s simultaneously be bold, clear and thoughtful about the type of change we want!

As for the camp, I have the nagging thought that when journalists accused Anarchists of ‘infiltrating the camp’, we may have missed the chance of a lifetime, to say to the whole world, yes, the camp has been formed on the anarchist principles of horizontal organization, cooperation and self-determination. If the platform that we constructed can be compared to a football stadium, I would report that “it was an absolutely crucial match for a team who never get invited to play away, yet the home game advantage was not quite seized upon and, and ‘at the end of the day’, too many own goals were scored”.

The camp at Drax had a message of decentralizing power in both senses of the word, which fitted well with autonomous ideas. The decision to hold the camp at Heathrow presented many problems for getting such a radical message across, but perhaps it will stimulate overdue reflection on how we tackle issues of individual lifestyle choices versus collective action and desires for wider social change. Of course, all of the disadvantages must be weighed up against the kick that major media coverage may have given to the movement. As for the lack of controversy around the call for increased state intervention in our lives, I think that it would have been a problem regardless of the location of the camp. The sense of urgency will only increase each year, making the Climate Camp movement more susceptible to its’ influence.

Faslane 365: Mobilising communities to abolish nuclear weapons - Rebecca Johnson

Since starting a year-long non-violent blockade of the Faslane nuclear weapons base in Scotland on October 1st last year, Faslane 365 has involved thousands of people from all over the world. With two months to go, the campaign is now gearing up towards October 1st 2007, when many will be returning for a unified Big Blockade, aiming to close the base completely.

Actions over the year have been as varied as the people who have participated: large or small, carefully planned or serendipitously chaotic; some were poignantly funny, such as the Spanish group that covered themselves in slippery blood-red paint before lying down (imagine the MoD cleaning bill), while some were unbearably moving, as when a group of elderly Hibakusha (survivors) of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings laid paper peace cranes across the mouth of the gate and sang songs about preventing nuclear weapons destroying anywhere else in the world. Then they sat down, defying police orders to move. The blockades have ranged from bagpipes and ceilidhs to dawn lock-ons and tripods in the road that closed all the gates for over an hour. Among those arrested there have been Members of the Scottish and European Parliaments, a UN Assistant Secretary-General and his family, renowned writers and musicians, doctors, nurses, community workers, unwaged (but hardworking) activists, scientists, cyclists, mixed choirs, women in wheelchairs, grannies for peace, representatives from various faiths, students with their arms locked together while their professors sat on camp stools in front of the North Gate and held a 6-hour seminar (in the pouring rain)…

What was the purpose of spending all this time and energy? What has it achieved? What was it intended to achieve? What lessons can be learnt?

First, at a time when the majority of British public opinion is portrayed as uninterested in nuclear issues, a primary objective was to raise awareness and opposition to Tony Blair’s precooked decision to renew Britain’s nuclear weapon system, Trident. But Faslane 365 aimed to do more than raise awareness. We wanted directly to disrupt the military-nuclear machine and stimulate a regrowth in non-violent community-based activism on peace, justice and environmental issues.

By blockading the base, we are disrupting what we see as immoral and illegal nuclear deployments; in effect, the citizens being arrested and dragged from the gates of Faslane are the people who are actually upholding the law. In deploying nuclear weapons – and even more so in plotting to procure the next generation – it is the British government that is breaching humanitarian law and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations it has undertaken. Preventing nuclear business-as-usual then becomes a citizen’s duty, enshrined in the Nuremburg Principles. One reason why so few arrests have resulted in prosecution is that the ‘Authorities’ do not want the courts clogged up with hundreds of non-violent protesters determined to show that nuclear weapons are illegal as well as being immoral, inhumane and incapable of contributing to our real security.

But passion and having right on our side are not enough to bring about political change. The yearlong blockading of Faslane was part of a political strategy to break the nuclear chain at its weakest link – Scotland. The deployment of Trident relies on the naval base at Faslane and a facility for storing and fitting nuclear warheads, built into a rock-face at Coulport, a few miles away. But the overwhelming majority of Scottish people want nuclear weapons taken out of their country. This was underscored on June 14 by a vote in the Scottish Parliament in which 71 MSPs voted against Trident, with only 16 (all Tories) voting to keep it. The Scottish Labour Party split - 5 brave souls voted with the majority who want to abolish nuclear weapons. The other 39 abstained, mostly because the replacement of Trident is official New Labour government policy, whether they agree with it or not.

Blockading Faslane puts pressure on the Scottish executive, who have to pay for the policing of the base. Debarred by the devolution agreement (The 1998 Scotland Act) from having an independent say on defence and foreign policy, the Scottish Executive is finding other ways to put legal and financial pressure on Westminster to change its nuclear policy. In one important example, there are moves afoot to charge the Ministry of Defence one billion pounds per warhead that travels on Scotland’s roads to and from Coulport. The grounds are the serious environmental and safety risks when these live warheads are transported in frequent convoys from the nuclear bomb factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield and use routes such as the M8 or M9 past Edinburgh and the A82 past Loch Lomond. Danger money might also be levied for the nuclear weapons carried through Scottish lochs on the Trident nuclear submarines.

A further challenge initiated by Faslane 365 and now taken up, is the argument that London cannot use the Scotland Act to impose Trident on Scotland when the renewal, use and threatened use (and therefore deployment) of these nuclear weapons contravene obligations and undertakings in international law. This is the basis for the ‘Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Bill 2007’, sponsored by Michael Matheson MSP, which underscores that Scotland has legal as well as moral and political grounds to reject having Trident.

If Scotland succeeds in rejecting Trident, London would be hard put to find an alternative base for its nuclear weapons, which would greatly add to the political pressure on the UK government to move from nuclear re-armament to disarmament. In so doing, Britain would become the first nuclear power to take on board the 21st century reality that nuclear weapons are a security problem, not a security asset. By transferring our resources to devaluing and abolishing nuclear weapons, Britain could give an enormous boost to international security and non-proliferation.

But of course the issues that have to be addressed go far wider than getting rid of Trident. As exposed in the Blair government’s White Paper and hurried debate on Trident renewal leading up to the ‘three-line-whipped’ vote on March 14, the justifications for getting the next generation of nuclear weapons are very thin. Relying on scaremongering about ‘unknown unknowns’ and outdated notions of deterrence, they equate nuclear weapons with an insurance policy - justifications that could function as proliferation drivers for any nation on earth to acquire their own weapons of mass destruction. Not only do nuclear weapons provide no more insurance than voodoo medicine, but they are also no answer to the real threats we face, which include climate change and terrorism. On the contrary, they contribute to additional WMD threats and get in the way of international efforts to implement coherent security and disarmament policies.

Instead of wasting resources on a capability to threaten mass annihilation, we need to learn to think in different ways about war and peace, and base our defence and security on international cooperation, justice and sustainable development. Overwhelming national force and armaments are now as irrelevant for human security as bows and arrows had become by the 17th century. Terrorism and climate change will not be defeated by nuclear weapons – or even by smart bombs and the suspension of our hard-won civil liberties. We need greater understanding of the causes (including our own roles and practices) and better policy options for dealing with them.

Laws and restrictions enacted under the guise of combating terrorists are now being employed to rob us of human and democratic rights that were painstakingly won during centuries of civil resistance against despotism and tyranny. So Faslane 365’s approach has been to challenge militarism directly while also building a broader, stronger community of activists and resisters who would learn from each other’s struggles and campaigns, share ideas and give support. For this purpose, the 6-person steering group has sought to facilitate rather than organise. Making extensive use of website and internet, we have provided detailed briefings for blockading groups, encouraging them to do the planning, practicalities and decision-making for their particular actions themselves. In most cases this has worked, and people have been so energised and inspired by blockading together that group-members have kept in touch and often gone on to organise further blockades at Faslane or other kinds of non-violent actions at local bases or facilities.

Faslane 365 developed out of a long history of non-violent opposition to nuclear weapons, drawing from the successes of the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp of the 1980s and decades of protest at Faslane itself, from the peace camp to Trident Ploughshares. It added its own unique contribution, encouraging concerned people to form groups and organise autonomously, and take responsibility for one or two days of a collective action extending over the whole year. Each blockading group then posted its stories and pictures on the website for all to share.

October 1st may be the finishing line of the first phase of Faslane 365, but it is by no means the end of the struggle to rid Scotland, Britain and the world of nuclear weapons. On September 30th, representatives from many of the groups will gather in Glasgow to discuss future strategy and plan for the next stage. Civil resistance is not an end in itself, but a tool of mobilisation, pressure and change. It works best when placed in a broader political context that includes education about the issues, analysis of the security environment, alternative thinking about how to address the problems, and participation in (and strengthening of) democratic institutions, including informing and lobbying elected representatives.

Rebecca Johnson is a member of the Faslane 365 Steering Group and a former Senior Advisor to the International Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Hans Blix.

G8-Summit protests in Germany: Against globalisation and its non-emancipatory responses - Rob Augman

“Make Capitalism History: Shut Down the G8!”

The grassroots mobilizations against the G8 summit, held in the northern German town of Heiligendamm in early June of this year, were organized by broad networks of direct actionists, anti-racist groups, anti-border groups, anti-fascist militants, queer activists, squatters, debt-relief groups, trade unions, environmental organizations and many others. Despite the very restrictive policy of the German state that forbid any demonstrations in a large perimeter around the ‘security fence’ protecting the G8 summit, activists successfully disrupted the G8 meeting.

The tiny enclave of Heiligendamm was for two days only reachable by helicopters or with boats from the seaside, as demonstrators blocked roads and train tracks leading to the site of the summit. Impressive were the pictures of thousands of people crossing fields and forests, in their effort to out-manoeuvre the huge police force, and make their way to the fence.

Heiligendamm will mark another memorable moment in the alter-globalization movement, a movement whose strength is often attributed to its diversity of actors. But this multitude, however, should not be mixed up with arbitrariness, as the movement itself also struggles with the challenges in developing a critique of global capitalism that provides emancipatory possibilities.

Contemporary social conflicts, a widespread sense of alienation, deep feelings of powerlessness, and the increasing intensity of violent conflict sets off a whole host of resentments and oppositions to the global situation that are not emancipatory. Many people who are deeply dissatisfied with the global political and economic order do not gravitate towards progressive or social justice organizations. The rise of racist, nationalist, fundamentalist and other forms of reactionary politics emerge as responses to the global situation as well, and they compete for power and influence on the same social terrain of those on the Left. These are present in the discourses, policies and politics in struggles around globalization/anti-globalization as well, and were therefore present in the mobilization against the G8 this year.

In Germany, with its history of National Socialism as well as uprisings of neo-Nazism and nationalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left must struggle with and position itself against critiques of “the new world order,” of “globalization,” and even of “capitalism,” from non-emancipatory positions, including those from the (far) Right. Such non-emancipatory critiques range widely, from proponents of economic protectionism and political isolationism (which can be seen in Right-wing anti-war positions), to the cultural field of “preserving cultural uniqueness from commercialism,” all the way to the far Right and its attempts to solve social questions in hyper-nationalist ways.

The scale of right-wing involvement in anti-globalization politics, or broader sentiments of reactionary anti-capitalism, present facts that have not gone ignored by some on the German Left and can be seen present in the anti-G8 mobilization, whether against the far-Right, the state, or as self-criticism of our own social movements. These groups are employing various approaches, and seeking various goals in their emancipatory aims. In their confrontation with “globalization” on the one hand, and reactionary anti-globalization on the other, transformations can be observed in the analyses and the practices of the Left itself. The international mobilization against the G8 summit in Germany provides a unique look into these struggles in order to consider how left and social justice groups can better confront the complicated and varied challenges we face.

The infrastructure and mobilization for Heiligendamm had been built over the course of two years, connecting activists across Europe and beyond. A week of protests, a counter-summit with international guests discussing major problems of globalization, from climate change and health politics, to gender justice and the right of free movement for all, and plans for physically blocking the G8 summit were some of the major events. People organized three camps to house thousands of activists, which included kitchens, security, showers, and other provisions. Indymedia groups provided infrastructure for a continuous reporting of the news. Information was circulated in leaflets and on the web informing people about police tactics, border restrictions, surveillance and much else regarding what they could expect and how they can get support in case of such a need. Legal aid was provided by a left-wing lawyer’s organization. Mobile groups organized medic services. Additionally, activists organized a hotline in case of sexist or sexual abuse. Groups such as the Hedonist International energized demonstrations with their techno truck and their “Rave Against the Machine.”

Self-organization was the backbone of the demonstrations and infrastructure of the mobilization against the G8 summit. The means are also the ends, and this included an appreciation for joy, leisure and aesthetic desire. The mobilization displays a pre-figurative politics, a vision in practice of the “other world that is possible.”

Despite the intimidation, provocation, demonisation and the police’s physical attempts at disruption, the mobilization would not be derailed. Massive showings of dissent towards the G8 and the broader global situation was going to appear at the gates of the G8 summit.

“Nie Wieder Deutschland!”
(Never Again Germany!)

For international activists joining or observing the demonstrations against the G8 summit, the East German city of Rostock where the mass demonstrations and the main convergence centre were located, was no reference point at all. But for those old enough to remember, Rostock was the site of a violent 3-day attack on Roma and Vietnamese asylum seekers by neo-Nazis and ordinary German citizens. It was 15 years ago, in the summer of 1992, and it set off a wave of similar attacks across the country, on African, Turkish, Asian and other migrants, with houses burned down and people killed. “What 1968 was for the Left, 1992 was for the Right.” [ii]

This wave of racist violence was a deeply political issue. It came at the time of reunification of East and West Germany, the fall of the Soviet Union and the realignment of international relations after the Cold War. Just decades after the Holocaust, racist mobs and political groups of the New Right were strong in Germany and Europe more broadly.

The host of economic problems following “reunification” were projected onto migrants, as a specific social group causing these crises. This racial skapegoating was not limited to the far-Right, but rather transcended political boundaries, and was therefore expressed in the mainstream discourse as well. “Bonn [the capital of former West Germany], unable to provide the ex-GDR economy with the quick fix that it had promised, shifted responsibility for the country’s economic pains onto Germany’s liberal asylum law.” [iii]

Therefore, while the police brokered a deal with the Rostock mob, allowing them four hours of free reign to attack the asylum centre, state policy committed its own attack on migrants, with restrictions that effectively amounted to a revocation of the Asylum Law. It also instituted a hierarchical labour system for those who remained, and sent the message that migrants are the source of Germany’s economic problems.

The new economic and political situation was articulated through a nationalist framework by centrist politicians, by the far-Right and throughout civil society [iv]. But this nationalist explosion and the changing political situation also prompted responses by the radical Left. German nationalism, racism, fascism and the history of the Shoah became major concerns. Seeing them as deeply related, the post-‘89 German Left marched under the banner “Nie Wieder Deutschland!” (Never Again Germany!).

“We Are Here Because You Destroy Our Countries”
“We Are Here Because We Destroy Your Borders”

As part of the protest actions against the G8 summit, an action day was organized under the slogan “Global Freedom of Movement.” In the early morning about 2,000 people took siege to the “Foreigner’s Office” in Rostock, which is where decisions are made about whether or not individuals will receive residence permits or be deported. Informed of the activists’ plans ahead of time, the office was shut down under the pretense of “computer problems.” Activists climbed to the roof of the building and hung banners against deportation centres, reading “No Camp – Not Here and Not Anywhere!”

After this action the activists marched to the Sonnenblumenhaus, the site of the racist attacks 15 years earlier. “By holding this rally we want to remember the incidents of 1992 and show how much worse the conditions for refugees in Germany have become because of this pogrom.” [v] At the gathering police continued their repression against activists. A snatch squad moved into the demonstration and grabbed a few black-clad demonstrators, breaking the nose of a Cameroon refugee and injuring a cameraperson in the melee. Later in the day, as the gathering sought to march towards the harbour in the centre of the city, it was blocked by riot cops with water cannons and armed vehicles, but after two hours of negotiations, the march was able to continue.

These demonstrations were part of a week of G8 protests that were specifically highlighting struggles against the regime of global migration management. Activists from numerous countries joined the transnational network meeting, discussing the situations of migrant struggles, whether it be mass demonstrations and strikes by illegalized migrants in the U.S., legalization struggles in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, or protests to shut down detention centres in Germany. [vi] The events and actions are aimed at explaining that migration is part of the processes of international relations of exploitation – whether due to privatization of resources in the global south that makes life more and more unbearable for people in these countries to support themselves, or due to the explicit demands for cheap (often service) labour in the global North. Hence, the slogan, “we are here because you destroy our countries.” But simultaneously, other activists find this portrayal too mechanical, implying that migrants are solely victims, simply set into motion by processes that are wholly out of their control. In response to this “Fortress Europe” position, activists from an “autonomy of migration” analysis, argue that despite the reality of migration management by states and inter-state systems, the barriers are continually defied and subverted by creative actors – therefore, migration could be seen as the “most successful social movement.” [vii]

The relationship and conceptualization of migration as a phenomenon in the age of globalization then, is transformed from a paternalistic relationship of charity and protection into a relationship of support and solidarity. “Globalization” then can also be seen not simply as a one-dimensional plot by the global elite, but rather as a regime born of conflict, resulting from a variety of sources, some of which are self-determining. Therefore, the focus on migration at the anti-G8 mobilization highlights a structural fact of social life despite restrictions – possibly an intrinsically anti-national movement. It therefore emphasizes this fact of migration as a right of mobility, and envisions the practical assertion of global social rights as part of emancipatory transformations.

“To point out the antifascist character of the anti-globalization movement” [viii]

In Rostock on June 2nd, while Left and progressive groups organized a huge international demonstration against the G8 summit under the banner “Another World is Possible,” over 40 busses of neo-Nazis converged on the nearby town of Schwerin for their own demonstration against the G8. In response to the neo-Nazis, civil society groups, trade unions and antifa groups organized 3 different counter-demonstrations, the antifa groups with the intention of physically preventing the neo-Nazis from demonstrating. But on the morning of the protest, the neo-Nazi’s and the antifa’s permits were revoked. The neo-Nazi busses left Schwerin for surrounding towns, holding spontaneous demonstrations, one of which marched through the Brandenburg Gate in the centre of Berlin. A group 150 antifa activists who arrived in Schwerin, on the other hand, were surrounded at the train station by heavily armed police and arrested.

Fifteen years after the wave of racist violence of 1992, the far-Right is still an undeniable player in political and social life. They continue to skapegoat migrants as the source of persistent social and economic problems. Additionally, they have increasingly articulated their atrocious politics in anti-globalization and anti-capitalist language. For them, the powerful international institutions – such as the G8 – are seen in personified terms. The complex social arrangements often simplified under the term “globalization,” are viewed as nothing other than a plot by a specific social group. Due to the historical association of international networks with Jewish communities, the far-Right personifies this international conspiracy as the “Jewish” rulers of the world. [ix] Against this perceived plot, they draw on an equally imaginary force to defend themselves, the so-called “national community.”

Therefore, the strength of the far-Right has to do with intervening in contemporary political discourses whether those raised in mainstream political discourse, or those raised by the Left. In responding to these issues, they regularly project social crises on specific social groups as the source for such social problems – these groups often being migrants, Jews, or leftists. Therefore, real grievances set off by social, political and economic problems are a source of their support. By combining the anxiety over high levels of unemployment in the East of the country, with a skapegoating of migrants and “global elites” for these problems, the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany won over 7% of the vote in elections last year in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, enabling them entry into regional parliaments. It was in this context that the antifa demonstration was organized, “to point out the antifascist character of the anti-globalization movement.”

Militant anti-fascism became a major focus of radical Left politics after 1992, with the organizing of a countrywide antifa network which confronted far-Right groups in the streets. Additionally, concerned about the rise of a broader German nationalism, many took up research about the history of National Socialism. This enabled them to better understand the discursive framework of far-Right politics historically and its continuity (and divergences) in the present. These analyses can be seen in the call to action for the antifa demo in Schwerin. In their leaflet they explained the anti-Semitic ideology of the neo-Nazis’ as a deranged form of anti-capitalism. The Nazi analysis of society is constructed through a bi-polar opposition of false premises. They believe that a “real, natural, material labour” is threatened by an “abstract, parasitic, financial elite.” The antifa leaflet reads:

[i]“On the one hand, [the Nazi] view [of capitalism] contains the idea of a national economy and it’s “honest, German” labour - the so-called “constituting capital”; and the “money grubbing, Jewish” capital on the other hand. For the Nazis this allegedly “Jewish capital” is constituted in the sy[s]tem of interest and the financial world, for example in banks and stock exchanges in general, and in the “Wall Street” in particular.” [x]

Failing to see capitalism as a social whole, a system from which labour itself is constituted, they view capitalism as a foreign imposition from the outside – especially from the U.S. Their response is then a naturalisation of something they perceive to be concrete, the imagined, “national community.” This foreshortened critique of capitalism helps explain their simultaneously racist and anti-Semitic politics, on the one hand as being against the perceived nations which are supposedly invading otherwise harmonious Germany, and on the other hand against the perceived anti-national leaders of this world order, the international Jewish elites which prosper from the disintegration of “real nations.”[x ]

But the electoral support the NPD gained at the polls is only the tip of the iceberg. Their views are influential even if they’re not expressed in such crude and violent terms. Additionally, their themes overlap with some taken up by Left associated anti-globalization groups. Popular support for an alter-globalization movement is common when it is expressed against “American” capital, in contrast to a supposedly more socially responsible European or German capitalism, and when international investors are depicted as parasites looting the “real” economy. Examples abound in Germany of left-wingers arguing in language reminiscent of the Nazi era. These problems have led sections of the Left to criticize the presence of foreshortened critiques of capitalism found even amongst some on the Left.

Indeed, one doesn’t have to search long at the anti-G8 demos to find examples of conspiratorial, dualistic or personifying social critiques: a 911-conspiracy theory banner, a “Bush is the #1 Terrorist” poster, or the omnipresent G8-octopus with its outstretched tentacles devouring the Earth. The lowest common denominator though, of anti-globalization critics, has often been an opposition to “finance capital.” This can be seen in seemingly opposite sections of the movement: whether it be anti-capitalists smashing banks or reform oriented groups pushing for taxation on international investment. The “common sense” for such broad social movements might be the idea that “money is the root of all evil.”

The analysis of capitalism as a social system, rather than a simple relationship of domination, or a binary struggle between “oppressors” and “oppressed,” leads groups like TOP Berlin (see their article on page xx) to find ways of expressing a different orientation. Joining other post-antifa groups, they marched under the banner reading “Ums Ganze” which loosely translates into “All of It!” Therefore, while demonstrating against the G8, they reject the idea of equating the G8 to global capitalism, and rather aim to situate the G8 as part of an international, and conflicted system of global capitalism. [x ]

Therefore, rather than positing a “real labour” against a “finance capital,” a “people’s struggle” against an “international elite,” or other such simplifications, such groups attempt to re-evaluate the forms of social life in contemporary capitalist society. This leads to different kinds of positioning. As demonstrations often demand simple symbolic representations, one attempt to intervene on this level was by using the imagery of leisure, and therefore a picture of a person relaxing on a hammock accompanied with calls for “luxury for all!” While anti-capitalism has been a mainstay in the alter-globalization movement, what it means to “smash capitalism,” and to “fight the G8” is an open and contested terrain. In this way, the mobilization against the G8 is a site of many conflicts on various levels – the analytical, the practical and the symbolic. In these ways this mobilization shows many attempts to push against capitalism, simultaneously grappling with the various forms of non-emancipatory responses that arise along the way.

In Conclusion…

Despite a total ban on public demonstrations on Thursday the protests continued, and did so with impressive success. Thousands of people from the nearby campgrounds marched towards the fence, dragging trees into the streets to create huge barricades, walking train tracks to prevent transportation to the summit, and hiking through fields and woods to outmanoeuvre police blockades. The G8 delegates had to reach the summit by air or sea, and even the sea was not completely secure as a Greenpeace boat breached the security zone. This is a tremendous achievement of determination and organization.

Even the mainstream media portrayed the blockades in a semi-positive light, showing video footage of thousands of protestors streaming through fields and hills to reach the fence. Their favourite image were those of the clowns, of course, and made the perfect contrast to the reporting of the heavy clashes between police and demonstrators the day before, in which various news reports described the protests as marred by “foreigners.”[x ]

While the mobilization was successful in disrupting the G8 summit, as was described above, opposition to the G8 and globalization does not imply emancipatory critiques nor alternatives. Reactionary resentments and ideologies work through oppositional politics, placing many challenges on the efforts to effect positive social changes. The desire to build mass social movements often involves appealing to the lowest common denominator, but the simple populist chant of “Bush Go Home!” brings together a wide variety of actors across the political spectrum, including reactionaries of various types. This reality provides challenges to building broad-based social movements with emancipatory possibilities.

Additionally, while it is imperative to exclude the most abhorrent actors from taking advantage of popular discontent – as the antifa demo sought to do – non-emancipatory views are not limited to the far Right, but rather transcend neat political boundaries. This transcendence is not simply the result of intentionally-disguised reactionary views – though that is sometimes the case – but often due to analyzes autonomously generating personifying analyzes of power relations, dualistic thinking and foreshortened critiques of capitalism. Therefore, this sets an imperative of self-criticism within our own oppositional political movements, in order to prevent unintended support of non-emancipatory views and currents.

DISCLAIMER: This text is a selection from an article written for the U.S. Left. We have omitted a conclusion in which the author offers suggestions about what might be learned from the G8 protests in order to help Leftists address similar challenges in the U.S. context. The article was originally published on ZNet at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13158.

The policing operation in the Heiligendamm area was the largest security operation in Germany since World War II. It included an enormous budget, a $17 million fence, 12km high, a wide no-protest zone, as well as air and sea defence. This operation was also more than defencive. A month before the summit, under the pretext of “threats by Leftist terrorists,” police raided 40 private homes and social centres across the country. The raids were heavily criticized in the mainstream press and the mobilization gained broader support as a result. In Berlin, a spontaneous demonstration brought thousands of people onto the streets for an energetic showing of support for the anti-G8 mobilization, and in Hamburg a huge demo erupted into physical clashes between protesters and the police.
[ii]Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Hockenos, Paul. P 30. Routledge. New York/London. 1994.
[iii]Ibid. P 33.
[iv]For a look into the relationships of these different social actors and the changing situation at the time, see “Rostock: or, How the New Germany is Being Governed.” Wildcat, No. 60, October 1992. http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/60/w60e_ros.htm
[v]From the “Crossing the Borders of the G8” newspaper, at: www.noborder.org
[vi]Examples from the newspaper, “Crossing the Borders of the G8,” published for the G8 mobilization by No Border. www.noborder.org
[vii]For a background on this discussion, and in relation to the G8 mobilization, see the essay, “Autonomous rear Entrances to Fortress Europe: Antiracist Perspectives in regard to G-8 Summit 2007,” at: www.nolager.de/blog/node/452
[viii]“Stop the nazi demonstration - 2nd June 2007 Schwerin.” www.schwerin.blogsport.de
[ix]In part due to criminal codes in Germany against openly anti-Semitic speech, as well as the popularity of “anti-Zionism” as a public discourse, the far-Right often calls this supposed elite “Zionist,” “cosmopolitan,” or “American,” rather than “Jewish.”
[x]“Head Off to Schwerin - Distract The Nazi Demonstration!” www.schwerin.blogsport.de
[xi]There are a whole host of other issues involved in neo-Nazi politics in Germany, which can not be adequately explained in the framework of this article. Some resources: For an analysis of Nazi Antisemitism as a form of fetishized anti-capitalism, see Moishe Postone’s “Anti-Semitism and National Socialism” at: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/postone1.html On anti-Zionism, see Thomas Haury’s “Anti-Semitism on the Left” at: http://www.workersliberty.org/node/6705
[xii]A recent interview by ums Ganze with Michael Heinrich, titled, “There Simply Aren’t Any Easy Solutions to Which One Can Adhere,” helps to explain their attempts to reevaluate the place of the G8 in the system of global capitalism. It was published in Monthly Review zine, here: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/heinrich220607.html
[xiii]A member of the anti-globalization group, ATTAC, also used nationalist skapegoating to blame foreigners, saying the clashes of the protestors was “atypical for German groups.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,486330,00.html

[i]Rob Augman currently lives in Berlin, Germany where he is researching the topic of Left politics and anti-Semitism. Many thanks go to Martina Benz for endless ideas and editorial support.

German neo-Nazis and anti-capitalism - Jan Langehein

The ‘social question’ has been a focus for propaganda by German neo-Nazis in the past, yet not always did this have an anti-capitalist touch to it. After the reunification of the old GDR with the Federal Republic in autumn 1990, the whole of Germany experienced a rise in unemployment; poverty levels increased in the East and West. Responsibility lay, on the one hand, with the collapse and sale of the industry in the former planned economy, and on the other hand a structural crisis of the capitalist economy in the reunified Germany. Far Right political parties, at the time primarily the DVU and the more moderate Republicans, responded at first with a traditional racism: they exploited the situation for their purposes by blaming migrant labourers and a relatively high number of political refugees for the poverty. The centre-right governing party CDU also looked at migrants as scapegoats for the crisis, accusing them of being responsible for the millions of unemployed and the collapse of the economy in East Germany. Even the liberal magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ [comparable to ‘the Economist’ in its influence; translator’s note] ran headlines suggesting that there was no place for refugees in reunified Germany.

The result of this agitation were dozens of deaths, some beaten or burned to death by Nazi attackers, some driven by German border police into the Oder river, which separates Germany from Poland. The dreadful developments culminated in August 1992: large parts of the population of Lichtenhagen, a suburb of Rostock, together with organised neo-Nazis and aided by the police’s inaction, attacked a refugee’s hostel over days and attempted to set fire to it. The “days of Rostock” received worldwide media attention, and victims of the past - from Russia via Poland to Israel – feared a resurrection of Nazi Germany. Far from pressing ahead with an intensified fight against the neo-Nazis, the German government responded to the situation by basically abolishing the asylum rights and thereby fulfilling a central neo-Nazi demand.

As mentioned, this still followed the pattern of a traditional racism, to be expected from neo-Nazis. The anti-capitalist ‘change of direction’ for the German Nazis only happened at the beginning of the new millennium and is connected to partly two factors: firstly, the National Democratic Party (NPD), with closer historical ties to Hitler’s NSDAP than DVU and Republicans, gained in importance; secondly, the focus of right-wing perception in Germany moved, after 9/11, from migration to the USA and Israel. The NPD’s self-understanding is as an anti-communist as well as an anti-capitalist party. One of its slogans is: “No to Communism, no to Capitalism, yes to German Socialism!”

The political program of this ‘German Socialism’ is based on the ideas of the NSDAP’s left-wing ‘Strasser faction’, which until 1934 comprised almost four million members. Its aim was not to nationalise the industrial establishment, but still to submit it to state control and to build a Berlin-centred structure of command. The centre of control was meant to turn workers from “free sellers of their labour power” into recipients of commands by the ‘Führer’. Those ideas were impossible to put into practice only because Hitler was not prepared to take power away from German industrialists. Just as the NSDAP, the NPD too does not regard capital as an all-encompassing social relationship, but divides it into ‘productive capital’ (workers and entrepreneurs) and ‘unproductive or money-reaping capital’, which without working itself exploits the fruits of honest labour. For the historical Nazis, behind this ‘unproductive’ capital was both the ‘bolshevism’ of the Soviet Union, as well as British and American ‘plutocracy’ with its superior economic strength. In the final instance however, both parts were seen as mere ‘stooges’ of a Jewish global conspiracy, which aimed at world domination and the destruction of the livelihoods of all ‘peoples’.

This is exactly the worldview that the NPD [now the most influential neo-Nazi party in Germany, translator’s note] has adopted today with its anti-capitalist rhetoric. Now they blame ‘Wall Street’ together with the US and Israeli governments for plotting to wipe out ‘peoples’ and ‘cultures’. ‘German Socialism’, they say, should take up the fight against ‘foreign influences’ and build instead a geographically-defined economic order – a European internal market under German control, removed from the global economy and in a world without Jews. It is a ‘culturalist’ and anti-Semitic nightmare, which wants to achieve for modern Europe precisely those plans that Hitler’s strategists had drawn up.

The NPD has understood that it can reach more people with its agitation against the USA and Israel than with the polemic against refugees and migrants. Since the pogrom of Rostock, open racism is ostracised, while the hatred of America and resentments against ‘Zionism’ are almost regarded as proof of one’s critical faculties. Many Germans believe themselves to be ‘critics of globalisation or capitalism’. They do not understand, however, that this should mean primarily a critique of one’s own society. Instead, they look for the reasons of hunger, poverty and violence solely in the policies of Israel and America. This is where neo-Nazis move in: In spring 2007, they initiated a national campaign against the G8-summit in Heiligendamm, which used the same rhetoric as left-wing critics of globalisation. Now, the NPD attempts to organise a co-operation with the main left-wing party ‘the Left’, a successor to the old GDR’s ‘Socialist Unity Party’. While ‘the Left’ is decidedly anti-fascist, its electorate frequently comprises supporters of the authoritarian GDR, which is open to right-wing ideas. The NPD has already managed to be voted into a number of regional parliaments of East Germany. In Saxony, the parliamentary faction of the NPD regularly gains votes by members of other political factions. Nonetheless, the critique of globalisation in Germany is not yet a field dominated by the neo-Nazis. Sometimes however, it is almost impossible to differentiate between anti-capitalist positions with a progressive, emancipatory or with a fascistic, anti-Semitic direction.

Regrettably, the German Left has little to offer in terms of response to the neo-Nazi anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist change of focus. The racism of the 1990s was countered by a still active anti-racist movement, which provides assistance to refugees and attempts to resist racist attacks on migrants. However, anti-American and anti-Semitic positions can also be found in large parts of Left, with left-wing and right-wing anti-imperialist writings hardly distinguishable from each other. What unites both sides is primarily the ‘culturalist’ (völkisch) element of their critiques. Both sides support the terror of Hamas and al-Qaeda against Israelis and civilians of other Western states, while they differ only in their positions to Germany. For the Left, Germans form part of the oppressors, while for the Right, Germans are victims. Ironically, a ‘deserter’ of the Left formulated the Nazi propaganda phrase of the “jewish-american imperialist conspiracy”: Horst Mahler, a one time fighter and co-founder of the left-wing underground organisation Red Army Faction (RAF), is now lawyer and NPD-politico.

For a few years now, a small but publicly outspoken section of the German Left has criticised this phenomenon. Periodicals such as ‘Phase 2’, ‘Bahamas’ or ‘Jungle World’ point out that the NPD, despite its traditional racism, is looking to co-operate with culturalist-religious organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, while co-operation between the Left and those same groups exists too. Several groups of the German autonomous and anti-fascist movement have adopted this criticism. Nonetheless, the Left’s response to the neo-Nazis turned anti-capitalists is still one of uneasiness. Anti-capitalism? Isn't that an anti-fascist subject? Nazis have got nothing to say about it! Often it is said that neo-Nazi anti-capitalism is a mere masquerade, hiding the affirmative role Nazis play for capital. However, such a point of view is not just dumb but also dangerous. The danger is that the German Left refuses to abandon its mistaken positions and becomes, in some respects, indistinguishable from the Nazis. There is the chance, however, to rethink and to reformulate its own critique of capitalism – counter the fascist variant, for the progress and emancipation of humanity and in strict opposition to all anti-Semitic tendencies.

iStill today, evidence suggests that the government had a hand in the pogrom of Rostock or at least tolerated it. The excellent BBC documentary “The truth lies in Rostock” can be recommended.
ii[The original German term here is ‘völkisch’, derived from the word ‘Volk’ meaning ‘people’ or ‘nation’. ‘Volk’ makes a strong reference to ethnicity, autochthonous culture and nationalism and is a central organising principle for the Nazi movement, which opposes it to the idea of ‘rootless’ capital, translator’s note]

Jan Langehein is a radio journalist and regular contributor to the German weekly ‘Jungle World’

Interview with Catherine from the Climate Camp

The Camp for Climate Action spearheads a radical movement against the “causes of climate change”. What are those causes?

I’m no expert but the key cause of climate change is the release of carbon out of the earth back up into the atmosphere as CO2. All the carbon from the trees and plants that have been slowly getting squashed to make coal, oil and gas over millions of years is now being released very quickly into the atmosphere. This quick release started at the Industrial Revolution and has been speeding up ever since. So the main cause is the burning of these fossil fuels for transport (e.g. cars and planes), making electricity (e.g. coal and gas fired power stations) and the manufacture of just about everything we use in the modern world (e.g. fertiliser for food from oil, electricity for factories and homes). There is also methane, emitted by the huge amount of cows we now have on earth, landfill (where household waste is buried underground) and other places such as the permafrost, which is now starting to melt and release huge amounts of methane.

You can therefore say that behind this, a key cause is modern life – capitalism and consumerism which focus only on profit. Also the individualistic nature of these, where other people and our impacts on them (whether in producing trainers or losing agricultural land through climate change) are ignored. This is completely unsustainable in every sense of the word – we depend on the earth for our survival (air, water, food) so destroying it is not an option if we are to survive. But the way we live, or at least those of us that do the mass consuming and live in capitalist systems, is doing just that.

The Camps were no spontaneous gatherings but were meticulously organised. How many people were involved with the planning process?

I’d say around 150. Some of these were working on camp stuff for an hour a week or less, others were doing it more like a part time job for several months. Some worked on the camp over 8 months, others did their bit nearer the start or end of the process. At each monthly weekend-long gathering (where key decisions were made) there were 50-80 people. Some people came to every gathering, some to most and some just to one. So there was a core of the same people (maybe 30) every time but also the group was different every time.

Working groups also met at these gatherings. These were smaller groups with a specific focus e.g. Networking (website, media and publicising the camp) and Site Practicalities (infrastructure and transport). They had autonomy to work on their particular areas but any big decisions, which affected the whole process or camp, were taken to the full gathering and decided by everyone. There were also smaller working groups (e.g. entertainments, kids) who mainly met at other times or worked together through phone calls and e-mail. All members of working groups did lots of work outside of gatherings and many met between as well as at them.

In gatherings and working group meetings consensus decision-making was used – allowing all voices to be heard and everyone’s say to be equal and drawing together the best of everyone’s ideas to reach a decision that everyone was happy with. This was tricky at times but meant that all decisions were collectively reached.

Also local groups (e.g. Yorkshire, West Midlands) got together to organise neighbourhoods. Before the 2006 camp these were mainly just organising to get a kitchen, shelter and people to the camp. After the camp some of them became local action groups, taking action against the causes of climate change locally as well as organising a neighbourhood for the 2007 camp.

The land on which both Camps were held was squatted. How was it occupied?

I wasn’t actually involved in this but in 2006 small groups of people (about 80 people in total) were transported to near the site and dropped off at different places. This was in the middle of the night. They then walked onto the site. A fence was erected and legal notices put up. A complex scaffold tripod was erected and some attached themselves to it so that eviction would be harder. A few marquees were erected. This was all done before about 6am. That all sounds quite simple but it took an awful lot of planning and organising, which had to be done in secret.

In 2007 a similar method was used. Small groups of people from different parts of the country got themselves to places near the site – transport was less of a problem in an urban location – then when the coast was clear walked onto the site and carried on as last year but with a simpler and quicker to set up fence and a spectacular double tripod which it seems was erected in seconds, well minutes. Both times it took the police a few hours to find the site, by which time infrastructure was well under way.

The focal points of the Camps were the “days of mass action”. What did these actions aim to achieve?

There were several aims in 2006. The first was to shut down one of the root causes of climate change: Drax coal fired power station. It seems crazy to try to shut down a power station but it’s much crazier to still be burning coal in such huge quantities so it’s a proportionate response. Secondly we wanted to get media attention to let people know just how crazy it is to be burning fossil fuels and that people are willing to take direct action to stop it. Thirdly the aim was to inspire people – who were on the action, at the camp or heard about it – to take direct action against the root causes of climate change. As well as being inspired people could also attend training and workshops and talk to each other so that they had more idea of how to take action. The aim was to build the growing network of climate change activists, and that people joining this network would come from lots of different backgrounds not just the ‘usual suspects’. This last aim seems the least tangible but you should never underestimate the potential of physically getting lots of people together in one place who share a common purpose, and then telling loads more people about it.

In 2007 the second and third aims were the same and were definitely expanded on – we got huge media attention and a lot more people got themselves clued up and joined the action. Also a dozen smaller actions took place around the same time as the mass action – BP, carbon offset companies, a nuclear power station and an airport owner were targeted by small affinity groups. The first aim was to disrupt Heathrow airport but by targeting the corporations – BA and BAA – not passengers. These corporations are pushing for airport expansion and a third runway in the full knowledge that this gives the UK zero chance of meeting even its 60% CO2 reduction targets., Basically they want to commit us to runaway climate change. So this year we wanted to tell BA and BAA exactly how appalling their actions are and support the ongoing local campaigns against airport noise, pollution and expansion by telling the whole world about the proposed third runway and the wider impact on climate change and all our lives.

Why and how was the decision made to target Heathrow airport in the first place?

The decision was made by a process of consensus decision-making at a gathering of about 100 people, one of the open public monthly meetings. Detailed information on six different locations was provided by the Land group who had spent months researching different potential sites.

How do you measure success or failure?

I don’t think you can. The camp was definitely a huge success both years in that we achieved our aims, but it’s so much more than that. For me there are many successes, small and large but all important. Just mobilising enough people to organise the camp was a huge success, as was each bit of positive media coverage we received or each person inspired.

I don’t think you can say that something as complex as Climate Camp was simply a success or a failure, and to do so is to completely detract from our whole ethos which is that there is no one solution to climate change, that people need to find new and various ways of working together, that we are trying out new ways of living, being, thinking and organising here. This is all about a complex, diverse, ever-changing way of behaving not about simple black and white choices between A or B. So there were multiple successes and lots of failures too, but I’d see these more as part of our learning and our experiment. Like some of the meetings at the camp were very difficult, people didn’t participate in a fair way and bad decisions were made. However, that is both a failure and a success if in the process lots of people learnt better how to conduct themselves in meetings to make them work well. You can only succeed or fail if you have set, concrete and immovable aims. Thankfully Climate Camp isn’t like that – if it was then it would be just another political party or ideology-based group.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t think about success or failure, of course we should, but that it would be dangerous and counterproductive to measure it in the terms it is usually measured in, say in the contexts of business or elections. It may make us sound like we’re fobbing off the person asking whether we succeeded or failed, but people need to start thinking in different ways if we are to change the world enough to escape the most devastating effects of climate change. It is up to us to demonstrate and live these different ways, and to inspire others to do the same by the way we act and what we say. For me the camp was a huge and ever-changing experiment in collective living which was incredibly exciting. We started off at this year’s set-up with maybe 150 people who were already used to DIY culture and working collectively, then every day more and more people arrived who weren’t used to that but started to learn about it, be inspired by it and consider how they could take it back into their homes, communities, workplaces and anywhere else they found themselves. This was incredible to be part of. Every day in the Welcome tent I met dozens of people for whom this was all completely new, and every day I saw someone who I’d welcomed yesterday taking part in consensus decision making, being a legal observer, cooking with others to feed 200…now that’s what I call a success!

The only thing I would be tempted to call a failure would be if the taking of the land hadn’t worked or we’d been evicted straight away, but even that wouldn’t have been a complete failure. It would be a failure in that the aim of taking a site wasn’t achieved, but so many of our other aims would have been achieved because a huge amount of people would already have been inspired and mobilised and we’d have run at least the workshops somewhere else. It was portrayed that not shutting down Drax was a failure, but again that’s only if you take a narrow view of what success and failure are. It wasn’t a failure to me – it would have been great if we had shut it down but the real impact and therefore success was still there in the money it cost them for security, the huge amount of adverse publicity and the fact that lots and lots of people really started to think about coal and why we really have to stop burning it.

Also, for me personally and for many others, we understood what direct action is all about and were inspired to support or carry it out ourselves. For me one of the biggest successes you can have when campaigning on any issue is to educate people – be it information, ideas, attitudes or behaviour. Every single person that has ever campaigned, protested, taken action or stood up to be counted was inspired and educated at some point which set them off on that path; whether through reading something, seeing something, hearing something or talking to someone. So, just getting our message and our ways of living, working and being out there was, to me, actually our biggest success.

Will there be a third Camp for Climate Action?

Who knows! There are regional meetings taking place through September for local groups and neighbourhoods to get back together and decide what they can do next. Then there will be a national gathering in October where everyone will decide what next. Anyone who comes can input into this. Lots of people assume there will be a third camp but there are lots of other ideas to consider too. Whatever happens though, this ever-growing movement for action on climate change is not going away. I can’t wait to be a part of what happens next…

Make a foreshortened critique of capitalism history!: Without a radical critique every action becomes mere activism- reflections on the anti-G8 mobilisation 2007 - TOP Berlin

06-g8-familienfoto-im-strandkorb,property=poster.jpg

3, 2, 1…action!

Without a doubt, it was the event for the European left this summer: anti-racist groups, queer activists, squatters, debt-relief groups, anti-fascists, trade unionists, environmental organizations…in June, all of them travelled to the small German village of Heiligendamm in order to express disagreement or even disrupt the G8 summit. Months before there was a marathon of meetings, conferences, fundraising concerts, and every leftist place in Europe got swamped with flyers and posters mobilizing against the summit. The focus of it all: action. Demonstrations, riots, blockades, vigils, clandestine actions…there was something in it for everybody.

Those calling into question this mode of ‘action for action’s sake’ are often accused of trying to break or slow down the movement, of being a threat to the radical left’s unity, of intellectualizing. But protest in itself is not emancipatory – how often have we seen racist mobs in the streets protesting the building of a refugee home or mosque, or large-scale fascist demonstrations that also aim at ‘the system’. Even ‘anti-capitalism’, the leitmotif of the more radical part of the anti-G8 movement, can be a deeply reactionary ideology, as can be seen not only when looking into the ideology of the Third Reich, but also when looking at contemporary campaigns by fascist groups who are decidedly ‘anti-capitalist’.

Keeping all of this in mind, it would be naive for a radical left to simply want to take part in whatever social movement comes along. Those who do not want to mix up Islamists, neo-Nazis, landless peasants, welfare recipients and fare dodgers in one subversive mass, to group them together as ‘the people’ standing up against ‘the system’, will come to a lowly result. An intervention without a critical definition of one’s own standpoint is less than a sad ‘being part of’ - it turns itself into a tool for the wrong purpose. Therefore, theory becomes necessary - not because of a ‘more-radical-than-thou’ battle, but in order to truly understand just how capitalist society functions so that it can adequately be overcome.

G8: légitime!

Against the popular opinion among the anti-globalization movement that the summit was illegitimate in the sense of ‘undemocratic’, we need to take note of the realities of bourgeois society: Not just a gang of robber-knights but in fact representatives of constitutional states with basic laws and acknowledged proceedings of legitimisation came together at the summit. As juristic persons states can “freely” and “equally” arrange informal meetings and close contracts. Instead of forging alternative models of democracy and law, an emancipatory movement should recognize that domination and exploitation in capitalism are performed not primarily against law and democracy but within and through these forms.

This insight should have had large-scale consequences for the mobilization against the G8 summit. It implies an explicit refusal of economistic and personalized (state-) conceptions. Whereas the first wants to directly debunk the state as a mere tool of the economically dominant class - to demand its ‘right’ use for the common good in circular reasoning-, the second primarily conceives the condition of the world as a result of individual misconduct of single capitalists and politicians acting out of greed, venality or an absent sense of responsibility.

One of the inherent dangers of this logic is to fall into anti-Semitic stereotypes: the anti-Semitic ideology is usually embedded into a worldview, which ‘explains’ the evils of modern capitalist society. Capitalism in this worldview is not seen as a process, which arises following its own structural logic without a particular leadership, but rather as an exploitative project consciously put into effect by evil people. Historically, this way of thinking emerged in the 19th century in Europe in a time of to the rapid spread of capitalist society and the social upheavals this triggered. The anti-Semitic worldview thus consists of personification for non-understood economic and social procedures and draws upon the picture of the ‘Jewish capitalist’ that is deeply embedded in Western culture, which for centuries associated Jews with money. It can be displayed in talk of ‘the capitalists’ who ‘pull the strings’ from ‘the US East Coast’, ‘dominate the world’ and just can’t get enough with their ‘greed’.

Less reactionary but similarly problematic is the moral conviction of certain companies and multinational corporations, whose practices are - often rightly - stigmatized as especially abhorrent. What falls out of this perspective is a critique on the plain ‘vanilla’ exploitation - that lies in every wage dependant, commodity-producing labour. Furthermore, the notion misconceives that in capitalism the economic actors are following a rationality that is forced upon them by the economic relations themselves. Even the capitalist is dammed by the band of competition to make profit or to perish. The process of concentration and centralization of capital is insofar a structurally caused moment of the dynamic of capital accumulation. That’s why it would be ludicrous to demand for instance ‘fair competition’ against the ‘power of corporations’ or to classify capital under the motto small = good and large = evil with sympathy points.

To conceive ‘rule of law’ as a specific form of capitalist domination does certainly not mean that within capitalism legal norm and legal practice, ideal and reality are always in accord with each other. That would mean to ignore the ideological character that the law form has in a capitalist society. That on an empirical level not only several capitalists but also institutions of constitutional states are using illegal practices - disposing toxic waste in Africa, killing trade unionists, practising torture, etc. - has been widely scandalized. However, a political movement that primarily criticizes what is generally defined as ‘criminal’, acts on the level of critique of an attorney. The fallacy of such a position admittedly is: The world would be all right if just everybody would respect the law.

Theory in action

While the contradictions of capitalism can be experienced in daily life, as a complex social relationship of domination capitalism withdraws itself from every-day-life’s consciousness. To introduce a radical approach into the struggles against the G8 does target on more than a ritualized gesture. But building a foundation of theory does not mean to withdraw into the ivory tower and never take to the streets. On the contrary, such a conclusion would be fatal: if one does not want to capitulate in face of capitalist reality, a call to action is more than necessary.

The G8 summit can be conceived as one of the forms in which capitalist society reflects itself on the political level. An irreconcilable act of negation towards these should not aim at the ‘One Family’ of the defrauded and the disappointed, but at the possibility of bringing the scandal of capitalism in its totality into the focus of critique: to criticize its structures in institutions and in our heads and to develop a perspective beyond domination, violence, repression and exploitation. At this year’s summit, this only happened to a certain extent – more visible were the ‘analyses’ that conceived the Group of Eight as the ‘spider in the web’ or the ‘distributing centre’ of ‘predatory capitalism’ and the personalisation’s that imply some of the dangers and shortcomings mentioned above. More important than protesting against the summit seemed for us to critically intervene into one of the biggest leftist movements at present tense and challenge some of its dominant assumptions.

While talking about revolution seems to be pretty naive today, it appears to be even more stupid to waste all of one’s abilities to arrange oneself with the status quo. The G8 summit can be seen as a cause to go the whole hog with the critique of capitalism – not because the G8 is the personified evil but rather because domination in capitalism basically has neither name nor address. The ‘right place’ for anti-capitalist resistance is never immediately given. It is defined exclusively by the experience of social contradictions, leading to the insight that there is a necessity to (to speak with Karl Marx) “overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.”

i Most information on recent developments of a „right-wing anti-capitalism“ in Europe are available in German, such as the reader „Nationaler Sozialismus - “Antikapitalismus” von völkischen Freaks“ brought out by TOP.
ii TOP tried to realize this for example through organizing a block at the central demonstration in Rostock with the „….ums Ganze!“ (“…to the Whole!”) alliance which tried to bring across some of the points mentioned in this article, by organizing debates at the various camps on different critiques of capitalism, and by distributing various flyers and reading material.

TOP (Theory. Organisation. Praxis) is a Berlin-based antifascist, anti-capitalist group. They are part of the “…ums Ganze!” alliance (http://umsganze.blogsport.de) which consists of more than ten groups from all over Germany. Parts of this text are based on a paper written prior to the G8 summit which can be found in English at www.top-berlin.net. To get in touch with them write to mail@top-berlin.net.

Editorial - Which camp are you in?

Another airport, another camp. Many of the marquees and tents were the same, and most faces were familiar too. Yet the atmosphere at the No Borders camp last September was very different form the Climate Camp that had happened a month earlier. For a start, there were no police, journalists or livestock on site! Out were the dreadlocks; black hoodies were back in fashion. New airport, new camp, new politics? The No Borders camp had set up at Gatwick airport. Not to protest the flying habits of the middle classes but to demonstrate against the building of Brook House, a new detention centre at Gatwick airport.

We spent time at both camps and so did many others. But an obscure article in the Guardian newspaper proclaimed “You are either in the Gatwick camp or in the Heathrow camp. Make your choice.” Such was the conclusion by Brendan O’Neill of the ex-Marxist ultra-liberal website spiked-online. He had just given one of his infamous rants at British environmentalists. Only (as Merrick shows on page 9) this time he got his facts wrong.

Sure enough, O’Neill praised the No Borders campers for their protest “against the British government’s penchant for building prison-like detention centres for ‘illegal’ and ‘paperless’ immigrants, including one inside the grounds of Gatwick airport”. On the other hand, he accused the Climate Campers of being “interested only in their freedom to lecture the rest of us about our planet-killing holidays” and “calling for less choice, less freedom of movement, and for tougher taxes and restrictions on people’s ability to fly”. That might have been true for some of the liberal and conservative green pressure groups that have jumped onto the Climate Camp bandwagon. Many of the camp organisers, anarchists and socialists at Heathrow, however, condemned the calls for restrictive government-action.

There was some real support and co-operation between the two camps; and that is recognised from both No Borders (see page 4) and Climate Camp (see page 9) perspectives. We were also somewhat bemused by O’Neill’s remarks: One of the marquees at the No Borders camp had “from Drax to Heathrow” visibly written on the side of it, pointing out that the marquee (together with lots of the people) had come straight from the Climate Camp. There was no need to choose, we had just moved from one camp to the next!

On second thought, however, it is more complex than that. It should have trickled through to the radical green movement too that some of its traditions and contemporary manifestations have a markedly conservative edge to them. And increasingly today, green discourses are being used to justify migration controls. Isn’t it morally unjustifiable to allow unrestricted migration and freedom of movement when air and road travel and unsustainable consumption levels are destroying the planet? As we have argued in our last issue, there is clearly a level of austerity politics at work in the green movement. And the climate campers should guard themselves against attempts to use it as a platform to argue for more government and less travel (see page 14).

The intermingling of blood and soil ideology and conservative greens is well known. The thread can be picked up at various points throughout European history. For instance with the rise of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century came the close association between a romantic idealisation of the natural world and a desire to preserve and keep sacred this world – a romantic nationalism. The fascist conceptions of nation, blood and soil have green undertones. They evoke a connection between race and homeland and between nation and nature. For the German Nazis, it was the Volk (the ‘people’) alone that could live in harmony with the natural surroundings of Europe. With National Socialism sometimes came an inherent anti-modernism and romantic vision of the ‘natural’ as opposed to the destructive forces of the international financial elite.

This romantic idealism has sometimes been transported into ‘radical’ green movements. Proponents of ‘deep ecology’ and of ‘primitivism’ have especially been flirting with anti-immigration ideologies, though more so in the US than over here. Sometimes, the complex social reasons behind systematic ecological degradation are reduced to a mere problem of scarcity and ‘overpopulation’. Apparently there are too many people in the world and in Britain. Such arguments go hand-in-hand with calls for migration controls and border regimes to protect the European and North American eco-systems from ‘unsustainable’ population levels.

To be sure, none of this thinking was evident at the Climate Camp or could characterise the environmental direct action movement in Britain. But we have come across such arguments and it is important to refute them. Partly because they are missing the fundamental point: Trying to find an ethical or sustainable way of living in this current mode of social organisation invariably leads into a dead end. Capitalism is based upon contradictions and we won’t be able to break out of them if we hide behind pure ethical-environmental or moral-humanitarian positions without challenging the entirety of the system. The connection between No Borders and Climate Camp needs to go beyond infrastructure to a genuine exchange of politics and ideas.

A foot in both camps - Merrick

It’s always something of a fish/barrel/firearms combo going for Spiked and their writers. But given the scandalous denial of the facts and complete absence of research in one particular piece, I’ll do it anyway. Just so you know who we’re dealing with, Spiked rose from the ashes of Living Marxism, the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party. They had the traditional fanatical far-left party allegiance and devotion to allies right or wrong. This cost them dear when their love of Bosnian Serbs during the Balkan wars led them to fabricating a libellous story about ITN’s coverage, and LM was sued out of existence.

The party folded, the communist ideas evaporated, but that fixation with making the story fit your beliefs has endured. They always had a strong anti-environmental stance, seeing humans - and especially their technology - as capable of fixing everything with industrialisation. (Quite where the energy sources and raw materials are coming from, well, let’s just keep seeing further industrialisation as the only progress worth having and have faith it’ll all come out alright.)

This has led them to their present position of being fervently ‘pro-science’ (ie pro-corporate science) and extremely critical of environmentalism. The team donned suits and formed a number of front groups (am I the only one who always wonders why a person is presented as a plausible pundit just because they’re from something that can be called a think-tank?) with names like Global Futures and London International Research Exchange.

Living Marxism and Spiked folks were climate change deniers for as long as it was tenable and quite some distance beyond. Indeed, Martin Durkin, maker of denialist documentaries The Great Global Warming Swindle and Against Nature, as well as ones ‘proving’ that silicone breast implants are good for womens’ health and that genetic engineering is more or less the best thing ever, has strong links with the personnel and ideology of LM and Spiked.

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked’s editor. So we can expect anything he writes to be in the Durkin tradition of highly selective fact-mincing.

He’d already used his keen political intellect to lay into this summer’s Camp for Climate Action for being ‘made up of painful miserabilists, who wouldn’t know what fun was if it stamped its eco-footprint on their faces’.

But after the Climate Camp he wrote this other piece, comparing the Heathrow Climate Camp with the No Borders camp at Gatwick a month later. No Borders is an international network who work with and for migrants and asylum seekers on the issues of freedom of movement and for the freedom for people to stay in the place which they have chosen.

O’Neill talks of the contrast between the ideals of the two camps, concluding “You’re either in the Gatwick camp or the Heathrow camp. Make your choice.” All the hallmarks of LM journalism, there. Challenging, bullish, ideologically driven, and completely at odds with the facts.

The Camp for Climate Action and No Borders openly supported one another. Their websites link to one another. As well as the day of mass action, there were several smaller bits of direct action from the Climate Camp. One was an occupation of the offices of budget airline XL. The target was chosen not only because of their cheap flights but also for their contract to deport refugees from the UK. The action was explicitly in solidarity with the No Borders camp. In the press release one of the protesters, Allannah Currie, explained: “environmental refugees outnumber all other kinds combined, and climate change will make that get a lot worse. We in the wealthy countries have welfare to protect us from climate chaos, but the world’s poorest have nothing to help them except us taking responsibility. Our carbon emissions threaten to take the essentials of life from the poor of the world, it makes a mockery of our concern about aid and debt relief.” The press release went on to plug the No Borders camp and had the No Borders URL at the bottom. When protesters (except one who’d locked on to a stairwell) were removed from the building they continued outside, holding a banner saying ‘CHEAP FLIGHTS… CHEAP LIVES?!!’. This action upped the ante considerably and led to XL pulling out of deportations within weeks.

The Climate Camp’s programme of workshops included ‘No Borders and the Harmondsworth Detention Centre’ and ‘Climate Change: Making Poverty Permanent?’. Additionally, there was one from anti-Shell campaigners in Ireland who’ve forged links with indigenous groups fighting Shell in Nigeria, and several from anti-biofuels campaigns that are largely based on the fact that oil plantations are destroying forests which is an attack not only on the ecosystems but also displacing the people that live there.

The final action from the Climate Camp was a protest at Harmondsworth Detention Centre where asylum seekers are kept in prison-like conditions. The report on Indymedia describes the protesters as being ‘from the Climate Camp, including many from No Borders’ and explains: “The link between the Climate Camp and detention centres is in no way convoluted. Climate change is already producing millions of environmental refugees. These millions will become hundreds of millions in a business as usual scenario. Many of those refugees managing to flee to this country, along with many fleeing torture and war, are met not with compassion and asylum, but brutal repression and detention. The policies of UK plc with regard to climate change are hurting these people, but instead of helping them, UK plc locks them up.

If he’d, ooh I dunno, checked what the Climate Camp actually did then O’Neill would have known this. Knowing any of it - all of it easily found in obvious places - would have totally undermined his case. If he’d gone one further and actually made contact with anyone from either camp he would have discovered all that and more too. O’Neill says of the No Borders camp ‘this time freedom-loving greens are nowhere to be seen,’ yet at No Borders many of the organisers and attendees were the very same people as the Climate Camp. They also shared infrastructure; the same marquees were used, the same bike library available for borrowing, the same vehicles delivering stuff and taking it away, you name it.

O’Neill talks about his imagined lack of solidarity between climate activism and No Borders as illuminating: “the deeply anti-humanist strain in the politics of environmentalism. Because environmentalism is built on ideas about scarcity and shortage, it tends towards misanthropic solutions: demands for smaller families, harsher living conditions and restrictions on migration. Strip away the trendy gloss, and environmentalism increasingly looks like an expression of middle-class outrage against the masses and our dirty habits.” I love that, calling himself ‘the masses’.

As a rule of thumb, the richer you are the greater your personal consumption and carbon emissions, so environmentalism is pretty much an attack on people’s habits in direct proportion to the size of their income. It’s an attack on the rich and their dirty habits.

If we are to talk of global migration and global climate, we have to look at humanity globally. In those terms, the masses do not have dirty habits. Most people will never fly or own a car, indeed barely half the world’s ever made a phone call. To do any of these things says you’re actually in the rich elite. Why do the likes of O’Neill always use ‘middle class’ as the criticism? Don’t the upper class ever offend their beliefs? But the term is not used in a strict socio-economic sense. It has other connotations, it implies a woolliness of thinking, a kind of personal and intellectual inauthenticity as a human being. It’s a nice handy catch-all dismissal, vague enough to not have to be defended.

He says that it is ‘inhumane’ to restrict immigration if climate change is going to force vast numbers of people to leave their homeland. Quite so. Indeed, at both the Climate Camp and the No Borders camp this point was made repeatedly. But might it be more humane to let people stay on their land amongst their culture rather than deprive them of the basics of life and force their migration just so the rich can jet off for weekends in Barcelona?

Such an idea as espoused by the climate campaigners left O’Neill incredulous: “They were effectively calling for less choice, less freedom of movement, and for tougher taxes and restrictions on people’s ability to fly. Their argument with BAA can be summed up as follows: “We demand the freedom to protest against freedom!””

Absolutely. There are limits to freedom. Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. When climate change is already killing people in their thousands every week, the freedom to increase emissions is the freedom to throw ever more punches.

The whole principle of Contraction & Convergence is that we find the safe level of total human emissions - so nobody’s fist is hitting anyone’s nose - then we share those out equally. As opposed to the idea that whoever has money can do what they want and if it inflicts suffering and deprivation on the poor and those yet to come, well, tough shit.

In talking about the ‘masses’ yet just meaning those in the rich nations, and in talking about ‘freedom’ meaning the freedom to do what your money allows, O’Neill and Spiked reveal a deeply held sense of superiority over and contempt for those they exclude; those who do, in actuality, constitute the mass of people.

For the vision that joins up its thinking and acts responsibly out of concern for humanity at large, you need a foot in both camps.

"Merrick is a writer and activist on environmental and other issues. Whilst keeping a hand in as part of the Godhaven Ink publishing collective, in these cybertimes not much of his writing comes out on actual paper things. Nowadays it’s most frequently done on his Bristling Badger blog (www.bristlingbadger.blogspot.com) DISCLAIMER: This article was first published online at www.thesharpener.net"

In defence of free spaces… international call for decentralised days of action for squats and autonomous spaces

On Friday the 11th and Saturday the 12th of April 2008, we call for two days of demonstration, direct action, public information, street-party, squatting… in defence of free spaces and for an anti-capitalist popular culture.

Through these two days, we want to help create more visibility of autonomous spaces and squats as a european/global political movement. We want to develop interconnections and solidarity between squats and autonomous spaces. We want to keep linking our spaces with new people and new struggles, and support the creation of autonomous spaces in places where there has not been a history of this kind of action. We want to build, step by step, our ability to overcome the wave of repression falling on us.

We call for decentralised and autonomous actions of all kinds, depending on what people feel to be the most appropriate to their local context. You’ll find below the political content we wish to give to these two days.

We are everywhere…

For centuries, people have used squats and autonomous spaces, either urban or rural, to take control of their own lives. They are a tool, a tactic, a practice, and a way for people to live out their struggles. For decades, squat movements across Europe and beyond have fought capitalist development, contributing to local struggles against destruction; providing alternatives to profit-making and consumer culture; running social centres and participatory activities outside of the mainstream economy. Demonstrating the possibilities for self-organising without hierarchy; creating international networks of exchange and solidarity. These networks have changed many lives, breaking out of social control and providing free spaces where people can live outside the norm.

Among other things, these places provide bases for meetings and projects, for the creation and distribution of subversive culture, for the non-monetary based exchange of goods, resources and knowledge, for experimenting with new ways of living, for collective debates, for recycling and construction, for agricultural activities, for the production of independent media.

Whether we speak of urban squats or of purchased land, of negotiated or re-appropriated rural land, of restored factories or self-built buildings, these spaces are refuges for rebels and outlaws, poor and homeless people, radical activists, illegal immigrants. Social centres are crucial to us as part of a movement for social change.

All over Europe, repressive agendas are being pushed by governments

They are attacking long-standing autonomous spaces such as the Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Koepi and Rigaer Straße in Berlin, EKH in Vienna and Les Tanneries in Dijon, squatted social centres in London and Amsterdam, Ifanet in Thessaloniki, etc. In France, squats have become a priority target for the police after the anti-CPE movement and the wave of actions and riots that happened during the presidential elections period. In Germany, many autonomous spaces have been searched and attacked before the G8 summit. In Geneva and Barcelona, two old and big squatting “fortresses”, the authorities have decided to try to put an end to the movement. Whereas it is still possible to occupy empty buildings in some countries, it has already become a crime in some others. In the countryside, access to land is becoming harder and communes face increasing problems from legislation on hygiene, security and gentrification by the bourgeoisie and tourists. All over Europe, independent cultures are being threatened.

Several months ago we saw running battles in the streets of Copenhagen and actions everywhere in Europe in an explosion of anger at the eviction of the Ungdomshuset social centre. Since then, and with a few other big resistance stories that happened over the last months, we’ve managed to renew the meaning of international solidarity.

We are motivated by the same passions, we feel the same determination, face a common enemy in repression, and are united across borders by our desire to build a world of equality and self-determination. As unaligned and ungovernable islands of uncontrolled freedom we want to continue to act in solidarity, and strengthen our international links, no matter how many kilometres there are between us.

What follows is a short synthesis of the decisions and projects coming out of the april2008 coordination meeting that took place in ‘Les Tanneries’, Dijon, on November 24-25th. The meeting was attended by some 120 people from 25 different countries.

mailing-lists and forums
The main discussion list is called april2008-coordination(at)squat.net, and there’s a number of other lists for working groups, all of which are mirrored on the april2008 forums: http://april2008.squat.net/forum/. If you want to join and take part, please do! Just send an introduction mail to april2008(at)squat.net.

agenda of public april2008 events
April2008 will be a mix of both surprise “not-announced” actions and public “announced-beforehand” events. There will be paper and digital versions of a program, so that people can join actions and activities in places where participation is welcomed and/or forces needed. The schedule will be edited early March, and available as a PDF. We invite you to send all your announcements to april2008@squat.net, so they can be published on the website and then summarized on the agenda.

Two possibilities for new meetings were proposed:
- May 2008, Berlin: it was proposed to meet some days ahead of Koepi’s days of action, so that people could stay for the actions if they wanted to. Various people were really enthousiastic about it, but some others were a lot more skeptical, given that having a meeting in Berlin in such context might not allow quiet in-depth debates, and the energy of the meetings might be swallowed by action dynamics or police pressure. This debate will be brought back to people in Berlin, who will decide if they wish to call for this meeting or not.
- October 2008, Barcelona: the proposal will be made at the Asamblea de Okupas de Barcelona (city-wide squatters’ assembly). Encounters might be followed by days of action or not, depending on the local context, the organizers’ choice, and the experience of the Berlin gathering.

Ideas for action
A lot of examples of possible actions have been mentioned as well as quite obvious possible common targets linked with speculation and private property management. Let’s make it clear, though, that there will be no april2008 official action guideline. Everything is possible. Join actions in other cities where forces will be needed if nothing happens at home! Though there is no worry about everyone’s local creativity, it can’t harm to state some of the tactics people have been mentioning, related to their recent local experiences: squatting something crazy and huge right in the town centre, organizing a mass action to occupy a building with the location announced in advance (as during the Copenhagen’s G13), targetting real estate agencies, blocking or removing their offices, locking bailifs inside their doors, squatting politician’s houses, organizing Reclaim The Streets parties against gentrification, creating fake newspapers about autonomous spaces and housing politics to distribute massively in bus/suburbs stations and around town, squatting land in the countryside, finding strength and people to open and keep squats in places where it never happened or where it became really difficult, to organize tourist visits of the cities showing all the houses evicted and the evil of contemporary urbanism, organizing solidarity actions (on consulates or targetted country companies…) for squats threatened of eviction in other countries, proposing open doors and open activities in an autonomous space, bringing the activities of an autonomous space outside in town (workshops, free-zone, hacklab, infoshop, gigs…), choosing a common enemy in various towns (as it was done by french squatters in 2005, with 17 decentralised actions on Socialist Party’s city councils and headquarters), following the dutch example of a white book of squatting, with stories of squats in every cities, electing the “bad landlord of the week”, occupying shops and supermarkets, disturbing official political debates and organizing your own discussion about the need for autonomous spaces, etc., etc.

Interview with Alice/Robin from No Borders about the Gatwick camp

Last September, some 300 people gathered a few miles from Gatwick airport for the No Borders camp. What was the idea behind the camp? What were its aims?

The camp was part of the campaign against a new detention centre, Brook House, that is being built at Gatwick Airport. It was also a conscious attempt to strengthen the UK No Borders network, to gather ideas for how to build up the fight against the system of migration controls with other groups working on this issue in the UK, Europe and beyond. There were loads of workshops, talks, films, networking and skill sharing at the camp. Another aim was ‘outreach’ and raising the profile of the campaign against the new detention centre and displaying our opposition to various parts of the immigration infrastructure in the Gatwick area, (reporting centre, detention centre, companies involved in removals flights etc.) As the original call out explained, “Gatwick is a border in the middle of Britain. People arrive there everyday. People are forcibly deported from there everyday. It is a place where people are imprisoned for unlimited lengths of time without trial, where people are forced to hide underground and be invisible, where people are treated as criminals for the ‘crime’ of crossing the border… We demand the end of the border regime for everyone, including ourselves, to enable us to live another way, without fear, racism and nationalism.” The UK context has arguably become much harsher under recent legislation and a cranking up of the No Borders network was certainly needed.

How was the camp organised and why did it come so quickly after the Climate Camp at Heathrow airport?

There have been discussions about a UK No Border camp for many years. This camp was continuing the tradition of the No Borders camps across the world since the late 1990s, and like the camps that took place last year in the Ukraine in August and on the US/Mexican border in November. The original idea, in March 2007, was to have a smaller action camp to disrupt the building of the new detention centre but the idea developed and publicity was taken to the G8 in Germany, early June. This meant that the camp grew in size and became much more ambitious. We have all certainly learned lessons from this experience.

Although there were monthly, open meetings, the majority of logistical organising, networking and fund-raising was done by a (too) small group of existing No Borders activists based mainly in London, Brighton but also from around the UK. The short time frame over a busy period meant that it was difficult to get more people involved. In our debrief, we discussed that perhaps from some places there was pressure to pull off something of similar scale to the climate camp, but this was not by any means an explicit aim of the camp. The main reason that the camp was planned for the late summer was not to clash with other camps/events but also we felt it was essential for the campaign against the new detention centre that it was this summer, building work has already begun! In fact the detention centre is due for completion in 2008.

A conscious decision was made to rent, rather than squat, the land on which the camp was held. Also, instead of mass direct action, the main event was an authorised demonstration to Tinsley House detention centre. Were there (dis)advantages to working within the law?

Squatting was certainly always there as a fall back option, to my knowledge there was certainly no conscious decision made not to squat. Saying that, there was a strong argument to make the camp a place where people with insecure legal status could come without putting themselves at risk. It’s hard to say exactly how asylum seekers and migrants are treated by the criminal justice system, but its certainly unpredictable and often small offences can risk detention and deportation. Of course with squatting, defending the site could well end up being the action in itself and we were not sure about how many people we would be. Ultimately though, we found a really good location and sound farmer for an amount of money that we could afford so we went for that. Due to police pressure, we then lost this site, 48 hours before set up was due to start! We were pretty close to not having a camp at all when we lost the land. This is one big disadvantage of working with rented land, ultimately the police harassed the family on this farm to allow them full access, they denied it, the police continued to harass them and eventually they pulled out of the contract. This has happened before, at the G8 camp in Stirling for example, and this shows that the police are prepared to try hard to stop these events happening.

Because at the last minute the location of the camp was forced to change we were much further from intended targets and so smaller affinity group actions were much harder to do, although there were some, (including an occupation of Virgin Airlines offices and a blockade of Group 4.) This was a real shame as all along the idea had been to have both legal demos and provision for direct action, but it was way out of our control. After the decision was made to get a temporary events notice to make the camp a legal and safe space, from that point on there was a need for negotiation with the authorities. In the end there was no license because our actual location fell in a different council and it was too late.

One thing that was advantageous of having a main, pre-organised legal demo, was that the time actually at the camp, (only 4 days long rather than 8 days at the climate camp,) was not spent deciding what to do and people could easily come just for the day. There was a clear programme of events and of course, autonomy, (although maybe not enough time), for groups wanting to organise direct action alongside that. It did seem strange to be organising a legal demo and it was for sure an uneasy political choice for many. But in reality the aim of the demo was to march through Crawley town centre on a busy Saturday afternoon, show our opposition to the new detention centre and to get to Tinsley House to show our solidarity and communicate with the detainees inside. Our negotiation of a route and a legal demo meant that we did this successfully. Not all the events were negotiated in this way, at Lunar House in East Croydon we gathered outside to give out food and information to the people queuing and the police tried to stop us by using kettles to contain small groups.

Although I took part, I would question whether what happened at the climate camp was a mass direct action. Despite the many many hours spent looking for consensus on the plan, there were many people who felt the whole thing was manipulated and sabotaged. The action on the Sunday at BAA was essentially a blockade at a building which was not open for business. Whether this was fundamentally more effective/ empowering than the demo in Crawley is a question for each individual involved to answer. But the point is that each case needs to be thought about on its own merits about what it is trying to achieve and be planned accordingly. To really get a mass of people I think that at least partly open, pre-planned events can really help. I think also that we should learn about how much energy and time can be spent on reaching consensus with very large, diverse groups which then can sometimes result in decisions which very few people are happy with.

Many of the people at the camp had also been at the Climate Camp. Was there an overlap of effort?

There was certainly a great deal of co-operation between the people organising the infrastructure. The No Borders camp was able to borrow and store structures and a lot of necessary bits and pieces from individuals, groups, neighbourhoods and ‘central’ climate camp tat. This made the No Borders camp able to happen and was a great example of how effort from one thing can carry on to the next. There are plans afoot to make this process more easy - formalised in some way in the future. In all other ways, networking and the campaigns involved, overlap wasn’t really an issue. But I was definitely glad to see that quite a few people did cross over, and that the two issues are seen as interrelated. For example XL airways were targeted during the climate camp for their involvement in deportation flights to the Democratic Republic of Congo. This airline then made a public statement that they were stopping their involvement in deportation flights just before the No Borders camp.

Some commentators have remarked that the Climate Camp stood for ‘austerity’, while the no borders camp stood for ‘freedom of mobility’. Aren’t these irreconcilable politics? Was this an issue at the camp?

Was it an issue? Not one that was discussed that I was aware of. For me it’s an interesting comment, because there is very little that seems to link the two issues together in the public eye. Social justice arguments related to climate change are often down played or ignored whereas I see migration and climate change as totally connected. I was involved in both events, and saw no clash between them but of course I can only speak for myself. For me, climate camp was about many things, I don’t think it is possible to reduce these things to one position. Climate change is perhaps the starkest symptom of the economic system which promotes endless economic growth over all else. Finding ways of living with more autonomy from a fossil fuel- oppressive- climate changing system is one of those, learning skills for self reliance is another. Challenging the idea that the well-off have some inalienable right to fly away to Paris for shopping trips is also important. This year’s camp was also about highlighting BAA’s Heathrow expansion plans and making the argument that this is madness in light of climate change. Perhaps most importantly to me, it was also about opposing the idea that the people whose homes, schools and communities would be destroyed by the expansion of Heathrow, and all the others who will feel the less direct impacts, are the unfortunate victims of necessary progress. The people in Sipson village are one of thousands of communities around the world who are threatened by the pressure for expansion and profit. The climate camp was also about standing in solidarity with those people, but also with the many millions of people whose lives are directly or indirectly affected by the environmental and social ravages of an oil-addicted consumer culture. So yes, climate camp is about challenging unjust and unsustainable consumption, which isn’t the same as being for austerity which has negative connotations. Spiralling debt, work related stress and mental illness, obesity, depleted sense of community are all symptoms of this illness and localised community responses to climate change can also have many other benefits.

Open borders and the freedom of movement for all is also an anti-capitalist position. From slavery through to modern day neo-liberal free trade agreements, the position of wealth and privilege in the global north is, to a large extent, the result of the exploitation of land, people and resources of the two thirds world. The immigration system and fortress europe is designed to preserve this division. Flows of people are managed and controlled in the national interest, and for economic benefit. To speak out against migration controls also challenges the huge injustice which exploits people and resources around the world for the benefit of few. Freedom of movement is the preserve of the relatively rich. People who question the principle of freedom of movement, should consider their huge privilege if they have an EU passport.

In summary, both camps call for social change, a desire for a redistribution of wealth which is both a call for reigning in of western decadence and an opening up of that same wealth to those affected historically and also right now. The climate camp offers a radical critique of responses to climate chaos offered by governments. Many of the options offered by the state such as carbon rationing, would de-facto lead us blindfold into a police state. No Borders has at its core this same resistance to encroachment on our liberties and sees that government systems of control are often trialled on asylum seekers, but they can and will affect us all.

The Climate Camp aimed to build a movement against the causes of climate change. Can you see an emerging no borders movement?

On the one hand yes, the number of active No Border groups in the UK has certainly grown since the camp and there are projects and actions going on, which link these groups into a network. There are big questions which we will be discussing at an up-coming national gathering, about how any No Borders network could be strengthened and made more effective. As well as challenging the construction of new immigration prisons and deportations to possible death and torture, a No Borders movement would have to build widespread agreement that such things are morally unacceptable. Each case that is highlighted by anti-deportation campaigns, every action against a forced removal is part of building towards that point. There may well be a growing movement against the companies that carry out deportation flights for example or the detention estate, run by private companies for profit. Educating ourselves about the immigration system, the harsh reality of ‘illegal’ economic migrants, challenging racist officials and laws and acting in solidarity with all the struggles against these things I see as part of an emerging No Borders movement.

But what exactly do we mean by a movement? There is no such thing as a blueprint for a movement but I understand it to be an informal group action for social change which aims to influence the wider political agenda with its message.

The Climate Camp aimed to include as many people as possible, brought together to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions through education, sustainable living and direct action. An enormous amount of energy was spent bringing a non-hierarchical model of organising to a wide group of people, recognising that we need radical action on a mass scale. The result of this long planning process was two flawed, but fantastic, week-long events. This process was made possible because ultimately there was already a general feeling that “something must be done about climate change” within the mainstream consciousness that could be tapped into and developed. Although many people involved with the camp place this message within a much wider critique, in itself, doing something about climate change is far from a radical message. Indeed everyone including American presidential candidates to fossil fuel companies such as Beyond Petroleum finally seem to agree.

After two years of climate camps, a direct action movement is being drawn together and strengthened against the fossil fuel empire, one of the root causes of climate change. Since the high profile, audacious events, some climate campers have become spokespeople for more radical arguments within the broad, public climate change debate which involves NGOs, politicians and the mainstream media. The Climate Camp was, in short, less about the message conveyed and more about how to get there. It also successfully brought arguments about economic growth lying at the root cause of climate change in to the public spectrum.

I wonder if this approach to movement building is possible, appropriate or even desirable for No Borders. The No Borders network has existed since 1999 and is a loose association of autonomous groups and individuals who work within a political spectrum of direct actions, anti-deportation campaigns and demonstrations which challenge migration controls. The No Borders position is certainly far from having popular currency. It is explicitly anti-state and pro-freedom of movement for all people. It argues that immigration controls are inherently racist and so acts out of solidarity with economic migrants as well as asylum seekers and refugees. In a global economy, where goods are transported and monies flow irrespective of borders, nation states are a way of controlling access to wealth and privilege and dividing the haves and the have-nots both between and inside countries.

This political position is currently on the very fringes of debate about migration, which is dominated by right wing, anti-immigrant scape-goating and human rights based reform. A huge amount of important work is done by groups to support those suffering immigration detention and destitution and supporters will hold someone’s hand all the way to the plane. However, many of these groups do not or can not challenge the immigration system as a whole and are unlikely to ever become part of any No Borders movement. Although there will be some cross-over there are different underlying aims, (reform of vs. abolition of immigration controls). No Borders has a vital role therefore in articulating the anti-capitalist/anti-state position within this debate and taking direct action to prevent things when we can. We are, however, a very long way from making the fight against borders part of the mainstream in this country although there are emerging links between struggles of undocumented workers, detainees and those struggling against immigration controls around the world.

It seems we are perhaps, finally a little nearer to seeing radical action on climate change, (if only the eco-radicals of the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s had been listened to!) But it is important to remember that both are essentially part of the same struggle to destroy our current economic, capitalist system and are equally far away from achieving this aim! Both emerging movements will encounter similar resistance by those who will fight to maintain their power and privilege and this remains the most challenging struggle of all.

The no borders camp got little media interest in the mainstream press. Do you still think it was a success?

It all depends on how you measure success; I sometimes thought it was a miracle that we pulled off the camp at all! I also enjoyed not having a paparazzi or fit team camera pointed at us the entire duration of the camp. We were there for many reasons, getting mainstream media interest was not a high priority for many of us though there were some very positive reports in the local media. It was a success for us as a local group, it was an exciting beginning to a rejuvenated No Border network. There were some very powerful, informative and useful workshops; one I went to about the impact of migration on the autonomous, indigenous communities in Oaxaca for example. There were some really important exchanges between people, both at the camp and outside, when we were at Lunar House reporting centre in Croydon and talking to people inside Tinsley House for example. I had never been on such a big demo at a detention centre and I don’t think Crawley had ever seen anything like it. There were also invaluable opportunities for lessons to be shared with No Border activists and other people struggling in other places around the world.

In retrospect I think everyone involved would have done things differently. But, whether the camp was a success or not will only become clear as we see how the actions, campaigns and network develop over the coming months and years. Any camp needs to be measured on so many different levels, its atmosphere, its logistical organisation, its political impact etc. I for one have had enough of camping for a while and think that I will put energy in to other things, but it was a great experience. The campaign against the new detention centre continues, see www.noborders.org.uk for updates.

"Alice is involved with a No Borders group in Brighton. She is also part of Trapese, a popular education collective who recently published, Do It Yourself: A handbook for changing our world. See www.handbookforchange.org"

Interview with a spacehijacker

In September 2007, you proclaimed “the spacehijackers own a tank and plan to use it”. What was the target?

The plan with the tank was to drive it into DSEi (a bi-annual arms fair which happens in the docklands in East London), we then intended to sell of the tank to the highest bidder regardless of morals. If an angry 14 year old ASBO yoof or black block warrior decided to take it on a rampage, then we took no responsibility.

Naturally the police were pretty keen on not letting us follow this plan through, even though the fair itself is well known for having even less moral fibre, with stalls routinely turning up selling illegal weapons and torture equipment.

Our plan mainly was to put the arms fair back on the map of London’s consciousness, and in the pages of the papers, to try and build up support for the arms fair protests.

So, did you use it?

Yes and No. Unfortunately the police managed to find our secret hiding place for the tank a few days before the fair. We then spend 24 hours a day under police watch, with our phones being listened to and agents being followed around.

However in a cunning move, planned on pay as you go phones, we managed to hire a second tank (the bird) for the fair after emptying out everyone’s overdrafts. The plan for the fair went as normal, and our agents met at tank number one (Fredom) then attempted to drive it out to the fair through the 150 odd police that had turned up to block our way. In a beautiful turn of the tables, the police ended up having to form a human shield around the protester vehicles to stop us driving down the road.

They then demanded to perform a roadside MOT check on our tank, which was 100% road legal, we had insurance certificates, DVLA numberplate certificates etc etc etc. Speaking to the traffic policeman on the day, basically they had been informed to find something wrong with the vehicle so as not to let us drive. Lo and behold, after about an hour of faffing, they claimed that a split piece of rubber on one of the axles made the vehicle un-roadworthy and wouldn’t let us drive.

I climbed up onto the turret of the tank and had to make an announcement to the crowd and police. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are really sorry to say, that after wasting everyone’s time, the police have decided not to let our tank onto the roads today. However I have just had word that our SECOND TANK has just arrived at canning town round-about next to the arms fair!”

Cue panic amongst the police ranks who had no idea a second tank was on the cards, and cheers from the protesters, who then hopped on the bikes we had provided to rush down to the fair and the tank. The Second tank made it right up to the front doors of the fair, and our auction took place, surrounded by more police as the arms dealers drove in and out of the fair.

In terms of our aims, it gained a lot of negative coverage for the arms fair, with editorial in the London Paper, London Light, Times and Time Out amongst others, we even had a Hijacker Spokesperson pretending to be from the arms fair on the BBC news.

How much did the tank cost you? Was it money well spent?

Tank number one FREDOM, cost us around £6000 including low loader hire and parts etc, the second one cost about £2000 to hire for the day. To be honest, the look on the police’s faces when we announced we had tricked them and that the first tank was a decoy, was worth every penny. We managed to raise a fair chunk of the money running stalls around east London promoting the arms fair protests, and had a number of bands etc selling t-shirts at gigs. The King Mob Blues even promoted the plan at their Reading set. Since the fair we have been holding a load of fundraiser parties to pay everyone back who lent the project money.

Some people accuse you of being a bunch of middle-class art students. How would you respond to this?

Some of us are. Some of us are middle class ex-art students who work in media, some of us are computer programmers, some of us sign on, some of us are barristers, some of us are professional knitters, some of us are nurses, some of us are lingerie models, some of us run independent cinemas, some of us work in schools, some of us build bicycles, some of us are secretaries, some of us make instruments for a living, and one of our group is a porn star and motivational speaker.

As spacehijackers you intend to claim back lost public spaces. What do you say to those who feel that all you do is hijacking anti-capitalist demonstrations and actions?

I think that’s rubbish, with DSEi we have been actively campaigning against it for 6 years, this time there were Space Hijacker agents at every one of the Disarm DSEi planning meetings, our tank fund raiser stalls handed out information and flyers for everyone else’s part of the protests. Fair enough we often get accused of courting the media, but to be honest, sometimes as with DSEi that is our intention. We’re not trying to steal other people’s glory, or hijack their parade, often quite the opposite.

I guess the main thing we get grief over is Mayday (which also happens to be my birthday), when we arrange events that are not part of the A-B marches, and not part of the autonomous bloc. To be honest, I hate marching from A-B and certainly have no intention of doing it on my birthday. If we arrange an event for after the marches, then surely it’s an addition as opposed to a hijack of the march?

At the end of the day, I think the more people doing more things the better, it’s not like there is a fixed percentage of the population who the activist groups have to split between themselves, and our actions are taking people away from others. The more stuff that’s going on then the more people get involved and it helps everyone.

Your stunts remind us of the writings of the situationists. Who are your influences?

Well the S.I. certainly, also people like the Yes Men, The Toy Shop Collective, Etoy, ®™ARK, Reverend Billy, The Vacuum Cleaner, The KLF, Dada, CrimethInc, and loads loads more.

Do you still own the tank and what do you plan to do with it?

Yes we do still own it, and have many plans up our sleeves. Ones which come to mind include borrowing one of our agents children and doing the School Run in it, amongst the SUV’s, we may be turning it into a Starbucks and also painting it up in UN colours and tackling vulture fund managers. I guess watch this space.

Marching to oblivion: What if they had a march and nobody came? - Little Red Wagon and Pedro Rocha

The word ‘demonstration’ comes from demonstrating your force (of numbers) to your adversary. Given that the December 2007 Campaign Against Climate Change demonstration in London had, on a generous estimate, less than half the feet on the street of 2006, then our adversary - dubbed the ‘pollutocracy’ by George Monbiot - are hardly likely to be scrapping their high-carbon futures. In the three years that the march has been running, the media’s coverage (and public concern?) of climate change has gone - pardon the pun - stratospheric. After all, 2007 saw a pull-few-punches IPCC report, the Stern Report’s aftershocks and the Draft Climate Bill. The Arctic melt was unprecedented and terrifying. So, this was supposed to be the day that the long-awaited mass movement against climate changed reared its multifaceted head and bit the government, hard, on the arse.

In our humble opinion, the green ‘movement’ is not significantly bigger or less crushingly white and middle-class than, say, 2004. There are reasons for it, and there are efforts to change it, but it’s an inconvenient truth of our very own.

In our opinion the 2007 Camp for Climate Action amounted to a mass-lobby for higher aviation taxes. That wasn’t the intention, but it was the result. Often the radicals are distinguished from the mainstream only by more dramatic demands for emission reduction, and willingness to tiptoe into the realms of tactical illegality once in a while. All feeds principally into state-led solutions within the current system.

Any changes one could point to in the green movement are dwarfed by the massive greenwash effort undertaken by the government, business community and a compliant media over this same period. It has been an act of political ju-jitsu on their behalf, taking the force of their assailants attack, and using it to their own advantage: the environmental movement has made loud calls for someone, anyone, to take action, to which they have made louder responses saying they are just the people to take it: “don’t worry, it’s all in hand”. Should have seen it coming!

So why was the march so small?

The miserable weather may have shaved off a few thousand who lacked a developed sense of irony. Perhaps some people have turned in desperation or inspiration away from marching and towards non-violent direct action. Perhaps it was poorly promoted - certainly there wasn’t the newspaper ads and razorlight poppiness that ‘Stop Climate Chaos’, in lieu of any sensible analysis, brought to the table last year.

The sums still don’t add up. People obviously stay at home if it appears that the government has everything in hand and need not be challenged, just nagged a little. The principle demand of the march was for a “strong climate bill” - one with caps on emissions (only explanation provided). So why not just write a strongly worded letter to your MP? Or easier still vote Tory at the next election?

The majority of the march consisted of Friends of the Earth, the Green Party and CACC with its Socialist Worker Party-backers. Each seeks the attention (or rather, direct debit details) of the elusive common people. The banal simplicity of their messages was infantile and infantilising. The most common banner of the day was “George Bush no.1 climate criminal”.

So what about the radical end, the ones who didn’t want to sign up to the demands of the march but come along anyway to cause nuisance? A call-out for an autonomous bloc had been made on Indymedia. Only a handful turned up, and trudged along with everyone else, red and black flags sagging in the icy rain. No wonder, there was as much sense in the proposal as calling an autonomous bloc for a ramblers association outing in the Cotswolds.

The Climate Camp planned to have a presence, and announced that campers would participate in an ‘aviation bloc’ with NOTRAG. This happened not. Instead, campers dispersed to hand out flyers (far hipper than newspapers, you understand); not to make a radical intervention in the day’s proceedings, but to self-promote. Premonitions that the choice of location for the camp would constrain the political space for manoeuvre seem to have come true: aviation remains no.1 on the agenda for ‘radical’ greens; moving away now would be treachery!

Leading the charge in this direction are Plane Stupid. They provided what was apparently the only direct action of the day in London, gluing the doors shut on the travel agents that lined the route of the march. Autonomous actions in Manchester also targeted travel agents. On the issue of over-consumption, striking at the demand side through direct-interference with the consumer’s activity, remains the order of the day. Interestingly, a banner drop in Manchester the day before employed the same ‘the tide is rising’ slogan as was projected onto the side of Battersea power station in a stunt sponsored by the Daily Mail & General Trust owned Metro. A serious concern with radical change means continually reviewing tactics and discourses; something’s not quite right if both of these coalesce with the nation’s largest corporate media entity.

Striking also was the sharp hike in vegans on the march. They must have realised that climate change is a great platform for their cause: inciting fear of Armageddon is a good way to get people thinking about a change in their diet. However, it means sacrificing the principle message of their campaign: end cruelty to animals.

Right-wing commentator Dominic Lawson fulminated a while back that environmentalism was the anti-capitalists’ new vehicle of choice following the fall of communism. He might be right (even broken clocks are right twice a day). In comparison to previous years, the shortcomings of our system of production was much higher on the agenda, getting a mention in most of the rally speeches. Vegans and socialists in increased numbers - no harm there as long as there’s also a lot of ‘normal’ people.

The SWP and other anti-capitalists hitching a ride on the green bandwagon face a similar problem to the vegans; whilst capitalism’s excesses are there for all to see in the climate change story, campaigning on this terrain means side-lining the cause of ending cruelty to people. The matter of exploitation and that of destruction of the earth’s ecosystems may be part of a common core problem, but here they are separated, the former sidelined.

Speech, speech. Oh, on second thoughts, no thanks.

The post-march speakers almost invariably critiqued economic growth, not the diffuse structure of exploitation. This green capitalism it seems is also a capitalism with a name and address, controlled by a small number of human subjects. This was exemplified in the unchallenged choice to situate the rally outside the US embassy, all those images of George Bush, and the attacks on greedy corporate giants and wealthy individuals portrayed as gleefully destroying the planet while counting their gold. Sadly it was left to Monbiot to address more clearly the hints that the problem might be linked to a system with its own dynamic. Interesting to see the complete turnaround from his talk at the climate camp a few months back. There he apologised “to all the anarchists in the room” that state-led solutions are the only way forward. Here he was talking about the fundamental illegitimacy of the government, how climate change could never be solved without scrapping capitalism, how we needed direct action every week. He soon returned to prior form and started talking about a ‘revolution of the spirit’.

Capitalism was also muddled together with industrialism and technology, particularly in the speech made by the Climate Camp representative, who asserted that capitalism, climate change and industrialism were born in the same period in history (which is dubious), and that we should turn our back on ‘techno-fixes’. Whilst expectant faith in future technological breakthroughs can distract from making emissions reductions today, surely the problem isn’t industry and technology per se, just the use it’s put too, the form it takes? Cheaper, better renewable energy technology is being kept under wraps due to the owners’ necessity for profit; might this not have been a better point to make? Instead of demonising technology why not discuss more healthy ways of using and developing it for the common good? At times it’s hard not to join in with those saying “these folks will only be happy when we’re all living in yurts eating acorns”.

It’s also hard to see how the potential ‘mass’ of people alluded to by most of the groups’ spokespeople would be attracted to a movement that simultaneously calls for austerity and expensive lifestyle changes.

Listening to all the speakers talk about how we were all wonderful, and part of a powerful climate justice movement that was definitely going to save the world, one senses that it’s times like these that turn people off any form of dissenting politics. All the embarrassingly self-congratulatory ‘done-my-bit’ discourse, the attempts to portray failure as success and weakness as strength, were extremely disempowering.

Because these marches measure ’success’ principally in terms of how many people turn up, all forms of disobedience and confrontation are purged in favour of a placid stroll. Nonetheless radical activists in the UK should not abandon marches altogether; small group NVDA and community building is vital, but to punch above its weight, grow and inspire, an aspiring movement must get together frequently. Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. We need to reclaim marches as a radical form of protest. The mass action at BAA in the summer showed what was possible: lower numbers but higher impact.

"Little Red Wagon is an activist skillshare group based in Manchester, concerned mainly with issues of movement-building. Pedro is a research fellow at the University of Manchester."

Editorial - Indymedia and anti-Semitism

For many of us a visit to Indymedia UK is a frustrating experience. Its open publishing newswire reveals an array of bizarre opinion posts, advertisements for activist meetings, petition requests and photo stories mixed in with the odd action or demonstration report. However, the number and diversity of articles on the newswire are more than an inconvenience. Most exasperating are the countless posts obsessed with the Israel-Palestine conflict, which are telling of some of the political viewpoints we are happy to associate with.

Yes the conflict in the Middle East is one of the major atrocities of our time, as the lives of ordinary Palestinians are being destroyed by the bulldozers of a well-equipped army. The issues that are driving this conflict – nationalism, religion, imperialism – should be essential topics for the radical left. But to have a radical critique of those issues, we need to see beyond Israel=evil and Palestine=good. Mostly however, the opinions presented on Indymedia make the problems of the world seem like one big Jewish conspiracy. The question of what makes Indymedia UK so appealing to conspiracy theorists (see page 4) is worth asking. It’s not just the open publishing format. Rather, it’s the familiarity of the view that the world is run by a few multinationals, Americans and Israelis.

It’s worth pointing out again what we said in our first issue (and will continue to say): capitalism is not a conspiracy! There is no conscious effort by a few high-paid execs and political leaders to manipulate the rest of us. No one stands outside of capitalism; no one pulls the invisible strings: rather it should be understood as an inherently social process where domination is abstract.

Ultimately then, it’s a matter of targets. Theory does not translate easily into action. This year, the Climate Camp had another difficult target discussion (see page 16). This time it boiled down to the question of what presents the biggest threat to climate stability. Most would see the burning of fossil fuels as the greatest idiocy. But others cited figures that would suggest that the erosion of rainforests through the industrial use of biofuels is the bigger threat.

Targets are tricky. In 2007 we criticised the decision to hold the camp at Heathrow. We argued that “instead of showing the interconnectedness of the Social and the Ecological, Climate Camp [had] picked the individual as the point of attack” by focusing on the ‘unethical’ lifestyle choices of those who fly. Moralistic arguments against individual consumer behaviour did not allow for an anti-capitalist critique of society. In 2008 (as in 2006) the target is coal; applying our criticisms at the point of production offers a better platform for exploring the social roots of environmental problems. We’ve now got the opportunity to pick up our argument where we left it at Drax, and most importantly, to move forward with it. This year the Climate Camp has to talk about capitalism as a social process, and not slip back into talking about ethical lifestyle choices. E.ON, BAA and the government have no interest in furthering runaway climate change. But they are faced with the alternative of making profit (and burning fossil fuels along the way) or going bust. Like we said, no one stands outside of capitalism.

We cannot vilify the big multinational and glorify the small organic farm. It’s not a game of villains and heroes. This is what we find problematic with the Israel-bashing on Indymedia: it falsely personifies social forms of domination. When it comes to deciding on targets it should be these foreshortened critiques of capitalism (which can be dangerously reactionary) that are on the top of our list.

1968 - Interview with Ian Bone

How old were you in ’68 and what were you doing at the time?

I was 21 and a student at Swansea university. I was in the Swansea Anarchist group – all students – and we occupied the university building in solidarity with the French students and hoisted the red and black flag. We were very serious whereas in 1967 we were very frivolous.

How did you hear about the student and worker protests in Europe and did you get involved?

We listened to Radio Luxemburg every night for news from Paris. When we heard the Bourse was on fire with the black flag of anarchy flying above it ee thought the revolution was nigh. I remember being very big headed in an ‘I told you so’ way the following day in the university coffee bar. Our anarchist group grew from 20 to over 1000 overnight. Very exciting it was.

Was there anything meaningful happening in England at the time that contributed to these protests? Or is it fair that Paris took all the credit?

It wasn’t just Paris – there were student uprisings worldwide – the Zengakuren in Japan for example. The Vietnam war was still the major politicising factor. In March there was a violent demonstration in Grosvenor Square at the American embassy and a bigger and better one planned for October. We thought it might lead to insurrection on the streets. We were disappointed.

The English working class at this time seemed to be most excited about Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech and sporting its anti immigration sentiment. Is this a fair observation or was there a progressive working class movement?

We wanted to get in touch with the workers – but we didn’t know any! And they would have taken the piss out of our long hair. The defeat of the Seamen’s Strike in 1966 was a setback for the union movement and Powell was able to appeal to the anti-immigrant feeling – especially against Ugandan Asians – among sections of the working class. It was a parallel universe – it hadn’t occurred to us till May that we might need to get the working class onside.

Do you think the events of ’68 actually improved anything, or are they overrated?

1968 was a very liberating experience for those few students involved but not for anyone else! We thought we were going to change the world, we didn’t, but at least we had a year when it seemed possible which is more than anyone in England has had since. For most lefties they then began their long march through the institutions and Tariq Ali is wheeled out every anniversary. It was the most exciting year of my life so I ain’t complaining.

40 years later can you see any potential for similar student and workers unrest in Britain?

No.

Autonomous spaces and social centres: So what does it mean to be anti-capitalist? - Paul Chatterton

A huge amount of people get involved in what are called ‘autonomous social centres’ – cooking food, putting on film nights, teaching English, making banners, planning actions - the list goes on and on. But what are they all about politically and what are the hopes and dreams of people involved in them? Why are they there at all? How do they organise and strategise?

I’ve used the term ‘anti-capitalism’ in the title with good reason. In less than ten years since its media appearance in 1999 in Seattle and in the ‘Carnivals Against Capitalism’ on June 18th, anti-capitalism has become a widely debated and identifiable movement. Whether acknowledged or not, social centres are part of the building of this anti-capitalist politics. Ok, the way they do it and the way they talk about it is different in each place. But a real desire to make some kind of politics beyond, and against, capitalism begin, right here and now, rather than waiting for some hoped for revolution the future, is what keeps people involved and inspired.

As I talked to people involved in social centres, it became clear that anti-capitalism meant a number of really important things: that they want to create political projects grounded in their communities; they are comfortable with politics which was messy and impure; they want to build strong relationships between people; the way they organise them is experimental and promotes self management; and they develop political strategies which attempt to break outside the activist ghetto. In the next few pages I want to explain what these mean in more detail.

Politics is all about place

Anti-capitalism needs to happen somewhere – to come together and be visible. Social centres allow this to happen – they create something like an ‘urban commons’ (like the village commons) which is self managed and open to all who respect it. Social centres respond to a very basic need – independent, not for profit, politically plural spaces where groups outside of the status quo can meet, discuss and respond and plan away from direct policing and surveillance. Social centres fill the gap left by the decline of traditional political places such as working men’s clubs, trades clubs and workplaces that provided a resource base.

People describe social centres in many ways – using words like platforms, safe spaces, bases, incubators, ground territory and shelters – all of these provide safety in our turbulent times. People want to mix more mobile, confrontational and short-lived politics around direct action in smaller affinity groups or mobilisations at summit sieges with something more permanent. Putting down roots through renting or buying also reflects that squatting is more and more difficult in the UK. Many permanent social centre collectives did emerge out of the strong UK squatter culture of the 1990s realizing that squatted spaces are short lived and can be an energy drain. Loss of space is a constant frustration when you want to start to engage on a longer basis. But securing space also has a wider role. They are a key organising tool for political education within communities and movements.

The impure, messy politics of the possible

What are the political identities of social centres? Anti-capitalism is pretty elusive. It means different things to different people. There’s often general reference to being not for profit, rejecting hierarchy and domination, or embracing equality. People often express it through a unity of resistance and creativity within our everyday lives – blending a confrontational attitude with living solutions. But when you scratch the surface you find that there is a reluctance to be pinned down - the whole point of the politics of the place is that they are open, complex and messy. This impure politics opens up debate so that conflicts and differences can be acknowledged and resolved. It’s not easy - it’s a politics that needs constant work as different views and backgrounds bash together. Time and again people use the word ‘possibility’, in contrast to lack of possibility of the hum drum of parliamentary politics. And it is this possibility that our dreaming means something.

But don’t expect quick results. The timescale of this impure politics of the possible is much slower. Social centres offer a steadiness, longevity, a sense of history and ‘something gentler to hold a position from’. It’s this stability and openness together that can allow some really amazing and powerful politics to emerge.

Rebuilding the social collective

Anti-capitalist politics are not just about bricks and mortar. They are also about the hidden work of rebuilding social relationships around emotions, solidarity and trust. While bread and butter issues such as housing struggles or ecological damage are important so too are our basic emotional connections and responses to one another. This is invisible essential political work, and if ignored erodes the bedrock for affinity, understanding, tolerance and consensus. Social bonds that tie us together are often more important than the roof and the walls. Creating these social bonds is really crucial especially in cities that are becoming dominated by corporate bars, offices and restaurants. Creating these bonds can transform people so they can understand themselves, their situations, their relationship to others and those with more power, and begin the task of political awakening.

Self-management and the art of experimental organising

Ok, social centres might be militantly self-managed, but a huge amount of effort is put into organizing them. They are, in effect, a programme for expanding and making real self-management and a commitment to direct democracy, consensus decision-making, direct participation and a rejection of hierarchical organisations, as well as various forms of discrimination. One of the trickiest issues faced by social centres is developing a collective understanding of what self-management actually means, and how to get people to take this on. This politics of self-management contrasts with the disempowerment and alienation of our lives at school, work and home.

Overall, organisationally, social centres are defined by their flexibility and pragmatism, choosing minimum formal legalities and, in parallel, developing their own forms of direct democracy. Trial and error feature large as well as a willingness to accept mistakes and try new avenues when things don’t work. This flows naturally from the fairly widespread distrust of institution building, hierarchy and bureaucratic organisations within anti-capitalist, anarchist movements.

This informality and pragmatism is about the importance of deeds rather than propaganda. Decision-making structures are also highly inventive and flexible. Consensus decision-making, a tool for promoting direct democracy between individuals based upon an equality of participation and the incorporation of many voices, is used almost universally as a tool for making decisions. Inevitably, such flexible, experimental ways of doing things can go badly wrong. They are far from perfect. But working out how to make decisions means that we also resolve problems and sharpen models for direct democracy.

But let’s remember that self-managing a space is a form of direct action in itself, especially through its rejection of paid labour and hierarchical structures. It is this that keeps inspiring new generations of people to get involved. Working together and running a building collectively and independently is a political project of self education, where people learn how to work collectively, manage their lives, and come to realize that different ways of organizing social welfare and economic exchange do exist and are doable.

Lots of challenges still remain – the tensions between consumers/service users and maintainers/carers, gender divisions which are made worse when they are simply brushed under the carpet, the tricky and unresolved issues around paid work, the lack of time that people can commit to projects, the problems and limitations of informal self discipline and teaching others about collectively agreed rules, inclusivity and accessibility. This final point is a really important one. Inclusivity is key to the politics of self management as it both extends radical politics to newer groups but also sustains new energy and attracts new generations of people to manage and nourish the project.

Developing political strategies outside the activist ghetto

So what about political strategies? Well there’s no blueprint, nor should there be. There’s a rejection of fixed leadership and committees, in favour of more flexible, experimental and participatory strategic priorities to achieving radical social change. An important part of the debate is whether social centres are a means to a broader political end, or whether they are an end in themselves. Are they facilitators, containers or catalysts for political activity, or are they actually confrontational political strategies in themselves? Often, so much work goes into running and cleaning social centres and autonomous spaces that there is little time left for what is seen as the real stuff of activism - political meetings, demonstrations and actions, organising, building social movements. Many activists, used to being mobile, are anxious about fixing themselves to a place too firmly. These fears - creating a self managed safe space that is too inward looking and comfortable – are important and need addressing, especially if social centres start to become trendy cafés, bars or alternative shops.

So what is their effectiveness as political projects? On one level, they make new worlds seem more achievable and increase the possibility of politics based on self-organising and collectivity. They are also a crucial entry point for a largely depoliticised generation due to the lack of visible, active radical alternatives in their workplaces, schools and communities. But gauging effectiveness is an illusive and probably pointless task. One person’s effectiveness is another person’s failure. Success is also often externally and negatively defined - when such radical projects are seen as an effective opposition they provoke repressive responses from the state and police. A nice double-edged sword.

And who do social centres aim at? On the one hand, they look inward – as resource centres and safe bases for those involved in developing and deepening anti-capitalist resistance and direct action. On the other hand, they look out beyond the comfort zone of known activists and like-minded politicos into the wider community, and connect and support local struggles. Ultimately, these are not separate strategies and there needs to be a desire to build a broader base of support for anti-capitalist ideas and practices locality by locality.

But the relationship between social centre activists and the local community remains largely unresolved. There is a tendency to assume, as one person put it, that ‘they’ (the ‘non-political’ public) have a conservative way of looking at things. In general, there is a strong push to overcome these perceptions. First, people want to reach out through actions and deeds, through living examples that inspire people, rather than through the use of propaganda words and slogans. Second, people value the largely unknown views of the local community in their own right. So social centres reject the ‘sausage factory’ route to social change where ‘non-activists’ are processed and indoctrinated to think in particular ways – in you come Mr and Mrs non-political, and out you come ready for the struggle!

These days social centres really try to avoid looking like ‘ghettoised anarchist squat spaces’, preferring to be professional looking, using familiar signs such as coffee machines, art exhibitions, and reading areas to be part of ‘normal society’. Being welcoming is also seen as crucial.

Reaching out is a result of the self-critique and discussions about political tactics within the anti-capitalist movement. It is a reflection of a perceived failure of autonomous, anti-capitalist groups to capture substantial ground and spread ideas within mainstream society, especially since the heyday of Seattle.

Activities in social centres, then, often try to attract people to engage in debate, analysis and socializing, through public talks, film screenings, reading areas, café and bar spaces, gigs. These activities create social centres as hubs for sparking debate and action on key issues in that locality. This isn’t to say that there is consensus about reaching out. Doing it is often seen as a sure-fire way of diluting important political imperatives and strategies for working towards insurrectionary and confrontational politics. In one social centre, for example, participants became divided over the issue of whether or not it was ‘anarchist’ to give local people food.

Closing salvos. Reflections on building anti-capitalist strategy

What are the strategic prospects for these kinds of anti-capitalist projects? There are a number of strategic issues I want to end on. The first refer to priorities for growth. What is needed to promote more individual radical, self managed place projects committed to anti-capitalist practice as well as a network to support such spaces? Progress has already been made through network meetings and a dedicated website and social centres continue to support a range of anti-capitalist projects and host national meetings for movements such as No Borders and the Camp for Climate Action. There is a need, and probably enough desire, for a stronger sense of a collectively functioning network that can mutually support the wider movement as well as individual projects. We also need to ask ourselves if the network is fighting on the right issues, and if not how does it define wider areas that social centres are well placed to address? An obvious starting point is land and property speculation and wider struggles over urban gentrification and privatisation.

There could also be a stronger push to support an anti-capitalist politics in the UK, and through this identify which parts of a wider infrastructure of resistance and creation could be supported and developed (for example, independent media, health, production, prisoner support, outreach). Social centres could also state more forcefully what they are for and against and contribute to stating feasible alternatives locally. Many do this through, for example, workers co-operatives, not for profit entertainment, and free libraries and meeting spaces.

Second is the issue of growing these kinds of projects into a more connected, coherent and politically effective movement. Are they just defensively local projects or can, and should, they have wider meaning, and provide models for the benefit of our society? What is their role in a wider parallel, externally oriented, growing infrastructure which meets our desires and needs right here and now, but which also genuinely represent non capitalist values? This is not to suggest creating a comfort zone in which activists can circulate, but rather promoting an ever-expanding set of activities that can start to genuinely create parallel opportunities for housing, leisure, work and food. It is about making a post-capitalist future begin that seems feasible exciting and doable and avoids the dogmatic, moralist politics of the Left.

Another strategic area is about developing and sharing anti-capitalist ideas. Education, and the long tradition of popular education, is important here. There needs to be more times and spaces for people to come together to discuss joint approaches to confronting neoliberalism. At some point there needs to be serious connected conversations with all those on the Left about the merits, or not, of movement building to seize power on the one hand, and focusing on grassroots power on the other. Locally, social centres also should consider whether, and how, they need to confront the local state as it becomes a block to further change, and the problems of just promoting their own version of local self management. One final issue relates to the ongoing tensions between strategies of illegally occupying/squatting space and legally renting/buying space. The accusation that legality and inclusivity has de-radicalised these place projects and professionalised activism needs addressing head on and needs talking about.

There are a number of key internal strategic issues such as, often invisible, internal hierarchies, lack of attention to accessibility, emotional needs and inclusivity, gender divisions and domination of men especially within group process, and age divisions especially those between different political cultures and movements. The wider issue is how anti-capitalism can break out of the limits of the protective, internally looking ghettos it sometimes makes for itself. We have to ask ourselves, how can our examples appear more do-able and what we say more feasible? Finally, there are strategic issues of evaluation and collective methodology. What methods can be used for evaluating our own projects so we know what is working and what isn’t? Can we evaluate why anti-capitalist ideas do not spread. Is it the content, the medium, the messengers, the process, the presentation? How do we decide what we do next? How can we use wider consultations and co-inquiry to develop a greater collective understanding of what we have achieved, and would like to achieve, and to engage with others about key issues?

A commitment to anti-capitalism is always going to be messy and incomplete. Social centres and autonomous spaces in these dark times are amazing reminders of the possibilities of building the new worlds we dream of. We still ask, what now? What next? When will the future begin? Social centres help here: they continue to give us strategic glimpses of what an anti-capitalist life may look and feel like.

[Disclaimer: This is a shortened version of an article that appeared in the booklet 'What's this place? Stories from social centres in the UK and Ireland' available from http://www.socialcentrestories.org.uk/]

Paul Chatterton teaches and researches in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds where he runs the MA in Activism and Social Change (see www.activismsocialchange.org.uk). His research on social centres is part of a research project called ‘Autonomous Geographies’ (see http://www.autonomousgeographies.org/). He is also a member of the Trapese Popular Education Collective and their resources can be downloaded @ www.trapese.org.

Power Generation! The Climate Camp at Kingsnorth

The climate camp this year will be at Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent. On the obscure Kentish peninsular of Hoo, a profoundly important struggle over the future of how we respond to the twin problems of climate change and the evolving energy crisis will start unfolding this summer…

Despite the growing evidence of how serious a problem climate change is, E.O.N. wants to build the UK’s first coal fired power station in thirty years to replace the current power station at Kingsnorth when it retires in 2015. If built this power station will emit 6 to 8 million tons of CO2 every year . That’s a hell of a lot of CO2 to add to the atmosphere when usually cautious scientists are saying there is a climate crisis and that there is an increasing risk that our growing emissions of CO2 will trigger catastrophic climate change. It’s a lot of CO2 to add to the atmosphere at the very time we need to be radically reducing CO2 levels. Not only that but another six atmosphere crushing coal fired power stations are in the pipeline. What happens at Kingsnorth is vitally important. If we’re serious about tackling climate change we have to get serious about stopping Kingsnorth being built.

So on one side are E.O.N and the government. Their solution to climate change is (well they don’t really care but) in word at least a commitment to carbon trading, nuclear energy and, at the outer edge of possibility, carbon capture and storage. Their solution to problems of energy supply insecurity is to build into the grid a range of different generators, all large-scale based around coal, gas, nuclear and some wind. On the other side are NGOs like Greenpeace and WDM and a potentially crucial grassroots mobilisation in the form of the climate camp. The NGOs are calling for no new coal without carbon capture and storage and as an alternative to coal fired electricity generation investment in renewables and efficiency. The climate camp is attempting to catalyse a grassroots challenge to the growth economy and if it sticks to previous trends will call for a reduction in demand and relocalisation within the context of a global struggle against the fossil fuel industry and the continuing capitalist enclosure of remaining hydro carbons and forests.

The camp should be somewhere else?

The decision to go to Kingsnorth wasn’t without controversy. In terms of other options many felt that this year’s camp should focus on biofuels. In addition, since the decision to go to Kingsnorth has been made some worry that this shows a tendency towards the camp becoming some kind of lobbying group. So it’s worth answering that question and looking into (at least from this scribbler’s point of view) why the choice to go to Kingsnorth was a good one from a long-term strategic point of view. The related question of whether this choice allows for anti-capitalist critique is dealt with later.

Why not biofuels?

It’s hard to argue that in the broad context either biofuels or coal is the more important issue. Climate change is caused by both the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forest ecosystems. Whilst at first the debate about where the camp should go seemed to be about the relative political importance of either issue it became clear that the camp wasn’t about any particular issue and was essentially a base for movement building. So then the question became which location offers us the best place for geographically located resistance to the problem of climate change. This in a sense is the root of the camp. It recognised that the problem of climate change was too big and abstract for people to deal with so it creates an iconic space for people to gather. The place is as crucial, if not more crucial than the issue. Overall, while no one would really say coal was more important, it was felt that Kingsnorth offered a more iconic place than any of the biofuels options. That said, a critique of biofuels and the importance of ecosystems destruction has become part of the climate camp’s political critique and there is a commitment to actions on biofuels during the camp.

Has the camp become some kind of lobbying organisation?

This question has been raised because both last year at Heathrow and this year at Kingsnorth the camp is intervening in a process in which a decision from government on expansion is pending. In the circumstances if enough pressure is applied the government could be forced to change its mind. Secondly, on both these occasions NGOs with a less explicitly ‘radical’ message are also involved. At Kingsnorth Greenpeace and WDM both have strong campaigns against the power station.

What’s lobbying? Conventionally it’s the idea that people using various means - from directly talking to sending letters to organising public meetings - attempt to persuade government officials to change government policy on an issue. More broadly it could be stretched to mean political activity whose aim is to change government policy. The idea of lobbying is to use whatever channels there are to put pressure on government to change. Clearly we’re not engaged in conventional lobbying, we’re not trying to persuade the government to change its mind through rational argument or through using the normal democratic channels provided by the democratic process. We recognise that government and E.O.N will build the power station unless they are forced not to. There has been no communication between the climate camp and the government or E.O.N. We’re not politely asking them to not build the power station. We’re saying: you want to build but we have different ideas.

The anti-roads movement was not a lobbying organisation but its big success was changing government policy on transport. Likewise the radical campaign to stop GM wasn’t a lobbying campaign but it changed government policy. We have to make what we do count. As a location for the camp Drax was inspiring and symbolically powerful, but did it make any real difference? The camp at Heathrow had a real impact on the campaign to stop the third runway. The challenge is to remain true to our radical vision whilst acting in strategic ways that make change possible.

The difference between us and the NGOs campaigning on Kingsnorth is that we also want other things. Victories over Kingsnorth and Heathrow are necessary but far from sufficient.

However aren’t there other decisions that are more important to affect? And how about, rather than getting the corporations and government to not make a decision they want to make, force them into making a diction that wasn’t even on the horizon?

This was why the first camp at Drax had so much potential. However much it is important that we stop Kingsnorth being built, how much more powerful would it be if we could close down a power station that was already running? It’s still the same process but a much more powerful one.

Tactically however it would be magnitudes harder. If a hundred thousand miners failed to do it then it seems that for us for the time being camping outside Drax has powerful symbolic value but will actually change very little. That’s why in a sense Kingsnorth is the radical choice. We have a real chance to affect change and in terms of movement building giving people the sense that they are participating in history and making it happen is crucially important.

In addition going to Kingsnorth helps us see beyond the camp. Clearly our response to climate change can’t be limited to a yearly camp. Which beyond a few times will start to feel like an annual countdown to disaster. Going to Kingsnorth situates us in the middle of a campaign. If we’re serious about climate change then we have to be serious about Kingsnorth and that means planning and preparing a campaign to stop it being built. Heathrow is important but Kingsnorth is far more imminent.

Coal and Anti-Capitalism

The Climate Camp has a radical anti-growth or even anti-capitalist agenda. So how does Kingsnorth offer a platform for this radical critique when other groups such as Greenpeace and Christian Aid are also campaigning against it?

Is there some uncorrupted physical space of pure anti-capitalist opposition? Whatever we decide to do (if it’s at all relevant), from being against GM or No Borders or anti- G8 and supporting strikers, it will on the surface mean that we are opposed to or for things that other groups with less radical agendas also agree with. The question is how we campaign, where we see it taking us, what we say and what we’re building for. The fact that other groups are also interested in Kingsnorth and Heathrow means we’re actively engaging with a wider community and we should be brave enough to make our arguments both as part of and antagonistic to that community. Christian Aid are against Kingsnorth but not against the growth economy: well, let them explain how we’re going to have annual growth of 2%, reduce emissions by 90% and end inequality.

Too much of the anti-capitalism ‘movement’ is just an ideological identity love-in. But if we’re serious about change then we have to get out of the activist ghetto. And in the end that probably means getting involved in issues that other people also care about.

One of the big problems with the camp at Heathrow was the difficulty in making a systemic critique stick. Because it was an airport it was assumed we were against people flying - and in truth lots of people were. So despite a Herculean effort to focus on the corporations, part of the overall message was that people that fly are the problem (which is true but only the first part of a more complex problem).

Kingsnorth is all about corporate and government power. The story is about how big money will do anything (even burn coal in the middle of a climate crisis) to expand or at least maintain its position. Kingsnorth exposes a fundamental truth at the heart of power. It doesn’t matter if it’s wanted or not, it doesn’t matter if it does any one any good or not; if it makes money it’s fine by us.

How do the government and E.O.N justify building this power station?

There are two arguments that justify the building of Kingsnorth. Firstly, that the problem of emissions will be dealt with through the emissions trading scheme. As if the need for action is so limited a country the size of the UK can raise its emissions and expect all the necessary reduction to come from somewhere else. And secondly, the government believe that energy security is more important than climate change, so they’re going to build it in the belief that in public the argument that we have to ‘keep the lights on’ trumps the more distant problem of climate change.

Keep it in the ground.

The simple fact about coal is that if we burn all or even much more of the coal ‘reserves’ on this planet then we’re toast. It’s that simple. Millions of years’ worth of solar energy and carbon are stored in these compressed prehistoric forests. Burn all this energy in a few decades and it’s over. So along with our anti-growth message our central message this year should be ‘Keep it in the Ground’. It’s simple, it’s necessary, and fully acted out it’s very radical.

It’s simple. Keep it in the ground. Anyone can understand what it means and it makes the lines clear. Some people will do anything to burn the stuff; some people believe in a world where fossil fuels stay in the ground.

It’s necessary. If we burn all the coal, oil and gas on the planet then in terms of ecological systems we will cause levels of warming and disruption that take us into extremely dangerous territory. The struggle for a fairer, more ecological world has to be a struggle to keep coal in the ground (also oil and gas but because of the scale of the ‘reserves’ particularly coal).

It’s radical. Growth at its current rates would be impossible without burning astonishing quantities of oil, gas and coal. It would be a mistake to think that this makes this message a purely anti-capitalist one. You can have hierarchical and even capitalist relations of production when you burn wood (early US industrialisation for example). You can have hideous exploitation on organic farms with no fossil fuel inputs. But like No Borders it’s a politically necessary message without being fully sufficient. A society that keeps fossil fuels in the ground will be fundamentally different. How it’s different will be up to the people struggling to make it happen.

Clean Coal?

There’s been an algae-soaked sea of greenwash in the past decade but first prize has to go to this simple two-word combination: Clean Coal. These two words (along with the size of coal reserves and its relative cheapness compared to increasingly expensive oil and gas) have breathed new life into the coal industry. There is of course no such thing as clean coal. Just like there is no such thing as clean anthrax or clean fission.

New generating technologies have improved the efficiency of coal fired power stations from around 35% to 45%. So one could say slightly less dirty coal. But these efficiency gains also reduce costs, which increases demand so whether there is any overall improvement is doubtful.

There’s also the much-lauded possibility of using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to clean emissions up (or at least bury them). CCS is a method for stripping the CO2 out, condensing it and burying it in salt aquifiers and old or partially used oil and gas wells. The key thing about CCS is that it’s science fiction. At the scale of a large power plant it doesn’t exist. It’s at least 20 years away at any big scale of usage and, given that the next decade is crucial, CCS can make little difference to climate change. There’s the possibility that a small part of Kingsnorth might run a CCS experiment. They want to talk about CCS but the real issue is burning coal, which is what Kingsnorth will be doing in spade-fulls (well ship-fulls). Even in the unlikely event that they do successfully build a CCS section to the plant, Kingsnorth will still emit 6 million tons of CO2 a year. That’s a lot more than the third runway at Heathrow would produce.

There are other problems with CCS, but given that it doesn’t exist there’s not much point in focusing on it. Fusion nuclear might not be a great idea but we don’t run campaigns against it because like CCS it’s still 20 years away. There are even circumstances where CCS might be a good thing but these circumstances will only arise if we win the bigger fight over climate change and energy in the here and now.

Beyond Greenwash!

We’ve entered a phase that goes beyond greenwash. Clean coal is greenwash in that the coal industry uses the term to further its ends. In a step that goes further than this, governments and corporations are now using climate change to create a world in their image, to fundamentally buttress their idea of how the world should work. They use climate change to spread fear and support the extension of the free market ideology, and the idea of progress as the development of technology. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t campaign against climate change; it just means we have to be clear we’re not only against anthropomorphic climate change; we’re against the economic and social forces that cause it.

Where next?

Almost everyone involved in the camp sees the need to move beyond the idea of doing an annual camp. The idea of the camp was to help catalyse something bigger and more enduring. A serious strategic engagement with this issue will have to work for local change whilst be willing to come together to take on issues of national importance issues where no local group could be big enough to generate the opposition necessary e.g. Heathrow or Kingsnorth. Equally it will have to look at the issue of work. Without engaging in the work we do, how we do it, and how we can build a global movement to change the way we do it, we will only scrape the surface of change. So what should we do next? Well lots of things but fairly high up the list is stopping Kingsnorth. We cannot have a successful grassroots movement on climate change if it doesn’t challenge the building of this next generation of coal fired power stations. The good news is that it’s just such a confrontation that might be that making of the movement.

Sonofamigrant or Paul M as he is otherwise known is involved in the Climate Camp networking group (aahhrgg) and works part time for Greenpeace. If he can’t sleep he occasionally gets up and taps out random hazy thoughts on his computer. On this occasion the Shift dream catcher caught these ones.

The G8 summit in Japan

This year’s G8 Summit will be held between July 7th and 9th by Lake Toya in Hokkaido, Northern Japan.

Since the beginning of last year, NGOs, leftists, trade unions and greens have organized several events and formed networks connected to the Hokkaido summit. The position of these networks and organizations range widely from those opposing the G8 to those seeking to influence G8 leaders. Of course, anti-capitalist radicals from all over Asia are also determined to use this summit to build the strength of the movement against global capitalism.

This has led them to their present position of being fervently ‘pro-science’ (ie pro-corporate science) and extremely critical of environmentalism. The team donned suits and formed a number of front groups (am I the only one who always wonders why a person is presented as a plausible pundit just because they’re from something that can be called a think-tank?) with names like Global Futures and London International Research Exchange.

Coalitions

In Japan, leftist movements (the new Left and several sectarian groups), dating back to the 60s, still have a strong influence within the social movement sector. However, due to their violent past during the 70’s and subsequent struggles amongst the Left, even now NGOs are reluctant to work with the Leftists. (For example, in an incident in 1972, the Rengo Sekigun (United Red Army) murdered disloyal elements at one of their mountain hideouts calling it a ‘purge’ and there was a shoot-out at the Asama Mountain Lodge between the police and the Red Army.)

So what are the chances for a broad movement against the Japan summit? The situation is different in various parts of the country. In the Kanto area, for example, (the Eastern part of Japan, including Tokyo), NGOs and Leftists work independently from each other. The NGOs have formed the ‘G8 Summit NGO Forum’ in which they discuss and offer possible alternatives to the G8. The ‘G8 Summit NGO Forum’ was already born in January 2007 “as a civil platform by Japanese NGOs’ broad coalition for the 2008 G8 Summit in Toyako, Hokkaido”. As of July 2007, 101 NGOs were affiliated with the forum. These NGOs are working on areas such as the environment, poverty elimination and development, human rights and peace.

The ‘G8 Action Network’ of the Leftists, on the other hand, opposes the G8 altogether, pointing to its undemocratic character. The ‘G8 Action Network’ is the anti-neoliberal globalisation network of various Japanese organizations and movements, including dozens of groups and more than 150 individuals. It calls on “all social movements, peasant organizations, women, migrants, urban and rural poor, fisher folks and civil society from all over the world who are resisting free trade in its many forms, war and militarism, the privatisation of essential services and natural resources, illegitimate debt and the domination of global finance, and fighting for and building real people based solutions to global warming, to come and join us in the week of action against the G8 here in Japan.”

What becomes highly important here is the fact that the NGOs and the Leftists started to walk separate routes last year. This separation was induced by the founding of the NGO Forum in order to gather together the various NGOs in Kanto area. The newly established NGO Forum was bound by a manifesto which prohibited anti-G8 activities. The “Basic Principles for Activities of the NGO Forum” are to facilitate proactive advocacy activities when it is not possible to make joint proposals or reach agreement through discussion; to conduct its activities in a democratic manner, with an emphasis on achieving consensus among all participating NGOs; to give importance to the process of discussion among NGOs as well as achieving results through advocacy; and to oppose any advocacy activity that employs violence or illegal means. Thus, the Leftists found themselves excluded from participation in this forum.

The situation is very different in the Kansai area however. Here (mainly Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe), the NGOs and the Leftists are looking for possible ways to work together. Mutual executive committees were created in cases such as the “Citizens Environmental Summit (CES)” in Kobe, and the “Symposium toward G8 Summit” in Osaka.

What makes Kansai different from Kanto is that the NGOs and the Leftists in Kansai held a successful common forum last year, an alternative forum to the 40th commemorative meeting of the Asian Development Bank. More than 50 local and international NGOs and 1,000 people in total participated in this forum. There were 17 workshops, and also some demonstrations. The executive committee of this forum consisted of organizations such as the Kansai NGO’s Council, the ATTAC Kansai group, and the trade union’s conference.

Anarchists

Apart from the NGO’s forum and the Leftist G8 Action network, a network of Japanese anti-authoritarians and anarchists, was formed in May 2007. The ‘No! G8 Action’ was initiated right before the G8 2007 in Rostock, where it learned from the European anti-G8 protest. Then it began to prepare its own projects. One of its focuses has been to work within the G8 Action Network coalition. Now it strives for bringing Japanese and East Asian impetus into this stage of the global anti-capitalist struggle.

Generally speaking, No! G8 Action is a network of radical movements. But they are trying to work with a wide range of groups, including certain reformists and academics. In the past, anti-authoritarian groups were excluded from the wider coalitions. So this time, they have decided to call for coalition-building themselves. Some academic and intellectuals in particular, they say, are sympathetic.

Japan hosted the Okinawa G8 Summit in 2000. At that time protests focused around the US bases and only a few anti-capitalist groups were involved. There were no moves to organise a global mobilization in 2000; this year will see Japan’s first major global mobilisation.

[Disclaimer: This text has been adapted from http://gipfelsoli.org/Home/Hokkaido_2008/4867.html; http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2008021571.php; and http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392319.html]

“Go Hamas Go”? Why Indymedia UK is losing support

"Every time I log onto activist news sites like indymedia.org, which practice “open publishing,” I’m confronted with a string of Jewish conspiracy theories about September 11 and excerpts from ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’"
Naomi Klein

Sure enough, Naomi Klein is no-one to go by. However, in the past few months the site indymedia.org.uk has lost support from many activists for letting anti-Semitic posts go unchallenged. Most controversial and divisive proved an article by one Gilad Atzmon with the title “Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath”. For many, Atzmon was an outright anti-Semite and the post in question racist and discriminatory. Some in Indymedia’s moderating collective however insisted that Atzmon’s article was a valid contribution to the newswire and refused, and even blocked, any decision to have it hidden. The Atzmon affair, as it became known, led to heated discussions, personal accusations and a loss of credibility for UK Indymedia amongst some of its moderators, in activist circles and even in the wider leftist movement. At the height of the affair, three active Indymedia moderators resigned from the collective, giving many readers the impression that the obsession with the Palestine-Israel conflict had gained the upper hand.

Indymedia’s editorial guidelines clearly state that “posts using language, imagery or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination” will be hidden, if not deleted, by the moderators. Indymedia.org.uk has been a target for anti-Semitic posts before and many have been hidden straight away with reference to the guidelines. In this latest affair however the guidelines did not seem conclusive enough to judge what is anti-Semitism and what isn’t.

The Atzmon Affair

Atzmon’s article “Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath” was certainly such a case. Some thought it was anti-Semitic and wanted it hidden. Some thought it was on the borderline. A third group of Indymedia activists however were determined that this article should stay on the newswire. The issue was not helped by the appearance on the scene of Atzmon’s rival Tony Greenstein. Greenstein, an anti-Zionist himself, argued strongly for the post to be hidden. His campaign of personal accusations and harassment however did not help his cause.

Atzmon’s article argued that “Hitler was indeed defeated, Jews are now more than welcome in Germany and in Europe, yet, the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago.” For Atzmon, thus, Jews had not learned the lessons of history. Not anti-Semitism was to blame for the systematic persecution, internment and killing of 6 million Jews. No, it was Jewish unpopularity!

Those who knew Atzmon’s writings knew that this was a harmless expression of his beliefs. Previously he had let it be known that “American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.” Such Jewish conspiracy theories are largely indistinguishable from Nazi ideology. For the Nazis, anti-Semitism was not just the hatred of the Jew. Anti-Semitism provided a whole worldview, a theory of powerful Jewish interest secretly controlling the economy and pulling the strings behind the scene. Jews were thus to blame for both capitalism and communism.

However an Indymedia activist decided to interview Atzmon to give him a chance to defend himself. Atzmon thus let it to be known that “There is no anti-Semitism any more. In the devastating reality created by the Jewish state, anti-Semitism has been replaced by political reaction.” Once again, thus, he affirmed that the hatred of Jews and Israel is simply caused by themselves. And, in an email to one Indymedia activist, he challenged Indymedia to expose the Zionist plan to dominate the world.

Resignations and resolution attempts

Three of the Indymedia moderators refused to take up the challenge. They resigned from the collective stating that they were “simply not functioning on the same planet as the rest of the most active site admins” and “did not want to be associated with a group that endorses such bullshit”. Other admins were shocked too, but remained in the collective. The rest of the Indymedia collective, on the other hand, did take up Atzmon’s challenge.

Many more articles appeared, some promoted some not, that attempted to prove that Jews had built “the last openly racist state on the planet”, or that “the situation of the Palestinians is little different than the situation of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII”. A classic anti-Semitic analysis. Another article by Atzmon himself was posted provocatively entitled “The Protocols of the Elders Of London”. Comments such as “Long live Palestine” or even “Go Hamas Go” were no longer hidden. Many were posted from agitators based in Canada and the US who have recognised Indymedia UK’s willingness to host their posts. “Go Hamas Go”? Isn’t that the same group of Islamist fundamentalists that have taken power of the Gaza Strip after a military conflict with the nationalist Fatah, and just recently issued a statement “blessing the heroic operation” of a gunman who had opened fire on 80 Jewish students sitting in their library, killing 8. Isn’t that the same Hamas party whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic state? The Indymedia collective had clearly something to answer for.

A long-awaited IMC UK network meeting took place in Nottingham in February. The Atzmon-Greenstein affair and related moderation and process issues dominated the discussions, along with other pressing issues such as the new web design. A compromise solution was found that resulted in a new category of “disputed posts” for articles that were controversial, but where no consensus could be found for hiding. The issue was by no means resolved after the Nottingham meeting however. On the contrary. Blog reposts about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict multiplied and have since taken up a large part of the newswire. The remaining moderation collective however withstood the pressure to hide many of those posts despite an editorial guideline that sets out that “articles that are simply pasted from corporate news sites” may be hidden.

Nazimedia?

It thus became evident that the problem did not just lie with the open publishing format. Some Indymedia activists began to pursue an agenda that belittled anti-Semitism. In March, despite obvious discontent amongst many Indymedia users, the collective published a full feature on its website with the title “Israel keeps its promise of a Holocaust upon the Palestinians”. It argued that Israel’s deadly military raids aimed against some Hamas officials and Gaza gunmen amounted to plans to unleash a Holocaust and a “full-scale war” on Palestine. It was published together with a cartoon by the controversial artist Latuff, which compared the situation in Palestine to the extermination of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps.

For many readers, users and supporters of Indymedia, this was no less than a provocation. They responded in style. Within days, dozens of posts and many more comments accused the moderation collective of anti-Semitism and of having a “black and white” view of the issues. Some went further and described the website project as “Nazimedia”. Others vowed that Indymedia had finally lost their support and that they would stop using the site. All complaints were hidden within minutes. Some moderators had referred to them as an “organised disinformation campaign against Indymedia UK”.

Comments that supported Indymedia’s redefinition of Holocaust however remained on the newswire. Amongst others they denounced those complaining as “trolls aiming to silence any debate on Israel”, argued that “we can not command the zionist maniachs to stop killing and stealing until we can enforce it”, or even referred to Israel’s actions as “final solution” (a stark comparison with the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews and their descendents.)

Nothing new

The allegations of being blind to anti-Semitism against Indymedia admins is nothing new, of course. They have troubled IMC projects around the world for a while. In 2003, for example, search engine Google temporarily stopped including some local Indymedia sites in Google News searches. Apparently it had received complaints that Israelis were labeled “Zionazis” in some articles. In particular the San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia was no longer indexed, with even the site moderators agreeing that some of its content “could be considered hate speech”. Nonetheless, some US American Indymedia sites continue to host articles by anti-Zionist conspiracy theorists, congratulating themselves on their willingness to speak the truth. At the time of writing this, for example, an article on IMC Miami has been posted claiming that “Israel was involved in the 9/11 matter, although few writers are willing to cover it.” Legal action also temporarily shut down Indymedia Switzerland in 2002. A Jewish anti-fascist group had threatened to sue the moderators over a series of Latuff cartoons which it saw as offensive and anti-Semitic.

What’s anti-Semitism?

The Indymedia UK collective is unlikely to agree whether Atzmon or Latuff are anti-Semitic. And in many ways it would be a futile endeavour. The question of what constitutes anti-Semitism and what doesn’t will not be settled by Indymedia admins.

More important is the question why controversial and provocative posts that compare Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany find their way on the Indymedia newswires in the first place. It would certainly be wrong to deny that Indymedia has a problem with anti-Semitism. While the content of some articles is disputed by the moderation collective, some posts are clearly considered as anti-Jewish racism and are hidden or deleted straight away. So what attracts anti-Semites to the website?

Let me be very clear about one thing: Indymedia UK is not run by a collective of anti-Semites. The moderators strictly adhere to the anti-racist guidelines. Any racist post is immediately hidden or deleted. But many of the disputed posts are not racist. They do not follow simple anti-Jewish sentiments or prejudices. And still they are considered anti-Semitic by many.

One reason might be that the editorial guidelines are no longer up to date with current developments in radical politics. Anti-Semitism defined as anti-Jewish racism will not come to the crux of the problem. Anti-Semitism claims to have an explanation of the world as a whole. It is not simply about hating Jews, but rather about hating everything that Jews embody for the anti-Semites. While the objects of racism are seen as sub-human, anti-Semitism projects an image of the Jews as omnipotent, secretive, powerful.

Sadly, Indymedia offers a platform to invent caricatures of the Israeli state and of its policies. Instead of recognising the political context, it helps to perpetuate an image of Israel, and of Jews, as sinister conspirators with a secret plan to turn the world into one massive settlement.

Editorial - The Climate Camp at Kingsnorth was great!

The Climate Camp at Kingsnorth was great! These were our initial thoughts on arrival at the first German climate camp in Hamburg, which took place just one week after the British one in Kent. The Hamburg camp seemed less organised, there were far fewer people and the lack of a clear neighbourhood structure meant that we aimlessly walked around the site for a good half hour before finally pitching the tent in the ‘anti-barrio’ barrio.

In Hamburg the climate campers weren’t camping alone but were doubled up with the anti-racist movement. There were thus two main action targets (coal and deportation flights), two press groups and two websites for example. The inherent complexities that have been noted between the austerity politics typical of the green movement and the calls for freedom of movement from many anti-racists (see the article by No Borders) didn’t seem to be a problem for the Hamburg campers, however.

But Hamburg was an attempt at a broad church movement that was built upon a compromise solution tied to the concept of ‘Global Social Rights’. For the climate campers this meant re-evaluating the notion that climate change is a purely ecological problem and situating the threat, and our response to it, in a social context (a banner hung from a crane during the climate camp’s mass action read “expropriate energy production”). On the other hand the anti-racists had to accept a quasi-fearsome language of new migration pressures caused by climate change: ‘climate change will lead to more ‘climate refugees’, that’s why we must do something about it!’

There is something else inherent in the ‘Global Social Rights’ slogan that doesn’t seem fitting with radical grass-roots politics. Demanding rights is not only a passive and liberal notion (Which rights? And who is going to warrant them? The state?), but also undermines any attempts to de-legitimise the authoritarian and economic structures that shape our everyday lives and experiences, including our experiences of climate change and border controls.

This was also a major topic at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp. With climate change understood as a mainly ecological problem scientific facts were thrashed around that encouraged the projection of non-emancipatory, authoritarian solutions. This culminated in George Monbiot calling for a state response to climate change in one of the camp’s major plenary sessions as well as in a later Guardian article, and a backlash of interventions from an anti-authoritarian minority (see Adam Ford’s article). Such interventions demanded a social, anti-capitalist, bottom up response to climate change, the importance of which was evident in the outraged response from the National Union of Mineworkers at the Climate Camp’s demand to ‘leave it [coal] in the ground’ (see our interview with Dave Douglass).

Despite the problems inherent at Kingsnorth, anti-state and anti-capitalist positions were being reaffirmed and discussed again. One camper in Kent felt that he had experienced the “maturing of the green movement”. The fact that the coal workers were invited (and the resulting discussions around class, work and climate change) was testimony to a mature movement that can foster such debates. However, in its ‘old age’, is the Climate Camp now losing sight of its roots in the direct action movements of the 90s or the anti-G8 Dissent network?

A clear dividing line through the movement was drawn by journalist-turned-climate ‘expert’ Monbiot who after the camp criticised the “anarchist” Climate Campers for “diverting from the urgent task” of stopping climate change. In a remarkable return of Hobbes’ 17th century Leviathan into the contemporary direct action movement, he could do no better than to imagine a life without government as the freedom for Daily Mail readers to pick up a gun and kill the nearest hippy. As we remember it, the Drax camp had set out to claim that corporations and governments were the problem not the solution to the climate crisis. We would hope thus that the Climate Camp would ‘find the time’ for a political rejection of all eco-authoritarian claims that “stopping runaway climate change must take precedence over every other aim” (Monbiot).

1968 the soundtrack…no thanks: On student politics and finding one’s place in one’s own time - Pascal Steven and John Archer

You can hardly open The Guardian or turn on the television or radio this year without being reminded of the 40-year anniversary of the 1968 uprisings. The “spirit of ‘68” has been commodified, sold to us on t-shirts, mugs and through the bleary eyed nostalgia of ‘68ers” such as Tariq Ali cashing in on old war stories and bemoaning a lack of similar radical zeal in today’s students. 1968 is understood within both radical and liberal circles as a period of massive social conflict, in which students played a prominent role in struggling for greater freedom. Critics of this myth such as Slavoj Zizek, who argues that the main thing that 1968 produced was neo-liberal capitalism, have been silenced beneath the mountains of commemorative articles. You get the feeling that many commentators believe that 1968 can and should be recreated, and blame today’s apathetic students for it not doing so.

Those cashing in on the corpse of 1968 and all that it represents have forgotten that this is 2008 and history can never be repeated but can only be learnt from. It seems many expect that chanting the same slogans will produce the same results forty years later.

The deluge of flyers shoved into my hands this year by various socialist groups all offering the same unimaginative narrative and offering workshops on how to recreate the 1968 conditions are nothing more than a quaint anachronism. Whilst many on the left have their heads in the sand writing articles and dreaming of the “right social conditions”, they are ignoring the conditions within which student protest movements find themselves today.

In Britain students at the University of Sussex, Southampton and the University of Manchester have been very active in resisting the continuing marketisation of their education. With the signing of the Bologna accords in 1999 many European universities are beginning to undergo structural changes in accordance with the blueprint laid out by British universities. The Parisian student occupations earlier this year are one example of student protests against these changes, which have also been seen in Germany, Spain and Greece. Globally other students are also resisting structural changes to higher education in the USA, Canada, Chile, South Africa, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand (for more information see http://fading-hope.blog-city.com/international_student_protests_2007.htm). An international day of action against the commercialisation of education is being planned for the 5th of November 2008.

This contemporary struggle should not be reduced to an analogue of the struggles experienced in Paris, Prague or Mexico in the 1960’s. We are now experiencing a new cycle of capital accumulation, a different geo-political situation and a whole range of new issues to deal with, in particular climate change. Iraq is not today’s Vietnam and Parisian student protests this year are not the same as those in 1968. Students today are facing a different set of issues within a different social context and are responding to them in different ways.

But what are the major points of tension within these movements, what are the limits and obstacles to their radical potential and how can other social movements best help them? The following insights have been gleaned from an active involvement in the “Reclaim the Uni” campaign that has been running in Manchester for the past four months.

Neo-liberal changes within the University of Manchester

The 2004 merger between the Victoria university of Manchester and UMIST left the newly founded University of Manchester heavily in debt. In July 2006 its operational deficit was £30 million pounds. At the end of 2007 a moratorium on job losses was removed allowing the university to begin the process of shedding 650 staff that were enjoying “abnormally high levels of pay inflation in the sector”.

Whilst the media have focused on the forced retirements of prominent Marxists Terry Eagleton and Sheila Rowbotham (who has just won her campaign to stay on) perhaps more significantly for most students and staff at the university has been cuts to the I.T. and library departments. I.T. clusters and faculty libraries have been removed and staff-student contact times have been halved over the last twenty years due to losses of staff.

At the same time the university is also attempting to promote itself as a top class research institution. Figurehead staff such as Martin Amis and Joseph Stiglitz are paid vast sums for little more than marketing rights whilst an investment of six hundred million pounds has seen buildings designed to divide staff and students, such as the Arthur Lewis building, being constructed with little student input. In order to supplement their income Manchester has been a vocal supporter of increasing top-up fee’s for Russell group universities – effectively calling for the creation of a two tier system – and has signed a variety of deals with companies such as Bp, Tesco and BAE.

At the same time market processes have been entering the academy in a variety of more subtle ways. Knowledge is becoming increasingly market oriented through venture capital intellectual property companies set up in our departments such as the University of Manchester Intellectual Property ltd (UMIP) and the University of Manchester Incubator Company (UMIC). Government initiatives such as the research assessment exercise (RAE) have produced mechanisms for quantifying and directing academic research towards profitable areas and making academics compete against each other.

The average student’s time at the University of Manchester is often alienating and uninspiring. Alongside concern with high levels of debt (which have increased with the introduction of top-up fee’s) many students we have spoken to have expressed their sense of feeling like an economic unit, of being given an education to perform an economic function in the future rather than as a valuable end in itself. Students are increasingly being viewed as consumers of a product rather than partners in the pursuit of knowledge.

It is important to stress that the changes experienced at Manchester are also being experienced throughout much of the world. The problems we face are the result of specific political and economic processes not mismanagement by individual university administrators.

Reclaim the uni and the problems of creating a truly anti-capitalist campaign on campus The reclaim the uni campaign is an outcome of these neo-liberal changes. We consciously wanted to reject the hierarchies that characterised most of the left on campus and provide a space for people to feel empowered and for often quite varied ideas to cross-pollinate with each other. We worked explicitly outside of official student union channels, although the union did offer support. We wanted to try and encourage autonomous action rather than a reliance on leadership – a reliance that the union executive members are usually all to keen to promote.

The group encompassed many people with a variety of perspectives all brought together by the negative changes we were experiencing in our daily lives. Although some were adamant that this was not a “political” group, but one merely focused on improving our student experience many of us involved wanted to highlight how capitalism affected our day-to-day lives as students. Whilst not neglecting the “big issues” we were keen to stress that capitalism has to be fought at a day-to-day level, at the level of lived experience. Capitalism is a system of social relationships, not an object that can be confronted through the spectacle of demonstration every three months in London. We wanted to avoid mobilising people through guilt (as is happening with lots of climate related movements), or through “militants” prepared to sacrifice time and energy for noble, yet distant causes such as Iraq or Palestine. Our poster campaign consciously focused on issues we could relate to as students at Manchester such as reduced contact time, library hours and lack of access to buildings whilst explaining that this was a political process, not just the result of some accidental bad decisions.

After a few months planning we had our first demo; over 300 students with a sound-system confronted police and occupied a university building where a list of demands was formulated through a difficult consensus process and sent to the vice-president. The demonstration was a starting point not an end goal. It demonstrated the deep dissatisfaction with the way things were going and showed students what we could do when we worked together.

The campaign, unsurprisingly, has its own internal tensions and we think they are worth reflecting upon. In many ways those of us involved weren’t expecting such a large turnout and were inexperienced with the practical issues of keeping the momentum of such a large group going. Perhaps the most interesting political tensions, however, came out during the formulation of the demands during the building occupation.

It was clear at this point that there were splits in opinion even between those that saw the problem as being caused by neo-liberal processes. During the discussions it became apparent that some SWP members were attempting to link this large autonomous movement with their own (much smaller) free education campaign. Without wishing to create a counter-clique of anarchist elders it was difficult trying to ignore the political posturing and comments that often felt like pre-planned speeches. By the end of the occupation, admittedly after many people had drifted off home, the major lines of tension that a group this large and varied had to internalise had become apparent.

A major difference was between those of us that saw capitalism as something that could, and should, be challenged here at the place we studied and those that believed that our best response to faceless global processes should be to simply demand better value for money here at Manchester. Although capable of winning minor concessions in the short term, as a long-term strategy it didn’t look particularly viable. So were we faced with the dichotomy between denying minor concessions and compromises in favour of the longer, more impossible seeming struggle?

Not really, though many thought so. For many, capitalism was something ‘out there’ and if we weren’t calling for the immediate withdrawal of the troops from Iraq, the independence of Palestine and the immediate end to all neo-liberal policies, then we were simply being reformist. Yet, we believe that our strategy does not have to be either of these rather unappealing choices.

By instantly aiming at the global level we ignore the mass of power relations we are entwined in. Protests are reduced to passive acts of consumption, which a small number produce, they become indulgent displays of who can sympathise the most. Demonstrations are reduced to little more than a spectacle of impotent fist shaking and chanting at a target so diffuse as to be invisible. For us effective struggle starts in the demands for improvement in our every day lives. By changing things at a tangible level, these little victories can inspire people and instil a sense of confidence in our collective abilities to create change rather than endlessly banging our heads against brick walls. This is the very basics of classical class struggle, workplace organisation – and it was surprising that so many on the left seemed unaware of it, being so scathing of the professed concerns of the workers and students of the university.

This difference in viewpoint was confirmed at a ‘reclaim the campus’ conference held in May in London – hours upon hours were spent discussing what the appropriate stance towards Hezbollah and the Iraqi insurgents should be, whether we demand immediate withdrawal of the troops from Iraq or whether a phased withdrawal would be better for the Iraqi labour movement. Not a minute was spent discussing how we practically organize on campus. Most of the criticisms about student lefties is true, they are often more interested in intellectual posturing and one-upmanship than actually doing anything. When we have a movement strong enough to force the governments hand over major features of its foreign policy, then that will be the time to start discussing the matter in depth. Until then, we have to deal with how we build a struggle from our everyday lives, without losing sight of the need for solidarity, and the fact that the Iraqi labour movement and anti-capitalists in the UK share elements of a common enemy.

Small steps before giant leaps?

We cannot hope to recreate the conditions of the 1960’s and in many ways we wouldn’t want to. As the debates in Manchester are repeated in universities all over the world it seems to us that a truly anti-capitalist politics can only be based upon struggling in the here and now against tangible issues. Campaigns based upon the premise of capitalism as something out there, as the plan of George Bush or the G8 lead us down the wrong road. Until our movements are large enough to influence (inter)national policy effective anti-capitalist actions must be locally situated. Although trans-national solidarity is important, if it becomes the focus of a campaign then it leads to symbolic sacrifices of energy that produce the mere spectacle of opposition. Effective movements must be aware of the tensions between situating a campaign locally whilst still being connected to struggles in different places and at different scales. In practical terms this is a very difficult thing to do and localised campaigns run the risk of falling into what David Harvey would term militant particularisms, movements that are defined by local interest only. An often forgotten part of 1968 was British workers marching for restrictions on migration whilst today hidden beneath the “We Are Everywhere” triumphalism of Seattle is the truth that many groups involved were campaigning for national protectionism. So, we must walk the tightrope of tensions between being rooted in the everyday whilst still being connected to wider struggles.

True resistance to capital is based upon movements with tangible and inspiring goals. We must be realistic and recognise that currently anti-capitalist movements are relatively small and this is in part down to poor choices in strategy. The free education campaign is a relatively small and SWP dominated group for very clear reasons, it fails to inspire or connect with people. On the other hand the reclaim the uni movement, whilst also being openly anti-capitalist, has attracted a large amount of support on the basis of its ability to clearly articulate tangible and desirable goals. Once our movements are large enough then we can begin the task of challenging capital at a larger and more abstract scale but until then we must continue movement building at a local level rooted in our everyday experience of capitalism.

"Pascal Steven is studying in Manchester and is involved with both the reclaim the uni group and Manchester No Borders. John Archer is from Manchester and has been closely involved with the ‘Reclaim the Uni’ campaign, and will continue to be so as long as he can keep his sanity in the company of liberals and Stalinist SWP members."

Climate Camp and class - Adam Ford

Picture the scene. The setting sun is glinting off the visors of the police lined up in front of me. It’s the second or third day of the weeklong Camp for Climate Action - already I’ve lost count - and for the second or third time since I last slept it looks as if the cops are about to invade. I’ve just bolted from the opposite end of the site, where I’ve helped dig a defensive trench at another gate. To my left, atop a red van, a woman who sounds scouser than scouse exhaustedly screeches words of encouragement into a megaphone and somehow dances to Radiohead. To my right, a posher than posh couple casually talk up Cornish nationalism and agree that political correctness means white people suffer more oppression than anyone else on the planet. All the campers care about the environment, but that seems to be the only thing we have in common. That and - by now - a dislike of police.

The first Climate Camp was set up in 2006, by activists who had been heavily involved in organising protests against the G8 summit in Gleneagles the year before. Their immediate target was the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire, but they sought to demonstrate two things. Firstly, that direct action was an effective way of making changes within society - like shutting down power stations - and secondly, that people could live non-hierarchically, in an environmentally sustainable way. Many of the initial organisers self-identified as anarchists, and they wanted climate camps to be anarchy in action.

At least that was the theory. Now in Climate Camp’s third year, the results are highly questionable. In terms of building a movement for environmental sustainability, the camp experience and how it is perceived by the wider population both need to be considered.

Certainly, to be a climate camper is to participate in anarchy in its original and best sense – running things without bosses. The camp is clustered into regional neighbourhoods, which hold meetings every morning. These assemblies discuss organisation within the neighbourhoods and camp policy as a whole, such as whether to accept the police’s latest ultimatum. Decisions are eventually reached via consensus, and ’spokes’ are delegated to express the collective’s views to the ’spokes council’, before reporting back. This can be seem like a long-winded process if you’re used to taking orders, but it works to ensure that everyone feels ownership over decisions, and are therefore usually happy to implement them.

Anarchy can work fast too, and not just when riot police arrive on site at 5.30 in the morning. Perhaps my favourite illustration of this took place on the final Sunday evening, when a trail of wooden boards that snaked through the camp needed to stacked. Someone took the initiative to do this, then someone else joined in next to them. Within a couple of minutes, the idea of stacking had gone along the trail, and about quarter of an hour later it was all done. Quite a strenuous task had quickly been completed, without a single order being given.

However, halfway through the week ‘An open letter to the neighbourhoods’ was circulated, authored by ‘…a large group of anti-authoritarian participants in the climate camp’, and expressing ‘deep concern about the direction that the debates have taken over the past days’. It went on to claim that ‘In more than one workshop we have heard calls from the podium for command-and-control and market-orientated measures to address climate change’, and ‘The responses to these proposals have been far too polite’. Calling for ‘A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism’, as well as ‘all forms and systems of domination and discrimination’, it emphasises ‘A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations’.

The letter hit on one of the central problems facing the camp: how to make it ‘a welcoming and non-sectarian space’ for people new to anarchist ideas, whilst ensuring that career environmentalists like George Monbiot and Mark Lynas (who outraged many by backing the government’s nuclear power plans, the former on BBC’s Newsnight) don’t get an easy ride. This issue is compounded by the inevitable tendency of more militant campaigners being drawn to the barricades and defending camp against police.

Saturday was the climax of the week, and had been declared the day when we would “…go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!”. The camp separated into blue, green, silver and orange blocs, with the plan being that we would take different routes over land, sea and air to get to Kingsnorth, arriving en masse, and E.ON bosses would order a shutdown. The end result was that one person climbed over the second security fence onto company property, and was immediately arrested. One boat made it onto a jetty, and a police charge sheet reveals that one of the four water inlet systems was shut down, but E.ON claimed it was “business as usual”. Fifty arrests were made, about half the total for the week.

So much for what actually happened. How much of the intended message survived the mainstream media’s filters and made it into public consciousness?

At the start of the week, coverage focused on the police attacks. Monday, 4th August saw BBC exposure of the police’s brutal dawn raid, giving details of casualties, showing police in riot gear attacking campers, and quoting camp media team members at length. On Tuesday, they ran with local Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews’ claim that the police had been “provocative and heavy-handed”. On the other hand, none of the other almost daily attacks got any press. This may be partly due to the pressure of the police’s announcement that they’d discovered a stash of knives and other weapons in woodland near the site. Campers immediately denied any connection with the stash, and none has since been found. But it seems likely that for many, this discovery provided retrospective cover for the police’s use of force, potentially dissuading waverers from paying a visit.

For the mainstream media, the camp wasn’t so much an experiment in sustainable living as a collection of oddities. When they discussed on-site conditions at all, they seemed more intrigued that there were people in the 21st century who voluntarily used compost toilets and grey water systems, than by the green implications. That this was part of an ‘eco village’ seems largely to have passed them by, a fact illustrated by a Google News search. Bizarrely, the Custer County Chief in Nebraska, USA picked up on it, as did a New Statesman article (not very encouragingly titled ‘Woolly minded hippies?’). This contrasts with 109 results for “climate camp” “compost toilet”. For their part, The Guardian even produced a tourist-style survival guide, entitled ‘How to go to Climate Camp - and enjoy it’.

As in previous years, the camp got the mainstream media talking about the role that carbon emissions play in manmade climate change. However, outlets overwhelmingly portrayed this as a protest against emissions at Kingsnorth in isolation, rather than the structural need of capital to expand, degrading the environment in the process. One deviation from this was when the Kent News quoted camper Anya Patterson as saying “If we are serious about fighting climate change, we have to tackle the root causes, and those are greed and a commitment to relentless economic growth.” Similarly, the non-hierarchical decision-making process was largely ignored, with the BBC merely describing it as ‘exhaustive’ and ’somewhat baffling’.

One facet of the week that all mainstream media went big on was the idea of direct action. Unfortunately, it was only covered in the most superficial way, focusing on the supposed dangers that campers would be letting themselves in for. Of course, police attack was not listed amongst these hazards, but electrocution and drowning were. The implicit message in all of this was that once people stepped outside the law, their safety was at risk, and that therefore the state and - by extension - police really are there to serve and protect everyone – batons, riding crops, pepper spray and all.

Though the Climate Camp website is declaring the week a resounding success, it can surely be judged a valiant failure in terms of its stated objectives. E.ON were inconvenienced for a few hours, but Kingsnorth was not shut down. Some campers learned about non-hierarchical organising and strategies for sustainable living, but this made little impact on the wider public. ‘Direct action’ became a media buzzword, but only as something irresponsible and to be feared. Carbon emissions became a hot topic, but in the context of the above, only as ‘footprints’ to feel guilty about.

Indeed, some campers were hoping for this. On the Thursday morning, I had a discussion with an activist about his ambitions for what is being dubbed the ‘climate movement’. “To make a lot of people very guilty”, he replied.

This emphasis on guilt as a precursor for individualistic lifestyle change is perhaps the very opposite of what many original organisers hoped for. However, I believe it is fundamental to what is sometimes called ‘green and black’ anarchism. The idea of a class-based transformation of society is rejected – in some cases because of righteous disillusionment with traditional forms of class struggle, in many cases because the individual is from a relatively wealthy background. When such people see impending environmental catastrophe as the number one threat to their lives, their philosophy often becomes more anti-technological than anti-capitalist. Taking this perspective to its logical conclusion, capitalism and the state wouldn’t be much of a problem if they could somehow leave people alone in ecological peace, but since they can’t, both must be overcome. But with international class-based solidarity apparently ruled out, the result is that “setting an example” (as one woman put it) becomes the main method of ideological recruitment.

This sets green and black anarchism up for its own failure. Due to the built-in ideological structures of mainstream media and the state, the example set is of using those compost toilets, getting attacked by police, and putting yourself in mortal danger on your week off. Understandably, this is not an example that many are willing to follow.

The boast that Climate Camp would “shut down Kingsnorth” was always about bravado and bluster, a tendency which people from all strands of activism are vulnerable to in times of unrelenting defeat. But how could Kingsnorth really be shut down? Medway Council have approved E.ON’s plans, and the final decision rests with the government, who have already indicated they will grant permission. Demolition of the current site and the construction of the new one is scheduled for February next year. On camp, there was a lot of talk about trying to build on current “momentum” and systematically blockading work from then onwards. Clearly, because of the long term commitment to direct action necessary, this would attract a smaller and ever dwindling number of people, unless substantial local support is forthcoming. Even if it is, there are plans for seven more coal-fired stations in the pipeline, plus all the other myriad ways capital is destroying the environment. There simply aren’t enough of us to wage such a struggle.

Any campaign against environmental destruction has to be rooted in a movement against the profit motive and the capitalist system, or it is doomed to symbolic gestures and failure. Industry doesn’t create carbon emissions, working people do, because they are paid to do so and see no viable alternative. While capitalist ideas prevail amongst the working class, invasions of power stations are less direct action and more dramatic lobbying; ultimately impotent appeals to the government to see further than the short term bottom line, something it is organically incapable of doing.

Ironically, this plays into the hands of people like George Monbiot. ‘Climate change is not anarchy’s football’, he patronisingly declared in a post-camp online reply to an article by radical journalist Ewa Jasiewicz, before going on to declare that ‘I don’t know how to solve the problem of capitalism without resorting to totalitarianism’. And every dictatorship needs paid advisors.

No George, climate change is not ‘anarchy’s football’; it’s a matter of life and death. That’s why we need working class revolution, so we can sort it out.

"Adam Ford is an activist and journalist from Merseyside who writes about activism, local history, social issues and culture from a radical working class perspective. A collection of his work can be read at http://dreaming-neon-black.blogspot.com"

Interview with Dave Douglass

At the camp you joked about the police presence being nothing compared to your previous experiences. How did you find the Climate Camp this summer?

Well I’ve been up against the law since the age of 14, arrested for hitting the prime minister with a tomato and assaulting the police at 15, through to Holy Loch and Aldermaston’s right up to the late 60s. Grosvenor Square, London. Dam Square Amsterdam, Belfast, and pickets in the 72 / 74 miners strike. Mass confrontations in 84/5 Orgreave, hit squads and petrol bombs, the cops weren’t a surprise at all, but I was just making a joke I wasn’t trying to ‘pull rank’ or see who had the raggiest arse.

Before the camp you wrote an open letter to the Climate Camp, why did you choose to do that?

I was incensed. Because it seems to me, the miners throughout history have had nothing but betrayal and being stabbed in the back. ‘The Green Movement’ we had foolishly thought was our ally. An ally who could see that we stood against nuclear power, civil and military, were against opencast mining, and were for practical renewables.

We thought they understood the politics of energy and why it was the miners had been almost wiped off the face of the earth (in Britain) in class war. We had set up an alliance Energy 2000 way back in the mid 80s with Greenpeace and environmental groups (by ‘we’ I mean the NUM) to campaign for Clean Coal Technology, and an end to Nuclear power, for solar, tidal, and geo-thermal and phasing in practical world applicable programmes like solar power farms in the worlds deserts to supply the world with ever lasting power, free and clean, with clean coal buying us the time. Then just when we are on our last chance for survival, just when we are trying to knock back the major nuclear construction programme in favour of clean coal and carbon capture, the Climate Camp marches in and attacks Drax.

The shrill middle class instruction that there was no place for coal in Britain energy supply, came as a slap down, and a warning to keep our place and be quiet. Our betters knew better than us, and coal had to go, it had been decided. Well it drew a furious response from me. I am not, by the way saying the Climate Camp is entirely middle class, nor am I saying that a largely middle class milieu invalidates their argument just because of that. I am saying that that particular bright young middle class thing, appearing on the TV news that night, and telling us what was good for us, did produce class anger, and it reinforced a class divide of perception.

I have been associated with protest organisations since I was 14, many of them heavily composed of middle class people and full of muddled middle class shite ideas, but the cause, the anti bomb movement for example, the anti nuclear movement demanded that the working class add its own colours to those movements and debates. This was another reason for responding to Climate Camp instead of bricking them.

In your letter and at the camp you made the case for the continuation of the coal industry. Does this not put you on the same side as the government, the police and the E.ON bosses?

Well the cops didn’t seem to think so when we got nose to nose on the gate on Wednesday afternoon. But let me ask the same question, on the day the Camp opened, Brown made a statement saying he too was concerned about coal and CO2 and this was why they were investing in Nuclear Power. The stink against coal is fuelling a revision of ideas among so called socialists and environmentalists, who now are panicked into believing nuclear provides the only answer. The fact is the choice for base load generation, is either coal or nuclear, the camp keeps bashing coal, which is promoting nuclear.

This just so happens to the Government’s policy and has been since the Ridley Committee drew up plans in the late 70s to take out the miners as a social threat to the system. The camp is acting on the side of the state and government. We fought the cops, whole communities of working class people fought the cops and some think the army too, to stop pit closures, against state and government plans to wipe us out. Now the Climate Camp shouts Leave It In The Ground, and defacto Shut The Pits. The cops helped shut the pits, the government closed the pits and coal power stations, this is the same demand as the Climate Camp now advances. So you answer the question whose side are you on?

By the way, when mass protest movements stand against the big power generators investing in land based wind turbines and political arm-twisting, patronage and sheer bribery is applied to force Wind Turbine estates into rural lands, where do the Climate Camp stand? Not on the side of the protesters, not against the environment being utterly despoiled by industrial turbine estates, but on the same side as the capitalist power generators N Power and the others, getting £300,000 per turbine per year whether it turns a blade or produces a watt of power. So which side and whose side? Fact is the government is anti coal, anti coal communities, and those who support that side support the government and state, touché.

Many who attended the Climate Camp, yourself included, are not just concerned with climate change but with radical social change. If this is our goal does there not need to be a fundamental change in industrial infrastructure, the nature of work and the role of trade unions?

Whey aye, why do you think we want a working class revolution? We want minimal amounts of work, an end to the wage slavery of capitalism, an end to useless duplication of production and waste. We want real fundamental needs met, like water, housing, clothing, education, food, and freedom not invented needs, which we don’t need. But we believe only the organised working class, organised and conscious of its own existence and role in changing society and smashing the old order can deliver this change. For that, we need progressive unions like the NUM, visionary working class communities like the pits, docks, factories etc. That’s why we defend their existence and the ruling class will at every turn try to wipe us out, close us down, disperse us, or divide us. That’s why they closed the pits here only to import 70 million tonnes of coal from countries where the union doesn’t exist and miners toil in conditions we fought our way out of over a hundred years ago.

It’s not just about work, its not and never has been just about jobs, it’s about the right and ability to intervene into life and challenge the system, and bring about a new social system.

We thought that the decision to invite NUM members to the camp was definitely a step in the right direction. Where do you see divergences between your own goals and those of the Climate Camp?

Well we’ve organised a Labour Movement Conference on Class, Climate Change and Clean Coal in Newcastle upon Tyne on Nov 1st, with myself and Arthur Scargill and others speaking at it. We invite the Climate Camp spokespersons to come and debate these issues with us. (Venue to be finalised) The Climate Camp is a thoroughly undemocratic movement, which is led by some strange impulsion, which seems not to debate targets, or strategy or goals or class before it arrives at a new enemy. It takes for granted, coal for example is the enemy. It is deeply offended to be offered a different vision. I was asked about ten times as I gave out our bulletin if I had had permission to give these out in the field. Seriously. I will not tell you how I responded.

The Climate Camp needs to engage itself, and it needs to engage and understand the working class movement. It needs to accept that the working class movement, the union movement and the socialist / anarchist movement have a vision too, and we don’t necessarily agree. They need to engage us more and confront us less. They need to intercept the demands and goals of the workers movement with questions and ideas on how they relate to the environment and climate change for example.

I say again I am not saying there are no trade unionists and working class people engaged in the camp, there clearly are, but the camp overall is not represented by that small tendency, and will frequently confront their own class positions and they will find themselves in contradictory positions. It must also be said that elements of ‘the left’ have jumped on this environmental bandwagon and is free loading. It hopes to seem relevant to a powerful movement because it despairs of the working class. Abandons traditional working class areas and unions to seek new shiny platforms on which to lead and appear relevant.

Given the need for some kind of response to climate change, could you see trade unions such as the NUM ever having a productive working relationship with ‘radical’ greens such as the Climate Camp? Is a red-green politics possible?

As I say we started this way back first with CND, and Trade Union CND, and then with Energy 2000, With The Anti Nuclear Campaign, in the 90s in joint campaigns against open cast mining which was being undertaken at the expense of the deep-mined industry. But with a collective perspective on clean coal, and practical renewables, (solar can be made practical on a world scale, geo thermal on a limited scale and tidal too –but land based wind turbines are classic ‘green wash’ and a cheap trick which is decimating huge tracts of unspoiled countryside and wilderness.) We can and must co-operate. Hopefully lots of people will come to our November conference and we can debate it further.

"David Douglass, worked in the mining industry for 40 years; 30 of those on the Coalface tunnelling and driving roadways, working both in the Durham and Doncaster coalfields. The last three years working was as a Trade Union Organiser for the TGWU in the Northern Region. Previously 25 years an official of the NUM at Branch level and executive member of the Yorkshire Area of the NUM. The last ten years in the industry ran the Mining Communities Advice Centre which was a hub for political and welfare and benefits action in the South Yorkshire Coalfield communities.

An Anarcho-Syndicalist, with roots and history in the anarchist movement but still philosophically a Marxist. Anarcho-Marxism has been recently described by the CPGB Weekly Worker as ‘just anarchism’ so ‘just an Anarchist’ then by that definition. Been active and involved in movements from Holy Loch in 62, through to Vietnam, Ireland, Iraq and countless strikes and battles with the employers, the cops, the army and the state.

Just completed my autobiographical Trilogy: Stardust and Coaldust, the first book Geordies gets its launch at this year Anarchist Bookfair, and I hope people will come along and hear my reading from the book, (and actually consider buying it). Produced by Christiebooks, with great help and support from Stuart Christie."

“Make a foreshortened critique of capitalism history!” - A Reply - The Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London

gordon-brown-2002.jpg

In the very first issue of SHIFT magazine the Berlin-based group TOP delivers fragments of their critique of the anti-G8 mobilisation in order to “make a foreshortened critique of capitalism history” (TOP). A sympathetic cause indeed to challenge antisemitic currents and nationalist floods (not only) in that movement.

Unfortunately TOP fails to deliver an appropriate critique of those positions. Whilst in some cases moral appeals and warnings replaces a proper critique, they provide a wrong explanation in some other cases. In this reply we aim to provide arguments against these shortcomings hoping to aid TOP’s cause which we subscribe to. Thereby we will concentrate on what we believe to be TOP’s main fallacy: Their underestimation of the state’s role in preserving capitalism. TOP rightfully refuses “economistic and personalized (state-conceptions)” within the anti-globalisation movement and writes: “one of the inherent dangers of this logic is to fall into anti-Semitic stereotypes”. They then go on by giving a brief overview of history and substance of the antisemitic world-view.

However, TOP does not sufficiently detail their position on what capitalism is, why and how so many protesters come to a wrong differing conclusion about it and how this involves antisemitism. However, we believe that these details are crucial to defeat a foreshortened critique of capitalism. The brief remarks about their understanding of capitalism are: Capitalism is a “process, which arises following its own structural logic without a particular leadership”. Discussing whether and how protest against a meeting of the most powerful states in the world is reasonable TOP writes that “domination has neither name nor address”.

We think that this position is a consequence of TOP’s failure to understand the democratic state, its elected agents and its objects of government: the people. First, in order to develop our critique of this position, we have to make a step back and state some results which we probably all agree on: In capitalism the satisfaction of personal needs is not the purpose of production. For example because food is private property of a grocery store owner, one’s hunger is not a sufficient condition for gaining access to that food. Store owners don’t stock food to feed the hungry but to make a living.

The first principle of capitalist interaction is free and equal trade or in less palliating terms: without giving there is no receiving. So only if a store owner sells enough stuff this month he might be able to make a living with his store next month. This is complicated by the fact that there are many grocery stores around competing to attract buyers who in turn dispose only about a limited budget. This competition exists on all levels (jobs, customers, markets, etc.) — it is universal — and also involves global corporations, they too compete for customers. If they fail, they go bankrupt. To survive in universal competition they improve their production and increase the absolute exploitation of their workers (prolong the work day, more intense work, lower wages).

Capitalism is a labour divided society which means that the producers depend on each other: A farmer needs tools, the tool maker needs raw materials, and miners need food. Under the dictate of private property this interdependency is not resolved in a conscious common plan but each agent is depended on each other’s arbitrariness. In this situation — being subject to other’s free will — it is indeed best practice to always strive for one’s best result.

Insofar universal competition is logical in capitalism. This is probably what TOP would call “structural logic”. A position which wants to preserve the free market and private property in the means of production but singles out capitalists or corporations for their ‘greedy’ and immoral behaviour is therefore indeed a wrong personalised conception: “the notion misconceives that in capitalism the economic actors are following a rationality that is forced upon them by the economic relationships themselves.” (TOP)

But: Heiligendamm was not a meeting of grocery store owners, farmers or factory workers but a meeting of heads of states. A store owner (or any capitalist) and Gordon Brown fulfil some very different roles for capitalist reproduction. Gordon Brown’s government’s decisions reach to (and beyond) the borders of this country, the decisions of a capitalist affect his own store/factory and maybe the shops he competes with. Furthermore, the capitalist — regardless if he produces, sells, etc. — has to obey to the rules of private property, while the government formulates and enforces these rules. Thus the state causes all the messy business. Note that those without considerable personal effects, too, have to obey to these rules, though without being able to use them to their advantage. Because of this relationship between citizens and the state asking what the rights of the citizens are is of importance. In contrast, when nation states decide to treat each other like “juristic persons” (TOP) they are only limited by their own choices. Thus considering whether the most powerful states in the world can “‘freely’ and ‘equally’ arrange informal meetings” gets pointless. There is no monopoly of force that can grant or withhold this right.

On a side note: TOP’s counter to the anti-globalisation movement’s claim that G8 is illegitimate misses the point when they discuss whether the meeting is legal or not. To fulfil the crucial duty of granting private property the state has to be sovereign with respect to his subjects. How sovereign a state is depends on how much it pushes its monopoly of force through within its borders and its interests beyond its borders. The last requires military might or the power of economic extortion and the G8 is a meeting of states which generally don’t have a problem in those departments. This does not imply on the other hand that there are no other states with a significant military force or economic power. However, in many other states most of the sources of national wealth are in the hands of foreign capitalists and every government — whatever the intent — which touches this property is confronted with the US and EU.

Thus even though state actions are somewhat limited by the international community of states (read: mainly G8) the limitations of a capitalist and a state (including its personal) are very different. For example, the EU has limited the free exchange of crop and subsidises its farmers to make sure it is independent of foreign food suppliers. Other examples are road works, public education and public health. Those sectors are not completely subject to the invisible hand of the market because the state decided to regulate the “free market” according to its interests. Or consider any embargo or war in which a state practically negates possible business interests of its national capital. Exactly, because state has not to succumb to the “structural logic” of capital it can provide the “particular leadership” necessary to perform “domination and exploitation” “within and through these forms [democracy and law]” (TOP).

Note that using this result to demand a radical change in politics from the government would be foolish. First, the state agents believe in freedom, democracy, and capitalism and so do the parliaments which appointed them. Also those parliaments are re-affirmed every once in a while by the people of their respective countries via elections. Governments have a purpose which is documented in their respective constitutions, abolishing capitalism altogether is not part of those constitutions and even if Gordon Brown was convinced to stop the madness of capital and nation he could not do it. Modern states have safety measures to make sure a government does not go rough — in either direction — like ballots and if necessary the state of emergency where democracy and freedom are suspended in order to preserve the state.

Capitalism is neither a conspiracy of a few nor a “process … without a particular leadership”. It is neither a process without leadership because there is a government but nor is it a conspiracy of the few because the government is bound to the constitution and law. The anti-globalisation movement generally approaches this problem from a totally different angle. Instead of asking how and why the world is set up, they compare state and capital with their ideal of it. Consequently, this movement either demands “better politics” or has lost trust in the political class and aims to replace it. As there is no interest in understanding how democracy, freedom and equality preserve exploitation and domination the anti-globalisation mainstream keeps searching for violations of those high principles. If the system itself is not flawed there must be some external source for all the trouble: corrupt politicians, greedy bosses, loss of culture. This search for external jamming sources is where antisemitism has some “answers” to offer.

“Overpopulation”: letting capitalism off the hook - Manchester No Borders

From when we started being active as a No Borders group in Manchester we have been frustrated with a lack of radical analyses and critiques (anti-state, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-discrimination etc.) of climate change. This was particularly so, as we became aware of a ‘greening of immigration controls’. There appears to be an increasing tendency for green politics to lean towards repressive measures as solutions to the environmental crisis.

More specifically, in discussions with other (environmental) activists, we have recently found ourselves in disagreement over the issue of ‘overpopulation’. A common green orthodoxy today is that there are too many people on this planet, and that we need to do something about it. (Although as we gave a well-attended workshop at the Climate Camp on this topic, we were positively surprised how many of the participants were critical of this stance.)

In this article, we want to spell out the dangers of the ‘the planet is full’ argument and argue that ‘overpopulation’ is not the root cause of climate change. Not people are the problem, but society. Not human beings per se, but the way our social life is organized: capitalism.

There are two levels to our criticism of the ‘overpopulation’ argument. One, the argument quite simply plays into the hands of governments, nationalists and anti-feminists who are quite happy to step up demographic controls, people management and anti-immigration policies. Two, interpreting population growth as the root cause of the climate crisis completely disregards the systemic nature of the problem and thus lets capitalism off the hook.

The overpopulation argument

So where is the problem? The UN projects that world population figures will rise from today’s 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050. For the prophets of demographic doom, Britain, in particular, is under threat. Government projections are that the UK population is to rise from 60.6 million (mid-2006) to 77 million in 2050. Obviously, demographic modeling contains lots of cultural and political assumptions, and should be treated as politically informed rather than neutral observations. Human population behavior is very random and unpredictable and not something that can be forecasted as unproblematically as tomorrow’s weather, say (and you know how inaccurate that is!).

Whatever the assumption, an increasing amount of global players (from government agencies to international organizations, from think tanks to celebrities) conclude that the planet is full. They argue that any such densely populated area as Britain would be unsustainable in terms of food production, housing and energy needs. Also within the green movement this is not a marginal position and no longer limited to ‘deep ecologists’. The green-nationalist think tank ‘Optimum Population Trust’, for example, estimates that the UK can only sustain less than half its current population level. And they demand a national population policy that first stabilizes the number of people in the UK and then gradually brings it down to 30 million.

Fact is however, that the UK population is growing primarily because of immigration. The argument thus is threefold. First, immigration puts pressure on national resources such as water, energy, food and countryside. Second, new migrants tend to have more children than the national population thereby accelerating the problem. Third, migration to ‘first world’ countries turns previously low-impact consumers to high-impact consumers increasing their ecological footprints. It comes as no surprise to us, then, that the BNP calls itself the ‘real Green Party’.

The government’s chief green advisor, Jonathan Porritt, has also time and again argued this point. But what to do? Porritt’s suggestion is straightforward: zero net immigration! David Cameron also agrees that rapid population increase will put pressure on our natural resources. And again, his solution is to lower net immigration:

“my focus today is on population, and here we should note that only around thirty per cent of the projected increase in our population by 2031 is due to higher birth rates and longer life-spans…the evidence shows that roughly seventy per cent - more than two thirds - of the increase in our population each year is attributable to net migration. Of that increase, forty seven per cent comes directly from people to moving to Britain, and the rest from higher birth rates amongst immigrant populations.”

The feminist dimension

It becomes clear that in a sexist, imperialist, capitalist world, it is impossible to separate discussion of population control from hierarchies of oppression. Which population is going to be “controlled” and how will this control come about?

Any form of population control risks seriously impinging upon women’s right to bodily autonomy. State-enforced population control programs, such as China’s ‘one-child policy’, are usually enacted upon women’s bodies; it is women who are forced to have abortions, to undergo sterilisation, or to take long-term birth control products (often with serious health repercussions). Rarely are men forced to undergo vasectomies, despite the relative easiness of this procedure when compared to tubal ligation.

However, not all women will be affected equally; those from the Global South, ethnic minorities, those perceived as disabled, and the working class have historically borne the brunt of population control policies. Eugenicists in Victorian England were very clear about which segments of the population needed controlling: the poor and the disabled.

More recently, Black British feminists in the 1970s and 1980s wrote about the need to campaign for abortion rights while at the same time also fighting for their right not to have abortions and not to be pressured into sterilisation. At the same time dangerous forms of birth control, like early experimental forms of Depo-Provera, were being tested upon women in the Global South (and in predominantly African-American areas of the US) before being allowed for sale in the Western world. Today, women in the Global South are often ‘encouraged’ by NGOs to use long-term forms of birth control, like implants, that require a medical attention to stop (as opposed to something like The Pill, which can be stopped at any time by the woman taking it). This history cannot be ignored today when discussing population control in the UK. As single working-class mothers, immigrants and ethnic minorities (particularly Muslims) find themselves being increasingly demonised; any population control policies will target women from these groups.

Malthus

Throughout its history then the overpopulation argument has been used to present people and children as the source of inherently social problems: letting capitalism off the hook. The argument always goes like this: there are too many of us and the planet can’t hack it. Whether it’s the poor, the Jews, women or migrants, all have been used strategically as scapegoats for an irrational and unproductive use of space and resources within a capitalist economy.

One of the most prominent writers on over-population was Thomas Malthus, a 19th century cleric of the Church of England. His treatise on over-population “A summary view of the principle of population” was printed in 1830, but is still read widely today. Malthus stated that whilst population increased at a geometric rate (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…), doubling every 25 years, food production increases at an arithmetic rate (1, 2, 3, 4, 5…). Malthus believed this disparity between food production and population growth was the root cause of “checks to (human) growth” such as war, famine and disease.

The strong strand of prejudice within Malthus’ work, however, often goes unacknowledged by neo-Malthusianists. He saw poverty as deserved rather than produced and blamed the poor for their “lack of moral restraint” thus making them the primary focus of population policy. The inherent conservatism and class prejudice hidden behind a veneer of scientific objectivity has made Malthus a popular source of intellectual legitimacy for various conservative and authoritarian positions.

In the late 19th century Eugenicists began utilising and expanding on Malthus’s critique of the rapid population growth of the poor. Eugenicists argued that this lack of restraint was genetically inherited and posed a threat to the future of the nation. A prominent eugenicist was Winston Churchill and many discriminatory laws were passed to attempt to influence the outcome of breeding. Once again systemic problems were naturalised and projected upon the very people most negatively affected by them.

Neo-Malthusianism

Many anti-migration authors have also mobilised Malthusian ideas. These arguments have relied upon an analysis of national resources as closed and finite systems and exaggerating rates of migration. Proposals for the closing of borders are contrasted with images of swarms of migrants exhausting national resources like locust. One example of this nationalist position, which supports the competitive nature of states, is this quote from the ‘Population and environment’ journal:

“Countries that are in the lead in reducing their populations should not give in to advocates of growth by allowing massive immigration. This rewards those who multiply irresponsibly”

As environments change due to climate change the monster of ‘overpopulation’ is being resurrected as a security issue. As we are seeing with climate change, environmental issues provide a space for the legitimisation of conservative and authoritarian policies.

Perhaps one of the most influential of these authors was Garrett Hardin whose essay “The Tragedy of the Commons”, printed in 1968, masked a pro-private property stance beneath a veneer of scientific objectivity. Hardin believed that, without private ownership of natural resources, unchecked population growth would lead to their exhaustion. The same arguments were used to support the 20th century ‘green revolution’ and are appearing again with the G8 leaders in Japan agreeing to extend research into GM crops to deal with ‘overpopulation’. ‘Overpopulation’ is used as a convenient argument to support the agendas of specific political and economic actors.

But let’s not attack a straw man here. None of the green progressives here in the UK argue for more stringent migration controls (in contrast to parts of the green conservationist movement in the US). Nonetheless, we have witnessed population graphs being used in climate change presentations, which could have lead to knee-jerk reactions and dangerous political conclusions when taken out their left-wing context.

Earth First?

The climate action movement of course recognises the repression faced by migrants and the fact that the groups of people who are hit hardest by climate change are in the Global South. However, even with the best intentions of warding off ecological destruction and creating better lives for people in the face of climate chaos the ‘overpopulation’ argument still ignores the systemic logic behind climate change: capitalism.

The central flaw to Malthusian thought is its a-systemic nature. Regardless of the economic system or social organisation, it views the root cause of most human suffering as population growth, and in particular the threat of the poor becoming richer (and thus consuming more). Poverty however, is produced not bred, and by projecting systemic flaws onto those it most affects neo-Malthusianism both helps to protect the status quo from criticism and construct vulnerable social groups as legitimate targets of control.

As relatively rich Western countries consume the most energy, it is often argued that it is their populations, in particular, that should be curbed, whether by authoritarian state control, or by individuals in the West simply realizing it is their moral responsibility not to reproduce. But to imply that the Earth should come before a child can lead down a dangerous path. It may lead to a resentment of those social groups that migrate or reproduce more often than others.

Besides, social, economic and cultural pressures to have or not to have children cannot be tackled through individual lifestyle choices and guilt trips. An emancipatory response to climate change requires a political and social solution.

We should be attacking capitalism, not children and families. In a world where children are killed over oil and exploited at the hands of multi-national corporations it isn’t surprising that children will eventually be blamed for capitalism’s fuck-ups. Capitalism doesn’t make sense and neither do capitalist solutions. The ‘overpopulation’ argument ignores the contradictions inherent in capitalism that mediate the relationship between human beings and the environment and already limit our freedom and desires on a real everyday level.

Instead of acknowledging the unprecedented global disasters that seem to spiral as capitalism grows and spreads its destructive wings, the ‘overpopulation’ argument asks not for a new form of social organisation (that might see land and resources accessed and shared more evenly, contributing to less poverty, more sustainable lifestyles and fewer wars) but takes the shameful and hopeless route of asking people to have fewer children. In a world where we are repeatedly screwed over we are now being asked not to screw!

"Manchester No Borders is a group resisting migration controls and the persecution, detention and exploitation of refugees and other migrants. We are committed to practical solidarity and direct action as well as imagining a world without borders and ways to realise this.’ Recently, we have aimed to focus strongly on the theory linking border control, capitalism and the environment to help inform our practical actions resisting migration controls. This article is a product of these many discussions."

Editorial - Summit protests and the economic crisis

Summit-hopping is so last year. Or is it? When we began conceiving this issue a few months back, it seemed like everyone was gearing up for a busy 2009: NATO’s 60th anniversary party, the G20 summit in London, the G8 in Italy, the UN’s climate summit in Copenhagen… Ten years on from the ‘battle of Seattle’, 2009 was set to be the return of summit-hopping.

However, so far, anti-capitalists in Italy appear to have made little progress in mobilising against the G8 summit in July. What is more, everyone is talking about the UN’s climate change conference next December in Copenhagen. This comes with the awful package of environment minister Miliband calling for a mass movement for green capitalism and an austerity deal. The threat of another paralysing ‘Make Poverty History’-style mobilisation looms. On the other hand, there are, of course, some summits that continue to attract fundamental antagonism. The EU’s meeting on immigration in Vichy, France, last November was one example, despite a lack of mobilisation from the UK.

There is something that is fundamentally different from the previous decade of large anti-globalisation mobilisations: neo-liberalism itself is in crisis! The policies that were promoted by the anti-globalisation arch enemies (WTO, World Bank, IMF) are failing not only in Argentina and Mexico, but also in Europe and North America. The current financial crisis provides a platform for a systematic critique of the current economic system.

Maybe we should be excited that suddenly everyone is talking about the economy. Or should we? Many analyses of the crisis seem to be putting forward reactionary solutions. For a start, who we blame will define how we respond. Socialists blame bankers, government ministers and conservatives (and increasingly liberals) blame immigration, environmentalists and the middle classes blame the mass consumerism of the working class and the corporate media blames everyone. And what, then, will the response be? Anti-consumerism and austerity politics? Economy-boosting interest rate cuts? Tougher immigration controls? Urban riots? Blame creates hierarchies and characterises anti-globalisation protests. If we are to build a collective, emancipatory response to the crisis we need to be critical of any strategies that ignore the realities of life in capitalism, that fuel moral superiority and reinforce class divisions.

Furthermore, with every crisis comes a new conspiracy theory. The problem with these ‘explanations’ is that a capitalist crisis is not the result of the errors of a ‘small and elusive group of people’ as the conspiracy theorists want us to believe.

We live in a system that is antithetical to our needs, and importantly, our desires.

Crises are inherent in capitalism. There is no solution that will make capitalism free of crises. We can demand more regulation of the financial sector or the nationalisation and democratic ownership of banks. Still, capitalism’s crises are based in its inherent contradictory character with the desire to produce for profit-maximisation rather than social needs. And this will always be the central goal of capitalist production. A crisis won’t change that. There are more crises to come, with indications that speculation with raw materials and food could lead to much bigger misery than the bursting of the credit bubble. It is contradictory and irrational to produce, distribute and exchange resources as is done in a capitalist economy, thus capitalism without crises would be an oxymoron.

The left should take the crisis as an opportunity to push for more, to push for a system that puts our needs and desires above profit, to avoid limiting ourselves and scapegoating others. At a time where political leaders are making our demands seem reasonable (whether that’s the nationalisation of banks or a strong climate deal), we should not settle for compromise but demand the impossible!

Despite these new opportunities, there are few signs for a new wave of summit protests that can escape the attempts by governments to recuperate them. Protests are not happening outside summits now. As we write, they are happening in suburbs and big university towns. The migrant youths of St. Denis, the anti-CPE students, the Anomalous Wave movement and the Greek anarchist youth all dominate the headlines, rather than the plans for opposition to the G8 or G20. Also in Britain, radical anti-capitalist protest is no longer connected to the anti-globalisation movement, but is at the radical edge of the failed anti-war movement of 2003. Maybe in 2009 ‘suburb-hopping’ offers new opportunities for resistance?

Are We Anywhere? Carbon, Capital and COP-15 - Pascal Steven

Everything is rational in capitalism, except capital or capitalism itself… the system is demented, yet it works very well at the same time”.
(Felix Guattarri, 1995)

“We mean business when we talk about climate change”.
(Jose Manuel Barroso, European commission president)

One of the biggest political spectacles of the coming year will be held in Copenhagen, (COP-15) in December. There, delegates from 170 countries, corporate lobbyists and NGO representatives will come together under the banner of the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCC) in an attempt to solve the problem of climate change via the implementation of a global, market based, carbon cap and trade scheme. The deal brokered here will replace the Kyoto treaty which will expire in 2012. The COP-15 will be a core global governance mechanism through which climate change mitigation will be implemented. The deal that emerges from this has the potential to affect the entire socio-ecological field.

Although the framework for the new treaty has been sketched out at Poznan there is still lots to negotiate. Outside of state actors, NGOs from both North and South are calling for a mass movement to intervene in this process. Many are calling for a dramatic reduction in the maximum CO2 levels that will be permitted to be emitted whilst others are seeking greater flows of technological exchange and financial aid to cope with the effects of climate change. In the UK, the Climate Camp and sections of the radical left are also beginning to mobilise. However, heated debate still exists over whether we should go and, if we do decide to go what should our intervention consist of? With the upcoming anti-Nato, G8, G20 and COP-15 summits 2009 appears, at least on paper, as the year in which summit mobilisations come back into vogue. However, unlike mobilisations during the alter-globalisation cycle of resistance, the politics of climate change make an intervention at the COP-15 much more difficult. Whilst many are calling for the COP-15 to be de-legitimised and shut down others are calling for a pragmatic engagement with it and suggest corporate lobbyists or the most dilatory states as targets. This article hopes to problematise the (post)politics of the COP-15 process and highlight the difficulties a radical left intervention would encounter in doing so.

Post-politics of climate change

The formal political space of the COP-15 process can be defined by its emphasis on consensus. Although every actor involved has their own individual agenda and set of goals for the summit it appears a degree of consensus has been reached. A new political space based on science and technocratic administration is emerging where the only debates that remain are over the finer points of the carbon market which will be implemented. Climate change has been de-politicised and debate is now framed within scientific terms of carbon parts per million in the atmosphere. Despite appearing as a non-political issue, it is the exact opposite. Anthropogenic emissions stem from concrete forms of production. By focusing on carbon and not the flows of capital responsible for their emission, policy makers are confusing the effects with the system that produces them. This focus on carbon helps to insulate the system from criticism by creating the problem as external and divorcing it from its social context.

Climate change has been defined in terms of carbon and not in terms of capital, but any policy needs support in order to be implemented. The political willpower to act on climate change has been galvanised through an apocalyptic and millenarian narrative. The argument for averting climate change is clear and unequivocal; if we do not mitigate climate change the results will be disastrous for the entire world. This is of course true, the effects of climate change will be devastating for many, particularly for the most vulnerable sections of society. Therefore we must act now to avert this catastrophic build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The problem is defined as a universal problem requiring a united global response. Faced with the prospect of apocalypse, old left-right antagonisms begin to look outdated and those standing outside of this “carbon consensus” are marginalised as idealistic at best. Climate change therefore becomes a post-political space devoid of conflict and instead focused on implementing policy based on science, technology and markets. This appeal to universal action has helped to short circuit real political debate over future potential socio-ecological relationships. Within this depoliticised space Ed Miliband’s call for “millions on the streets” in a Make Poverty History style mobilisation to give Gordon Brown a mandate at the COP-15 sits comfortably with environmental activists calling for a pragmatic engagement with the process. Much like the Gleneagles G8 summit, COP-15 appears to be recuperating antagonism in order to re-articulate global patterns of capital.

This is tying the world into a disastrous course of action. Climate change must be defined as an issue of capital not carbon. Contrary to the claims of proponents of the emerging “green” economy, there is no equitable technological solution to climate change. A de-carbonised global economy (as many wish to see) will still be a capitalist economy with all the social and environmental damage this entails. A greener form of capitalism will be a more austere form of capitalism in which increasing unrest will require disciplining by increasingly authoritarian forms of state power. At best the COP-15 will be a pyrrhic victory in which catastrophic climate change is averted at the expense of many people’s standards of living. The Cop-15 process can be seen as one part of this emerging green new deal in which converging ecological and financial crises can be recuperated into circuits of capital accumulation. This carbon market will primarily benefit private interests in the North who have enough financial power to offset their emissions via “development” projects in the global south which look likely to only benefit small sections of local elites. Real political contestation has been trumped by a process whose destructive and deeply political nature has been obscured behind a scientific and apparently universal mandate for action.

That the media and the entire political spectrum appear in support of this process makes an anti-capitalist intervention even more problematic. By demanding the end of capitalist social relationships and refusing to accept the COP-15 we are articulating a demand that is impossible to be accommodated within the existing political sphere, especially one which forecloses the political through its use of science and focus on “universal” consensus. By standing outside of this, our demands are likely to be made legible in one of two ways. The first narrative, already used by George Monbiot with regards to last years climate camp, is that a radical intervention at the COP-15 will be an outdated and ideologically driven form of protest in a situation which needs a unified global effort behind it. The second narrative, and perhaps the more undesirable, will be that our intervention will be conflated with that of more liberal groups.

Despite this, we must act. Our intervention must embody a rejection of the false solutions proffered by the COP-15 process whilst clearly standing in opposition to liberals and environmentalists wishing to “make Kyoto Stronger” who are in fact pushing for a more austere form of capitalism. Our only hope of breaking through this will be an intervention of such force that the post-political veneer of the COP-15 process will be shattered, even if only for the days of the conference. Given a trend of increasingly militarised summit policing this appears an unenviable, if necessary, task.

In terms of environmental politics the anti-capitalist left is nowhere. Climate change has gone post-political. The only debates left at COP-15 are over the finer points of the carbon market which will be implemented, a market which will produce new forms of structural violence. In an incredible demonstration of the adaptability of capital many NGOs and environmentalists are supporting this process. Although it would be tempting to remain in our local communities the impacts of climate change and its mitigation are so large that we cannot afford to ignore this summit. Although as a movement our energies are perhaps best focused on the local this is our last chance to try and de-legitimise this process and re-politicise climate change.

Given the post-politics of climate change however this will be very difficult to achieve. An analysis of post-political processes has severe implications for anti-capitalist interventions. If the political sphere is no longer, if it ever was, a viable space for protests then perhaps the focus should shift to autonomous interventions in spaces that we create. Indeed, the real intervention against global climate governance may well be expressed in food riots, anti-airport expansion campaigns and fuel poverty campaigns, perhaps even by people not explicitly identifying with climate change politics. Whether we are successful or not at COP-15 we must begin to recognise ways in which we can support these autonomous uprisings rooted in our everyday experiences of capital.

Pascal Steven lives and works in Manchester.

Interview with Werner Bonefeld

This year there’s the NATO summit, the G8 in Italy, Cop-15 etc. Do you think this could be the return of the anti-globalisation movement? Could, or should, it take the same form that it did in the late 90’s and how do you think the current financial situation affects this?

I don’t know. Of course the mobilisations in the late 90’s were disrupted by 9/11 and from then on took a tumble. They might come back as a consequence of the financial crisis but it very much depends how the financial crisis is going to pan out. The material effects of the crisis will be harsh. Uncertain is how people will respond to the challenges and the pressures that they face. It’s difficult to strike against money as it were. It’s much easier to strike against an employer or even against repossession of houses. It’s possible to organise there. But with banks it’s difficult to organise. Besides, the business of negation is not to render banks responsible, and make them accountable to their consumers, whatever that might mean. Such ‘responsibilisation’ belongs to the reality of bourgeois society. The business of negation, the anti in anti-globalisation, is the creation of alternative social relations by means of practical critique of existing social relations. Such creation is always creation in movement. One has to see whether we will see such a movement.

What I haven’t heard from the existing anti-globalisation movement is anything akin to what happened in Argentina with the financial crisis in 2001. I am sure there are discussions but I wonder what really has been learned from Latin America. There have been very many discussions, in Europe at least, about for example the Argentinean piquetero and the Zapatistas, and discussion as to whether we are witnessing the emergence of a new social subject and new forms of organisation. The outcome of these discussions have on the whole been rather predictable. Yet, what is the reality of these movements for us, in Europe. Suddenly, or not so suddenly, there is the long awaited and predicted crisis and the movement seems paralysed. There’s an irony there. ‘What should we do?’ The whole learning process, particularly from Latin America was an academic learning process, or a process of mythologisation. Solidarity with the YA BASTA is easy for as long as the YA BASTA stays where it is, in Argentina, and requires no other practical commitment in the here (and now). Solidarity with the YA BASTA has to be a practical one, in one’s own social relations.

The big issue now is not whether the protestors who, say, were at Heiligendamm in Germany, turn up again in great numbers. The big issue is rather whether the YA BASTA assumes practical relevance. The composition of the movement will change. In the past, it was easy to coalesce in critique of the so-called neo-liberal state. The nationalisation of banks, employment guarantees by means of government credit to ailing companies, etc., might well rupture the movement. The state suddenly does what certain voices of the anti-globalisation movement demanded – and this despite the fact that the socialisation of debt is intended to guarantee, for want of a better expression, the privatisation of profits. What is the relationship between the YA BASTA and the state?

In North America and Western Europe at least, there is this critique of finance capitalism, that might come back again, that was the defining feature of the anti-globalisation movement protests against the IMF and World Bank and other sort of global financial institutions. Obviously people have always pointed to the dangers of just criticising financial institutions and not, as you say, how capitalism affects us on a sort of real person level. Do you think that might be something that we are experiencing again? That the critique of finance capitalism will run the risk of stereotyping and projecting?

It might; it might not. It depends, again, how it turns out. It would be good to predict the future, but the critique of finance was always misguided I think. There was always this separation between good capitalism and bad capitalism. Bad capitalism was financial capitalism and the other capitalism was seen to be the one that was suppressed by the bad capitalism. And the connection between finance and production, between production and exchange, commodity form and money form, that was never really drawn in this anti-globalisation movement. The critique of speculation has to be a critique of the social relations of production. That is, one should not divide between ‘bad finance capitalism’ and ‘good industrial capitalism’. The one depends on the other, and visa versa.

Especially in the current crisis here in England, what everyone’s been talking about, from the conservatives to the socialists, is greed. That the reason we have this crisis is speculation and greed by individual bankers. The work you have done and that of others has pointed out that this may have a relationship to scapegoating the Jew or anti-Semitism.

Yes, well that is one of these divisions between financial capital, on the one hand, defined by greed and industrial capitalism on the other hand, not driven by greed but by concrete matter and productive activity. That spurts over into anti-Semitism - that’s quite right - and that’s where the difficulty lies, I think, for the anti-globalisation movement. How does it confront or understand the current crisis if it merely sees it as a crisis of greed, that is, as a crisis of regulation, a crisis that is resolvable by the state by means of responsible regulation. Responsible for whom? For the common good? What is the common good in a capitalistically constituted society? The purpose of capital is to make a profit. And that is, money must command labour. The demand for better regulation, and a more effective integration of production and finance, does indeed focus this purpose of money – to command labour. An anti-globalisation movement that only focuses on the issue of greed does not see the vampire that sucks labour out in the production process as the basis of that greed.

So, for you then, is the way to avoid this problem a return to ideas of class and class struggles? Ideas which the anti-globalisation movement quite consciously has left behind?

I think what has to be left behind is the old social democratic or state socialist idea of class. That idea was based on the notion of market position, and sought to rebalance the inhumanity of exploitative production relations by means of re-distribution. That is the concept of class that I think needs to be overcome. In opposition to affirmative conceptions of class, we need to rediscover class as a critical concept, a concept that belongs to a false society. That is to say, class struggle is correctly understood the movement against the existence of social classes. Class analysis does not partake in the classification of people – its business is the critique of such classification. Class struggle is the struggle to dissolve class society, relations of class domination and exploitation, in favour of commune – this society of the free and equal, an association of the freely assembled social individuals.

So if correctly understood, class should be a critical concept, not an affirmative concept. The old class concept was an affirmative concept; it affirmed class position. It wanted to re-distribute in order to create a fairer deal, a new deal, for those on the wrong side, or the wrong end of the stick. The critical concept of class, which is to dissolve class, battles against the existence of class society.

So could such a movement against class, offering such a critique, be relevant in today’s society? Could the anti-globalisation movement, if it reconstitutes itself as such again next year, be an effective political player?

Again, I don’t know. It very much depends how the current crisis pans out. It will affect jobs. It will affect income. It will be very bad for people heavily in debt. How will they react? What will they do? And the reaction of these people is, to a great extent, also a responsibility of the anti-globalisation movement in terms of their critical intent of enlightened democracy – the democracy of the demos that assembles in the street; a democracy of and in the street. This democracy, this practical subversion of everyday life, if the anti-globalisation movement is able to practice that then it will become something new in terms of its composition, relationship to capital and its state, organisational form, and negative purpose. If the anti-globalisation movement is not able to do that then it might well be that those who carry the brunt, financial and otherwise, of the crisis, might not be part of that movement. In the British context, the white working class, impoverished as it is, has tended in certain areas to go to the right rather than to the left. That I think is also a responsibility, not just of those people who go to the right, but also the responsibility of the anti-globalisation movement to mobilise for democratic purposes – here and now. So it depends on the mobilisation, who mobilises and where, and who is part of the mobilising coalition.

On a practical level it can be argued that the anti-globalisation movement needs a symbol, or a target around which to mobilise and that’s why summits are so attractive. Do you that the oversimplification and ‘personification’ of capitalism, which manifests in the targeting of summits and global elites, can be avoided while the anti-globalisation movement continues to summit hop?

Well I think summit hopping is OK, who wouldn’t want to travel around the world and see different places and do so for the sake of protest. Summits render visibility to struggles, provide them with symbolism, but the struggle itself takes place in other places I think. Summits do not struggle. Struggles are always local, and their locality is the basis for their globality. That is, the everyday struggle over the production and appropriation of surplus value in every individual workplace and every local community is the basis of the class struggle on a global scale. ‘Globalisation’ has not done away with everyday struggle. Instead, it focuses it. If it really is the case that whole communities are in danger of losing their houses, if people are dispossessed, then the anti-globalisation movement will have to be a movement against repossession.

I do not know whether there will be a movement against default, practically, on the streets. A Latin American example is that people occupy their factories when the going gets tough and the machines are in danger of being taken away. Will that happen here? This is a practical question that cannot be resolved by summits. It needs to be resoled in practice. Whether the (European) anti-globalisation movement assumes class form is difficult to predict, but if one looks at the often-mythologised struggles in Latin America, this is what the struggles are, from the protection of the neighbourhood and of homes and living-conditions, to the provision of food and water, and the self-organisation of subsistence, from the factories to the land. And what comes out of it? I don’t know. Whatever the future holds will depend on the movement of the so-called anti-globalisation movement. Where will it move, what will it move, if it moves?

"Werner Bonefeld teaches Politics at York. He recently published Subverting the Present - Imagining the Future with Autonomedia."

Mass action concept during COP15 in Copenhagen - Klimax/Copenhagen

The answer to the question of whether we should attempt to shut down the COP15 summit and the entire process or block in the delegates until they have signed a protocol we can agree to is YES!

Starting from the beginning we do not believe for a second that large populist-orientated demonstrations will be enough to counter the dominant agenda of green capitalism, support progressive voices on the inside or to neither help solve climate change nor delegitimize global authority all together.

Parades, even endless, numerically vast ones, with more vague and defeatist demands are too easily absorbed by global authority and boomeranged back in the same direction they came from, carrying the momentum of the legitimate concerns throughout the public and smashing dissent by adopting a few points and camouflaging it as a good and reasonable compromise. Gleneagles became the Bermuda Triangle of antagonisms for the alterglobalisation movement. Global authority was revitalised due to the lack of an oppositional force. The lessons learned were expressed in the planning of resistance to the G8 in Rostock and still apply to this day. We need to portray our antagonism to the dominant agenda and kill the idea that climate change is a problem that puts us all in the same boat. This must be done through mass action to open up the political space to express another point of view and show that we are many and diverse.

Legitimacy versus concerns

At the first meeting in The International Climate Network held in Copenhagen in September 2008 the facilitators, having foreseen tension in the discussion about the legitimacy of the COP15 as an institution, an inevitable parameter when discussing civil disobedience and mass action to disrupt or affect the processes and power exchanging within, a game of sorts was played out to soothe ideological and political differences. The deal was that all the participants should walk around the room and debate the legitimacy of the COP15, whenever one met a person who thought it had less legitimacy than you did, one should move towards one end of the room and vice versa. At the end everyone had settled at a specific point in the room and collective discussions began from there. After a while though it was obvious that nobody was really talking that much about the legitimacy of the COP15, actually it seemed like no one really believed that in their perfect world such an institution would exist in its current form, but they seemed not to really care either. Instead, what roughly came to surface were two sets of concerns. In the more-legitimacy end concerns such as; the summit being the only chance for indigenous people and other progressive voices to be heard and it’s the only chance for an international and binding agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While in the less-legitimacy end concerns about the rise of green capitalism, green austerity and the fear of trying to heal the symptoms without attributing any blame to the disease - the fear of lack of antagonism and co-option. Unsurprisingly the activists in the more-legitimacy end, roughly speaking, correlated with the ones entering the climate struggle from an environmental perspective and in the less-legitimacy end activists who had entered from a social perspective.

This action concept is an attempt to tie a knot between these concerns and make sure that we, at all times, action in a way where our concerns are meet as much as possible in the given situation.

Objectives and aims

The only thing more gruesome than yet another round of capitalist accumulation and the further expansion of government and corporate control into our lives, are the disastrous case scenarios of climate change unfolding. Thus our primary objective must be to combat the dominant market based agenda on the inside and function as leverage for progressive voices pushing for a protocol which could actually save this planet.

The logical syntax: A good deal is better than no deal – but no deal is way better than a bad one.

A truly social and serious agreement to a cut in greenhouse gas emissions which is fair globally as well as locally, not destroying the local ecosystems, not stealing away indigenous farmers lands and using up starving peoples’ food supplies to keep the motors running in the SUVs of the western middle-class, is not only a restraint to global capital, but the happiest possible ending (within reason). On the other hand if the deal is just a new chapter in the Kyoto protocol with an insignificant cap in emissions as a global figure in the distant future, combined with poor local solution only benefitting the TNC’s and the rich, it must be fought on all levels. Even though there will be no global convention after the year 2012. Global authority would have shown itself incapable of producing any results on the number one issue and the whole process would have been delegitimized; opening up for other possible solutions.

The strategy

It is not possible for us to shut the summit down before it gets started! It’s not possible to shut down the process from the get-go without completely alienating ourselves from the general public and their concerns. In spite of their dissatisfaction with the way politicians are handling global warming the general public’s reaction is to appeal for their given authorities to ‘do something’ - the fact that they now actually meet has all the legitimacy in the world.

To meet our concerns in the best way possible in the current situation we block the delegates in. We encircle the entire meeting and declare that not a single soul gets to leave until a socially just and binding contract has been signed. In all likelihood the contract won’t be near good enough, both in terms of scientific numbers and measures but also in terms of how these new benchmarks are going to be reached. In the logic of keeping them inside until they sign a proper convention we are not going to let them out. ‘We do not believe that this convention is good enough. Go back in there until you have changed it’. This will show that we strongly disagree to the convention which has been signed and portray antagonism in the unavoidable, but not necessarily violent, clashes between police and our blockades. True to the mantras: ‘a good (which we hate to call it; but would be categorised by a protocol with a probable chance of saving the planet…) deal is better then a no deal’ and ‘the only thing worse than another round of capitalist accumulation (a hard one to swallow for the bloodthirsty anticapitalists of KlimaX Copenhagen indeed) is the worst case scenarios of climate change’. We are not going to attempt to shut the process down, but portray our strong disagreement to how it’s done and show our dissent and concerns with the new convention. However the encirclement is not a fixed position at all. It depends on what we stand to gain from an eventual outcome. During the summit the eyes of the world will be resting upon the Bella Center in Copenhagen, just like – and presumably even more - all the other summit/counter summit events. But this time we got reality working for us a lot more than usual (‘If climate change didn’t exist we would have to invent it’, someone said) and this meeting could easily delegitimize itself. The pressure we exert on the outside will also donate power to the voices on the inside actually concerned about saving the planet.

If the new protocol is not a planet-saving one, we will be far from alone in our dissent. Powerful voices across parts of the political spectrum along with scientists, indigenous communities, all kinds of organisations and movements from across the world and even the more moderate NGOs would have to speak up against it. If the COP15 summit loses not only its legitimacy – understood not as some prefixed legitimacy defined in accordance with leftwing radical ideology, but as a much more frank and uncomplicated one in the eyes of the general public, but also its ability to carry out solutions to every single concern highlighted by the more-legitimacy group. If the indigenous people are not heard, if no progressive input gets to affect the work process and if there is no real, serious and binding contract aiming at cutting Co2 emissions, the process’ value to us begins to wane. In fact, it can only be seen as an instrument for fathering corporatism and opening up new markets for exploitation. As the legitimacy begins to crumble we are in fact the ones affirming the summit as a possible and legit mechanism for solutions by just standing idle by and demanding – we think its time to go Seattle on their asses. We should attempt to shut down this illegitimate process for good! This not being a detail orientated writing, but a theoretical basis for mass actions, elaborations about methodology and exactly how are intentionally left out.

Even though, as you may have already realised, this concept suggestion is an attempt to work around the legitimacy issue, but here is our two cents on those regards anyway. The core of activists in KlimaX Copenhagen surely would like to see a much more participatory society. There is no doubt that an institution like the COP or even the elected representatives is not within our ideal for decision making. But to us legitimacy is about more than ideals, otherwise we would have to postpone all problem solving to a post-revolutionary calendar. Legitimacy also has to be about solving the problems of this planet and meeting the concerns of the people that live on it. As long as the COP15 holds a possible solution to the biggest problem we have, it also has legitimacy. Maybe our understanding of the word is rudimentary, but if aforementioned has nothing to do with legitimacy, maybe it isn’t that interesting at all and we should find another word and get on with it. Certainly we believe that neither ideals such as anarchism or democracy and the ‘the end of history’ paradigm of the elite, neither of which a farmer in Brazil or a fisherman in Bangladesh, as they are the most, give a damn about, should stand in the way of plausible action aimed at saving the planet.

The parallel summit

Following the storyboard of the countersummits’r’us movement is having an alternative summit and to try and shut the actual summit down before it starts. This time around many things are different and we see a lot of advantages in that. This counter summit will more have a character of a parallel summit. In stead of ‘just’ discussing the newest theories about what the capitalists are now up to, we will mirror the discussions going on inside the Bella Center and bring our conclusions into the streets, whilst fighting the dominant agenda heavily in the media and ‘on the inside’. We imagine a much more homogeneous protest than BlockG8 with a mass action clause signed beforehand. This is not speaking against a clause in itself, which might still be a good idea, but without having any prefixed interpretation of exactly how things are going to be and how we will act. Since whatever goes on inside the meeting will also have a reaction on the streets, it will deliver an immense amount of pressure. Maybe we could even set up perimeters and move in closer and closer to the Bella Center whenever the process takes unsatisfying and greedy turns.

We should not work against the legitimacy of the COP15. We should have its legitimacy working for us. The besieging strategy is a multiple option position from which we will be able to act, in order to meet our concerns best possible in any given situation. If the summit ‘turns ugly’ to an extent beyond repair and beyond any viable solutions for saving the planet, it will have lost its legitimacy in accordance with any reasonable definition of the word and we can attempt to shut the process down. If we manage to accumulate and assert pressure enough to seal a convention with planet saving potential, but still far from an incompatible with that ‘other world’ we think is possible, we will have a chance to say no by keeping them in there. If the deal is a perfect display of solidarity and unselfishness we can all go home and wonder what the hell happened and still be happy, but we are not going to elaborate too much on that possibility… One could argue that this will create a tense atmosphere between trigger-happy activists wanting to shut the summit down and the ones who want to keep the summit going and by what principles and measures we are going to figure out when it goes from one scenario to another. But aren’t we evidently going to have those discussions anyway, no matter what we do?

The block in strategy is the concept, if any, we can agree on. It’s a strategically, tactically and logistically plausible concept.

We hope to facilitate a dialectical process around this concept to make it as strong as possible.

Rossport: Safety begins with team work? - Steph Davies

Shell plan to build a pipeline from offshore in the Corrib gas field, through Broadhaven Bay, ending up in a £545 million refinery at Bellanaboy. Since 2000 the people of Rossport have been working with activists from across Europe and beyond, fighting this project with amazing determination, and a wide diversity of tactics. The solidarity camp and house act as bases where activists from outside the area can converge, live and take action from.

Many actions, from blockades, to car cavalcades, kayak flotillas to sabotage of police vehicles, occurred last summer in Erris. In August the Solitaire arrived to lay the pipeline required for Shell’s project. Its work was successfully disrupted and no pipes were laid. This was due to close collaboration between the local community and activists from outside the area. However, as with any campaign, there are ideological tensions and conflicts in politics, strategy and messages. This article does not provide a historical overview of the campaign, but analyses some of the events and issues that arose during the Solitaire’s presence last summer. The events and individuals described in this article are no more important than others that have taken action, or the actions that preceded them.

Shell’s Tactics

The potential value of the Corrib and surrounding fields for Shell and its partners is in excess of €50.4 billion. Shell have the provision of 100% tax write off’s on development, exploration and operating costs connected to the pipeline. The government has been supporting Shell at everyone turn, through tax rebates and providing ‘security’. In 2006 the state spent €8.1 million on policing for the Corrib project.

The community in Erris have been torn apart by Shell through their tactics. They have also shown a stamina, courage and strength in persistently facing up to the threat which is truly remarkable. Shell have been buying up the community and intimidating and bribing individuals for information. This has caused strong divisions, but has also brought those together who are united in the resistance to Shell and Stat Oil. The solidarity people displayed, for example in connection to the famous ‘Rossport 5’ who were imprisoned in 2005 for 94 days each for their refusal to give up land and fishing rights, or Maura Harringtion’s hunger strike, are examples of this.

Community Responses

The most famous response to the threat of the Solitaire this summer was the hunger strike that community activist Maura Harrington undertook for 11 days outside the compound of the pipe complex to demand for the Solitaire (the large pipe laying vessel employed by Shell) to leave Irish waters.

By day 10 of the strike tensions were running high as the local community and the camp had been maintaining a 24 hour vigil at the compound and doing actions everyday against Shell and the Solitaire. The camp decided it was important to support Maura and that individuals should participate in the vigil and any solidarity actions organised by the local community during this time. It was difficult at times because the hunger strike was never agreed with the consensus of the community, and was not part of a particular political strategy. However, people rose to the challenge in supporting Maura and her family, taking action in a variety of ways, from solidarity demonstrations, to a kayak armada including members of the Harrington family to directly confront the Solitaire.

During the ‘Reclaim the Beach’ action international activists and the local community worked together to take down the fence and re-establish a public right of way on the beach in Broadhaven Bay. Meetings to plan the action were attended by individuals from the camp and the wider community. Decisions were made by consensus and the camp and the wider community worked together during the action to stick to agreed decisions and support each other.

Whilst most actions taken against Shell by the local community and the solidarity camp are broadly agreed upon, some tactics revealed ideological differences. The car cavalcade, first done to celebrate ‘the Chief’s’ (Pat O’Donnell) release from prison, and repeated during the hunger strike, was an example of this. A three hour car rally including 500 cars drove around Bel Mullet and Bellanaboy. Certainly, in a campaign calling for environmental awareness, a protest dependent on fossil fuels seemed an unusual course of action, but this tension did at least provide an opportunity to explore some of these ideological differences.

The solidarity camp and house are both examples of sustainable living. Power comes from the sun and the wind and there is a compost toilet. However, controversially, the camp is not vegan. The local community often delivered diary products, and sometimes the fisherman even dropped off fish. This was a major challenge to many living on site. The danger of refusing gifts from the local community is alienation, and some did not consider the ‘vegan issue’ one of importance in relation to the issue of the pipeline. I found this deeply challenging however, as mass produced animal products depend on high levels of suffering to animals, and can play no part in an environmentally sustainable future. The tensions that arose from lifestyle differences also proved to be fertile areas for discussion and exchange, and it was interesting to compare different view points and talk with people who hadn’t thought about emissions from animal consumption and animal rights previously.

‘Shell to Sea’? Or Shell to Hell? NIMBY-ism in Rossport

The biggest white elephant of all in Broadhaven Bay is the ‘Shell to Sea’ message. Fearing for their land, homes, livelihoods and community, locals in Erris have adopted this slogan for their campaign. The ‘Shell to Sea’ demand was a source of controversy on camp. How can so called environmental activists endorse slogans such as ‘Shell to Sea’ and nationalistic turns of phrase such as O.G.O.N.I ‘Our Gas, Our National Interest’ (a reference to the struggle of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta, a place similarly torn apart by Shell). Surely the concept of nation-state is not helpful when we should all be calling for this unstable pipeline to remain unbuilt, whether at sea, or on land? The Shell to Sea website states that it would ‘wholeheartedly welcome any open forum’ with the government and all those involved if better tax breaks and an off shore refinery were considered. However, on off-shore refinery would still have devastating environmental effects. This pipeline represents a line in the sand for new infrastructure at a time of increasing wars for resources and unstable energy projects.

It is often easy for climate activists to refuse to compromise on issues such as the development of new infrastructure. It is undeniable that it is easy to deal in absolutes when we are dealing with ‘climate’ as a broad topic, but hard to put this into practice in specific struggles, but the concept of Shell to Sea is a compromise that would have terrible consequences for the wider geographical area beyond Erris. Many activists who have come to fight with the community return and feel a close link to the area and the struggle, but all are aware of the ideological differences which abound in the campaign.

As the campaign grows momentum a sense of urgency of the wider climate problem and the need for international networks of resistance (such as links with the Ogoni people) is growing in what began as a localised struggle. People involved in the camp for several years have described how the involvement of activists from outside the community has helped bring the climate change agenda into the campaign, and also brought new methods of organisation to the struggle, such as the consensus process which is now used in the regular meetings at Glenamoy.

The people of Erris are fighting to halt gas extraction and are taking on a giant multi-national intent on profits at any cost. The work of the Solitaire was successfully disrupted this summer, through collaboration between the immediate community and activists from outside the area, and despite tax payers’ money being spent on drafting in the Irish Navy to ‘protect’ the vessel. This is an amazing achievement and an example of how, by acting with real on the ground solidarity, environmental activists (to use a clumsy label) can work with specific communities to support them in their struggle and move beyond the rhetoric which we often try to impose on people through local networking without meaningful community led actions.

The Solitaire will be returning in the spring and with it will come new problems and challenges, but I have no doubt that the people will continue to be united in their fight. This pipeline can be stopped, if people from many backgrounds work together to fight it. The diversity of tactics and creativity shown in response to the huge threat continues to be a major strength for this campaign. My time in Rossport was one of the most inspiring and challenging experiences of my life, and I encourage anyone to get involved in the campaign.

"Steph Davies has been working on various campaigns, from Climate Camp to No Borders and animal rights, for several years. She is committed to direct action as an effective form of protest but is aware of its limits when used as a form of movement building in isolation. Because of this she has also worked on various forms of networking and skills sharing in order to make sure that ideals such as sustainable living, autonomy and freedom of movement move beyond the ‘activist ghetto’."

Speculating on the crisis - The Free Association

When we wander the streets of Leeds, Mexico City, Mumbai the wealth we see seems somehow familiar, yet we wonder where it has come from. That wealth is familiar because we produced it. But we feel disconnected from it because it has come not from our past, but from our futures. It is this problematic, this peculiar relationship between the past, the present and the future, that offers one of the keys to understanding the present crisis of capitalism.

A deal based on debt

The social relations and the processes that make up neo-liberalism have been blown apart. And it’s in times like this, when a system is in far from equilibrium conditions, that it is easier to see what these social relations and these processes are. Like an exploded diagram helps us understand how an engine is assembled… except the capitalist mode of production isn’t an engine and this explosion was neither small nor controlled.

Neo-liberalism meant deregulation, of labour markets and of trade. It meant the removal of state-guaranteed protections for workers and the environment, and attacks on trade unions. It meant the removal of subsidies – e.g. for food staples – and the dismantling of public provision of services, such as health and education. It meant greater ‘fiscal discipline’ – enforced on governments of the South, largely flouted by the US government – and greater discipline on workers. It meant new enclosures and the expansion of property- and market-relations into ever wider areas of our lives. Globally, neo-liberalism meant stagnant or declining real wages, a declining ’social wage’, longer working hours, fewer employment rights and ‘civil liberties’, less job security and increased general precarity. As a result of these shifts, profit rates have risen – almost relentlessly since the late 1970s, in countries such as the United States – and we have seen huge concentrations of wealth and dramatic increases in inequality.

But neo-liberalism also involved an implicit or tacit deal, at least for workers in many of the so-called advanced capitalist economies. This deal was necessary for the ‘resolution’ of two problems that neo-liberalism creates for capital. The first problem appears to be ‘technical-economic’, it’s the problem of ‘over-production’. Capital is only capital when it is in the process of increasing itself, increasing its own value; commodities are only commodities (and hence capital) when they are being sold. But how can the increasing pile of commodities be purchased if real wages aren’t rising? Economists describe this as the problem of ‘effective demand’, Marxists call it the ‘realisation problem’. The second problem is the danger that the mass of people made poorer by neo-liberalism will revolt and reject what is fundamentally an enormous transfer of wealth from workers, peasants – the planet’s ‘commoners’ – to the wealthy.

Capital’s answer to both problems was to be found in the same mechanism – plentiful access to cheap credit, which sustained a series of asset bubbles, primarily a sustained bubble in house prices – the so-called ‘Greenspan put’. In fact increasing house prices have been fundamental to the deal, making us appear wealthier and so disguising the terms of the deal.

Credit – borrowing – and house price inflation have acted as the necessary stimulus to growth. Or seen from our perspective, the whole world economy has rested on our ever-increasing personal indebtedness: “Between 2001 and 2007, homeowners withdrew almost $5 trillion in cash from their houses, either by borrowing against their equity or pocketing the proceeds of sales; such equity withdrawals, as they’re called, accounted for 30 percent of the growth in consumption over that six-year period.” In fact the current global meltdown began with a credit crunch, provoked by the spread of bad debt: this crisis goes straight to the heart of the neo-liberal deal.

A categorical crisis

Capitalism may be in crisis, neo-liberalism may be over, but that doesn’t mean we’ve won. Far from it. Crisis is inherent to capitalism. Periodic crises allow capital to displace its limits, using them as the basis for new phases of accumulation. In that respect, it’s true to say that capitalism works precisely by breaking down.

But this is only when it works: all of the above only appears to be true when seen in hindsight – after the resolution of the crisis. In fact crisis is mortally dangerous to capital. The word ‘crisis’ has its origins in a medical term meaning turning point – the point in the course of a serious disease where a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death. This has been the case for every capitalist crisis.

Take the example of the New Deal in the US in the 1930s, and the more global Keynesian settlement of the post-war period. It’s easy to see this as the inevitable and sensible solution to secure full employment, economic growth and prosperity for all. But there was nothing inevitable about it. The poverty of the Great Depression was only a problem for capital because we made it so. (Capitalists never concerned themselves with poverty in the 19th century before workers were organised.) In the 1920s and the 1930s the real threat was one of global revolution, and capital’s future was always in doubt. In fact the New Deal never ‘worked’: it took the death of millions and the destruction of half the world to establish a fully functioning settlement.

Just as the idea of a ‘deal’ only makes sense retrospectively, the very terms we use to describe what’s happening obscure the contingent nature of crisis. When we talk about ‘credit crunch’, ‘recession’, ‘deal’, ‘unemployment’, or even ‘financial crisis’, we’re framing the problem in a way that pre-supposes a capitalist solution.

Zero

How can we think of this in a different way that reveals our own power? One of the reasons we appear weak is because we don’t understand our own strength. Of course, when you’re in the middle of a shit-storm, it’s impossible to make a hard-nosed assessment of the situation: in the current global meltdown, the future is only certain if we are written out of history. (And predictions risk dragging us into a linear temporality, one where the past, present, future are open to simple extrapolation.)

But tracing the lines of our power, and identifying the roots of the current crisis in this power are also difficult because of the way neo-liberalism has set out to displace antagonisms. Many of the elements we associate with neo-liberalism have this as their main aim – globalisation of production (’blame Mexican workers’), sub-contracting (’blame the suppliers’), labour migration (’blame immigrants’), expanding hierarchies (’blame your line manager’) and so on. The clash between worker and boss is shifted, sideways, into a bitter struggle between worker and worker. These effects have been amplified by the process of ‘financialisation’: our pensions, our schools, our healthcare etc increasingly depend upon the ‘performance’ (exploitation) of workers elsewhere. Generally our own reproduction is so linked to capital’s that worrying about ‘the economy’ has become commonplace.

But neo-liberalism also depends on a temporal displacement of antagonism, established through the mechanism of debt. As we said above, part of the neo-liberal ‘deal’ involved cheap and plentiful credit. For capital this solved the realisation problem; for us it offered access to social wealth in spite of stagnant wages. Rather than a struggle over social wealth in the here and now, it shifts this antagonism into the future.

Capitalist social relations are based on a particular notion of time. Capital itself is value in process: it has to move to remain as capital (otherwise it’s just money in the bank). That moving involves a calculation of investment over time – an assessment of risk and a projection from the present into the future. The interest rate, for example, is the most obvious expression of this quantitative relation between the past, the present and the future. It sets a benchmark for the rate of exploitation, the rate at which our present doing – our living labour – must be dominated by and subordinated to our past doing – our dead labour. It’s hard to over-state how corrosive this notion of time is. It lies at the heart of capitalist valorisation, the immense accumulation of things, but it also lies at the heart of everyday life. “The rule of value is the rule of duration.” Under neo-liberalism, if you want a picture of the future, imagine a cash till ringing up a sale, forever.

But the crisis has brought the future crashing into the present. Once we take inflation into account, interest rates are now below zero. In the relationship between capital and labour – or rather between capital/labour, on the one hand, and humanity, on the other – we have reached a singularity. We are at ZERO. Capital’s temporality – one that depends upon a positive rate of interest, along with a positive rate of profit and a positive rate of exploitation – has collapsed. And the debts are, quite literally, being called in.

It is not always obvious how the creditor/debtor antagonism maps on to the antagonism between humanity and capital: it’s an antagonism that is refracted and distorted almost as soon as it appears. But the everyday appearance of debt collectors and bailiffs underlines the violence at the heart of the debt relation. In the words of a Swiss central banker, in the relationship between debtor and creditor “the strategic situation is as simple as it is explosive”. Explosions are decidedly non-linear events – they are a rapid expansion in all directions. In the last few months, our relation to the present and to capital’s linear temporality has shattered, and multiple futures are now more visible.

Short circuits

From capital’s perspective, this crisis needs to be contained, that is, closed down. In these exceptional times, measures are rushed through and solutions imposed because the priority is to re-affirm capital’s temporality and reinstate discipline. This will be the prime purpose of the G20 summit in April (in the UK) and the G8 summit in July (in Italy).

It’s important not to over-state the importance of summits – summits are trying to ride a dynamic that they don’t necessarily understand, and one that they can’t control. Capital’s logic is as simple as its metronomic beat – all it seeks is a chance to valorise itself. Like a river flowing downhill, it will go around any obstacles put in its way. Of course regimes of regulation can make this flow easier or harder, but they can’t stop it. But summits have in the past provided a focus for our energies and desires. During these moments, against one world of linear time, value and the present (the-world-as-it-is), we have been able to construct many worlds, live other values, and experience different temporalities.

But the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen raises a new set of problems. It’s a summit where institutional actors could be forced to face up to longer-term, structural contradictions, and dwindling faith in market-based ‘solutions’. Seen through the prism of temporality, runaway climate change is a non-linear process but capital’s responses so far have been based on a linear timescale, as if climate change is reversible at the same speed at which it started. The problematic raised by COP15 is how a world of values and non-linear time can relate to a world of value structured in a linear, monomaniac fashion. One of the difficulties in working out our relation to institutions lies precisely in the fact that movements operate at different speeds and with a different temporality. It’s doubly problematic because while the crisis of our environment demands that we act quickly, we also have to resist the pressure from capital’s planners for a quick fix. As soon as crises are ’solved’, our room for manoeuvre is diminished.

We find ourselves faced with different timescales of struggle. Fights against job losses, wage cuts, house repossessions, rising prices and old-fashioned austerity are the most immediate. We also have to keep an eye on the G20, and then, in an even longer timescale, on COP15. But events like the recent uprising in Greece and the ‘anomalous wave’ movement in Italy can collapse all these timescales into one.

In Italy, the Gelmini educational reform law has provoked a three-month long mobilisation, marked by sit-ins, occupations, demonstrations and strikes. The movement started with high school collectives but spread quickly to encompass students, researchers and workers in education. The ‘anomalous wave’ has taken up the slogan ‘we won’t pay for your crisis’, which is fast becoming a NO! around which heterogeneous movements are uniting. The ‘anomalous wave’ has been able to address even wider themes of precarity, economic crisis and neoliberalism’s future. And another of its slogans expresses participants’ refusal to become subordinate to neo-liberalism’s universalising identities: ‘We are students, we will never be clients!’

In Greece, a wave of anger over the shooting of a 15-year old has snowballed into a ‘non-electoral referendum’ which has paralysed the government and traditional institutions. Major riots have been accompanied by mass assemblies, occupations of public buildings and attempts to take over TV and radio stations. In some ways it marks the return of ‘youth’ as a category in a way that’s not been true for 30 years. Schoolchildren and students have led the first wave, and commentators talk of a self-styled ‘€700 generation’ (a reference to the wage they expect their degrees to get them). But the revolt has been so ferocious and generalised because it has resonated with thousands who feel hemmed in by the future. In the words of an initiative from the occupation of the Athens University of Economics and Business, ‘Tomorrow dawns a day when nothing is certain. And what could be more liberating than this after so many long years of certainty? A bullet was able to interrupt the brutal sequence of all those identical days!’

As movements step outside capital’s temporality, the categories of ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ stop making sense: actions in Greece clearly draw on a history of resistance against the dictatorship, just as the anomalous wave in Italy riffs on a whole period of Autonomia in the 1970s. These movements may now spread to Sweden, Spain, France in what is being described as ‘contagion’. Our temporality is one of loops and ruptures – violent breaks with the present that throw us forward into many futures while breathing new life into a past. Even President Sarkozy has acknowledged the danger (from his perspective) of such a rupture: “The French love it when I’m in a carriage with Carla, but at the same time they’ve guillotined a king.” Of course, by definition exceptional times can’t be sustained. But while the world is in a state of shock, it opens up the possibility for us to impose our desires and reconfigure social relations.

As usual we’ve borrowed ideas from all over the place, but we should make clearer a few sources of inspiration and quotations. The figures on debt are from Doug Henwood’s ‘Crisis of a gilded age’, in The Nation, 24 September 2008. John Holloway offered some useful insights as well as providing the line about the rule of value, from ‘Drive your cart and plough over the bones of the dead’, Herramienta, http://www.herramienta.com.ar/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=arti.... There’s great material about Greece on http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/, and we found the following two pieces useful: George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, ‘Must the molecules fear as the engine dies?’, October 2008, http://freelyassociating.org/2008/10/bankers/, and George Caffentzis, ‘Notes on the ‘bailout’ financial crisis’, InterActivist Info Exchange, posted 13.10.08., http://slash.autonomedia.org/node/11434.

The Free Association are based in Leeds and blog at www.freelyassociating.org

Where Now? Thoughts on the anti-war movement and recent developments - Joseph Ritchie

After the mass protests in 2003 failed to achieve anything substantial, many in the anti-war movement have been at a loss about what needs to be done to rekindle some momentum and, more importantly, bring an end to our Government’s aggressive militarism. With this piece I want to first reflect on the antiwar movement as it was and take a look at where it’s going now.

On February 15th the world witnessed something quite remarkable. Worldwide, streets became swollen with protest as millions responded to the proposed invasion of Iraq. As is oft-mentioned, the New York Times reported that these demonstrations evidenced public opinion as the World’s Second Superpower. Looking back, it seems like that’s probably when we should have first felt uneasy. What I want to do with this reflection is take a harsh look at what has constituted the ‘anti-war movement’ and to briefly consider where we might go from here.

The empty centre of protest

When asked to explain why the abstract of a proposed invasion motivated far more discontent than the actuality of brutal devastation, there has been precious little comment from anyone involved in the mainstream anti-war movement. Despite the majority of the movement’s arguments being vindicated, the number of people protesting has dwindled. On the whole, reasons for this have not been forthcoming.

What I want to propose here is simply that there never really was an ‘anti-war’ movement as such. The connotations of ‘anti war’ and ‘movement’ imply a couple of things. These words suggest not only an acute opposition to the war but also the development of a counterforce to it. This ‘counterforce’, or opposition, is what would distinguish a ‘movement’ from, say, a ‘cultural phenomenon’. Looking back at interviews and oral histories of what is thought of as the movement, quite a different sentiment emerges. When, for example, you watch the recordings made of people on the marches and the justifications they give for their presence, they tend not to say that they are there to stop the war, but rather why they think the war is wrong. When pushed, they tend to say things like ‘this [march] will show Tony Blair that people aren’t behind him’ or some other such democratic abstractions. Alternatively, they discuss how important it is to show people that the war is ‘not in our name’. In my opinion, the marches were more protests about democracy and illegitimacy than anything else. In this light, it’s very telling how often the wars alleged ‘illegality’ was posed as an issue.

Then there was the complete lack of tactical thought. Even very mainstream avenues, such as the sustained lobbying of wavering MPs, were not convincingly addressed. To shed some light on why the movement took the form that it did, it’s worth asking why people ended up on the streets. For one, there was the deep commitment to spectacle. Generating the appearance of an anti-war movement (consider the endlessly replicated images of the large marches, the mass produced signs, the endless focus on media representation) seemed to take precedence over all else. A particularly exhausting example of this can be found in a recent campaign that involved a concerted effort to sell copies of the single ‘War (What is it good for)’ as a form of protest. Even more grassroots tactics, like the practice of having anti-war protesters shout at Gordon Brown when he was touring the UK prior to becoming Prime Minister can be read not simply as a good natured waste of time, but as a slight desperation to cultivate the appearance of antagonism when there was in fact none.

Part of this was pure reaction. For example, the lingering ghost of the (unsuccessful) movement that opposed the War in Vietnam was doled out in a largely fictionalized form as a model for the movement to emulate. Quite why it made sense to adopt a failed example, especially in the absence of a draft or comparable other circumstances was never explained, nor even questioned. Linked to this was the fact that rather than a movement rooted in the real world, i.e. in the space in which capital and the wheels of war are located, the movement took the bizarre route of existing primarily in what might be designated the ‘protest space’.

This is consistent with the way in which Capital negates subversive movements. We can observe in the popular renditions of combative figures (Martin Luther King, Mandela etc) the way in which struggle, which engages directly with economic and social realities in a variety of confrontational ways, is reduced instead to a ‘purer’ form of ‘standing up for a belief’. Rather than looking at them as tacticians, the focus comes to rest on their ‘integrity’ and ‘courage’ in a rather abstract form. This in turn promotes the inherent valour of ‘protest’, and ‘doing the right thing’ divorced from the pressing questions of reality. This is quite apparent in the modern concept of a march. Such tactics guarantee, as is a necessary part of liberal freedom that in no way will the protest spill over into the realm of the objects protested against. Instead, we would uphold our freedom to be ineffective.

The movement was also weakened by the hierarchies of knowledge and command within the movement that not only failed in their own prescriptions but fundamentally failed to empower anyone to think and act creatively. In my own experience with the mainstream movement I’ve often found that they are more concerned with crushing potential rivals who might steal membership fees than embracing singularities and exploring new routes of resistance. In this way, there was never a mass movement, so much as a mass orchestration.

Where Now?

This leaves us with the question of where to go from here. On the 29th and 30th of November a group called Edinburgh Anti-Militarists hosted a Gathering in Edinburgh to bring together the disparate strands of the anti-war movement. Given the recent flurry of anti-NATO activism taking place on the continent (and at the next summit in Strasbourg this January) we wanted to mobilize against the NATO parliamentary assembly this coming November. However, while putting together the agenda for the weekend it quickly became clear that this could also be a forum for trying to bring together the often oppositional parts of the movement and perhaps creating some kind of unity.

This seemed like a risky move. I’m sure we’re not the only ones who’ve spent a lot of time locked into pointless debates about the nature of violence and the real meaning of ‘diversity of tactics’. Nonetheless, after the first day of talks and presentations, the second day of discussion got underway and by the end of it we had created something quite remarkable. Despite the variety of campaigners (we had activists from Faslane, people from the Smash EDO campaigns and many others) there was a general agreement that what we needed was a non-hierarchical network of support which would use direct action to stop the NATO assembly next year. Even more interestingly, there was also a feeling that such a network should facilitate support for all the different small campaigns going on around the UK at present. To continue this process and to get more groups/individuals involved, more Gatherings are being planned as we speak. Crucially, this was the first time that we had seen direct action as the central tactic of a UK-wide anti-Militarist network.

Is this sort of network the way forward? Part of me thinks so. After too long having our differences exploited by those trying to control the movement, it makes sense for the direct action elements to unify and engage in protest and garner support on their own terms. It was stressed in discussions how important it was to involve more people and to, in a much more consistent way, explain our actions to the public at large. Further, it seems like after the failure of the anti-war activists to achieve anything through conventional routes direct action offers the possibility of more tangible results.

Still, I personally remain sceptical that this is all we need to do. No matter how vibrant and effective our resistance becomes, it remains fundamentally a rejection of what is. What we lack as a movement is something concrete to move towards. While it is understandable that, as anarchists and anti-authoritarians, we have not engaged extensively in questions about what a just ‘world order’ might look like, we nonetheless should not think we can dodge these questions forever. Much like the question of violence in society, if anarchists and anti-authoritarians don’t engage with these issues effectively, we remain like Christian Priests of old, issuing unhelpful proclamations about how things ought to be and will be after the revolution/second coming.

So, in conclusion, I want to argue that after 5 years of getting it wrong, the recent mobilizations against NATO and the creation of an anti-war direct action network the anti-militarist network (or AMN, for short) offers a chance of getting it right. If we can simultaneously consolidate ourselves as an effective network and reach out to new people on our own terms, things might genuinely begin to shift. To this end, I would strongly urge you to get involved with AMN.

"[DISCLAIMER: This article was written prior to the mass Gaza protests].

Joseph Ritchie has been involved in the anti-war movement since marches began in 2003. He is currently studying and his interests include Anarchist, radical theory and popular social movements. If you would like to contact him, he is available here: gotyourrightsrightherepal@riseup.net

To get involved with or find out more about the Anti Militarist Network, e-mail here: antimilitaristnetwork@riseup.net"

Why is the Smash EDO campaign still growing after four years? - Chloe Marsh

Well, starting at the beginning on our doorstep is an arms company that supports arms and is profiting from organised global terror. This factory, EDO-MBM, recently bought for a song by ITT Corp, is conveniently located halfway between Brighton town centre and Sussex University, on Home Farm Road Industrial Estate. For those who don’t already know the factory makes bomb release mechanisms, triggers essentially, for the smart and not-so-smart weapons that our government (and its allies) have been littering the world with over the last decade. I have heard people say “but they don’t actually make the bombs there” which is, technically, true. But, for bombs the same as guns- they’re no use without the trigger.

The campaign has gone from strength to strength even as resistance to and mobilisation against the war has been on the wane. For all good intentions, a campaign needs more than just outrage to sustain it. A campaign needs focus and drive, and we’ve managed that by a successful (if not so original) combo of regular demonstrations (every Wednesday for two hours for the last four years) and diverse direct actions. The regular demos provide a backbone to the campaign, and the actions give us the oxygen of publicity, as well as buoying up the spirits of people in and around the campaign.

A lock-on, or a demo in town or to the factory, gets EDO, the arms trade and the Smash EDO campaign into the ether of popular consciousness. From the news (mainstream and alternative) people get interested, and then find us via Indymedia, or by seeing our flyers & posters. From there some people take the logical next step and come along to the weekly noise demos, where they meet other activists, get on the megaphone, hold a banner and, possibly, join us afterwards at the pub.

As the campaign has gone on for so long now it has generated its own history- its personalities and key events. The SchMovies film ‘On the Verge’ has caught a lot of the best and most memorable moments on film. With this and various friends & supporters putting on benefit nights, the campaign has become a real focus for a lot of people- a movement of sorts.

The videos have really helped, especially ‘On The Verge’, which really helped bring Smash EDO to national attention. Thanks in no small way to the sterling efforts of Sussex Police, whose cack-handed attempts to ban the film led to major interest from the broadsheets. EDOs’ (failed) injunction case back in 2004/5 had a similar effect also.

Over the years EDO has been plagued by a scourge of Pixies- strange, obscure night time creatures who have at various times smashed windows and air-conditioning vents, splattered paint over the factory and trashed company cars during the dead of night. No-one knows who the EDO pixies are but they none the less continue to be active when no-one’s looking. But, beyond these things, the key factor underpinning the campaign is its sheer stubbornness. Many of the same people who where with the campaign at its inception in 2004 are still with it today; still banging pots and pans, still making banners, handing out flyers, writing press statements and generally giving up large chunks of their spare time. Alongside this, new people are joining all the time, bringing with them new ideas and creativity to Smash EDO.

This year Smash EDO has held two hugely successful street demonstrations in Brighton. At the first of these events, dubbed the ‘Carnival Against the Arms Trade’, over 800 people marched to the factory, broke police lines, smashed the company windows and trashed cars. At the Shut ITT demo in October, despite a huge show of force from Sussex and Hampshire police, demonstrators took to the woods and hurled bottles of paint at the factory from Wild Park. These demonstrations were pulled off despite police repression, one reason this succeeded was the tactic of wearing masks and of sabotaging the efforts of police Forward Intelligence Teams.

Although we haven’t shut them down yet, we’ve got quite a few tangible successes under our belt. We’ve helped them reduce their profits, directors have resigned, workers have quit (some of them didn’t even know they were making arms until we showed up!), and we’ve cost them hundreds of working hours over the course of the campaign. For a long time there was a debate inside the Smash EDO campaign about
whether we should encourage people around the country to set up their own local anti-militarism/arms/war campaign or whether we should instead get them to join us down in Brighton against EDO.

As it turns out, it’s proved a bit of a false argument really. What we’ve seen is that there’s been a whole lot of cross-fertilisation between us and other similar groups around the country. The people in Nottingham, for example, who protest against H&K arms, are the same people who are willing to travel to Brighton for our demos, and vice-versa. It’s really what’s needed to re-vitalise the whole anti-war movement: A network of local but mobile anti-war groups that plug away week after week in their part of the country, against their arms factory, military facility or whatever, but are able to rely on support from like-minded (and motivated) individuals and campaigns from around the country.

"Chloe Marsh is a Smash EDO campaigner and professional trouble maker. The next big demo will be a Mayday action on 4th May. For more info see www.smashedo.org.uk."

Editorial - Summer of Rage?

On 1 April, sometime after 7pm, we happened to walk unchallenged into the area around the Royal Exchange, which was eerily deserted by protesters. A dozen or so policemen stood confused, almost dazed, at the corner of Cornhill and Birchin Lane – behind them the body of Ian Tomlinson. The death of a man at a protest that could hardly even be called a riot was certainly the most sobering aspect that we took away from that day.

The G20 protests haven’t shut down a summit nor have they been a threat to business-as-usual in the City. What they have done, however, is to kick-start a far-reaching and at times exciting discussion on the role of police during protest events. It is entirely unsurprising nonetheless that this debate is carried out within a liberal framework which does not question the role of the police as an institution or the state’s self-granted ‘monopoly of violence’.

The problem to us seems to be one of criticism and critique. We see a whole lot of criticism of policing operations, of police tactics and of the behaviour of officers on the ground. But criticism, when adequately addressed, can only serve to reinforce the image of the police as the legitimate protector of property and law and order. Outrage at police violence, while from the perspective of the peaceful protester entirely understandable (and by no means do we want to condemn the anger felt when brutalised and humiliated by a force more violent than us), can only mean that ‘proportionate’ and ‘peaceful’ policing would be acceptable (or even possible).

A critique of the police (and with it of its relationship to the state and to capital) would be something entirely different. For a start, we would have to ask questions of ourselves: how can we deal with contemporary policing of demonstrations in the UK without resorting to the help of the corporate media, the IPCC or the legal system? And in the public realm we have to push an analysis that regards the police riot on 1 April as the very self-evident and expected role of those forces of the state that try to regulate, manage and control the status quo.

We have to be careful that the good deal of bad publicity that the Metropolitan Police receives from the Guardian and other newspapers will not have a de-radicalising effect. If liberal capitalist democracy is seen to be working – i.e. media scrutiny, police accountability, judges and politicians that punish police brutality – then where is our platform for attack? By (only) criticising the actions of the police we are appealing to the status quo, not condemning it.

This response to police action was also evident when 114 climate change activists were recently arrested in Nottingham in connection with an alleged plan to disrupt a local power station. The liberal media and many activists were outraged – this kind of policing impinges on our ‘right’ to protest; rights that are granted (or should be, so the argument logically goes) by the state and facilitated by the police. If we use this appeal to ‘rights’ and the legal framework to defend our actions, where are we left when our actions are antithetical to the requirements of the state and the police?

The G20 protests also showed our strengths of course. To begin with, an anarchist movement in the UK does exist and can achieve a tremendous amount with small numbers. Also, the Climate Camp mobilised thousands of people to engage with climate change not just as an outcome of carbon emissions but as a result of capitalism (well carbon trade, at least). This move away from simply seeing climate change as a scientific problem to stressing its social and economic causes is an important step towards building an anti-capitalist environmental movement ahead of Copenhagen.

Of course, the conversation on the role of violence in movements for social change and what ‘violence’ actually entails needs to be had. The black and white picture constructed by the media, made possible by the separation of the ‘peaceful’ Climate Campers and the ‘violent’ anarchists (as if you couldn’t be an anarchist Climate Camper) - skews the discourse on violence and the reality of state oppression and forceful resistance that is, globally, a necessary part of the lives of many ordinary people.

This difference of criticism and critique is also mirrored in the political responses to the recession currently on offer. Criticism of unfettered finance capital, of bankers and speculators, is put forward by a ‘grand coalition’ ranging from the BNP (“fat-cats”) and the Tories (“stop the bonuses”) to the Labour government (“more regulation”) and the Socialist Workers (“tax the rich”). Slogans we heard on the G20 demos (“hang the bankers”) are just the more radical version of the same message.

On the other hand, a critique of the financial system requires an analysis of, say, private property, a mode of production and exchange inherently motivated by the need to make profit, economic and political hegemony, and the relationship between these processes and personal, social and environmental issues. Only then can we move away from a reductionist politics that often results in the blaming of particular social groups or institutions (bankers, migrants…). In a recession, we should not self-prescribe poverty as some protesters did (“we need to get rid of the rich”), or ask for the right to succeed on a green and fair labour market (“jobs, justice, climate”), but demand ‘luxury for all’. What this luxury could look like must emerge from our future responses to the permanent crisis of capitalism.

G20 diary

For some pretty good reasons, summit mobilizations were supposed to have fallen out of favor in recent years. But with the world’s cameras zooming in on London for a meeting of world leaders in the middle of a recession that was throwing history wide open, suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the summit action!

The G20 mobilizations essentially took place for want of something better to do. Far from making good of the crisis, organizations across the spectrum of the left have remained in a state of rabbit in the headlights paralysis. The anticipated wave of labour militancy and invigoration of oppositional politics hasn’t materialized. No significant political responses to the crisis have emerged, much less a movement. Maybe a big show of force on the streets of London was the spark required?

The last time world leaders met on British soil was 2005 for the G8 at Gleneagles. The counter mobilization was long and meticulous. Not this time – Christmas hangovers had barely faded before the scramble to prepare began. Political meetings were filled with a sense of panic, but also expectation. So how did it match up?

Saturday 28th

The Put People First (PPF) coalition was formed following the announcement of the London G20 in late 2008. Founded on the principle of ‘people not profit’, it draws together a dizzying array of organizations. Usual suspects like Oxfam, Greenpeace and the Jubilee Debt Campaign sit alongside smaller groups ranging from Sudanese Women for Peace to Performers Without Borders. There are even several Christian groups – witness the Salvation Army marching unto class war! This is all knitted together with the combined might of the Trade Union Congress’s 6 million members.

Their demonstration started the week of protest. Organizers speculated turnout would be the highest of any demonstration since the anti-war movement’s peak in 2003. Titled ‘Jobs, Justice and Climate’, the march aimed for broad appeal. Whilst occupying the respectable political middle ground, this was no Make Poverty History, focusing on charitable handouts without challenging power. PPF instead attempts to interlink climate change with the global economic system and its negative impacts upon people near and far – asserting a coordinated response is necessary.

They succeeded in broad appeal. It was a veritable safari tour of the left in its natural habitat: Anarcho samba-bands alongside marching brass bands. Embroidered trade union banners mingled with environmentalists wearing green builders hats (some kind of peace gesture to the labour movement). There was even a couple of hundred clad in black for the ‘militant workers bloc.’ Broad yes, but the turnout was low - at 35,000 not even the biggest this year.

It’s not hard to see why. in attempting to be as inclusive (i.e. vague) as possible in demands and politics, the crucial business of making bold, concrete demands that might actually inspire people hit by the recession to protest fell by the wayside. The hardcore from various organizations brought their pet issues along, and it became impossible to discern any meaning from the cacophony. It encapsulated the British left: tiny, fragmented, directionless. The march trudged tiredly into Hyde Park, some clustering around ‘anarchists speakers corner’, most went to be hectored by union bureaucrats at the main stage. Attention turned to Wednesday…

Monday 30th

Press coverage suggested massed ranks of anarchists were hidden around the city planning unimaginable destruction. For out-of-towners wanting to join in, it was very confusing. Either secrecy has increased dramatically, or there wasn’t much happening. The ‘convergence centre’ announced on Indymedia was a ‘hoax’ to divert the police, apparently. Hard to stomach when stood outside in the rain.

To Ramparts and the London Anarchist Forum we went in search of information. The undercover Evening Standard journalist wrote as if he’d infiltrated the 21st century gunpowder plot. In fact, nobody seemed to know what was going on. The Climate Camp was judged the ‘most anarchist’ option, causing your correspondent to choke on his lager. In fairness, the Camp does try to be inclusive, open and organized. G20 Meltdown just seemed a mess, with Chris Knight embarrassing ‘the movement’ with ludicrous media statements.

That night, Whitechapel’s ‘we’re closing in’ benefit fraud adverts got covered in Financial Fools Day posters. Funny, but also depressingly ridiculous. The bright press spotlight on the UK’s anarchist scene cast a huge shadow against the wall, making many believe the approaching beast was a lot bigger than in reality.

Tuesday 31st

The elusive G20 Meltdown were tracked to a press conference outside the Bank of England. With the world listening, what would they say? With protective boarding being hammered into place all around, the representatives threw down a picnic blanket in front of camera scrum and began to act the role demanded of them: strange, incoherent radicals. It’s easy to dislike the slick Climate Camp media team, but I felt warm affection for them on this occasion. Almost pity. This time, they occupied the shadows.

Still in search of information for our affinity group, we head to the Foundry, a hip anarcho-cyclista-artista bar. Twitter and Facebook tell us of an open G20 Meltdown meeting there at 2pm. The Foundry is locked, with a FIT team outside. Half an hour passes, and dozens have abandoned hope and move on. When they arrive, there are more press than protesters, and we wait in line for information. Hearing that a large squat has been opened behind Liverpool Street station, we move on. Squatting an enormous office building in the financial district is no mean feat, but it came too late. The atmosphere was tense. Surrounded by particularly obnoxious cops and lacking numbers, a raid was expected from the start.

April 1st

Pick a horse, any horse! What symptom of global capitalism bugs you most – war (red)? Financial crisis (silver)? Enclosure (black)? Or climate chaos (green)? All will converge on the bank from different starting points. Alternatively, forget politics and think safety in numbers. Doing just that, we pick the silver horse. More people than expected, and the mood is as sunny as the weather. Reaching bank unimpeded is an additional surprise. The crowd is diverse, and the politics just as jumbled as PPF, but with more sound systems and less supervision. Drinking, dancing, chalking slogans on the wall and enjoying the spectacle. Nobody seems to notice the police sealing off the roads.

Trying to discern a message from the madness, the scapegoating of bankers, greed and speculation as the cause of the recession emerges strongest. Understandable, but it’s a shame to see a ‘radical’ protest parroting mainstream analysis. Banners don’t have to recite Das Capital vol. 1, but it’s important to do better. The predictable consequence of this foreshortened critique is cooption of popular anger with curbs on bonuses and tax havens. Like the PPF, G20 Meltdown was based around vague principles rather than political demands – they’re desperately needed if this is going to lead anywhere.

Getting out of the kettle was a stressful experience, but Climate Camp was the perfect place to relax. The police allowed the ‘good protesters’ and their cohort of Lib Dem MP’s and Guardian columnists a relatively free reign initially. Bishopsgate was truly reclaimed. A friend who’d enjoyed the best of the Reclaim The Streets years commented: “the soundsystems are smaller, the music’s worse, and people are on less drugs. But, people seem to have a better idea of what they’re here for, there’s more politics. And that’s a good thing, maybe it’s better!”

The European Carbon Exchange seemed a good target, if a bit obscure. It’s good to see attempts to link climate change to the economic system when the tendency in the past has been to lament poor personal consumption habits. The demographic at Bishopsgate was narrow compared to at Bank. An altogether classier breed of protester as style mag Grazia put it “smartly dressed … young professionals, many of whom have never demonstrated before.” The organic food stall – ‘farmers markets not carbon markets’ – seemed apt.

Expecting clashes elsewhere, pacifism defined the Camp’s efforts. More than just a simple grab at mainstream legitimacy, it seemed an attempt to distinguish the camp from the nasty protesters down the road – the ones who weren’t basing their protest on SCIENTIFIC FACT! When police advanced, ‘this is not a riot’ resounded. Every twitter post and press statement reaffirmed the non-violence. Besides that old chestnut of reaffirming the state’s monopoly of violence, in the immediate present it makes life hard for protesters wanting to resist being penned in and beaten. The good protester/bad protester divide was erected by those who are normally on the wrong side of it.

As evening drew in, things got rougher – both at Bank, and despite all the pleas, at the camp too. News of the tragic consequences of this police violence filtered out as the night wore on. The streets of the square mile were eerily quiet but for roving packs of riot police attempting to round up the remaining protesters.

April 2nd

The day of the summit. Time to ’shut them down’? Apparently not, everyone thought. The Excel centre seemed far away for tired legs and bruised bodies. No organizations issued a call for a protest. These meetings are just photo shoots anyway, attempts to portray stewardship over a system that is beyond control. Or so I told myself when the alarm went off.

All attention was already focused on the death of Ian Tomlinson. A vigil at Bank was called for 1pm. As the afternoon wore on hundreds arrived. The media happily replicated police press releases. People who’d been at the scene were contesting their version of events, but at this stage nobody wanted to listen. People talked about a cover up, ‘another de Menezes’ unfolding. Although police tactics the previous day weren’t remarkable, everyone had upsetting stories to tell. There was a sense of being on the back foot – pleading for the authorities to go easy, rather than threatening more unrest. The crowds disappeared without trace by early evening, people drifting back to the places they live and work to re-enter the relations they’d been trying to break the previous day. Then the news began to filter through of Visteon workers occupying factories in Enfield and Belfast.

April 3rd

Not ready to drift back, we board a coach at dawn to Strasbourg for the anti-militarist protests against NATO’s 60th birthday celebration. A tough decision – 12 hours aboard a Stop the War Coalition coach was the price to pay. Twelve turned to 18, and exhausted we blundered through barricades into the convergence campsite, with ‘the need for party discipline’ ringing in our ears. Battles with the police had been running for a couple of days now apparently, and of an intensity that made London look like a picnic. The slogan, ‘you make war, we make trouble’ seemed to sum up the approach.

April 4th

The ‘No to Nato’ demo had been called by a European coalition of NGO’s and peace groups – the majority German and French. Autonomous groups had also mobilized, and were first out of bed. It was pretty hard to tell that you were on an anti-militarism protest. The prevalent politics was anti-authoritarian. Ignoring pleas to keep things calm so the organized march could go ahead, a series of blockades were set up in the morning, igniting running battles with the police. Several buildings were burnt to the ground, including, much to everybody’s delight the customs building on the France – Germany border.

The differences with the London G20 were stark. As the windows of Threadneadle Street’s RBS went in, the crowd screamed for people to stop – wouldn’t want to look bad for the media after all! Whilst not everyone joined in the destruction, even amongst the mainstream protesters it seemed accepted that violence against property, well, wasn’t violence. The French police were met with a hail of stones and fireworks, the reply was endless teargas. UK police have an easier task, people generally police themselves. The passivity allows for the kettling, searches and surveillance. Further teargassing cut short the speeches at the demonstration’s official start point. The march got off to a chaotic start, and finished soon after. The police blocked the bridges leading out of the suburbs - sticks and stones were powerless to budge them.

In Memory of Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen, a socialist and fighter against all forms of racism and immigration controls, died on Sunday morning, 8 March 2009.

“Right now, ‘Don’t Organise, Mourn!’ - his only slightly tongue-in-cheek injunction to grieving friends’ seems as tidy and insightful as anything else he came up with.” (Jane on Engage Online)

Here is my attempt at public remembering and mourning.

Steve worked for about 30 years as an immigration-law barrister in Manchester, set up the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, participated in many Anti-Deportation Campaigns. He wrote books, manifestos, pamphlets and emails about anti-Semitism and socialism, about immigration, borders and the welfare state, in past and present.

Steve was a lawyer, a writer, and a political organiser. A Socialist and a non-religious Jew. A very funny and inspiring man full of integrity with a clear, analytical and personally grounded political stance. Probably a bit of a workaholic, full of enthusiasm that was difficult to withstand. A man who brought immigration history from below and past political struggles right into today’s realities, showing that “learning from history” is not necessarily a dusty, empty phrase.

He came from a generation of socialists that was used to organising in fixed structures, with committees, formal meetings and clearly defined roles, through manifestoes, programs, political parties and position papers. Within this tradition, Steve was fascinated by the interventionist, creative, direct action oriented political forms which were revived in the framework of the globally networked social movements of the last decade. Thus he was one of the bridges between political generations - although the younger generation’s informal, networked, horizontal, non-representative and seemingly chaotic ways of organising must have seemed weird to him at times.

In 2003, Steve was a driving force in writing a political manifesto against immigration controls titled “No One Is Illegal”. This slogan, taken from the writings of Elie Wiesel, was also the main statement of the transnational european noborder network which formed in the late 1990s. This network developed into one of the main grassroots assemblies of radical migration related politics on a European level, using “new” networked formats of political organising visible in border camps, campaigns against migration control, and Europe-wide action days. The “No One Is Illegal Manifesto” articulated the same uncompromising position against any form of immigration control. It helped to assemble No Borders-hubs in the UK and connect them with existing campaigns against immigration controls.

For the last fifteen years, Steve suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. This illness twists and turns the body. It is very painful and affects the functions of the body - hands, eyes, back. Nevertheless, Steve continued writing political texts and organising emails “with one eye and one finger”, as he put it.

In 1984, Steve wrote a text titled “That’s funny, you don’t look anti-Semitic”. A careful account of the history of anti-Semitism on the left in the UK, it also presents a differentiated analysis of Zionism and anti-Zionism. This text, re-published on the net in 2005, represents a valuable intervention in the current debate within the UK left about Palestine and the politics of the state of Israel.

Two positions seem to be impossible to reconcile: One accuses certain discourses amongst anti-Zionist supporters of the struggle of the Palestinians of anti-Semitism. The other accuses this criticism of Zionism. Steve had “one foot in the camp of the anti-Zionists and yet he [was] still mortified by left-anti-Semitism” (Engage Online). His position shows one way to oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestine without falling into anti-Semitic ways of thinking and feeling.

In an obituary on Workers Liberty, he is described as “a tower of strength and source of inspiration to all around him”. Even though I only met him very few times, I am sadly missing him as well. I am grateful for having crossed his path while he was alive. Now his body has gone to medical research according to his wish, and the folder with his numerous organising mails on my email client is closed. Nevertheless, Steve’s approach to life, politics, illness and humour will continue to enrich my own. Thanks, Steve

Interview with Marina Pepper/G20 Meltdown

Your public strategy in the run-up to the protests at Bank was rather unorthodox. On the one hand you stressed your image of tea-drinking hippies, on the other hand people from your group spoke of immanent revolution and ‘mutually assured destruction’ if the police attacked. Was this deliberate?

Tea drinking I am sure you know really is hardly the preserve of hippies. Tea drinking as a pastime and a ritual is symbolic on many levels. Tea drinking fueled the Blitz spirit, the American Revolution (think Boston tea party), it’s served at funerals, in cricket pavilions. The Queen drinks it, the workers drink it. No problem is ever worse after a cup of it. I’ve long been serving it on the frontline because it breaks the ice. Somehow the police are more trusting when you have a bone china cup of Darjeeling and a saucer in your hand. It goes so well with cake, too.

The idea of drinking tea and sharing food allowed us to promote the idea that coming out to G20 Meltdown was spikey enough, in that we were going to close the city roads, but a positive, civilized affair all the same. Like in the Asterix comic: when Asterix and friends fought the English, everyone stopped fighting to take tea. We were facilitating not a riot, but a very English revolution – as opposed to a Greek one - to which all races and nations were invited, to come and get stuck in.

It was all going so well. Then one individual got carried away. I guess it was in response to the police describing the future as a “summer of rage”, statements suggesting the police were “up for it.” Very unhelpful. I was beside myself when I saw the first interview on Channel 4 regarding mutually assured destruction.

The fact is, he had no right to offer mutually assured destruction as an option because, quite frankly, we didn’t have that kind of army available to match the threat. As was proven when the police got heavy and we all fell to their truncheons and shields. If we’d been any sort of destructive threat, Molotovs would surely have materialized. But they didn’t.

After the marches with the four horses of the apocalypse, people were kettled for hours at Bank - for many this felt very disempowering. Some blamed the disorganisation and possible tactical errors made by the G20 Meltdown group. Could it have been avoided?

In the early meetings many experienced protesters voiced their concerns that kettling could be problematical. As we couldn’t rule it out, we decided to use it to our advantage. Let the police blockade the roads, much easier than us having to do it. So that was the plan. Bring tea, cake, food to share, something to sit on, music etc and enjoy the kettle. I think it worked to a certain extent.

But so many people came who were new to direct action, who thought they were on a march or something. They came without any supplies. We put our kettle on and people kept asking to buy tea from us. We said: “We’ll swap you tea for your water.” They didn’t even have water with them.

Kettling can be – and was for many - disempowering. It’s boring – and extremely annoying when you need the loo. We have to overcome this by utilising the time. I wish we’d had half the artists they had floating round at climate camp. We needed more entertainment – although the reggae band kept us going on Threadneedle St. A makeshift ladies loo over a drain materialized. More such initiatives were needed.

Tactically, by starting at four railway stations and by having enough push in us to keep us moving (well done guys and gals who kept the Black Horse moving) we split the police. Always the plan. Once kettled at the bank the job was a good un, as they say. No traffic moving around the Bank of England. A blockade using shear numbers. Result. Tactically, we should have spent more time empowering people by telling them what to bring and then organizing once there. Could we have pushed off again in four directions? And if so, what then? What if? Who knows? Were we ready for what might have ensued?

Once again, one person from the Meltdown core group had his own plan for the day, taking off to UEL for some old codgers meeting of Old Labour. Like that’s useful. Staying put was the better plan. We had responsibilities to the crowd. I feel that certain core members let the people down. But all is not lost. We have started something. Many of us have learned from the experience and have strengthened our networks. I’m not getting a sense of “never again.” Quite the opposite. Groups like Climate Camp, Climate Rush, the Whitechapel Anarchist Group, while not likely to take up arms, are radicalized now more than ever. We are more serious about what needs to be done. We’re upping our game, creatively, effectively, for the long haul. And we have stronger international networks now. I’m in contact with Greece and Italy. I have friends in France. We are one.

On the G20 Meltdown website the stated aims for the protest on the 1st April were to ‘participate in a carnival party at the Bank of England’ and to ‘overthrow capitalism’. Do you think it’s possible to create political change using carnival tactics?

Carnival tactics are one tactic. Carnival is has the harlequin at its heart, who resists all authority in a topsy turvy world with the people taking the power, the fool being king for the day. Carnival releases us from the boundaries of the everyday norm. It is an excellent starting point. And the media loves it. If it can’t get a riot, it will settle for a carnival. God, anything to get us away from boring A-B marching on the one hand, and Molotov lobbing on the other.

Carnival gave birth to theatre, the first example of mass media, crowds experiencing the same emotions together. Think Ancient Greece. So empowering, so powerful.

Carnival is the way to get people up off their sofas, out of their houses and on with the action. It is most definitely a way forward for mass disobedience: civilized or otherwise, if we’re serious about stopping capitalism. Carnival is a great mobilizing tactic. But it’s as well as, not instead of, small autonomous groups doing the serious damage eg, where it hurts!

When we become too expensive to police, capitalism will fail. And if they send in the army? The British Army won’t be up for shooting down a Carnival.

How did the J18 protests in the City of London 10 years ago influence your tactical and political aims?

Me personally? I’ll be honest. In 1999 I had two children under the age of two and was working seven days a week, stopping only to breast feed and instruct the nanny. I didn’t even know J18 had occurred.

My political focus back then was climate change and waste, real nappies and organic farming. I thought you changed the world by exposing the problems – I was a journalist. Naively I felt if people knew what was wrong we’d all pull together and sort it. AS IF!

I even got involved in local politics – for my sins I’m still my community’s representative on the Town Council. I think 9/11 and the launch of the “war on terror” has held everyone back. It’s a bit like the suffragette movement which called a “ceasefire” during WW1. On top of that, people felt they were benefiting from the boom or bubble years. Buying their homes, shopping for stuff, all on credit, obviously, but it’s not something people wanted to discuss. They just wanted to strut around in their new kitchens in their new outfits, downing wine from a buy two get one free deal. It stopped them thinking about the overdraft.

G20 was the first opportunity for the movement to thrust forward, having learned not just from J18 but from G8 and Make Poverty History. With the crunch and the bail outs enough people could finally see the bleeding obvious: don’t ask the problem for solutions. We are the solution. No apathy, no extremism and no wrist bands. Let’s imagine it differently and implement.

With the scales falling from so many peoples’ eyes right now, we have an almost self-mobilizing movement to work with. At last!

Already after J18, people said that we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to criticism of the financial sector and of banks. Wasn’t the anti-banker position that G20 meltdown took at bit populist?

Of course Meltdown was populist. Money is what people care about. They feel so let down. That could be seen as problematical for an anti-capitalist movement. But let’s deal with the world as it is, not as it ought to be – that comes later. My feeling is you get people out on money, then through mixing it up with climate change, war, land issues and the squatting fraternity, people will come to understand it’s all part of the same problem: capitalism.

I only realized that relatively recently. I had to overcome the style issues presented by the anti-capitalist movement. I got to my thinking first through Climate Camp and have become totally convinced through meeting and working with Anarchists, who to my mind have it largely spot on.

But it’s too early to bandy Anarchy around the place. We’re fighting too many preconceived ideas. Maybe we have to dispense will all the old descriptions. Right now we need numbers and new blood. At G20 Meltdown and Climate Camp in the City we enabled thousands of new people to participate in anti-capitalist actions. This wasn’t your average summit hopping event, it was a mass of people expressing their need for a better world who don’t know yet quite how to express it.

Money issues are to anti-capitalism what the polar bear is to the climate change movement – not the point, but a way in. I disliked the hanging a banker vibe – although in many cultures puppets and voodoo dolls have a healing role to play. Just as burning effigies does it for the bonfire crowd in Lewes to this day. But the whole banker thing was a bit too literal for me. Our other messages got lost. Bankers aren’t the problem, they are the servants of the system. The system needs profits. This drive for profits is what gives us all the other problems. “Only following orders” is no excuse, but let’s go for those giving the orders as well.

Following the death of Ian Tomlinson, everyone talks about police violence. It is clear that ‘mutually assured destruction’ did not take place. How could we have protected ourselves better?

Barricade and enemy dispersal, eg: roll cars, set them alight and lob Molotov cocktails over the top? I jest.

Look, I saw many people who received worse treatment than that meted out to Ian Tomlinson. He was so unlucky. I personally was thrown to the ground, hit with a shield and squashed against a wall. I saw a woman dragged along by her hair and dogs set on people who were already lying on the ground and certainly not fighting back other than to cover their faces. I have many friends who received bruises the size of dinner plates from repeated bashings on the legs from truncheons.

So what could have been done differently? Nothing much at the time. It’s what we do from now that counts. We learn lessons, regroup, re-form and go again, varying tactics. The element of surprise is our best advantage – if we can work round police surveillance.

If we’re going to be kettled, let’s get kettled in useful places with lock-ons, glue-ons and tripods. Let’s go for the worst offending businesses – the war machine, the fossil fuel industries, let’s make it impossible for the politicians to continue with business as usual.

But we could also do more – as the movement grows – to ensure we act as one and know why we’re acting. The Bank of England didn’t have the drinking problem that arose at Climate Camp (because we were kettled from the outset). A decision was taken to keep hold of Bishopsgate overnight. But there were lots of people in the crowd who’d come for the craic. You can’t hold a road if you’re drunk. There were no blockades at all. That’s why it was so easy to shift everyone.

“No drinking” is a message I’m hearing – and I listen a lot. I’m also hearing: “this is only the beginning.” I personally – and lots agree – feel that we mustn’t get bogged down in this “police brutality” issue, because quite frankly, this wasn’t the worst we’ve seen and it won’t be the worst we’ll see, especially when the cops are dealing with food riots. The idea of protesting against policing with specific protests is ridiculous. Just go and protest – against war, capitalism, climate change inertia. Go take a building and transform it into an autonomous social space. That’s how to address policing issues: on the real frontline, not on some union-backed vigil-heavy posturing parade.

I won’t suggest we have to be peaceful about it – “peaceful” is such a lame over-used and misused word. Let’s keep focused on why and how we want the world to change. Let’s be provocative. Let’s keep them guessing. Let’s keep the kettle on, tea in the pot, love in our hearts and a riot up our sleeve. And if we only manage to change the world enough to create common spaces and new lives to opt out to, then so be it. We’ll have made enough of a difference for those of us who realize the authority we face is a false one. This is our world too and we’ll build it anew if we want to. Now is the time. Up the revolution!

Interview with the Whitechapel Anarchist Group

In the run-up to the G20 protests, parts of the corporate media ran a sustained campaign of scare stories about ‘violent anarchists’. How has your relationship with the media been? Did you try to get a more serious anarchist perspective out?

As far as I can remember, there weren’t many anarchists actively engaging with the media in the run-up to the G20. We did our best to respond to the interest that the media took in us - we’re definitely not about an absolute boycott on the corporate media. However, this does have its pitfalls and you definitely can’t go about it with any illusions. They will get what they want out of what you say - after all, they’re about selling papers! You could come out with the most solid critique of capitalism and they could still take more interest in what colour hoodie you’re wearing. However, I don’t think it bit us on the arse too hard…even that Daily Mail article was a good laugh!

To our knowledge, the only G20 event co-ordinated by London anarchist groups was the ‘Militant Workers Bloc’ on the trade union and NGO march. Why the focus of effort on this demonstration when an explicitly anarchist intervention on the 1st or 2nd April could have had a much bigger impact?

Actually, we put work into publicising the party at the bank, produced and distributed thousands of the now notorious posters. The poster certainly did a great deal in terms of getting numbers down there and also fuelling the flames of media hysteria. But, as they say, no publicity is bad publicity. With regards to the other questions, there are alot of factors to take into consideration. The most important one for us to address here is our current lack of ambition as a movement and the extent to which we have internalised a culture of defeat. We are always one step ahead of the coppers in shutting our actions down. Its time to turn that on its head again and come up with some fresh and innovative ideas that can turn round the culture of dissent in London. However, in defence of the Militant Workers Bloc it wasn’t simply 600-700 anarchos turning up to a Trade Union march. Our place in the march was negotiated with links that people have to militant sections of the workers movement and was symbolic of progress being made to integrate a direct action approach back into workers struggle.

The main two groups calling for protests in the City were Climate Camp and G20 Meltdown. There are rumours that London anarchists found it hard to work together with them. How did you get on?

As with all events thrown together under high pressure and with very little time, political differences and personal tensions did result in some difficult meetings. For all the criticisms of the G20 Meltdown group, they did manage to sustain media interest and pull off their action on the day. Whilst some may not see their action as being particularly ambitious, political or structurally sound (as some critics have said), they did a lot more than any of the Anarchist groups in London did. Most of us organised independently but under their banner on the day. As for the Climate Camp… well… I’m not gonna get into too much mudslinging as I have better things to do but they have definitely made some unwelcome contributions to the argument over diversity of tactics vs. pacifist witch-hunting.

The focus of most activist groups was very much on the anti-bank protests rather than on attempts to oppose the G20 summit. Was it a missed opportunity to disrupt a major gathering of world leaders or have we simply moved away from the anti-summit protests?

Simply put, the opportunity wasn’t there. Try looking at the ExCel Centre on a map and you’ll understand why. Even those outside our milieu described the G20 as largely pointless - better to have an action in the rotten, beating heart of capitalism than on its fringes! Also, Bank is right next to Whitechapel so we have a vested interest!!

How would you evaluate the days of action, considering there were only a few broken windows, countless head injuries and a killed bystander? What would you have counted as success?

In terms of lessons learned, let’s hope it is a massive success. There is alot of scope for reflection and alot of room for development - in terms of street direct action and long-term political strategy. It was what it was, and I think we’ve come out the better for it. Emphasis was placed on police brutality, but I think this reflects the politics of the people there. For those who went there to confront - albeit symbolically - a political and economic system, this was pretty much standard. A few blows to their side, a few blows to ours. Chris Knight claimed it to be the revolution, for many of us it was just another day at the office! Ian Tomlinson was killed by the police, and the truly tragic part is it takes a man to be murdered for people give a toss about the function of police in our society. He may simply have been on his way home for work, but he has come to stand for something much more. He has reminded us that we are not doing this simply for a laugh, that we are against capitalism because it is against us, that we are not after some hippie utopian dream but the end of a system of terror. We feel nothing but compassion for this man we never knew, and in solidarity with him and all others who have lost their life or liberty in the pursuit of anarchy, and for our own selves, we continue our struggle.

Kettles, cake and bunting at the G20 - Steph Davies

For me the G20 was a crazy mix of potential, missed opportunities, conflict and division. As someone with their feet in several ‘camps’ I felt torn…should I go to the autonomous march? Should I swoop with the Climate Camp? More than anything, I wanted both protests to converge in a beautiful, messy way. Now that would be a threat…

There were some great things about Wednesday: the scale of the autonomous march, taking a street in the heart of the financial district and holding it for 13 hours, giving workshops, and the RBS action. All this despite a staggering police operation, which resulted in the death of Ian Tomlinson.

The most disempowering thing for me on Wednesday wasn’t the state response, or the scale of the problems we are protesting against. It was how quickly we bought their hype, and how quickly we were divided. It’s always easier to point the finger and scapegoat other groups rather than sit back and take a long hard look at your actions, and as activists, we are no exception to this.

Cake and bunting? [see the article on guardian.co.uk, written by Plane Stupid activist Leila Deen titled ‘G20: The Cake and Bunting Revolution’] It ain’t enough. Sorry… Environmentalists (myself included) often talk in scary statistics. Most people agree that the time for action is now. In order to bring about mass scale social change we definitely need movement building. But what about movement strengthening? Sometimes it seems like people are so desperate to get new people involved they stop listening to those who are dissenting. The climate camp created a space for direct democracy, critical theory and positive solutions, but where was the attack? People often get politicised by going on demonstrations, but few would state that this was enough. Positive solutions must be part of any model of social change…but sadly, the state isn’t going to back down to bunting. The lack of defences at the climate camp made me painfully aware that it’s time to reinforce what we’ve got if we really want to scale up to new levels of surveillance and control.

This does not mean that what happened at Bank was any more effective. Thousands of people occasionally throwing water bottles in the air and some Graff does not a revolution make. The police are scaling up their operations, and as a result of this, we need to face up to public order situations better, in a far more effective and confrontational way.

We talk about diversity of tactics but on Wednesday there were two main options: stand in a kettle in black or in rainbow coloured kooky charity shop chic. We need a combination of movement building and also strengthening networks that exist. For me, the climate camp is a brilliant method of outreach, and a great place to provide training and converge. But as an end in itself, is it really going to bring about mass scale social change or tackle the root causes of climate change? It’s undeniable that it’s been a great tool for movement building, and it should be celebrated for that. But, as ever, a look to history is always helpful. Where did the climate camp come from and why are those who helped set it up walking away in droves? I still believe absolutely in the aims of the camp. It has been successful in creating a space from which direct action on climate issues can occur. The media response to the raid and arrest of the 114 activists in Nottingham is a testament to this. Direct action on climate change is now publicly acceptable. Now it’s time to raise the stakes…

At the G20, none of us were up to the job. This is the disempowering truth. Black balaclavas or cake and bunting… neither weapon of choice was sufficient. Where were the affinity group solidarity actions from groups who didn’t make it down to the capital? Why did so few break through police lines? Why was our response to the death of Ian Tomlinson and the Raids at Earl Street and the Rampart Centre a halfhearted demonstration? It’s vital that we acknowledge these issues.

Divisions within the general climate movement have been increasing over the last few years, and it would seem to me that there is a kind of critical mass that can be carried along by it at any one time. As it’s grown outwards and become a successful vehicle for movement building in relation to new people, others have left the process. I felt totally schizophrenic on Wednesday, wishing that we could be united in our dissent and believing that only then would we really be a threat, but realising also that the split was real and that false unity is more dangerous than separation.

The whole day was carefully choreographed by the media and the police to ramp up the divisions: prior to the ‘swoop’ people could move freely by the bank of England. As soon as climate camp took Threadneedle St the bank protestors were kettled. Apart from those who broke the police line, the protest by Bank remained contained all day. Climate campers were allowed to roam free. On the dot of 7pm, the Bank kettle was lifted, and climate campers were then surrounded by a ring of steel until late in the evening, when people queued up to be searched and photographed. Those from bank were not allowed in, and many people from the camp were separated by the riot police who flanked the sides, isolating small groups and stopping anyone coming in until the site was baton charged at 2am. The climate camp would never have been allowed to continue if the eyes of the law hadn’t mainly been on the G20 Meltdown…and as darkness fell, unsurprisingly, the ‘good protesters’ became the target of more police harassment..

Fluffy v. spiky? The debate has raged for years, and this is a new chapter with the same content. Good and bad protesters? Most people that I know are sceptical of the mainstream media, yet we all seem to have bought their narrative. Why are we talking about cake and bunting? Why are we using media spotlight to further outline divisions amongst groups fighting for social change? It’s all a game, and we are foolish to buy into it. This doesn’t mean never interacting with the media, but why do their job of perpetuating stereotypes and belittling serious demands and key messages for them? Complicity between the main stream and the state is an interesting topic for analysis because it does not require an in depth analysis of our own politics. It’s easier to look outside. What is truly disempowering is not the might of the media or their rhetoric; it’s how quickly we buy into it and use it against each other.

Sometimes it feels like we really are at some mythical point of mass scale social change, and other times it feels lost amongst our own entrenched positions and lack of ability for critical analysis. Perhaps it’s time to stop and take stock of our ‘movements’ before we build further on weak foundations… Why can’t there be cake, bunting, violence and riots? Why can’t the samba band provide a soundtrack or diversion for the black bloc? All these tactics have been used before, isn’t it better to think about how we can compliment each other, rather than condemning? There is no one size fits-all tactic for sparking off mass-scale change. We need reflection, analysis and being open to different forms of action, and a desire for genuinely working on collective weaknesses.

Politics or Pathology? Review of the Baader-Meinhof Complex - Raphael Schlembach

On the day of the premiere for the German blockbuster Baader-Meinhof Complex, a group of left-wing Autonome threw rocks and paint-filled bottles at the villa of bestselling author Stefan Aust and started a fire at the front door. Stefan Aust’s non-fiction book Baader-Meinhof Complex, with 500,000 copies sold, provided the background study for the film of the same name. Aust was also a close collaborator to Bernd Eichinger’s script and Uli Edel’s direction. The trio hail their work as a historical intervention into the contemporary debates on terrorism. Aust is more than just the extremely lucky – and now extremely rich – author of the Baader-Meinhof Complex. He has led, in the past decades, the academic, journalistic and cinematographic vision of the Red Army Faction – as author, in a number of TV productions and as editor-in-chief for the major politics magazine Der Spiegel.

The blockbuster film version tells the story of the Baader-Meinhof gang from the late 1960s to the ‘German Autumn’ in 1977. A radicalised generation of students fights against the failed denazification of West Germany, against their parents’ authoritarianism, and against what they perceive as the new face of fascism: US imperialism. When pacifist student Benno Ohnesorg is shot dead during a demonstration on 2 June 1967 and a right-wing fanatic nearly kills popular student leader Rudi Dutschke less than a year later, parts of the movement begin to adopt more militant tactics.

The attack on Aust’s villa in the noble-district of Hamburg-Blankenese is a sign that a small part of the German Autonome movement continues to agitate along the lines of the RAF’s anti-imperialism and still justifies its methods. The Baader-Meinhof Complex is not only an attempt to come to terms with episodes of left-wing terrorism in Germany’s past but also helps to condemn those tactics in the present. However, rather than making a political argument against them it attempts to depoliticize – and pathologize.

The book’s and film’s title should be enough indication of the political direction that Aust, Eichinger and Edel take. The militant and armed struggles of the 1970s – of the RAF and the 2 June movement in Germany, the Brigade Rosse in Italy, or November 17 in Greece – are seen as the result of a psychological complex of a young, naïve, but frustrated element of the hippie generation. The extreme violence portrayed in the film is explained as a mere pathology – not based on ideological thinking but on psychology alone. The idea that you’d have to be ‘mad’ to advocate or even practice violence and terror as political tools characterises the Baader-Meinhof Complex.

Take the depiction of Ulrike Meinhof. With her articles in the magazine Konkret she was the voice of a whole generation of students and leftists. In the film she at best provides the ‘theoretical’ voice-over for Andreas Baader’s adventurist and macho escapades. At worst her appearance strikes the viewer as naïve, timid and intimidated by the ‘deeds-not-words’ actionism of the Baader clique. Her decision to join the gang into illegality is shown as impulsive, rather than the result of the ideological escalation of her own beliefs. Even when she leaves behind her children, against all her previous principles, it is other members of the group that speak for her. Her suicide in Stammheim prison is finally no longer a protest against the prison complex and the conditions of her imprisonment. In the end it comes across as no more than apologetic self-justice or as the only possible frustrated attempt to leave the RAF and its violent campaign.

Already Meinhof’s first – and, in the view of Aust and Eichinger, fatal – decision to leave behind the bourgeois idyll of nude beaches and garden parties for the revolutionary milieu is not one she takes out of political motivation: she is simply driven away by her cheating husband. But here, here credentials as a radical journalist do her no favour. She is repeatedly challenged by über-activist Gudrun Ensslin for her intellectualism. For the film makers, the Baader-Meinhof group still had to abandon its political and theoretical baggage before it could begin its campaign of terror.

In stark contrast to Meinhof is the character of Andreas Baader. Baader’s first appearance is with a bottle of beer in his hand, making petrol bombs with the other, and telling his friends that they should burn down a department store. Macho, womanizer, drinker – Baader comes across more like a Wild West villain than as the political leader of a revolutionary group. With his liking for fast cars, drugs and guns, he is action hero – not terrorist, bandit – not revolutionary. Armed struggle was certainly a major tenet for the RAF, with the Heckler & Koch machine gun as its logo. But Baader’s continuous racist and misogynist outbursts reinforce the image that he’s in it for the thrill, not political change.

A third character plays the role of the measured and rational antagonist to the raging Baader. Bruno Ganz, who previously played the figure of Adolf Hitler in Eichinger’s Downfall, is persuasive in his role of Horst Herold, the president of West Germany’s national police force (BKA) and the RAF’s enemy number one. Only that Herold, who in the 1970s vowed “we’ll get them all”, is portrayed more as an understanding and intelligent chief-of-police who sees the root of the problem not in terrorism, but in the “objective” wars and social conditions that have radicalized a generation. What is needed according to the film character is not a police operation but political change. Meanwhile the real Herold was ousted from his job in 1981. His controversial methods of treating as suspect everyone with radical left-wing views had led to accusations of a police and surveillance state.

The RAF’s anti-imperialism

More important than the characters that the film presents, is what it only alludes to – the RAF’s political motivation. Other than describing it as a group made up of drop-outs, hippies and macho activists, this is where the film really fails to make any significant commentary on the political situation in West Germany at the time. The first attempt at showing the social conditions, the repression and brutality of police forces, comes right at the beginning. Other than the rest of the film it is highly dramatised and exaggerated, ending in the killing of student Benno Ohnesorg, underlined with dramatic music like a theatrical piece.

The RAF’s anti-imperialism is portrayed vividly in an early scene when Gudrun Ensslin storms out of her conservative-religious home dominated by her priest-father. The first step towards rebellion against the state is rebellion against one’s parents, it seems. Next up, Rudi Dutschke and his student audience at the Berlin Vietnam congress, consumed by a quasi-religious revolutionary fever, react to the only pro-war protester with passionate chants of “Ho- Ho- Ho-Chi-Minh”. Ensslin adds a few derogatory comments about consumerism in America.

But a seemingly significant, almost apocalyptic camera shot, goes almost unnoticed. In front of the flames of a burning Springer Press building (the symbol of mass media collusion with war and capital) stands the lonesome figure of a bare-chested hippie. Directed at the night sky, he repeatedly shouts his political message: “Dresden! Hiroshima! Vietnaaaam!”. All three refer to large-scale bombing campaigns against US American enemies. Taken together, however, their political meaning is equated, or forgotten altogether. While ‘Vietnam’ was the disastrous US war that mobilized the RAF’s generation, ‘Hiroshima (and Nagasaki)’ were nuclear attacks on the Empire of Japan towards the end of World War II. The air raids on the East German city of Dresden, however, were much smaller in scale and were carried out by British and American air forces in February 1945 during the allied war against Hitler’s Third Reich.

The comparison of the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima is a central demand of neo-Nazis today, who refer to the allied air raids as a holocaust, also equating it with the Nazi Holocaust against Europe’s Jews. Already in 1965, Meinhof too reiterated the message of revisionist and Holocaust denier David Irving that Dresden turned the anti-Hitler war into fascistic barbarism. The film scene is an indication of the political turn that would come for some of the Baader-Meinhof group.

Most striking of course is the direction taken by Horst Mahler, prominent lawyer and RAF founding-member, who in the Baader-Meinhof Complex organized the group’s trip to the Jordanian PLO training camp and appears complete with Castro-style cap. Mahler spent years in prison for left-wing terrorism where he made his complete conversion to neo-Nazism. Later, he became a member of Germany’s far right party, the NPD, successfully defending it in lawsuits brought by the German government. He has been back in court and prison several times since, for Holocaust denial and showing the Hitler salute, providing him with a welcome platform for anti-Semitic and xenophobic remarks.

The film’s failure to look at that side of the RAF’s politics is also picked up on by Hans Kundnani in the review for Prospect magazine. Kundnani spots Abu Hassan, the leader of the early Arab terrorist group Black September, appearing in the film as the commandant of a PLO training camp in Jordan. Black September was later responsible for the killing of 11 Israeli athletes and a police man at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972 and the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane. They demanded the release of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof alongside 230 Palestinian prisoners.

Kundnani writes:

“What the movie omits, however, is the bizarre communiqué Meinhof—the designated ‘voice’ of the RAF—wrote from jail celebrating the killing of the Israeli athletes as a model for the West German left. Meinhof’s weird logic illustrates the arc of anti-Semitism on the German New Left that began well before the RAF, with the bombing of a Jewish Community Centre in West Berlin on November 9th 1969, the anniversary of Kristallnacht [the first Nazi anti-Jewish pogrom]. This left-wing anti-Semitism culminated in the Entebbe hijacking in 1976, in which two German members of the Revolutionary Cells—another terrorist group to emerge out of the West German student movement—and two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked an Air France jet, flew it to Entebbe and separated the Jewish passengers and the non-Jewish passengers before Israeli commandos stormed the aircraft. And all of this from a student movement that began as a rebellion against the ‘Auschwitz generation’.”

Kundnani is right to highlight the mixture of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic ideology that became part of German anti-imperialism at least after the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria, at the end of which Israel had gained control of Gaza and the West Bank. Few in the ‘Free Gaza/Palestine’ movement today make reference to the RAF, the Revolutionary Cells or Black September though the connection between Arab liberation movements and Marxist-Leninist armed struggle groups is interesting, if only insofar as it shows its political limitations.

German nationalism

While one might spot a critique of left-wing anti-Semitism in the Baader-Meinhof Complex, the political career trajectories of some other RAF protagonists – those who don’t even feature in the film – are left completely unaccounted for. Most importantly there is Otto Schily. Friends with both Rudi Dutschke and Horst Mahler, he was also the defence lawyer first for Mahler and then for Gudrun Ensslin. He was also a key figure contesting the suicide of Baader and Ensslin, accusing the German state of murder. In 1980, he was co-founder of the German Green Party and then quickly succeeded in a career as Member of Parliament, for the Greens and then the Social Democrats. From 1998-2005 he was Minister of State for Home Affairs. Here Schily became synonymous with new draconian anti-terror legislation, surveillance measures against political opponents of the Federal Republic, and the scrapping of data protection laws. Other government ministers, including ex-foreign minister Joschka Fischer and ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, began their political careers in the revolutionary scene of the RAF years – Schröder even as lawyer of RAF member, turned neo-Nazi, Horst Mahler. When two police men were left injured after Molotov attacks at a demonstration commemorating Ulrike Meinhof’s death, Fischer was arrested in connection with the attack – though never charged.

It is significant that today’s political leaders – Schily, Fischer, Schröder – do not feature in the film, as their departure from left-wing radicalism marked the stabilization of German society in the 1980s and 1990s, and also allowed for a new-found confidence of the re-unified state. The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a contribution to this new Germany and, despite its refusal to deal with the RAF’s motivations, this makes it deeply political.

The importance that the cinematic version of Baader-Meinhof Complex has in the German national understanding should be made clear. The production was not only expensive; it is also an assemblage of the best-known faces of German cinema and TV screens. Eichinger’s other blockbuster production, Downfall, had a similarly star-studded cast and was a portrayal of German suffering and resistance against the ‘invasion’ of the Red Army of Berlin. It was a “German project, with German actors and a German director”, as Eichinger makes clear. Allegedly, even a few modern neo-Nazis were in the cast, exited by the chance to wear SS uniforms. Hitler’s last days are also depicted as pathology – a mad dictator who should have listened to his saner Nazi inferiors. Once Eichinger had the German nation defeat the Red Army (sacrificing Hitler) on the cinema screens, it was a logical conclusion to have them take on the Red Army Faction next.

Moreover, the film finally allows German schools to put the history of the RAF and the ‘German Autumn’ onto the curriculum. Until now, the story of RAF terrorism was also the story of political policing, illegal surveillance and state cover-ups, which could open up some uncomfortable questions in class. Documents that could give an indication whether Baader’s and Ensslin’s deaths were suicide or murder are still withheld from public view. The Baader-Meinhof Complex turns these questions into non-topics: the RAF; they were slightly mad, slightly cool – but certainly not political. Another ‘difficult’ chapter of German history has been dealt with – the lessons learnt can only strengthen the Federal Republic.

Raphael Schlembach is an editor of Shift Magazine.

Violence and Red-Green - The Fearless Theorillas

Anarchists are communists too. The question of climate change cannot be adequately dealt with by a philosophy, but to inform how we organise ourselves to stop the causes and deal with the political effects of climate change, we must look to communist philosophies. For us, this is the challenge of Red-Green: not to provide a Marxist or Anarchist reading of climate change, but to eke out the strategies and tactics where we can in order to progress our politics. In many ways, this distinction is well thought through by the term Ecologism (rather than environmentalism): Ecology suggests a total reworking of how we live and interact with each other and with a world beyond ourselves as human individuals or units, or rather, suggests a total unity of the world outside and inside. Is this not, at the heart of it, the same as the Communist hypothesis?

When we say that anarchists are communists, this is based on the premise that the entire concept of party-communism is essentially dead. There can be no serious attempt to resurrect ghosts of one-party states and voting for the revolutionary party. But this does not mean turning our backs on the concept of a labour movement, or the very basis of the communist hypothesis: that of a single humanity, working as a whole - albeit a diverse, fractured and fragmented unity. What follows is essentially a very brief intervention, in which we want to breath some life into what is currently seen as a subsection of our movement, but should be (and possibly is) its very core.

Violence & (power)

Common-sensically, there are two essential ways of getting what you want: violence and power. The general adage is that power comes through violence: the government gets to do what it wants because it has the police and the military, and use their violent means to achieve their ends. Another equally common phrase attests otherwise: ‘violence ensued because of a vacuum of power’. In other words, where there is no power, there is violence. Similarly, where there is no violence, it is because there is power.

Let’s think of it in terms of a cocktail. In the first instance, our two ingredients of violence and power are in the same glass, mixed up together. Violence and power, whatever their individual flavours and colours, are always presented in the same drink. In the second formulation, they are always in two separate glasses: violence in one, power in the other. If you’ve got one drink, you certainly don’t have the other.

However, there is another way. What if there is actually only one cocktail, and the other one is just imagined? Let’s assume that violence really does exist - it certainly seems so when baton meets body. Now, in order to have a drink, we need to also know that the drink may not have existed at all, and may not in future. Its entire existence is based on this idea of its own non-existence. So our one and only drink - Violence - is defined by the possibility of an empty glass. Nothingness makes us uncomfortable: it’s too difficult to understand. So instead we fill in the idea of the absence with something else, fantasising that there is something in the empty glass. This imagined drink would be power.

So what is power? It’s a catch-all term for anything that isn’t violence, for a fictive opposite of violence. That’s why we spend so long trying to work out where power lies: the media? Charisma? The public? The solution is that power is not a thing in itself. This is really important for understanding any potential labour movement. We cannot look to fictive focuses of change in order to actually affect change. So it would seem that the media, party politics, opinion polls- all these are quite literally nothing, compared with the actuality of material effects of violence.

Imaginative Labor

As has been pointed out by socialist feminists in the 1970s and Italian economists more recently, our modes of labour have fundamentally shifted. To what geographical extent this is true is a moot point, but certainly in the UK cognitive, immaterial and affective labour has become a dominant part of capitalist life. It would be quite possible to argue that the unpaid labour which occurs in the upkeep of a material labour force (more often than not women maintaining men) has always been dominant. But we can vaguely separate out two kinds of immaterial labour here, which we’ll label Upkeep and
Office Work.

What has all this to do with violence? Well, the sheer materiality, the physicality of violence helps support the case for organising and agitating the workers within the structure of a material labour system. Old-style communisms often focus on the ability for workers to change what is happening because they have material control over society, because they quite physically control the factories themselves. But if this has shifted, where are we left?

Yes, Office-Workers’ Climate Action sounds a bit strange, but it’s movements like this which might actually be able to salvage the red from the green. Capitalism gives us things, it creates the seeds of its own destruction, to paraphrase a dialectic. And that which capitalism creates in the processes of imaginative labour are often the exact things we need and use for activism in today’s world.

To mention two examples: Firstly, the Internet. During the wave of university teach-ins prompted by the atrocities in Gaza earlier this year, it became apparent quite how powerful a tool the Internet has become. Not simply through its own technology, but our familiarity with it. Every teach-in had a facebook group and a blog, some events actually seeming to start online before they ruptured into the campus itself. A range of Internet forums and email lists may unfortunately confuse the matter, and the whole process is certainly not perfected. But the degree of spontaneity and ease with which the virtual occupied space was created was really quite incredible.

Secondly, the Visteon occupation. Not seemingly spurred by the student movement actions or the G20 actions, except in perhaps providing an opportune moment for Ford to hide a bad story behind the glare of politicians’ smiles, the Visteon occupation was quickly seen by socialist and anarchist groups as a site of political importance. What could have happened, I’ll come back to. But what was important is that the solidarity the workers seemed most interested in was the offer of being taught consensus decision-making. This is not just a symptom of desiring better management, but for some kind of genuine imaginative expression - through the political.

Better tactics, not just theory

What did become clear during the Visteon occupation, was that, as campaigns acting in solidarity, we lacked the tactics necessary to really help the workers in any immediate way. There were, however, some good ideas proposed: to set up a mini Climate Camp outside the factory; to bring a tea stall or kitchen, so that we could provide food for supporters. As a possible eviction grew in potential, locking-on and barricading bubbled up in conversation. This was all a deep contrast to the Red-Green solidarity of Put People First on March 28th, where Workers Climate Action (and the Alliance for Workers Liberty) marched side by side with the Rail, Marine and Transport Workers Union. Making banners and writing flyers is important - but if we are to progress with a workers politics, especially with regards to climate change, our tactics must be more inventive, and more direct.

Of course, the political breaking point is that a workers movement must be organised from within, that we cannot bring direct action to the workers. But once we realise that imaginative labour is the workers movement for us, it becomes clear that the ways in which we use the limited skills of imaginative labour in order to take control is what we’ve been doing all along. What was astonishing at Visteon, was that with the G20 protests having just occurred, it turned out we were less organised, rather than more. During the G20 itself, as the police presence increased, it became apparent that we hadn’t developed in advance the tools we needed to make good decisions quickly: affinity groups, consensus decision making, spokes councils, and the like.

We are a workers movement. We are students in marketised universities and office workers constantly in the process of imaginative labour. Sometimes we are material labourers too. Taking the tools capitalism provides us with is still a question of revolutionary discipline, and the key to this is tooling up for democracy. If we’re serious about climate change and building a mass movement quickly, we need to encourage imaginative insurrection as much as an insurrectionary imagination. Violence in Red-Green is not a question of finding a way for Communism to bypass violence and direct action in the name of power (or of the People), but realising that we as a labour movement can provide the imaginative tools necessary to dream up more effective
ways of organising and affecting change - violent or otherwise.

The Theorillas [Theory-Guerillas] are a theory affinity group set up to throw some questions and thoughts into our movement – think of it like little thoughtful gifts. Kudos to all other gift-givers, both thought and actions).

Writing as a Jewish traitor - Steve Cohen

An imagined disputation with my comrades on anti Semitism

This is an edited extract from a text that Steve Cohen wrote in 2006 with the Lebanon war in mind. He sent it to us again during the Israeli attack on Gaza, still noting its obvious relevance for the Gaza solidarity protests.

Imagine

For forty five years as a Jew and a revolutionary Marxist I have been waiting for this debate, this disputation. The time lag is itself revealing – revealing of the left’s refusal to get beyond platitudes, often nasty platitudes, in discussing Jews. Let me say what this is not about. It is not about Zionism. Rather it is about the anti-Zionism of fools. And it is about the anti-imperialism of fools. I speak as an anti-imperialist. Over a century ago August Bebel, the German Marxist, coined the phrase “the socialism of fools” to describe those early socialists who equated world capitalism and world Jewry. In my view much modern anti-Zionism contains caricatures and myths which are equally foolish and equally dangerous. They are both a slur on Jews, all Jews, and do nothing whatsoever to advance the absolutely justifiable struggle of the Palestinians to become free of Israeli hegemony. And yes I think anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism should be conceptually and politically kept absolutely apart. However it is the result of the dominant discourse on the modern left that they have crashed into each other and joined up. This discourse is joined up anti-politics at its most grotesque.

What makes these anti-politics even more grotesque is that prior to the triumph of Zionism (and the establishment of Israel) there was another anti-Semitic slur (often found in Stalinist mythology) – that of the rootless, cosmopolitan Jew, that is the Jew without a country of his/her own and owing loyalty to no other state. So it is damned if you do and it’s damned if you don’t. The language of damnation, of fire and hell, is itself absolutely appropriate coming from a Christian-imperialist tradition which is responsible for anti-Semitism (as it is for Islamophobia).

As I understand it, the emergence of idiotic anti-Zionism as being dominant within anti-Semitic discourse found within the (non-Stalinist) left began in earnest after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the consequent Sabra-Chatilla massacre (actually committed by Christian Phalangists). In 1985 I wrote a small book on the subject of left anti-Semitism – “That’s Funny You Don’t look Anti-Semitic” (which is now posted on the web). This looked historically at how there has always been a significant current within the left who have adopted conspiracy theories about Jews. Only a few pages of this were devoted to the issue of anti-Zionism. Now I feel a whole library would be insufficient to house what is required. The real turning point were the Twin Towers destruction and the subsequent aggression against Iraq, both which have resulted in a global anti-Semitic backlash. The attack on the Twin Towers is perceived as a response (legitimate or illegitimate) to Zionism and the invasion of Iraq as being manipulated by Zionism. Of course neither of these events were in any way the responsibility of Jews or of Zionism. But even if they were they would not justify an anti-Semitic response. Even the real horrors of Zionism (such as the non-stop invasions of Gaza and the West Bank) are no such justification. This is blaming Jews for anti-Semitism – an outrageous concession to this oldest, or certainly the most persistent, of all racisms.

Imagine there’s no countries – or religion too

Allow me to state my position on Zionism as a political movement. Surprisingly it is doubtless at least in its basics the same as yours. I am opposed to it. I am opposed to it because of its racism towards the Palestinians. Because of its dispossession of the Palestinians. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, bad that you can tell me about Zionism that I would even start to justify. What is more I am opposed to the state of Israel. And I am opposed to the suggested two-state “solution”. If anything I am for a “no state” solution – that of a federated Socialist Middle East. I am opposed to Israel because I am opposed to all exclusivist states. Israel is an exclusivist state. Therefore I am opposed to it. I am a kind of Anarcho-Marxist on this question. I am for the absolute right of a law of return for Palestinians (and Jews). As a Diaspora Jew I am absolutely proud to hold no allegiance to any country on the planet – including Israel. I am proud to be both a Jewish traitor and a traitor of the Jews.

In fact I regard the very idea of a Jewish state as quite ludicrous. Can a state be circumcised? Can it eat kosher meat? Can it be barmitzvahed? And I feel the same way about the idea of a Muslim state – such as Pakistan. And I guess this is where we start to differ. I refuse to exceptionalise Israel. I am against exclusivist states. But all states are exclusivist, certainly all bourgeois states. It is their nature. They cannot be otherwise. The British state is a prime example. It is defined, and defines itself, by its immigration laws – who can come and who can stay and who has what rights (if any) dependent on immigration status. Want to define Israel as an apartheid state? Fine – as long as you are prepared to do the same for the UK. Want to organise a boycott of Israeli universities? Fine - as long as you are prepared to do the same for British universities, who are up to their necks in the enforcement of immigration controls. Open your eyes to the fees discrimination against “overseas” students – who can be deported after extraction of fees on completion of studies. Open your eyes to the vetting by university authorities of every single potential employee to ensure they have the “correct” immigration status. This in addition to the paid research or training contracts some educational institutions have with the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Want to demand the “dismantling” (whatever that means) of the Israeli state? Great! I’m for the smashing of all bourgeois states by the workers and their replacement with workers democracy. This is elementary Marxism. Which is why I am for unity between Palestinian and Jewish workers against their own rotten (mis)leaders.

What I am not for, what I am against, are clerics waving Kalashnikovs in their attempt to recreate another theocratic monstrosity. The exceptionalisation of Israel has lead to the utterly demeaning slogan on anti-war demonstrations in this country of “We are all Hizbollah now”. Well count me out of that one. Hizbollah is a clerical organisation which peddles the notorious Protocols of Zion – the nineteenth century forgery that reiterates the claim that Jews control the world (which is itself the central tenet of anti-Semitism). It is a clerical organisation whose chief political and military backer is Iran – whose leader is a holocaust denier. It is a clerical organisation which ultimately has no interest in a Palestinian state as such but seeks to recreate the Caliphate (which belongs to Islam’s golden age of philosophy, science, art and medicine - an age long past like the age of all religious constructs). This exceptionalisation of Israel is anti-enlightenment. It is spiralling political debate and practice into the most obscurantist period of history. It is replacing politics by religion of the most mindless variety (is there any other?).

As a traitor of the Jews I am also an atheist – and therefore opposed to Jewish religious practice in any guise. But who are paraded (like puppets) at the head of marches organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign? It is (male) members of the Naturei Karta sect. Sure these people are opposed to Israel. Why? Because the messiah, the real one, the Jewish one, has yet to arrive – and until he arrives a Jewish state is sacrilege! When he (these people sure are not looking for a female messiah) arrives then doubtless Naturei Karta members will be queuing up for their share of Kalashnikovs, will be training in the art of suicide bombings and will be promising each other their allocation of virgins in heaven or other such comparable inducements (an indefinite supply of bagels and lox?) and may even be piloting planes into the architecture of Manhattan (“we can do it for you cheap – we use only low cost airlines”). I joke because the only alternative is to throw up and be sick. And all this identification with religious obscurantism is supposed to pass as modern politics? And all this lauding of religious fundamentalism is supposed to be beyond criticism?

Imagine there’s no anti-Semitism

As an opponent of Israel I will not exceptionalise Israel. And as an opponent of Zionism I do not, will not, demonise Zionism. Demonisation reverts to the popular inspired myths of medieval Europe. It is the dark side of theology – and ultimately there is no other side. It is anti-secular. It is anti-Semitism: Jews as the hidden hand of history; Jews as the devil; Jews as the killer of god. The demonisation of Zionism simply transfers this to the killer of all of god’s people. It is the twenty first century equivalent of the blood libel accusation – the Jew as the murderer of Christian children and the drinker of their blood in order to acquire super-natural powers. This fantastic accusation has been responsible for a thousand years of pogroms. As Lenny Bruce used to joke – don’t the statute of limitations apply here? Just as the Jew of medieval Europe (and then Nazi Europe – there is a direct line) was depicted as all powerful, as being in possession of life’s secret mysteries, mysteries inaccessible to mere mortals but which determine the life and death (usually death) of all mortals – so Zionism is depicted as a supra-national force, more powerful politically than any other force on earth, and the cause of all war – from Iraq to Afghanistan. Next stop Iran!

And it doesn’t need to do this in its own name! It operates as the modern hidden hand – manipulating the lesser powers of Yankee and British imperialism. Armageddon in the New York sun? The destruction of the modern pyramids of the Twin Towers? None of this would have happened if Zionism wasn’t occupying the West Bank. This is the hidden hand twice removed. And the hidden hand operates under a supposed central Zionist ideological imperative – namely that Jews are a superior people, the real master race (in fact whatever the undoubted material wrongs done to the Palestinians, Zionism – unlike many other nationalisms – does not contain any such premise). If only Zionism would disappear then peace would reign on earth. The Messiah would have returned (the Christian one – the Jewish one hasn’t yet been)! I’m tempted to say to my supposedly secular comrades in a paraphrase of the only language they appear to understand, biblical language (the language of the “New”, not the “Old”, Testament): “Forgive them Marx they know not what they do – or say”.

Imagine workers’ solidarity – here, there, everywhere

So can I ask you another “what if” question? What if you had been a Jew in Germany/Czechoslovakia/Poland – in fact anywhere in Europe – after the Nazis first came to power in Germany and then proceeded to annex/conquer everything around them? Completely isolated by the historic defeat of the workers movement (thanks to Stalinist betrayals) what would you have done? And even if you weren’t a Jew then what would you suggest Jews should have done? For myself I think (depending where I was living) I would have had to acknowledge that the battle was lost. Resistance by Jews alone was not going to overturn the Nazi monster. Like today’s refugees I would have probably sought escape – and indeed advocated mass escape. Certainly I would not have criticised those who took this position (tragically they were shown to have been historically correct). However there was just one problem. Even at a time when the Nazis may have been prepared to allow such exit yet every other state in the world was imposing immigration controls against Jews. There was no escape route available!

On this planet without a visa for Jews there was one possibility of flight – to Palestine. Palestine was then of course under the colonial boot of Britain – which exercised immigration controls there against Jews there as it did in the UK itself. However there was the possibility of clandestine help from other Jews. I would have had no hesitation in seeking refuge there – or helping others get there. I have been to meetings where I have been told this was politically wrong. Wrong because it is the role of socialists to fight oppression where they find it – not flee from it, and not flee from it even where it is irresistible. Well, that would avoid all solidarity with today’s refugees. Wrong because it was and is somehow morally indefensible for a European to assume a right of entry into a “third world” country. Why? Who wrote this text book? I’m for a world without borders. A world where in the 1930s what was required was proletarian solidarity – given by Palestinians as well as Jews – to those seeking refuge in Palestine. Maybe some or many Palestinian workers did offer such solidarity. I don’t know the history. But I also know that as a communist I would have entered Palestine not as a coloniser but with a communist political programme – the same programme of Jewish/Palestinian proletarian unity that I advocate today. In the 1930s this would have meant unity against the Zionist leadership, against the absentee Palestinian landlord class, against the Mufti of Jerusalem and his open support for Hitler and against the British occupying forces. What would you have done my anti-Zionist friends?

Imagine there are no more lies

The slanders directed against Zionism, either directly or by default, are endless. It is impossible to deal with them all. But here are just more. Some nationalists actually did support the Nazis politically. Others fought alongside them. Even others were party directly to the holocaust. However these were not Zionists! The most vicious and most powerful was undoubtedly the Ustasa movement which ran the puppet State of Croatia (and many of today’s Croatian leadership continue to act as Ustasa apologists). And of course there was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and his followers. Al-Husayni, a leading Palestinian nationalist, met with Hitler personally during the holocaust. He was instrumental in forming specifically Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans. The largest was probably the Bosnian 13th “Handschar” division of over 21,000 men. The list of his crimes appears infinite. But the point I am making here is that none of this perfidy has ever called into question the inherent justice of Croatian, Bosnian or Palestinian nationalism. And I’m certainly not arguing that it should. – as far as I’m concerned nationalism can stand or fall on its own terms and these obviously need not be fascistic. What I am arguing is that the double standards at play are fantastic. Zionism is condemned as illegitimate for somehow supporting the Nazi enterprise – which it never did. Other nationalisms, or other nationalist leaders, which did support the holocaust are continued to be seen as legitimate.

And this brings me to another highly dubious point. I am being told more and more that it is politically incorrect to designate this Nazi genocide of the Jews as “the” holocaust. Instead it should simply be called “a” holocaust. Personally for myself I do not mind whether you use a “the” or a “a”. All that I am concerned about is the murder of six million Jews. I am well aware, and equally concerned about, other genocides both under Nazi Germany (of countless gypsies, trade unionists, lesbians, gay men, communists, disabled people….), historically (death through the slave trade, deliberate genocide of the American Indian, Turkish massacre of the Armenians, Stalinist atrocities…) and unto the present (Rwanda, Somalia…). Historically Jews themselves have suffered a thousand years of European pogroms many of which may legitimately be referred to as holocausts (where does one finish and the other start?).

So for myself language is irrelevant. Except the challenge to language can itself be highly political. And what concerns me about the emphasis on referring to what happened to Jewry under the Nazis as “a” holocaust is the hidden accusation that Zionists have somehow magnified, exaggerated, inflated (as though any of this were possible) what happened to Jews in order to justify the creation of an illegitimate entity – Israel. At the same time this attack on language seems to be suggesting that Jews are claiming for themselves a unique victimhood. Well, for me, this simply reproduces the dark and medieval image of the “squealing” Jew. I would personally be prepared to argue that what happened to Jewry under fascism was pretty unique. But so what? The idea that Jews have been politically or genetically programmed for victimhood is just another myth. As a Jew I also know something else. Ask all Jews in the world whether they would surrender Israel if retrospectively the events under Nazism could be undone -if the/a holocaust could miraculously be undone. I bet most, maybe all, would gladly give up Israel. But the/a holocaust did happen. And therefore so did Israel.

Maybe I’m a dreamer

The Chairperson has passed me a note – “wind up, only 5 minutes left”. I’ve seen a thousand in my lifetime. Anyhow this debate is only imaginary. But I’ll conclude on two points which I hope are provocative (what’s the point of exchanging truisms?). First I take it as axiomatic that the state of Israel would not have come into existence without the holocaust – it was the holocaust that legitimised (vindicated) its need. And its need was as a refuge from anti-Semitism. Of course (and unfortunately) most Jews who sought refuge were not communists. Workers’ unity has not (yet) materialised. The Palestinians have suffered a terrible wrong. However this terrible wrong should not conceal another truth. This is the uniquely contradictory nature of Zionism – unique because as far as I can see it exists no where else. In fact Zionism contains within itself its own contradiction. And it is this contradiction which renders it such an emotional as well as political firecracker (I know of no other political area where the emotions get raised so high on both sides). On the one hand Zionism is undoubtedly, unquestionably racist towards the Palestinians. Which is why I’m an anti-Zionist. On the other hand it is seen, and I think correctly seen, by most Jews as anti-racist. It is anti-racist in that it was and is a response by Jews to extricate themselves from the racism of anti-Semitism. Maybe not your way of fighting racism. Maybe not mine. But anti-racist nonetheless. And the majority of Jews in the world today view Israel as a “bolt-hole” were Nazism to arise again. It is in response to this political contradiction that I have started to assume the somewhat novel self-description of being an “anti-Zionist Zionist”. I am an anti-Zionist like no other (maybe I exaggerate) in that I refuse to accept anti-Zionist myths and untruths. I am a Zionist unlike no other (here I don’t exaggerate) in that I am opposed to the state of Israel. The only way out of this contradiction – a political contradiction not one of my personal pathology – is the unity of Palestinian/Jewish workers within Palestine/Israel combined with a relentless fight against anti-Semitism internationally.

My final point is to emphasise my role as a traitor. I no longer see any point in being Jewish. And I aim to give up on it. Not that I feel bad about being a Jew. Just the opposite. Rather I want to become the sort of Jew the anti-Semites warn us against. The cosmopolitan of no fixed identity. And I hope you are willing to surrender your own tribal/ethnic/nationalist/religious identities and allegiances. Join me as a traitor to your own traditions. Become cosmopolitans!

Steve Cohen, 2006

Editorial - The State We’re In

“What’s wrong with taxes?” – We were confronted with this sentiment by a large majority of those attending our workshop session at this year’s climate camp on Blackheath Common. To us it seemed a bizarre and surprising question coming from many of those who had come to an event that saw itself explicitly in the footsteps of the Wat Tyler-led anti-tax rebellion on the same heath some 650 years earlier.

Let’s get this straight. There is nothing wrong per se with fighting for state concessions. The fact that an autonomously-controlled no-go area for police was maintained was essentially a concession to the camp’s ability to mobilise public anti-police sentiment. But the arguments brought forward by the pro-state campers were cynical at best: there is no comparison to be made between the demand for a minimum wage, for example, and the hope for higher taxes (on us, not the rich), population surveillance and control, or carbon permits. The former is a result of workers’ struggles for better living conditions and is not contradictory to an eventual fundamental break with state control. The latter is essentially the self-flagellating demand to punish and manage the behaviour of the majority for the crisis that is capitalism.

The question that we really wanted to ask at our workshop (which ended up being more of an open floor discussion with over 150 in attendance) was: how do we respond, and move forward, when state actors are recuperating our concerns and ideas for the restructuring and strengthening of a new green era of capitalism? The overwhelmingly state-centred response from the floor only confirmed the need to develop our understanding of the relationship between the reproduction of capitalism (many if not all participants self identified as anti-capitalists) and the functions of the state.

Top-down government intervention may be the fastest way of reducing CO2 emissions. However considering the intrinsic necessity of capitalism to reproduce wealth from the exploitation of human and environmental resources and the role of the state to manage and maintain this, all calls on the state to lighten the load on the environment, will inevitably find the burden falling onto the human.

If we only define our radicalism through our marginalisation from the mainstream, what happens when the status quo aligns itself with our position? Warning of the ‘recuperation’ of ‘radical’ positions has weaved not only through environmental protest (consider Ed Miliband’s “keep on protesting”) but also through the anti-fascist movement. Maybe this says something about the hegemony, flexibility and innovation of capitalism and the state to respond to political, economic and environmental events but it also highlights the weakness of the anti-authoritarian left.

What do we do when the mainstream of society – as in the run up to the Euro elections – suddenly discovers that BNP-bashing is a vote winner? Are we allowing liberal anti-fascism to take the edge off a more radical, anti-capitalist fight against neo-fascist and nationalist-populist movements and parties? The broad mobilisation of Hope not Hate, for example, does not speak to the growth and strength of the anti-fascist movement in the UK but rather reflects a ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ approach in the place of radical political analysis.

The question is whether anti-fascism in itself carries a revolutionary perspective. Or, if not, what distinguishes radical and liberal responses to racist and fascist agitation? What is certain is that we need to come up with an emancipatory response to those who take the BNP or the climate crisis seriously only because they pose a threat to their image of capitalist democracy.

Rather than building a movement from sand with state concessions that will inevitably crumble we have to develop our politics, be bold in our positions, and imagine the un-imaginable.

'Romantic visions of pure indigenous communities - barriers to a radical ecology' - Russ Hiedalman

Everyone from the Conservatives to Labour, the BNP and the Green Party claim to have the most rational solutions for reducing CO2 emissions in the next 10 years (or however many it is until the end of the world). Considering these dire options this article looks at some of the barriers to a radical ecology that would place social and environmental justice at the top of the agenda. In particular, this article looks at three strands of political thinking, the left Greens (e.g. the Green party), the deep ecology movement and the BNP. It investigates the way these three broad groups use the words “indigenous community” a term that has become increasingly loaded with political meaning. From the housing estates of Stoke -on -Trent to the Amazon rainforest, the term is used to describe a variety of peoples: but what does it mean and what does its usage tell us about those who use it?

A romantic vision of small indigenous communities is overwhelmingly evident in a lot of green left thinking. Slogans like “small is beautiful” and “think global act local” reflect this. The deep ecologists also share this idea but in addition to this have an anti-humanist approach that has culminated in extreme views such as those held by the Finish activist Karrlo Linkola. For them pre- industrial society, even the hunter gatherer existence, is the pinnacle of human existence and they press for a return to small self contained communities that live in harmony with nature. The Greens don’t have a monopoly on these romantic visions of ‘pure’ communities. In the UK the BNP extends its usage to include the white British working class. The romanticised notion of ‘indigenous’ and ‘rooted’ communities is evidently connected historically to German romanticism (as epitomised by Wagner) and eventually fascism, and similarly for them the British working class are something to be lionised and protected against the threats of modernism and globalisation.

Practically these communities, whether in the UK or abroad, are all based upon a myth. For the Green left it seemed to grow out of Marx’s and Engels’ view that indigenous peoples often practised a “primitive communism” that showed market relations are not inevitable. However the reality of these pre-industrial societies are quite out of step with the modernist values that Marx espoused such as equal rights for women. The left often seem only too happy to tolerate in these imagined societies conditions that they would not want for themselves.

For the BNP the myth of Britishness is based on the idea of a pure white race made up of “Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse folk communities of Britain”, what they refer to as “indigenous Caucasian” In reality Britain is a mixture of ethnicities brought together by a history of invasion, conquest and peaceful migration (a recent report in the Daily Star stated that Nick Griffin could trace his ancestors back to gypsies). These imagined indigenous communities are treated like endangered species. The BNP’s Land and People website contains a number of stories under the the heading of ‘eco- threats’ that are often about the extinction of indigenous British species (e.g. the grey squirrel) due to the influx of a foreign species. The left displays similar attitudes; treating and sentimentalising human Amazonian inhabitants in much the same way as the animals that dwell along side them.

For all three groups the extinction of species is one manifestation of the belief that we now live in an apocalyptic dystopia bought about by corrupting outside influences. For all three the main culprits are agents of capital. The World Rainforest Movement and Survival International are clear that the threat to indigenous communities in the Amazon are “western multinationals”. Some fascists are more specific blaming globalisation, specifically ‘finance capital’ (i.e. an international Jewish Conspiracy). “Think global, act local” is undoubtedly within the BNP ideology, where globalisation and the resulting mass migration and ‘diluting of culture’ is responded to with local solutions.

For the greens (both the left and the deep greens) the apocalypse is manifest in many other forms: from a move away from organic farming (the petro-chemicals will kill the land and hence people when it is no-longer able to provide us with food) to climate change (humans have altered the atmosphere to the extent that it can no longer sustain us). For the BNP the former is true but not the latter. Nick Griffin recently told radio 5 live “ that global warming is essentially a hoax. It is being exploited by the liberal elite as a means of taxing and controlling us and the real crisis is peak oil.” Instead they also see it manifest in immigration which is destroying not only the English countryside but also English culture. Rather than rejecting the system at the root of environmental degradation and advocating for a socially just future both ask for limits on human existence- whether in the form of taxes or immigration controls.

This idea of cultural degradation is also a concern for the Greens. The “Clone Town Britain” and Tescopoly campaigns are good examples of how they hark back to a romantic vision of the past, to a nation of corner shops and small artisans. So it seems that the idea of purity and Englishness also leaks into Green thinking. Environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth states “As myself and a growing number of other people feel that our ‘English’ identity matters. A nation is a people who feel they are bound together by a culture, a history, a language, a homeland (in most cases) - in other words, a shared sense of self.” Evidently it is not just the BNP that are obsessed with a romantic (and historically absurd) notion of English ethnic identity and culture merged with concerns for the preservation of the environment.

What I’m not trying to do here is exaggerate the rhetorical similarities between sections of the green left and far-right parties such as the BNP, however it is important to explore why these similarities manifest and to ask: how do we distinguish ourselves from such positions. The problem is that all three positions as outlined above believe that our communities have simply become too big and as a consequence of this unsustainable. The BNP say that the environmental damage done to the UK could be reduced if we stopped immigration (reducing their criticism of globalisation to an attack on national ‘others’). Their website states “Britain is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and our population is increasing, due entirely to immigration… independent environmental organisations believe that Britain’s population needs to be significantly reduced. Our immigration policies will achieve this.” The British National Party also argues that “our countryside is vanishing beneath a tidal wave of concrete” and argue that “the biggest reason all these new houses are needed is immigration. One-third of all new homes are for immigrants and asylum-seekers”, “Britain will become a tarmac desert”. They attack the Green party’s stance on immigration and claim their more liberal approach shows they are not true environmentalists. However environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth has similarly described Britain as “a small, overcrowded and overdeveloped country”. While an organisation closely connected to Jonathan Porritt, The Optimum Population Trust, argues that mass immigration is causing environmental collapse. Mark Lynas has said greens must now openly address ‘rising levels of immigration’ which are contributing to ‘urban overcrowding and rural over-development’. This logic has also been applied globally, owing in some way to an emphasis on global warming. People will be polluting the sacred earth whether they do it in England, Germany or Angola. At the extreme end of this some deep greens have advocated a global reduction in population (Karrlo Linkola has even talked of his admiration for Stalin and the Nazi holocaust). With this comes an elitist attitude. They are the vanguard, the enlightened minority who can deliver the masses from themselves and also the belief that nature will judge us in the end and destroy the human race if we don’t change our evil ways.

The logical consequence of all of these arguments is the diversion of attention from the root causes of climate change and the shifting of attention to easier targets (whether that’s migrants, supermarkets, the rich…). This ‘foreshortened’ analysis of capitalism and it’s inherently destructive mechanisms is evident in the apparent attitude that indigenous communities cannot, and will not, repeat the mistakes made by the ‘bad humans’, those that have caused this dystopian world. Ironically some groups seeking to ‘protect’ people and natural habitats have attempted to do this by introducing western capitalist models to their traditional ways of living. The Centre for Amazon Community Ecology aims to “develop the sustainable harvest and marketing of non-timber forest products” in order to preserve the community. I’m not sure how turning social relationships into value based ones will “strengthen its traditional communities” or ensure that they don’t succumb to the very thing that is responsible for environmental destruction, capitalism. Again what is overwhelmingly evident here is a ‘we know best how to protect you’ syndrome.

This failure to break with capitalism, the very thing they blame for the desecration of sacred communities, is shared by the Greens and also by the BNP. Neither have managed to display any radical anti-capitalist views, both are essentially reformist and the BNP reactionary. From big capitalism and multinationals to ’small is beautiful’ and nationalisation. In the end it is safe to say that the three strands of political thinking are very different. However they do have a strong belief in a dystopian present that tends to equate big and global with capitalism, which in turn is equated with environmental destruction. Consequently all are guilty of upholding some form of indigenous, small community above all other form of social organisation, whatever their geographic location or racial extraction might be (however this romantic vision only extends so far as they attempt to guide and change the ‘pure’ communities to fit with their own elitist narrative) and, despite intentions, we have seen what the consequences of that can and will be.

Anti-fascism in the 21st Century - Phil Dickens

In Britain and Europe today, organised fascist groups have been gaining strength and popularity on a scale unseen since the end of the Second World War. A majority of European countries now have fascists elected to government, they form a significant coalition in the European Parliament, and their appeals to popular racism on issues like immigration are easy fodder for mainstream politicians determined to push the agenda even further to the right.

The important question, for any dedicated social activist, then, is how do we stop this?

The fascist agenda quite clearly runs contrary to the goals of liberty, equality, community, and solidarity that are at the heart of labour, socialist, and anti-capitalist organising. Thus, a strong anti-fascist movement is vital to the class struggle and to grass-roots community activism.

The rising tide

The sheer scale of the rising tide of fascism across Europe is startling. To give just a few examples, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) rose to power in Switzerland on the back of an openly-racist “black sheep” anti-immigration campaign. In Greece, the police have been openly collaborating with fascist paramilitary group Golden Dawn to wage a war of terror against migrants and left-wing workers’ groups. In Italy, the government has revived the Blackshirts as part of its vicious pogrom against the Roma people. Both Germany and Russia are experiencing an unprecedented level of neo-Nazi thuggery.

In Britain, traditionally the strongest bastion of anti-fascist sentiment in Europe, the British National Party (BNP) have made leaps and bounds in local council elections, as well as having their leader as an MEP. Meanwhile, militant groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) and Casuals United have taken over the mantle of street violence that the BNP have at least officially abandoned.

The consequences of such a rise are apparent for all to see. Amnesty International has pointed to a “growing trend of discrimination against Roma people across Europe,” from recent attacks in South Belfast to Government discrimination in Slovakia and fascist marches through Roma areas in the Czech Republic. Every so often, anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism will spike in France, among other places. And across the continent, attacks on Arabs and anti-Muslim sentiment have reached fever pitch.

Faced with such consequences, it is clear how anti-fascists must respond. What we need, quite simply, is solid organisation willing to take the fight to the fascists on any ground that they choose. If they have groups of thugs amassing on the streets, then we must be prepared to take the streets back from them and stand up as a physical opposition to their violence and intimidation. If they hold rallies and marches, then we must drown them out with our own rallies and marches. If they attempt to organise, then we must fight this by dispersing their meetings and disrupting their calls to arms. If they hand out leaflets, then we must oppose them with our own leafleting campaigns, combating their lies and fear-mongering whilst making sure that their message of hate does not spread. And, most importantly, we must be ready to combat their ideas with our own.

Every piece of misinformation must be exposed by way of facts and reason, and all their claims to “credibility” and “legitimacy” shown up for what they truly are. This is particularly important at election times as, though undoubtedly there are a myriad of problems with the status quo, what the fascists represent is a thousand times worse.

For the most part, the above describes tactics that are already in use by anti-fascist organisations. However, there are some serious flaws that need to be addressed. For instance, whilst groups such as Antifa are firmly rooted in grass-roots, non-hierarchical structures, the bigger anti-fascist groups such as Unite Against Fascism (UAF) are extremely hierarchical, and the decisions at the top aren’t influenced by the opinions of the supporters on the ground.

This, to my mind, is serious folly. What this means, in essence, is that UAF are completely detached from the ordinary people whose lives are affected by fascism every day. They hold rallies and protests where the destination is set by upper-echelon planners after negotiations with police, with no input at all from the bottom, and they release statements to the press. As far as serious activism and organising goes, however, their achievements are non-existent.
This kind of “anti-fascism,” then, is precisely of the kind that we need to avoid. One cannot wave a placard whilst hemmed in by police, shout out a few chants, and buy a copy of the Socialist Worker, and call it activism. It is not. Quite simply, performing this kind of action whilst remaining detached from the local community is not only ineffective but counter productive.

Addressing the roots of fascism

Anybody can see the consequences of organised fascist activity and know instantly how to respond to it. What makes a successful movement, however, is also looking towards the roots of such sentiment and trying to address that.
Fascism did not emerge one day from a vacuum and nor is it populated solely by people who are simply irrational racists the world would be better off without. No, a popular and growing fascist movement quite clearly contains a significant number of quite ordinary working class people who have for one reason or another thrown their lot in with the far-right. Unless we want to bow to snobbery, we cannot simply write this off as proof that the “lower classes” are all simply vile racists, we must begin to address the concerns of these people.

Unfortunately, an awful lot of people who oppose fascism on an intellectual level do move towards that conclusion, and fascists prey upon that fact. So, when somebody says that we need immigrants because “poor people are all lazy, ignorant, benefit-cheating scum” they are able to use this to their advantage and appeal to yet more people. We must reject this tactic and see it for the thinly-veiled class hatred that it is.

What we need, instead, is education. At the core of any workable organising effort is a group of dedicated activists doing their utmost to educate people about the problems that need to be overcome, about the importance of organising as a community and networking with similar groups, about the realities that we’re faced with, and so on. This involves going into schools, colleges, workplaces, and local communities to find people willing to hear our message. We have to spread the word on what fascism is, why it is a bad thing, how we oppose it, and what the alternatives are.

This cannot be done through sloganeering, either. Whether the audience is students, workers, or concerned local people, they are not stupid, and they will not see your point of view by being patronised or by having a slogan drilled into their heads. Fascists are gaining support by playing on and twisting legitimate grievances, and the only way to combat that is by addressing both the distortions and the underlying worries openly and honestly.

To take a more common example, it is quite clear that immigrants are not “stealing our jobs,” as fascists claim. However, what is happening is that corporations are exploiting immigrants and turning the native and foreign elements of the working class against each other in order to maximise profit. We need to get this message out, and to show that the solution isn’t to simply “kick them out.” A far more realistic and viable way of combating this problem is to work with immigrants, to bring them into trade union struggles, and to work together to fight the real cause of our problems – corporate capitalism.

That’s just one example, but it’s quite clear that anti-fascism needs to link into social activism: labour organisation, anti-capitalist organisation, local health and social programs for those abandoned by the government, education, and the like. In other words, engaging with local communities on issues they’re concerned about.

Anti-fascists also have to be careful with how we campaign during elections. In the first instance, we should not overstate the importance of voting. Voting is neither the prime nor the most effective way of combating fascism. It has its uses, particularly when it can be used to help keep the extreme right out of power, but it also has its limits.

For example, we cannot be seen simply as another arm of the campaign for the ruling parties, as a lot of people are – quite justifiably – disillusioned with them. To take the recent European Parliament elections as a case in point, one of the main follies of the British anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate was to involve Labour Party MPs, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in what they were doing.

Particularly as one of the main ways in which the BNP won support was by portraying themselves as the “alternative” to the Labour government, this was a grave error. New Labour have, during the last decade, continued the Conservative policies that entrenched private power and annihilated the organised working class. Hence, utilising them for a campaign will only serve to alienate ordinary people from the anti-fascist cause.

What we need to be doing, instead, is countering the idea (put about by the government as much as by the BNP) that fascism is radically different from the incumbent ruling class. Rather, the likes of the BNP merely represent a logical extreme of mainstream politics. It is the government which has destroyed the labour movement, wedded private power ever tighter to the state, waged a vicious war on migrants with internment and forced deportations, and used race to turn the working class in on itself. The role of the fascists on the fringes has been to help push the government agenda even further rightward whilst providing a convenient foil to mask this fact.

The folly of sloganeering

A common mistake of anti-fascist groups is that they play into this deliberate misconception through their use of sloganeering as a campaign tool. As an example, take the favourite slogan of UAF; “the BNP is a Nazi Party – smash the BNP.”

Undoubtedly, the sentiment expressed within the slogan is true. The BNP are fascists, utilising extremely authoritarian nationalism to promote a world order in which state and corporate power are absolute and intertwined. Their manifesto includes a pledge to “restore our economy and land to British [state] ownership” as a part of their “third position” economics, which echo Mussolini’s statement in The Doctrine of Fascism that “Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State.”

At the same time, the party goes beyond fascism to Nazism with their ethno-nationalist ideology, opposing “miscegenation” (race-mixing) and a “multi-racist” society in favour of the one composed of “the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed prior to 1948,” as outlined in the party’s constitution. Even if this is achieved by expulsion rather than extermination, as was Hitler’s original intention, this amounts to nothing less than ethnic cleansing.

It is true, then, to declare that “the BNP are a Nazi party,” but what exactly does chanting such a slogan achieve? In my own opinion, the answer is nothing at all. Presented with the evidence, from the party’s own constitution and policy statements, the public could very easily conclude that the BNP are Nazis and fascists. But whilst the BNP are framing their ideology in sophisticated polemics which address the concerns and fears, if grossly distorted for doctrinal purposes, of ordinary people, chanting “the BNP are Nazis” only serves to put people off.

Parties such as the BNP are seen, falsely, as offering a radical alternative to a mainstream political system that has annihilated working class culture and marginalised great swathes of the population. If all anti-fascists are doing is chanting and saying “no, they’re bad” without offering our own grass-roots alternative, then we will be seen merely as cranks and we will get nowhere.
If we are to present a credible alternative to organised fascism for ordinary people, it must also be an alternative to what is on offer in the mainstream. Here we have to be extremely honest. People have to know that there’s no quick fix to the problems that we all face if they’re not to vote for fascists offering exactly that. They have to know that the electoral system and reform have their limits, as history tells us. If we take any successful progressive movement of the past, whether it be civil rights, the suffragettes, the abolitionists, or anybody else, then we can see this. They used votes and petitions and so forth, but they also broke the law and were sent to jail for struggling. They used sit-ins, occupations, blockades, strikes, and virtually every other means at their disposal. Had they not, then we certainly wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms that we do today. So, yes, there is a hard fight ahead, but it can achieve real results and certainly offers greater promise than voting for or supporting fascists.

Opportunity and danger

We have reached a point, right now, where people are disillusioned with the status quo. They can see the effect that a culture of greed and selfish pursuit of profit, fostered under the dominant corporate-capitalist system, has on society.

Workers are losing their jobs so that their bosses can maintain profits in the recession. Billions of pounds of public money have been poured into keeping the banks afloat as they repossess homes at unprecedented rates. Social atomisation brought on by corporate dominance of the public sphere has led to spiralling crime rates and an entire generation marginalised by the system.
Such a situation offers both opportunity and danger to those struggling for serious social change. A population this disaffected by the status quo can go one of two ways, providing of course that a resurgent capitalist class doesn’t quickly reassert control through the propaganda system. Either they can be mobilised into mass popular movements that will challenge the injustices we see all around us and make a real, positive difference to the world that we live in, or they will turn to fascism.

At the moment, it is the latter course that is winning out. Instead of seeing the chance to organise the entire working class and fight against a system that has brought our society to its knees, they are turning on immigrants and minority communities. Instead of creating a real alternative to the disastrous policies offered up by a government in thrall to private power, they are voting for parties that will strengthen the ties between state and corporate power. Instead of fighting the disastrous division of the working class along racial lines, they are further withdrawing into their own, atomised racial “community.” The people are choosing fascism over activism.

This is precisely why anti-fascism has to be tied to class struggle and social activism to be truly effective. We have to make a serious effort to mobilise the population in a positive way and show them that there is a real alternative to the problems we currently face. Otherwise, all we are doing is driving away one fringe group for the benefit of a ruling class already enacting some of their worst policies.

Phil Dickens is an anarchist, anti-fascist, and trade unionist from Liverpool, England. He writes regularly about class struggle, racism, fascism, and imperialism, and his blogs can be found at http://truth-reason-liberty.blogspot.com and http://propertyistheft.wordpress.com

Climate Camp and Us - Anarchist Federation

At the 2008 Climate Camp in Kingsnorth an open letter was circulated by anti-capitalist campers raising concerns that the movement was increasingly being influenced by state-led approaches to tackling climate change. A more developed version was later published by Shift magazine. The original argued broadly that the camp should adopt anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian principles and objectives.

The 2009 Climate Camp, sited this year in Blackheath, London, saw continued debate over the future direction of the struggle against climate change. As a part of this, anarchist and libertarian communist activists hosted a debate on what we saw as a growing trend towards Green authoritarianism within the movement. Key concerns discussed included the assumption within some sections of the movement that the state can be used as a tool in combating climate change, and the general danger of the state co-opting the green movement and stripping it of its radical potential. While the ecological crisis is a pressing and potentially catastrophic issue for our class, it should also be understood as one in a series of crises, economic and political, that are created by the very nature of the capitalist system.

A lengthy debate followed amongst campers in attendance. The points that were most commonly raised were:

The possibility of using the state as a strategic tool for our movement,
The urgency of climate change, and the time scale we have to work with,
That idea that grassroots activity and state-led solutions may work in harmony,
The need for some form of coercion to promote lifestyle change and
What “our” (i.e. anti-authoritarian) alternatives are.

Following on from this debate, we felt it was important to work out what place we, as anarchist communist militants, can have inside this movement. It has become increasingly obvious that, despite a commitment to direct action and horizontal organisation, anti-statism is by no means a widely held principle inside this movement. The Climate Camp is moving further and further away from the radical, anti-capitalist politics of the organisations it grew out of, such as Earth First!, the 90s road protests, or Reclaim the Streets. While this movement has equipped itself with the skills (direct action, media relations etc.) and the knowledge (scientific analysis) to intervene in the climate change debate, it has not really worked out what its future political direction will be. The direct action, climate change movement has moved over the years from being fairly politically homogeneous, to being quite wide and diverse. While this has been positive in terms of building mass support, this growth has not been accompanied by any real, meaningful commitment to political debate. The result is that it is action against climate change (whatever that may be), not any sense of shared aims and values as a community of activists, that is holding our movement together. With this year’s camp having less of a focus on mass action, the real contradictions inside the movement are starting to show.

This is most strongly shown, as ecological campaigning is starting to spread into the workplace, in the wholly uncritical way that many Green activists have adopted the strategy and tactics of the traditional Left. Calls for nationalisation, eco-lobbying and work within the trade union bureaucracies have been widely accepted as legitimate tools in our struggle. Without an analysis of capitalism, and an understanding of the historical successes and failures of the workers’ movement, we leave ourselves exposed to recuperation by existing political organisations and elites (whether from Right or Left). With the possibility of a “Green capitalism” on the horizon, we’re uncertain how committed many activists will be in the face of a potentially carbon-reduced, but still capitalist and therefore unstable and exploitative, economy.

The “anti-capitalism” that is common amongst camp participants is one that objects to capitalism in its excesses, i.e. in the destruction of the planet, not in its everyday functioning. This was particularly obvious at the discussion on “anti-capitalism ten years after Seattle” - while this should have been one of the more radical, politically sophisticated discussions, the speakers still tended to present a view that saw capitalism as a system that only really harms the most super-exploited portions of the “Third World/Global South”’s population, and anti-capitalism as a matter of exotic, idealised people on the other side of the world fighting back. In this worldview, the role of activists in Europe (i.e. everyone who was actually there for the discussion) was simply to provide verbal solidarity with the Bolivians and South Africans in their fight against capitalism, not to take practical action right here and right now for our own class interests. The class nature of climate camp has been much discussed, and we should be careful to avoid falling into simplistic sociological views of class. But at the same time it’s hard to imagine anyone who’s had to deal with the miserable reality of working-class life for many people in Britain talking about anti-capitalism as if it was simply a process of cheering for the good guys in Asia or South America, and failing to see that any meaningful, effective anti-capitalist movement must be rooted in the struggle to win control over our own lives.

We feel the movement is at a cross roads. Much of the radical base has slipped away from the camp and our ideas are being lost. This is reflected most strongly in the changed dynamics and culture in this year’s camp. A lack of mass action and the “softly, softly” approach of the police meant that some aspects of this year’s camp resembled a festival more than a political gathering. The debates and discussions in the neighbourhoods were largely concerned with the anti-social behaviour of campers on site towards other campers. There was even some support for the idea of allowing the police to enter our autonomous space in the spirit of future “good relations”. Again, this in itself shows the naivety of many campers, and the narrow social base from which the camp was drawn: no-one who’s had much experience of the police (whether they’ve encountered them in the course of political activism, ecological direct action, or just through the experience of being an ethnic minority or “underclass” youth) could be taken in by the police’s strategy towards the camp, which essentially amounted to a well-thought-out PR campaign. In truth, the only real political work that has come out of this camp is the “eco-lobbying” of the media team, aided by spectacular “direct” action geared towards generating media commentary (in truth, many of this year’s actions were not direct in any meaningful sense of the word, just purely liberal protests). These are also roles that are routinely filled by those from high income backgrounds. The voice of Climate Camp is overwhelmingly white and privileged.

It is true that anti-statism is not a stated principle of the camp, but we believe that true anti-capitalism cannot be separated from anti-statism. The state is a fundamental part of capitalism. As anarchist communists, we reject state structures and argue that they are incapable of either preventing climate change or creating a better world. Instead, we focus on inclusive, participatory solutions that work from the grass roots up, educating each other about the alternatives that we can build today, and by extension how we see an anarchist-communist society operating. The goal of stopping climate change is vitally important, but so is radically changing society, and we believe that you cannot do one without the other. The state has never played a progressive role in society. Its purpose is to secure, maintain and promote the power of the ruling class. Where radical movements have arisen (in workers struggles, suffrage movements etc), the state has fought and repressed them. Where the state can no longer just rely on violent oppression, it incorporates some of the movement’s demands into its existing structures in order to strengthen them. Past radical movements have been recuperated in the same way, and there is a very real danger of the Climate Camp being turned from a genuine movement for social change into a lobbying tool for state reform.

With regards to the climate crisis, estimates for the time we have left vary from 10 years to 100 months, 5 years, or years in the past depending on who you talk to. The one thing we agree on is that time is of the essence. There is a broad assumption amongst our critics that the state is able to act more efficiently than the anarchist “alternative” we are proposing. The simplest argument to raise here is that the state, capitalism and its way of managing society have gotten us into this mess, so it seems unlikely that they’ll get us out of it. Their way of running the world has landed us in climate chaos, with the logic of profit and the market economy coming before all other concerns. The state’s purpose is to secure the status of the ruling class and protect their profits against any potential threat, to make sure that the smooth running of the economy is not disrupted. We have to raise the question of whether this institution will take the drastic actions we need to combat climate change? Is it able to act against the capitalists who hold its reins?

The origin of Climate Camp’s politics are in radical direct action to inspire and demonstrate how a more ecological society can work. The only way a climate crisis can be averted is by radically changing society. Only by a conscious effort of every person to act more responsibly can we change how we operate, how we produce, consume (or more importantly NOT “consume”) and live. But we believe the only way to accomplish this is from below, by inspiration, example and education. Not by taxation, involving the state in our lives and encouraging them to monitor our actions. How can we possibly preach the need for responsibility and reduced consumption whilst with its two hands the state continues to feed capitalism’s excesses and beat down any alternative movements? Likewise, it is naive to believe that top-down state control and bottom-up social movements should be working side by side to combat climate change. Suggesting that state control can co-exist with a movement that advocates radical social change is not only counter-productive, it is completely irrational. The state doesn’t want us to change, it certainly doesn’t want us to stop being good happy consumers who perpetually buy new cars, shop at super-markets and keep voting for things to stay the same. If ultimately all we want is better laws and state intervention on climate change, then why participate in a movement that openly breaks the law and challenges the power of the state?

Despite all this, there were also some very positive developments within the camp. The involvement of campers in the recent Vestas dispute and the Tower Hamlets strike showed a commitment to breaking out of the Green activist ghetto. The importance of workplace organisation as a critical tool in anti-capitalist struggle is gaining greater credibility, and this is the direction we need to take our struggle if we are to expand our movement, generalise our demands and take our place as part of a continuing culture of working class resistance. We have no doubt that anarchist communists belong inside the ecological movement. The positive examples displayed by the organisation of the camp and its decision making structure are important. Climate Camp potentially represents a useful tool for workers in struggle, helping to bring the lessons of collective living, horizontal organising and direct action to a class that is being battered by economic recession. The future political direction of the camp is key. We need to expand the debate and clarify the direction of our movement. When political conservatives, corporations, and even fascists are “turning green”, it is no longer enough to avoid debate and declare we must simply do “everything we can” to avert the coming crisis. At the end of our speech we posed a question to the Climate Camp and we feel that collectively we are still far from reaching a definitive answer.

Do we want to simply change the way that the current economy is managed or do we want to build a truly radical society? Do we want a bigger slice of the cake, or do we want the whole fucking bakery?

A perspective paper produced by members of the Anarchist Federation within climate camp 2009. www.afed.org.uk

Interview with German anti-fascist group TOP Berlin

In the UK, we hear a lot about a strong autonomous Antifa movement in Germany. Could you give us a bit of an idea how this has come about?

The autonomous Antifa is part of the radical left movement which developed following 1968. After the protests of the early 1970s had faded, the radical left seemed to be in a dead-end. A large part of the left occupied itself with the debate over the armed struggle of the RAF and other armed groups, as well as with their conditions of imprisonment. Another part organized in orthodox communist splinter groups. Although strong in numbers, by the early 1980s both approaches had lost contact to societal discourse and struggles.

The autonomous movement reacted to that with a changed concept of politics. Change should be begun now, instead of waiting for a far-off revolution to take place. The more anarchist outlook of the ‘autonome’ led to a relocation of focus from class struggle to the sphere of reproduction. Therefore struggles for adequate housing, over local planning issues and against large projects like the construction of Frankfurt Airport and a large Mercedes testing-road in Northwest Germany became important. The struggle against organised Nazis had always played a role for the radical left. Since the foundation of the NPD in 1969 and its electoral success in the following years there had been protests against its conferences and other events. An autonomous antifascism could follow on this tradition.

Organised neo-Nazis were seen as posing a threat to the living conditions of those on the radical left, who felt that their occupied houses and autonomous youth centres were under threat. In addition, the struggle against the neo-Nazis was understood to be a revolutionary struggle as the Nazis were perceived as the storm-troopers of the pre-fascist Federal Republic. This system would make use of the Nazis to suppress social and radical left movements. In the 1980s it was possible to achieve wide mobilisation with this analysis. In the early 1990s, however, as a wave of pogrom-like riots and attacks on asylum seekers swept through the country, the radical left found that with this analysis it was not in a position to do anything against it. Racist and fascist ideas seemed to be held by a large part of the population.

Under the impression that the autonomous movement lacked the ability to intervene, many activists founded small autonomous Antifa groups. In order to combine their potentials and become capable of action of a national level, in 1992 they founded the ‘Antifaschistische Aktion-Bundesweite Organisation’ (AABO) and a little later the ‘Bundesweites Antifatreffen’ (BAT). The AABO attempted to establish a stable organisation while the BAT aimed purely at creating a network of autonomous groups. Both attempts proved successful in mobilising large numbers of people against the few Nazi marches which took place in the 1990s. Their meaning decreased significantly, however, as nationwide mobilisation against Nazi marches became problematic, due to the sheer number of marches taking place. In addition, analysis hadn’t advanced much further from the 1980s. Antifa was understood as ‘der Kampf ums Ganze’ (‘the struggle against the system as a whole’): by attacking the most reactionary parts of society a blow would be struck against the whole system. This lacking analysis was proved dramatically wrong during the time of the Red-Green coalition.

When racist attacks in Germany peaked in the 1990s the state and police became increasingly active against neo-Nazi groups. In 2000, you had the ‘Antifa-Summer’. What was that?

In 1998 the conservative government fell and was replaced by a coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. This government, unlike the previous government, made the problem of neo-fascist organisation into a political issue, as well as racist and anti-Semitic attitudes in society. Following a failed bombing on a Dusseldorf Synagogue in 2000 came a wave of repression against the organised right. The most important action against the neo-Nazis was the government-initiated attempt to ban the NPD. Although this failed in the end, because too many leading NPD members turned out to be employed by the secret service, the trial led to a series of investigations, confiscations and a large sense of insecurity in the neo-fascist scene. In addition to this, the government pushed through a row of legal changes, which limited the right to demonstrate, banned certain fascist symbols and made it easier for the government to ban organisations which were opposed to the constitution. In the end the government made millions of Euros available for education against racism and anti-Semitism. On a governmental level, the democratic parties in many parts of Germany agreed not to work with representatives of the extreme right-wing parties. The conservative party also often took part in this agreement.

How was the state’s anti-fascism different from that of the Antifa movement? Why was the state suddenly interested in tackling the neo-Nazi problem?

The reasons why the state moved against fascist structures are complex. A major reason is that the government had recognised that it was damaging to the investment climate to have gangs of armed Nazis wandering the streets, or to have fairly openly national socialist parties sitting in the local government. This was especially the case as just at this time foreign investment was urgently needed in East Germany, in order to halt the total decay of the region’s economy.

But also important was that in the time of the Red-Green coalition the German self-identity had changed. While the years after the war were still marked by a denial of guilt, from the 1990s on Auschwitz and National Socialism became an integral component part of the German identity. The responsibility for National Socialism and the Shoah was not only acknowledged but also turned into something which could be utilised for the German identity. The reunited Germany, redeemed from its past misdeeds, and with ‘the experience of two dictatorships’ behind it, could enter the world as a democratic state. In this way the German attack on Yugoslavia during its civil war was justified, as the Serbians were supposedly planning a second Auschwitz for the Kosovans. On the other hand the new German democracy refers to the Eastern Bloc, the ‘second German dictatorship’, to stress the lack of alternatives to the bourgeois capitalist system. In this tense relationship between a newly formed totalitarianism theory and the striving for a good position on the world market stands the new German political outlook. To this also belongs the public memorials to the victims of National Socialism, as well as the German victims of air raids and expulsions in a ‘European history of suffering’. Also belonging to this are the interventions in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, as likewise the German push for the strengthening of the European border regime. And, finally, also belonging to this are the decided measures against neo-Nazis, who threaten the new German self-confidence and the state’s monopoly of violence.

How did radical anti-fascists react to this? Did it strengthen or weaken the movement?

The state’s action against neo-Nazis led the antifascist movement to an identity crisis. If fascist and neo-Nazi groups had up till then been seen as the storm-troopers of the system, who were supposed to suppress social movements on the government’s behalf, now, at the latest, the radical left had to confront the fact that Antifa was not ‘der Kampf ums Ganze’. A part of the radical left denounced the state’s action as hypocritical. It was pointed out that despite the state’s measures against neo-Nazis there remained in society a right-wing consensus. This consensus was supposedly based on a continuity of the concepts of national socialism, which were still virulent in society. This would express itself in the ‘volkisch’ (blood based nationalism) German foreign policy, for example the early recognition of Croatia and the support for the Palestinian cause, as well as in a tendency to historical revisionism. The state’s actions against Nazis were seen as hypocritical as the social structures on which both the German national project and the Nazis were based, were left untouched.

Another part of the antifascist movement accepted that the struggle against fascists offered no revolutionary perspectives and attempted to sharpen their opposition to the system in other ways. In particular the criticism of capitalism came into the foreground. Capitalism was now analysed as a complex network of social relationships, which are structurally prone to crisis. Neo-Nazis provided a negative solution to this inherent tendency of capitalism towards crisis. This solution, however, was based on a mistaken and structurally anti-Semitic analysis of the way capitalism integrates individuals into society and therefore not only had no emancipatory potential but had the potential to create something far worse than bourgeois capitalist society. For this reason neo-Nazis had to be fought, even though this fight had no revolutionary perspectives. These should instead be sought in a confrontation with bourgeois-democratic society.

While the following heavy debates seriously reduced the ability of the radical left to mobilise for years to come, and the resultant insecurity mobbed many antifascists to retire from politics, these tremors opened up the critical examination of the left’s own positions and in the end led to a strengthened theoretical confrontation with the basics of radical left politics.

How, in your group, do you think of anti-fascism now? Did you reconceptualise it to distinguish yourselves from liberal, bourgeois anti-fascism?

TOP Berlin comes out of the tradition of autonomous Antifa groups and still has in this field its greatest potential to mobilise. Accordingly we have intervened in the antifascist movement and taken part in antifascist protests. In the process we have always tried to insist on our own critique of mainstream society. Two examples of this: On 1 May 2008 Nazis demonstrated in Hamburg for ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ (blood based national community’) and against capitalist globalisation. In meetings and texts before the protest, we tried to work out a critique of the volkisch and anti-Semitic positions of the Nazis. In addition, we took part in the direct action against the march in Hamburg. Another mobilisation was against the ‘Anti-Islamisation Congress’ organised by an extreme right-wing party in Cologne, in collaboration with other European extreme right-wing parties. We undertook a nationwide mobilisation with the nationwide communist ‘ums Ganze’ federation, in which TOP Berlin is organised. In articles and in our own congress we tried to work out what role a culturalist understanding of society plays for the German national narrative. With this we wanted to fight not only the thinly masked racism of the extreme right, but also the everyday nationalism of mainstream German society. As well, we presented a criticism of Islamism as a reactionary crisis solution. The ‘ums Ganze’ federation took part in the protests by organising a large demonstration on the eve of the congress.

These two mobilizations display well our approach. We take part in antifascist protests, but try with theoretical content to lay a basic critique and bring this into the movement.

What has that meant practically? Has the focus of your activities changed?

TOP Berlin was only formed in 2007 before the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Therefore our group positions haven’t been affected by the Antifa Summer. But in contrast to its predecessor groups, Kritik und Praxis and Antifaschistische Aktion Berlin, we try to initiate more of our own campaigns, instead of following the fascists’ movements. In 2009 with ums Ganze we have initiated an anti-national campaign with the motto ‘Staat. Nation. Kapital Scheisse. Gegen die Herrschaft der falschen Freiheit’ (‘State. Nation. Capital. Shit. Against the dominance of the false freedom’). As part of this campaign we have published a book on the criticism of the state, organised a series of events on the critique of the nation and called for a nationwide demonstration against the celebrations of the 60th birthday of the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the second half of the year ums Ganze and TOP Berlin will mainly work on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and broaden our criticism of the nation to a criticism of real existing socialism. Besides this we will hold our second Marx Autumn School and devote ourselves to the second volume of Capital.

TOP (Theory. Organisation. Praxis) is a Berlin-based antifascist, anti-capitalist group. They are part of the “…ums Ganze!” alliance (http://umsganze.blogsport.de) which consists of more than ten groups from all over Germany. Parts of this text are based on a paper written prior to the G8 summit which can be found in English at www.top-berlin.net. To get in touch with them write to mail (at) top-berlin.net.

Interview with No Borders in Calais

What was the No Borders camp in Calais last summer set up in opposition to?

Joe: The camp was organized in association with the UK No Borders network, so of course the camp was set up in opposition to controls on the movement of people. In particular the camp was set up in opposition to the French-British border in Calais, but most importantly in solidarity with those undocumented migrants currently living in and around the port who are both suffering from and resisting the imposition of this border on their lives. It is the incredibly concrete and practical opposition of the undocumented present to this border every day that made the No Borders camp possible. To say ‘No Borders’ is not a demand for rights, but an expression of solidarity with all those who use their capacity to move in resisting oppression, exploitation and the global divisions of desire.

The French-British border in Calais has for sometime condensed many of the anxieties and tensions surrounding migration in contemporary Europe. Between 1999 and 2002 the Red Cross had a refugee reception centre stationed just outside Calais, in the village of Sangatte. The centre became the topic of at times vexed political exchanges between the French and British governments. The British charged the French with providing a magnet for illegal immigrants who were using the centre as a stop-off point before trying to enter Britain. The French complained that in having to provide for undocumented migrants trying to reach Britain, they were being forced to foot some of the bill for the UK’s purportedly over-generous asylum system – supposedly the real magnet for illegal immigration. With both administrations vying for the electoral capital to be gained from being seen to be tough on immigration, the centre was closed in 2002 by none other than the current French president Nicholas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior. Since the closure of Sangatte the UK and France have been working more closely on border control in Calais, with the UK adopting a kind de facto policing responsibility, funding many of the new security initiatives in and around the port.

Today the provision of all but the most rudimentary services to undocumented migrants in Calais has been outlawed. As a result a number of makeshift settlements have sprung up, locally known by all as the jungle. Living conditions in the jungle are very bad, and those living there are constantly harassed by a police force that actually have targets for how many migrants they must arrest - and inevitably release again a day or two later - each week. The No Borders camp was set up in opposition to this particularly brutal border regime, and in solidarity with all those who actively oppose it in their struggles for a dignified life.

Where did the idea for the camp come from and how was it organised?

Dan: During the Gatwick No Border camp of September 2007 the idea of a transnational action/gathering in Calais and/or Dover was proposed. Late last year, activists from the UK, France and Belgium met in Calais and decided to plan a camp in Calais.

The camp was organised by a series of meetings in Calais between British, French and Belgian activists. The camp was organised on a non-hierarchical basis, and all decisions were made by consensus. There were general meetings every morning and evening on the camp, and everyone was welcome to all meetings. The meetings were facilitated by a number of different people, and the agenda was set collectively. All the meetings were held in French and English, and sometimes there were translations into other languages as well, including Arabic and Farsi.

Who was involved?

Dan: Various groups and individuals were involved in the camp, including local activists in Calais, many individuals from Lille including from their local anarchist group, activists from other parts of France and Belgium and people from various No Border groups in the UK. Migrants were involved in all aspects of the camp itself, some of the migrants lived close to the site of the camp and were present most of the time. Some people from the local area also came to the camp to chat with the
migrants and the activists.

What were the aims of the camp?

Dan: The aims of the camp included: showing solidarity with migrants in Calais, showing solidarity with the local organisations working daily with the migrants, strengthening networks between British, French and Belgian activists, raising awareness of the situation amongst the local population and the public at large, and taking action to demand freedom of movement and an end to border control.

What were the main problems organisationally and politically considering the camp's aims?

Dan: A main organisational problem that we had was involving migrants in the planning of the camp. This was for many reasons, including the transitory nature of the migrants in Calais and difficulties with translation. A main political problem was overcoming the propaganda in the local press, which painted us as terrorists coming to intimidate, steal and to destroy local property. We worked hard to communicate our message and let local people know of our intentions for the camp.

The No Borders position attempts to move beyond humanitarian responses to immigration controls and restrictions on freedom of movement. How were these political aims negotiated at the camp considering the immediate situation of migrants there?

Joe: This was perhaps one of the most difficult things to come to terms with in Calais. When confronted with human suffering you want to know what you can do to help – and help immediately. Of course the camp infrastructure ameliorated some of this suffering for the week we were there. Police couldn’t harass people inside the camp and food, shelter, washing facilities and basic medical assistance was provided to anyone who came to the camp. On a singular level there is and was no problem in mixing humanitarian concerns with politics. The problem in Calais was that the immediate situation of the migrants living there was so bad – living without basic sanitation, medical care, adequate food, access to clean water and so on – that even in the space for political discussions made possible by the camp, humanitarian sentiments too often overrode more explicitly political discussions. The frustration felt by many at this situation was captured in a meeting where the public statement to be issued by the camp was being discussed. A young Afghan interjected: ‘Every time I come to the meetings we discuss about blankets, but we are not hungry, we do not come for blankets, open the borders!’ This separation of humanitarianism from politics, and the consequent triumph of humanitarianism thanks to its emotive pull, was one of the borders that the camp really struggled to break down. At times such bordering made itself manifest in political discussions through the implicit reservation of political agency for those who could afford it (i.e. the citizen-activist) and correlatively, by making those who couldn’t afford it into objects of humanitarian concern (i.e. the non-citizen). Perhaps the border between politics and humanitarianism presented less of a problem to be negotiated than a field of tension through which the camp was experienced.

Some people have criticised No Borders as being an idealist position that is irrelevant to the British working class and anarchist politics. How would you respond to this criticism?

Joe: ‘No Borders is an idealist position.’ Yes, but only if you think like a state. ‘You can’t make this work, its unmanageable, its not practical,’ the anxious statesman will cry. From the perspective of the state No Borders is indeed idealistic. But for us, No Borders is an axiom of political action, a principle of equality from which concrete, practical consequences must be drawn. It means recognizing, on the basis of our equality, solidarity in struggle irrespective of origins. It is this principle of equality which distinguishes the No Borders position from the ideology of free marketeers, of whom it is said also advocate the removal of controls on movement. Crucially of course they only advocate the removal of controls on the movement of labour-power - which only means people insofar as they are the bearers of a potential to work, or more precisely, be exploited.

Today the movement of labour is free, so long as it is profitable, which also means disciplined. It is precisely in this disciplining that the border affects all of us. The disciplining of the border separates us from one another, such that politics ceases to be about something common and collapses into the simple play of private interests. Thus it becomes possible to mark out some political positions as more or less relevant to your social group, and then choose your politics like you choose between fair-trade, organic or smart price brands in a supermarket. Is there really a need here to rehearse the closing lines of The Communist Manifesto? Doesn’t the weakness of left-movements today stem precisely from the kinds of sectarianism and state fetishism that both Marx and Bakunin in their different (red and black if you will) ways warned against? At the border the calculation of interests meets the lived reality of our lives. It is thus, like the factory, both a site of suffering and a vector of antagonism.

A list of demands were drawn up at the end of the camp. What were they and how did the demands reflect the aims of the camp?

Dan: The demands were as follows:

1. Entry to the UK for all unconditionally.

2. The cessation of attacks and destruction of places of life of migrants. Access to care and showers must be guaranteed.

3. Freedom of movement for all in and around Calais: the ability to move anywhere without restrictions, harassment or fear of being arrested.

4. The cessation of repeated arrests.

5. Freedom of expression for all, including migrants, the right to protest and complain to the authorities individually or collectively.

6. To stop evictions whether by charter or not to countries at war or not.

7. The end of the repression of associations and individuals who support the migrants including the provision of means of transport.

8. Provide free and impartial legal advice in the UK on the rights of asylum and immigration.

9. The British policy of arbitrary detention without time limit cannot be exported to Calais. No new detention centre can be built and particularly a structure of the Guantanamo kind.

Joe: Drawing up the list of demands was a difficult process. A mixture of practical demands and principled propositions made it in to the final draft. The real difficulty was in trying to get these two dimensions to work together without the practical demands appearing like a request for better social policy and the principled positions looking like empty radical gestures. Of course the greatest challenge to the border in Calais was the actions of the migrants themselves, the actual attempts to cross day and night. No arrangement of words could ever match this force.

The statement focused, not mistakenly, on highlighting the situation of police repression on the ground in Calais. No doubt this was in part because police harassment really was a common experience shared by activists, migrants and local youth, albeit in significantly differing intensities. One of the demands read something like ‘freedom of expression for all, including migrants, the right to protest and complain to the authorities individually or collectively.’ I remember this demand getting a quite a laugh when it was read out in Pashtun in the closing meeting. It does sound like a ridiculous demand; the police violence in Calais is in a very direct sense a manifestation of the violence of the border. But this is the sort of demand that the No Borders camp made it possible to think. Despite the phrasing it is not really a right which is given, bestowed or handed over - like charity - but a capacity which must be exercised. It is only understandable when it is concretely put to use. If words have any power at all it is encouraging action, in instilling it in their audience. Hopefully some of these words sketched out hurriedly and collectively did indeed encourage action, not necessarily to lodge complaints against the police, but simply to carry on kicking back.

Was this the only tangible outcome?

Dan: No, I believe there were other tangible outcomes from the camp. Firstly, there was a heightened awareness of the situation of migrants in Calais amongst British, French and Belgian activists, and a willingness to take action. Since the camp, there had been a continual presence of activists in Calais, monitoring police activity. Secondly, the idea of freedom of movement and settlement was introduced to a large number of people (locals, migrants and various associations and individuals). I believe that the camp achieved a lot of the aims that it set out to achieve.

Joe: Well the border is still there, so the camp failed on that measure. Yet for a week its naturalness and necessity was manifestly called in to question. That the French state was actively unnerved by this was evident enough in the truly hysterical show of force we were confronted with. Helicopters, some 2000 armed and anxious police officers, road blocks across the town throughout the week, arrests for buying toilet roll and distributing flyers, the list of absurdities is endless. Yet however transitory, and however limited given the resources put in to policing the camp, the action shouldn’t be dismissed for failing to ‘break the border’, or whatever. There are less geographical borders which also need to be challenged and broken down, very intimate borders you carry round inside your head. In this I think the camp had more success. Physical movement against physical borders will always provide a more effective challenge than any amount of protest. But not all borders are physical, and it is really the confluence of physical and social borders which people suffer from. In the camp some of the social borders which accompany physical ones were actively broken down. Some meetings and discussions were held in four or five languages, and discussions, exchanges and encounters occurred which disrupted the rhythms of everyday lives and the habituses of the activist, the citizen and the undocumented. In facilitating this, the camp helped undermine assumptions and preconceptions about different kinds of difference. We shouldn’t underestimate both the necessity and immensity of challenging the manifold borders we carry round in our heads, including the border between citizen and non-citizen.

What’s happening now in the mobilisation around Calais?

Dan: As stated, there has been a continuous presence of activists in Calais since the camp. A group, Calais Migrant Solidarity, (http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com) has been formed to
coordinate the work happening there, which involves monitoring police activity, offering practical support to the migrants, and preventing arrests and destruction of the jungles when possible. It is hoped that Calais Migrant Solidarity will soon have an office in Calais.

Joe Rigby lives and works in the North West and is active in the No Borders network. Dan is an activist based in the south of London who has been active in Calais during and following the camp.

Some thoughts on Anarcha-Feminism - Chepina Hukku

You might have heard the story. It was about 4pm on Sunday 7 June and the Anarchist Movement conference in London was drawing to a close. The 15 discussion groups had finally all had their turn at the mic in what had been a painstaking 2-hour final plenary. Perhaps more interesting than the much distilled feedback from each of the groups on 2 days of discussion among 15 near strangers was the fact that for the 200 odd people in the large hall, this was the first opportunity to get a sense of their fellow participants at the conference. Inspired by what seemed to have emerged somewhat more organically at the famed Bradford gathering of 1998, the conference organisers’ were determined that class-war anarchists should spend the weekend sat alongside climate campers in small discussion groups. Along with tube delays that prevented many from arriving for the opening plenary on Saturday morning this meant that until this point, the numbers and make-up of participants had been impossible to gauge.

The arrival of anarcha-feminist group No Pretence couldn’t have been better timed. Although I can only speak for myself, surveying the room, my doubts of the past 2 days seemed to be shared by others: just how much of an affinity did each of us feel with the people around us? And just how much did this room reflect the movement we had each felt we were part of?

Enter No Pretence, projector, screen and very own mic a-blazing.

As I say, the intervention was well timed. With the discomfort described above hanging over the room and the conference organisers about to facilitate the ominously-titled “What next?” part of the programme, the sight of eight masked, black-clad figures bursting onto the floor, hastily setting up their kit and launching an impassioned critique of the movement, as exemplified (for them) by the Anarchist Movement conference, certainly offered the possibility of seeing some of these doubts articulated. Five minutes later and No Pretence’s raw yet well-rehearsed attack on gender discrimination in our movement (and the absence of this issue from the conference programme) was over, and the group were bounding triumphantly out of the room. The statement they had read out claimed: “No matter how much we aspire to be ‘self-critical’ there is a clear lack of theorising and concrete action around sexism, homophobia and racism in the anarchist movement.” But what had the intervention achieved?

Lamentably, the intervention cannot claim to have shaken the conference out of its inertia and forced it to acknowledge not only the patent fragmentation of the movement it supposedly represented, but also that movement’s present weakness despite sharp new increases in class conflict and social unrest with established institutions. But that was never its intention, I suppose. It didn’t bode well either that the most the onlookers could muster in response to the intervention was polite applause; that the male conference organiser who resumed proceedings immediately after No Pretence’s exit didn’t even make the gesture of offering the mic to a female; or that the same guy’s misjudged comment about it “all being planned” was the only acknowledgement that the “interruption” had even happened.

Beyond the confines of that room, however, the intervention has certainly been able to provoke a reaction. If at first the intervention received applause from most, if not all, of the anarchist audience, since then the response seems to have fallen into two camps. Firstly, there are those individuals or representatives of various feminist and anarchist groups who have applauded the action as long overdue. They echoed the sentiment that women in the anarchist movement have not been spared sexist behaviour from men (and other women). The second camp, which we will examine in more detail later, is made up of those, including some of the conference organisers, who have predictably rejected the comparisons drawn between mainstream society and the anarchist movement.

Unfortunately, both sets of responses fail to distinguish between the No Pretence statement and the accompanying video. The latter, which has sadly proved the most enduring talking point since the conference, features a stark comparative look at male domination of political activity and the persistence of traditional gender roles in the photo albums of liberal democracy and the anarchist movement respectively. The sort of facile finger pointing at overt gender hierarchies in which the No Pretence video indulges is not without its place (after all, if it creates a space in which we can vent our frustrations with the gendered society we all experience daily, either within the movement or beyond, it can be considered a useful exercise in and of itself). This is especially true at a conference which did tend to give primacy to the issue of class struggle and thus tend (whether unintentionally or otherwise) to accept agency to lie with the male factory worker.

Unfortunately though, this finger-pointing is not without its pitfalls either. The preoccupation with obvious sexisms draws attention away from the crucial point: that is, the relationship between sexism and social domination in a capitalist society. It is this relationship that should be scrutinised if we are to understand the truly incipient forms of sexism embedded in our social relations. A case in point: No Pretence far too easily cried “Oppression” when they misheard a heckler from the audience: “Are you going to dance, sexy?” It has since been revealed (and I can confirm first hand), that the line was actually “Are you a dance act? Diversity!”; a remark not on the gender of those storming the stage, but a reference to the winning act of Britain’s Got Talent, who chose a similarly black-hood/concealed-face outfit for their popular audition. While occurrences of overt sexism are not unthinkable also in anarchist circles, real oppression will come much more subtly than that.

If anarcha-feminists are trying to tackle a feudal form of sexism, where women are actively prevented from participating in political society by a ruling class of men, they are attacking a straw man. The particular form that capitalist patriarchy, or patriarchal capitalism, takes is of a more structural, indirect kind. Capitalism, ironically, is based on the (liberal) principles of freedom and equality. Only when we are free and equal can we sell our labour power for survival – it is the basis of a class society. Capitalist patriarchy is not shaped by direct exploitation of women, obvious discrimination and domination. It is more subtle, and therefore more persistent, than that. We should not ask of society, and its representation in the anarchist movement, a liberal awareness of feminist issues, gender inequality and positive discrimination. I’d much rather hear the speeches of feminist men than sexist women.

To be fair to No Pretence, they have recognised this themselves, when they write that “hierarchical social relations cannot be reduced to personal insults or behaviour. Sexism thrives upon subtle and intangible processes which make gender domination and exploitation endemic.” But the vocabulary of gender “exploitation” nonetheless tends towards outdated understandings of sexism (under capitalism) as analogous to similarly misled concepts of class as a crude slave vs. master relationship.

Earlier waves of radical feminism adopted an anti-capitalist position based on the asymmetrical way in which capitalist economics impose value on traditionally gendered social roles and divisions of labour. Today, the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, one of the more contemporary radical feminists to which the No Pretence statement proudly alludes, has paved the way for just one of the many more sophisticated lines of analysis that have been developed in more recent years in response to the onset of the advanced global capitalism we know today. The body of radical research that emerged from Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, for example, based as it is around the physical and psychological violence inflicted by the new digital industries of the unregulated US-Mexican border zone upon their increasingly feminised labour force, is a stark reminder that more sophisticated critiques of the interstices between class, gender and production – traditional understandings of which are now blurred – are required if we are to unearth the indirect structures that underlie to sexism in society.

Likewise, today we are faced with much more complicated forms of social control, with liberal society adopting women quotas for representation in public life, positive discrimination embedded in employment legislation and formal equality of opportunity. Does this make modern capitalist society anti-sexist? No! But at the heart of an anarchist feminism must be the understanding that capitalist exploitation is structured in a more complex manner. If future No Pretence actions are to be taken seriously they should refrain from seeking a liberal response by insinuating that more female participation in anarchist platforms would in any way constitute a rejection of capitalist patriarchal forms of domination.

But there is perhaps an even more compelling lesson to be learnt from No Pretence’s use of sensationalist visual material which, as I have demonstrated, might have detracted from, rather than reinforced, their more astute accompanying statement. It seems to me that the use of such a montage betrays a certain naivety as to the response of a movement that, outside of radical feminist spheres, is largely indifferent to and comparatively unsophisticated in its analysis of gender politics (when compared to other Western European countries, for example). Indeed, it has been all too easy for those who are reluctant to engage with No Pretence’s proposition, for whatever motive, to dismiss the intervention based on the (fair?) assertion that the examples used by No Pretence to illustrate sexist behaviour in anarchist circles were selective and misleading. The fact that the intervention has given way to this sort of refutation is disappointing, but not particularly dangerous in itself. Conversely, that criticisms on these grounds have proven to be so easily and widely accepted/acceptable has in turn allowed far more sinister comments to creep into the debate relatively unnoticed, under the guise of springing from objections similar to those that dismissed the video as unrepresentative.

Some anarchists have suggested, for example, that the group should have brought feminism to the discussion table during the conference group sessions, rather than set their own. Comments such as this prove that while the video was perhaps a mistake for the group, covering up was certainly the right thing to do. It does not matter whether No Pretence are men or women, masking up was an adequate way to anticipate the response from the conference organisers: that the anarcha-feminists should have brought their opinions to the available structures of the conference. This to me was the truly sexist response: the suggestion that a feminist critique of patriarchal hierarchy could be adequately addressed – and thereby recuperated – within the constraints of facilitated discussion on anarchism, movement, and class.

Summing up, it seemed to me that the anarcha-feminist intervention was held back by a pseudo-radical proposition: that anarchism is opposition to hierarchy in its amalgamated multiplicity; i.e. anti-capitalism + anti-racism + anti-sexism + anti-homophobia + etc = anarchism. The intervention seemed to say that ‘you can’t be an anarchist without being a feminist’. Maybe they had it the wrong way round: ‘you can’t be a feminist without being an anarchist’ would be a radical slogan based on the recognition of capitalist patriarchy. Sexual liberation can only be achieved in freedom!

The Climate Camp as radical potential

So it’s three days before the camp and I’m sitting here, debating why I’ve spent the past couple of weeks tatting bits of wood and old carpets, making posters, organising workshops and the hundred of etceteras that come with holding a Climate Camp. What is it I’m (we’re) creating, beyond being one of the most beautiful, heart in mouth and weird events in my calendar? Is, or could the Camp be, a vehicle which offers a potential challenge to capitalism in any meaningful, relevant way?

I’m coming to a conclusion (as you will see) that the sites of the Climate Camp’s ’struggle’ are an abstraction. This is because (as I will argue) the Camp fails to meaningfully engage in relevant conversations and struggles over production.

The main argument I draw from Climate Camp has been ‘we have to take action for ourselves because no one else will.’ But what does that mean - to take action? How is action manifested? Is it just a matter of resisting nodes, old and forthcoming, in capitalist infrastructure like whacking weasels popping out of holes? Or do we need to root our struggle in the power behind capitalism itself: production. Production as in what is produced, by who, for what purpose and, crucially, according to whose decisions?

Climate Camp as an abstraction

What I mean by this is the location of the Camp’s dissent. This year, Climate Camp 2009, came to challenge The City of London itself, a ‘command centre’ of the global economy. The Camp’s aims were to make clear the links between the financial crisis and the ecological crisis. That link, we can assume, is capitalism. The City is a poignant symbol of capitalism and the Climate Camp is a symbolic movement. From pirate boats to colourful marches its defiance is temporary. Its greatest strategic aim must be to engage as many people as possible in resistance in order to halt the cogs of the capitalist carnage that has been developing in the last 500 years or so. However, in the process I feel we need to see that such a strategy will be limited to include those with some independence (economic/social) from the current system and lead to the alienation of others, primarily the working class, who have built up dependence upon this system (and have already offered right wing resistance to our ideals). As well as failing to create productive spaces that resist hierarchical state/corporate control, we are thus essentially enslaving ourselves and each other in the long term.

CO2, 90% cuts, 2030, 2050, etc, etc are all abstract notions that do not take into account people and their dependence, through employment and consumption, to a society geared to produce capital. Yes, let’s imagine a new world! A revolution without imagination is dead, yet one with only imagination is hungry. This is a call to the Climate Camp to decide whether to identify itself as a revolutionary movement and, if so, to have a meaningful discussion about production.

By avoiding struggles over production and turning to The City in order to highlight the links between the economic crisis and the climate crisis perhaps we could argue the camp becomes no more than a spectacular event similar to the launching of Inconvenient Truth or Age of Stupid. That is, it is an engaging and educating spectacle that tells us the dark clouds of climate change are fed by capitalism and are looming, mainly in the global south, and we ’simply have to do something!’

A quick note about the COPs: There are other things to do than fight COPs. Yes, like the summit hopping movements prior to it, we should be delegitimising these decisions. But let’s not forget that scientists, NGOs and a whole host of other etceteras will do that job also once the deal doesn’t show any significant progress. What else we can achieve by going there for a riot, besides having a good time, will be minimal. And at the same time if we are not careful we also run the risk of delegitimising ourselves. So far there has been no conversations to turn Copenhagen over, occupy it and reclaim it for an eco village utopia. But if these are logical conclusions we would like then we should be unifying with struggles over production in our own localities.

Is it behind the sofa? Is production the key we’ve lost?

There is evidence, during this recession and the large scale retrenchments of jobs in the UK and internationally, that occupations are on the table as a form of resistance and even getting the goods. There are struggles taking place where workers and supporters are rising up for their livelihoods in the face of capitalism, working as always for the growth and protection of profit margins.

One of the interesting points during the Vestas occupation was its facilitation by the Rail Maritime & Transport union. The RMT were playing for a ‘dignified defeat’ all along. Although we have to consider that the occupation consisted of 9 out of the 600 or so workforce there was no strong support, in words or actions, to resist the workers’ removal. Little or no voices discussing how workers could be reinstated and the factory adapted to cooperative production of wind turbines. Such agitation and solidarity is a meaningful area that the Climate Camp could invest time into supporting and energising. It demands developing a discourse around the importance of production within the camp and fierce active solidarity at the sites of these campaigns when the time arises. The present model for the Climate Camp (having single moments where alternative public utopias rise from the ground, soon disappearing) is highly resource intensive demanding the continuous work of many people restricting their ability to connect with, as it is, quick to spark labour struggles highly relevant to ecological progress. Again, a discourse needs to be developed so that we are receptive and listening out for signs of these struggles.

Occupations occurring in the global retrenchment of jobs have been calling for negations with bosses primarily over redundancy pay. For us to engage with this energy I believe we need to develop a movement that can take these actions further, and challenge the hierarchy of production and the product itself.

Fossil fuel that powers the machines and fertilises our crops allows capitalism to maintain growth. As fuels with worthwhile extraction value peak and decline, the first to suffer will, of course, be those dependent on and at the bottom of the capitalist system. Energy as a site for struggle will intensify over the coming years and must do sooner rather than later if we wish to have some alternative to total eco nightmare and, lest we forget, some control over how energy is produced to fulfill each others needs (i.e. will it be cooperative or ladled out with a truncheon?).

When failing to engage with occupations and other industrial/productive resistance for livelihoods and dignity (and whatever is left of community) we are failing to put in our word about political hierarchy as an inherent problem and about ecology relationships with industry.

“People are inherently cautious and take extraordinary action only when they have little to lose and something to gain.” (Immanuel Ness) If this is true then the predominantly middle classes that understand climate change as a threat see the need for action, yet working classes whose lives are less historically stable still feel a lot to lose through both reactions to climate change (from a social movement or the state) and the current recession.

However those out of the wash of the current economic system, though still dependent on state welfare (that cushion of general revolt), enter a potential class of people who are susceptible to new ideas and action. If again we are interested then we should not allow this potentially radical force to be absorbed and utilised by the far right.

Conclusion

This essay goes little way in addressing all the issues a discourse like the one I am calling for in the Climate Camp should consider. For example, if and how we would select sites of production for solidarity based on their environmental impact, how we relate to global struggles and even what we mean by production within a climate change (post industrialist?) concerned vision. Yet this is a plea, mainly for clarity of who we are.

The Climate Camp, like the process of writing this article for me, is a process of continual learning and discovery for ourselves. I came to the Camp, for example, deeply worried about climate change with little knowledge of definitions for capitalism, state, anarchy and class, arriving with the firm intention of cutting CO2 emissions and a vague idea (and love of) moving closer to nature. I’m still driven by these factors but I know for myself and now argue that CO2 has for this movement become an abstraction, and perhaps even a distraction, from the necessary challenge we meet in the struggle against capitalism for ecological and egalitarian values.

I feel that Climate Camp has a lot to give to struggles over class and production (this was demonstrated in part in and around the roundabout camp outside Vestas) and yet these movements have something to teach the Camp - that without locating our struggles in production we are dealing with the abstract and are disempowering ourselves and the millions who have a dependent relationship upon a capitalist engine, running out of petrol, and waiting for someone to make a sharp turn.

The author is a young activist presently living in London. His blog tendercalves.wordpress.com is a work in progress.1

• 1. libcom note: author name subsequently removed at the request of the author

Editorial - Theory into Practice?

In some ways, Copenhagen was post-politics in action. Thousands of politicians, business leaders and civil society actors came together in the Danish capital with no lesser aim than to ‘save the world’. Not just to prevent further wars, to eradicate poverty or to save humanity – no, the whole planet was at stake. And this was to be our last chance! The ambitions of the leaders translated into hope and expectations from their followers. Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown were sent on their way to Copenhagen with a blue Wave of support and encouragement by Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and the Co-operative Group. Anyone with a dissenting voice was easily labelled an extremist trouble-maker who selfishly puts ideology before the survival of the Earth.

The failure to come up with a legally-binding international treaty to reduce carbon emissions has, however, re-introduced some politics into the climate craze. Hope-nhagen has become Cop-enhagen, and the fairly indiscriminate preventative approach by the Danish police has sparked a new appreciation of the repression and control that could come with a state and business brokered climate deal. Yet, there is little sense of despair or resignation: “we are all eco-warriors now”, we could read in the Guardian on the eve of the COP-15 conference.

There is a danger of course that this will just mean more austerity and lifestyle politics (changing yet more lightbulbs), without the political vision that could shape an antagonistic movement. Already in the streets of Copenhagen, many felt that rejection of the summit and everything it did, and might, stand for was largely missing. Those who predicted this to be ‘the big one’ – the movement’s ‘coming of age’, 10 years after Seattle – were not hoping for a riot or a mass blockade of the meetings. Supposedly, what was really going to set the protests apart from previous ones were the alternatives on offer.

Naomi Klein, for example, praised the practices of the global climate movement: “Unlike at previous summits, where alternatives seemed like an afterthought, in Copenhagen the alternatives will take centre stage.” Many grassroots activists in the UK are also motivated by the array of practical possibilities that are at hand to get us out of the climate crisis. And we can definitely relate to the appreciation of self-organisation, when this comes as a political principle and not just a lifestyle action. But for those who never thought of a Copenhagen deal as success, the focus on practical alternatives won’t get us out of the ‘post-political’ scenario that dominates the response to climate change. Differentiating ourselves from the political elite merely through our DIY approach is not enough when we are faced with the overwhelming political consensus on climate change and the ‘anything goes’ attitude that slips through the back door due to lack of political debate. This post-political system can only be broken through direct antagonism and outright rejection.

Through our enthusiastic attempts to show people that we do have alternatives to the status quo and are not just a bunch of idealists it sometimes feels like we lose the critical element that might facilitate a break from the system. At last years’ Climate Camp on Blackheath there were some really great discussions on economic hegemony and alternatives designed to break away from the current system. In panel discussions with large audiences, speakers ranging from Green Party representatives to climate campers discussed the exciting world of alternative economics, and housing and workers’ co-operatives. However, as uplifting as it is to think that we can break away from capitalism through our housing and career decisions it would be naïve to think that these ‘alternatives’ escape from the same structures that they aim to challenge. In order to make discussions of these alternatives fulfil their potential there must also be an antagonistic element to our political action.

“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly”. One of our contributors quotes Adorno as a cynic whose philosophy has immobilised some parts of the radical left. However, when we consider the complete domination of the current political and economic system, manifest in the hugely consensual yet hopeless response to climate change at the recent COP summit, it often appears that this philosophical principle is not cynical, but rather an empowering form of rejection and antagonism against the entirety of the system that dominates every aspect of our lives. Maybe this is the only way to achieve political action that cannot be recuperated, taken from us, watered down and written into a Labour/Tory/Green Party policy paper or a Guardian ‘How to be green’ pull out.

A Cop15 diary - Ben Lear

The build up to this years UN conference on climate change, the COP-15 in Copenhagen, was huge. Both mainstream and alternative media were abuzz with predictions and discussions on the conference and the, almost obligatory, counter-mobilisation. From the Climate Camp at Blackheath to the pages of the Guardian and the Financial Times Copenhagen was billed as the spectacle to end all spectacles. Where a truly global climate justice movement would emerge or where the deal that would save the planet would be signed. Much was made of the fact that this counter-mobilisation would fall a decade after the Seattle protests. Would this be, as Naomi Klein suggested, the coming of age party of the alter-globalisation movement?

Journey

We hopped on a (full) bus put on by Climate Camp in Leeds and settled in for our day long coach journey. Everyone was excited if not a little apprehensive. Would we even make it over the border, let alone in time for the demonstration the next day? Despite being nervous about being stopped and searched we had no problems, being let through by German police without even being searched and rolling into Copenhagen with six hours to spare before the big Friends of the Earth demonstration in the centre of town.

Saturday 12th

After the standard organisational mayhem surrounding sorting out sleeping space for 250 people we made our way to the large “Flood for Climate Justice” demonstration, organised by Friends of the Earth. Attendance has been estimated at somewhere around 100,000, which is a far cry from the 300,000 in Genoa or the million in London on the eve of the Iraq war. If this was the most important event in the history of climate change politics, large amounts of people must have been very conscious of their carbon footprints. However, those in attendance spanned the entire environmental spectrum.

Sound trucks, samba bands and facepaint made for a bewildering spectacle as we tried to find the anti-authoritarian bloc. The bloc disappointingly lacked banners of any sort (with the exception of a large orange banner quoting an anarchist federation article printed in the last edition of Shift “We don’t want a bigger slice of the cake, we want the whole fucking bakery”) and was smaller than we had expected.

Once the demo had started we got our first taste of the difficulties involved with transnational organising. We encountered a group of British people dressed in suits, holding banners supporting carbon trading and chanting pro-capitalist slogans through megaphones. Some of the more eager members of the bloc went over and passionately, some even physically, confronted these people, not realising that they were acting out roles. It took the physical intervention of a few bystanders and other member of the bloc to make it clear that the suited strangers were allies and not enemies. Cultural and linguistic differences would have to be bridged over this week if we wanted to be successful.

The bloc continued, eventually being caught up with by a larger more organised bloc. It seems that in the confusion of the assembly point, two blocs had formed. Ours had left with the demonstration whilst the other, larger, bloc had only left at the insistence of the police, who argued that to remain would be to leave the legal demonstration. Later we would find out that members of this bloc had fired fireworks at the Danish foreign ministry, thrown stones and smashed several windows of a Danish bank.

The potential for this to spread and become more generalised was curtailed by a stunningly executed, if indiscriminate kettle deployed by the Danish police. Within a minute half the bloc, as well as other demonstrators and bystanders were stuck in a kettle leading to the mass arrest of over nine hundred people. Luckily for myself and my friends we managed to dive into the apartment block we were kettled against and find refuge in an apartment with an 80 year old lady. Eight of us spent the next six hours drinking tea and watching the arrests from the balcony of her apartment feeling strangely guilty. One person we were with watched his entire affinity group being restrained, placed in rows with everyone else on the dark, icy streets of Copenhagen and made to wait four hours for mass transit to the specially installed prison north of the city, modelled on the German G8 detention facilities. The preventive laws which were used to make this mass arrest had been specially instated for the Copenhagen summit and would become a recurring theme, and ever present threat, for the rest of the mobilisation.

Later that evening we made our way through streets littered with scarves and snapped placards feeling thoroughly deflated. Indeed the only victory of the day had been the personal one of escaping arrest. Whilst the majority of the radical bloc had been preventively detained, thousands had marched to encourage “our leaders” to do the right thing here in Copenhagen. It seemed evident that evening that there were differing opinions on what climate justice should look like and how we might get there.

Sunday 13th

In the aftermath of yesterday’s protest, with many still in jail, the ‘Hit Production’ demo, promising autonomous actions against the docks, promised to be the most interesting action of the day. We followed the helicopters to the meet up site only to witness the demo already being chased by a large amount of police. We tracked the demo through side streets until the already familiar sight of mass detention coaches suggested a bad result. We would later find out the demo had been kettled, with tear gas and pepper spray being used fairly indiscriminately. The organised autonomous groups that the action had relied on were noticeable by their absence and this would be true over the whole week. The preventative laws, coupled with an aggressive police force unafraid to employ mass arrest was causing problems for our demonstrations even remaining on the streets, yet alone being effective. It certainly felt that the police had the upper hand.

In the evening we attended the first of the Climate Justice Action (CJA) ‘Reclaim Power’ meetings in preparation for Wednesday’s attempt to gain entrance to the Bella Centre to hold a people’s conference. The meeting was well organised and positive, if not a little dominated by members of the UK climate camp. The militant, autonomous left were conspicuous by their absence. Many were still in prison from the day before whilst, we were told, many had left after Saturday’s demonstration. This was quite a worrying development - just who would be going to the rest of the weeks demonstrations?

Monday 14th

The main event of this day was the No Border demonstration that would head through town towards the Danish Ministry of Defence. There was an interesting mix of people at the demonstration, as well as those masked up and clad in black there were also many from more environment focused groups. The demonstration had the last remaining sound truck, (the others having already been confiscated) and the music, although interspersed with increasingly manic commentary from the truck, made a nice change from the already annoying and ever present samba band. In response to the police tactics so far a greater effort was made to maintain the sides of the demonstrations by linking arms as we moved. Whether this deterred the police or not (they were already being criticised in the media), it certainly bound everyone together (almost literally!) and helped to create a more confrontational attitude. Although it was great to see such a diverse attendance at the demo, some interpretations of No Border politics were slightly worrying. From one of the sound trucks the people with the microphones were almost screaming “No Borders, First Nations” at one point, to the prominent presence of the Robin Wood banner declaring “Transportation Kills” it was clear we didn’t all hold the same positions.

After we arrived at the Danish ministry of defence, and the organised autonomous groups that were encouraged to storm the building once again failed to emerge, the sound truck parked in the square opposite and people began to dance. A nearby giant inflatable orange ball visually demonstrating a tonne of co2 was un-tethered by a large crowd and rolled away down the road with scores of police in pursuit. The ball, now punctured in several places, was eventually recovered by the police and several attempts at kettling all those present were made. These all failed due to people’s willingness to push through, combined with the evident unfamiliarity that the Danish police had with this tactic. The police seemed a far cry from the efficient force we had witnessed in the previous days. The demonstration managed to manoeuvre itself to Christiania, the semi-autonomous space in Copenhagen, to celebrate a successful demonstration and await the CJA plenary session in the evening where Naomi Klein, Michael Hardt and CJA spokesperson Tadzio Mueller would be speaking.

When the time came the space was full to bursting. Naomi Klein, the main attraction for many in the room, discussed the potential of climate reparations to the Global South helping to undermine current international power relations. Michael Hardt, co-author, with Toni Negri, of books such as Empire and Multitude, delivered a brief talk about the concept of the Common and attempted, in a slightly more complicated than necessary way, to argue that ecology and anti-capitalism, or communism as Hardt referred to it, were inherently connected. The current problematics visible in the relationship between ecology and communism were, he argued, false problems which could be theoretically bridged. Tadzio Mueller rounded up by discussing the role of the COP-15 in providing outlets for capital accumulation and also in producing political legitimacy for social elites. In the open floor discussion afterwards the topic of violence was, once again, brought up. It was encouraging to witness most in the room accepting a diversity of tactics, but one which was applied pragmatically. Most seemed to agree that militancy was acceptable, but only in specific circumstances. The Reclaim Power Action on Wednesday, where CJA would attempt to enter the conference centre and hold a peoples meeting, would insist on remaining non-violent.

We then went for a few beers in Christiania to celebrate the successful demo and toast the successful future of a climate justice movement we may just have witnessed a glimpse of. In Copenhagen, away from our familiar UK context, alliances which had seemed impossible began to look realisable. Could this potential be fulfilled? This was rudely interrupted by a confrontation outside. Burning barricades and stones weren’t enough to stop the police locking Christiania down. Taking this as our que to leave we slipped out into yet another dark, cold Danish evening and started our long journey across the city to home.

Tuesday 15th

Today was quiet day spent preparing for tomorrow. Everybody was very nervous. Once again in the evening the meeting was dominated by native English speakers, the majority of which were from the Climate Camp. Once again the radical, autonomous left were conspicuous by their absence. Rumours had it that the Italian group “Ya Basta”, famous for their use of padded suits in Genoa, would be making an appearance. We would later find out that the bike bloc had had their machine confiscated by the police. As we settled into our sleeping bags that evening no-one was quite sure what would happen the next day.

Wednesday 16th

We woke at six in the morning to find the police waiting at both front and back doors. Staying at a city council provided crash space comes with its own downside. After a session of Jedi mind tricks for beginners, ‘no, we’re not the protestors your looking for’, we were on a bus and on the way to the demonstration. All the major bridges had police stationed on them and we were all taken off the bus once or twice each and searched.

When we arrived at the meet up spot it was clear that the demo wasn’t as big as we thought it would be. We would later find out that an autonomous group had been preventatively detained at what they had been told would be a legal assembly point. This deprived the action of some of its most experienced members. We arrived at the gate and people tried to force through, being stopped only by the liberal use of batons and pepper spray. A bridge made of inflatable mattresses emerged from various backpacks and the demo moved to support this.

During this time part of the bike bloc managed to break police lines and, using their bikes, form a screen in front of us. One person even managed to use their bike to disable a police truck. After losing a truck and being faced with determined lines of people and a sea of media camera’s the police decided to allow us the road, happy to arrest those that managed to cross the inflatable bridge into the waiting arms of the police. The peoples’ assembly was held on the road outside the Bella centre. We would later hear that delegates and NGO representatives from inside the conference were beaten and refused the right to join the conference. This action had been the centre piece for many over the week yet we had failed to get into the grounds. During the walk back into town undercover police managed to snatch a prominent German AntiFa member and after he was rapidly driven away we decided to slip through the police lines and make our way to find some food. We would later see the demonstration, lined with police, walk past what the Copenhagen council (and Coca-Cola adverts) had labelled Hopenhagen, a square full of stalls selling “green” motorbikes and eco-holidays. The image seemed strangely resonant. Wandering the centre looking for somewhere to eat we met several groups of people who mentioned, in code, that “something” might be happening tonight. Needless to say that something never happened.

Thursday 17th

Thursday was a much needed rest day. In the evening we headed over to the CJA debrief. Opinion seemed divided over whether the day was a success or not. Differences were still emerging. As the meeting was winding to a close and preparations were being made for it to reconvene the next day, someone made the case for us to stay on and keep talking due to the fact that this room represented a geographical diversity that would be hard to replicate. When it was mentioned that people would be flying back to Latin America the next day a tut and mumbled criticism was heard from one British person. It seems that no circumstances are acceptable to avoid the aviation embargo placed upon those with a moral conscious by the UK anti-aviation movement. Most of the people in the room looked very confused at this comment and the conversation moved swiftly on.

The CJA debrief continued the next day but I was unable to attend. As far as I can tell nothing concrete was proposed. A cynic might suggest that the counter-mobilisation mirrored that in the Bella centre, a disappointing turn-out where little beyond principles was agreed to. Hopefully this will be proved wrong and hopefully it will not take until November in Mexico for this to be demonstrated.

Homeward Bound!

Tired and suffering from (mild) cabin fever, we set off back home. Trying to unravel the personal experiences from a rational analysis of the political outcomes of the counter summit was proving difficult. Returning home and diving into the media frenzy for eulogising the summit it became clear that the counter-mobilisation was a lot smaller than had been expected by many of us. In a broader context, COP-15 ended a year of radical politics dominated by counter-summits. Broadly speaking, none of these, with perhaps the exception of Strasbourg, could be described as total successes. The G20, the G8 in Italy and Copenhagen were all underwhelming in terms of numbers that attended and the political success we achieved at the G20 and G8 were certainly limited. Whilst it remains to be seen whether the networks and relationships produced in Copenhagen will yield positive results it is clear that there are big differences between the political traditions involved in the climate justice movement. The lack of the European radical left, the strange portrayal of indigenous struggles and the ways in which voices from the South are incorporated will all need to be discussed in the coming months if we wish to strengthen the foundations which were clearly laid in Copenhagen. In conclusion it is impossible to present even a minor percentage of the stories which we heard or experienced whilst in Copenhagen that could convey the complex, contradictory, yet somehow still strangely inspiring nature of the event.

Ben Lear lives in Manchester and is still deeply perplexed about his Copenhagen experience. Topics he has written on include environmental politics, student movements and post-politics.

An interview with geographer Erik Swyngedouw

Erik, you are a human geographer and former student of David Harvey. Does a Marxist human geography have anything to contribute to the understanding of anthropogenic climate change?

The Marxist analysis is based on the view that any form of social organisation and dynamics has to be understood by looking at the social ways through which the physical environment is transformed.

This often is forgotten by Marxists; that fundamentally Marxism is a historical materialism, meaning that it tries to understand the socio-physical ways in which society is organised and in which society is changed. In capitalism then, the social transformation of the physical environment takes very specific forms, to the extent that capitalism is based on the continuous reinvestment of surplus in the production process. Any kind of capitalist economy necessarily needs an expansion and a deepening of the physical resource base to sustain its activity.

So in that sense - a growth economy, and capitalism is by definition a growth-based economy - necessitates the continuous expansion and the mobilisation of physical resources. In that sense, climate change, or in other words the transformation of oil and other fossil resources into atmospheric CO2, is an integral part of the dynamic of capitalism. You cannot possibly begin to understand the climate predicament without understanding the socio-ecological dynamic of capitalism.

I would argue that Marxism offers the best entry into that analysis.

Your work has to do with the spaces and localities of governance. Do you think the rhetoric of ‘man-made global warming’ is shifting the sites where authority is exercised and power yielded?

This is a difficult question. It is obviously the case that the discourse of climate change is organised, politically, in very specific ways and in very specific places. Take for example the United States, or the UK for that matter; there is now a consensus on virtually every geographical scale. Whether I look at the city of Manchester, or whether I look at the UK as a whole, whether I look at the city of New York, or at the United States as a whole - there is the political consensus among the enlightened elites at least that climate change is a serious problem.

Very few people disagree with that, so the key challenge today for the elites is how to make sure that capitalism as a socio-economic and political system can continue while at the same time making sure that the climate evolves such that it does not lead to disastrous consequences. I would argue that this combination is impossible to achieve. That is clearly what most, at least Western powers, are trying to do.

Is this what the COP 15 summit in Copenhagen was about?

Absolutely! The failure of Copenhagen to me was the clearest expression of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of making an impossible alliance between those who want to save the planet and prevent ecological Armageddon on the one hand and those who wish to make sure that civilisation ‘as we know it’ can be sustained. Of course civilisation as we know it is a capitalist civilisation. I would argue that it is impossible to square these two. We can not sustain this civilisation while at the same time assuring the save evolution of the climate. That has to be recognised, because the impossibility of achieving these two objectives has led among other things to disaster in Copenhagen.

You use the term ‘post-politics’ to describe how there is a consensual element to this impossible alliance that you speak of, how fundamental antagonisms can’t be seen any more. We’re thinking of the Wave demonstration in London, for example, which seemed to lend support to our leaders to save the planet for us. To what extent is this an instance of such consensual politics?

Very much so. The post-political argument revolves around the view that democracy, understood as a political system that permits the negotiation of antagonistic or radically different positions, has been displaced by a consensus-based arrangement. The classic example of that is indeed the climate change and environmental issue. People from a variety of different political reservations all agree that these are issues that require urgent action and they usually also agree that a solution can be found through a form of consensual, participation-based negotiation.

My argument is that such a consensus-based negotiation, such as in Copenhagen, is a classic example of an attempt to come up with a consensually-established and negotiated solution. Such a consensual order, I would argue, is the exact antithesis of what a global democracy is. A democracy is of course a condition that permits radically opposing views about the social, ecological orders of society to be expressed.

If we look at the environmental argument then, there is no proper political dimension to it. The proper political dimension is, as far as I’m concerned, displaced onto other terrains. In the case of climate change the focus is on CO2 and how to handle this. I think this is mistaken, not withstanding the fact of course that CO2 matters and that CO2 is indeed a key element in producing global warming. I would however insist that if we want to do something about global warming, about CO2 and about the injustices associated with it we have to focus on the political–social debates and not on CO2 per se.

At the COP 15 protests, some activists adopted the message that ‘climate change is not an environmental issue’. Is this a way then to break out of the post-political dilemma by saying that ‘climate change is a social issue’?

Yes, I like this sort of argumentation. Climate change is a social issue and the only way in which the climate or any other socio-ecological process should be approached is by searching for the social and political.

For the larger NGOs and politicians, climate change is a problem that needs to be managed and policed. It is about science and finding technological solutions and policing human behaviour. But for an anti-capitalist movement the question is how to break out of the paralysis of consensus. In Copenhagen, some people wanted to achieve a complete rupture with the official negotiations by blockading them or by attacking police and government buildings. But could an answer not lie in the democratisation of science?

On the science debate I think the first thing that needs to be done is to de-politicise the science – and not the other way round. What we see now is a form of politicisation of science. I think this is highly problematic. I am a scientist myself and I believe in science, in other words, I believe in matters of fact. That is, for example, I do not argue with the science of climate change. However, what I do dispute and object to is that scientists, who correctly state that CO2 is responsible for climate change and correctly state that human intervention is partly responsible for that increase in CO2, then add that – because of that fact – urgent and immediate social and political action is needed to bring CO2 down. At that moment the scientists enter the domain of the political, without properly acknowledging that that is what they’re doing. So I would argue for the de-politicisation of science and for the politicisation of the environmental argument.

But scientists are now integral to the climate movement. Is it even conceivable that scientists who unearth the facts behind climate change would not construct a political argument based on this?

The political argument, I would argue, should be based on a proper political foundation. For example, a properly political argument is the demand for equality. So a proper democratic, progressive demand as a political activist, my main foundation of being a political activist, is to demand equality; social and environmental equality. That demand does not rely on the fact of climate change. That is a demand that relies on political positionality. That is what I mean by politicisation. A political argument has to be based on a political foundation and not on a matter of fact. That does not mean of course that these matters of fact do not matter. Obviously it is the case, I would argue, that if I make a political claim for social, cultural equality then I have to contain the condition of CO2, the climate, environment etc. in that context. But that demand does not rely on the fact of climate change.

What I object to is when scientists make a political demand - that is to bring CO2 down – on the basis of the matter of fact that CO2 is going up in the atmosphere and is causing all of these other issues. That is not a political statement that is a depoliticising statement. That is a depoliticising statement exactly because these are the statements that lead people like Obama, myself and George Bush to agree. I mean who is out there who disagrees with the fact that the climate matters? It is exactly this form of politicisation of facts that leads you to the situation of post-political, consensual management.

"Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester. He is committed to political economic analysis of contemporary capitalism, producing several major works on economic globalisation, regional development, finance, and urbanisation. His interests also include political-ecological themes and the transformation of nature, notably water issues, in Ecuador, Spain, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe."

Lost in Translation - Debating radical political culture in Germany, the UK and beyond - Jan Digger

Since its beginning, Shift Magazine has been in some kind of dialogue with the radical left in Germany, infusing the current theoretical discourses from over here into UK activist theory. However little has been said about the activist practice in Germany, its political culture and how it may compare to that in the UK. While I am myself regularly shifting between projects and actions in the UK and Germany I felt quite happy seeing what could be loosely called “anti-national theory” entering the activist stage in the UK. Just as over here, in the UK I was frequently surprised by quite shallow and foreshortened political positions. However theory itself does not say anything about political practice. Yes, there is a “strong autonomous Antifa movement” in Germany but the question is whether it furthers an emancipating political culture and practice beyond or based on its interesting theoretical output. Looking at the political culture in Germany generally and its parallels with that of the German radical left more particularly (especially that of Climate Camp 2008 in Hamburg and the autonomous movement), this is highly questionable. Therefore, an inter-activist dialogue about this issue is absolutely vital.

There have been innumerable occasions when I spent time with friends in political projects over in the UK, where I thought: “These are so absolutely simple and obvious principles. Why don’t they get it done over here in Germany?” Hence there are a couple of differences (somewhat intertwined) between the political cultures, which are by no means absolute, but need to be addressed:

1. Organising Ourselves
Movement leaders, closed conspiratorial groups and activist cliques institutionalise and appropriate the movement, leading to exclusion and alienation instead of open, empowering and transparent processes; monopolising power, resources, skills and knowledge instead of sharing them freely and actively. Both of these are obviously practices many of us would deem contradictory to our politics. However these are commonly seen in the (radical) left in Germany and beyond. Attac, solid’ (youth group of The Left party), autonomous groups and more unaligned elitist movement cliques appear wherever a hot topic emerges (G8 2007, Climate Camp 2008, COP15 2009) and seem to push these politics, while the process and media groups seem to be pre-determined for this. Another alternative is to create completely unaccountable parallel structures all together.

2. Making Decisions
If it comes to seemingly “accountable” decision making the “plenary” is the most widely used “method” in Germany. It’s not quite defined but ask a leftist here and he/she will tell you it sucks. As there are mostly no hand-signals, no impartial and well-trained facilitators and no proper decentralisation, it takes ages whilst the rhetorically most eloquent and loudest get their way on the agenda and hence the aforementioned informal hierarchies determine the outcome. It’s a joy to see that in the UK, activists seem to get closer to the ideal: making decision on the lowest level, with those who feel affected with a clear and horizontal decision making process, like well-facilitated consensus.

3. Direct Action
Choice 1: Antifa-Demo in town. Frightening barking of some kind of incomprehensible slogan, firecrackers exploding in a crowd of potentially interested folks, the banners shielded by heavy police lines. No flyers at hand. Choice 2: “BlockX”. Like a herd of sheep you are steered towards the fence surrounding the summit, not really knowing what you are doing, while at the same time the press speaker of Attac or some movement “leader” explains why “the movement” is so great. And if the “leader” gets detained he/she will get an exclusive, personified solidarity campaign. No real choice, ey? How about thousands of people in small affinity groups, well-trained beforehand, swarming around stinging the system here and there, wherever they are, with their well-prepared blockades, lock-ons, occupations, sabotage or whatever? Sadly far from reality in Germany where empowerment all too often seems to be a foreign term. I am looking towards the UK climate action movement and gain a little hope…

4. Communication and Education
Sometimes it seems as if the (radical) left in Germany recruits itself mostly from white middle-class sociology students (like me, hehe). What this leads to is an acute academic intellectualism. When reading flyers, manifestos, books or simply talking to us, people simply do not understand. And even within the scene, those who can talk the smartest gain the highest esteem. We have to break it down into simple bits, pick people up where they are and give out our radical, little folk zines. Thanks UK for this piece of D.I.Y.!

5. Setting up Temporary Spaces of Resistance
While we are at it. Have you ever seen a private business pulling up a marquee with a Caterpillar on a Camp for Climate Action? And Dixie toilets? And essentially important Diesel generators? I have! Climate Camp 2008 in Germany. And all this shit was organised by self-declared experts. How about self-organisation? D.I.Y.? Collectively erecting this space of resistance? Pre-figurative politics in infrastructure? Little chance you get this over here. I am really happy to know that there are alternatives over there in the UK, like the Activist Tat Collective…

6. Modesty and Self-Reflection
I believe modesty and critical self-reflection would do us quite good. All too often there is self-glorification, the delusion of false unity and, in order to achieve this, the formation of alliances for exactly this sake: pushing your brand if you are Attac or Solid or satisfying your ego or personal career if you were summoned to be the “movement’s leader”. An undogmatic, open and public culture is completely absent here in Germany. Mainly because it would challenge the mentioned privileged and their political practices.

7. Connecting Struggles
“Radical ecology?” “No, sorry I am an Antifa.” Get what I mean? Lately I have been on an activist permaculture course in Devon. Queer-feminism, radical ecology, anti-racism, anti-capitalism and so on. It was all there. Shared passionately by all. Of course we have our preferences. But how absurd would the common German practice seem; to pick whatever hot topic there is (Globalisation, G8, Climate Change) to push your own label-identity-politics or personal movement-esteem? Even worse if you don’t even have a connection or passion to the issue itself anymore.

8. Autonomous Spaces
Compare an Autonomous Centre in Germany with a Social Centre in the UK. When stepping into the Common Place in Leeds I feel a warm and welcoming atmosphere and the attempt to be inclusive to the neighbourhood and the local community. Maybe also a space to charge up if you’re emotionally fucked. An autonomous squat in Germany: smoky, dark, black, dirty, lame tags and graffiti all over. The neighbourhood mostly wants to get rid of this “dirty blob” and the extremely rigid norms of a restrictive subculture wear out activists and newcomers a like. Maybe we need a norm to question all norms?

9. Towards Utopia
“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly”. Says Adorno. And so does the great part of the (radical) left in Germany. Radical everyday alternatives as practiced in workshops and the build-up of the Camp for Climate Action have a hard time here. But isn’t that exactly what we need? Similar to a reflection on COP15 I would say: What if… we mobilised 100,000 people to act more locally in trans-local solidarity, to provide much needed help to create new and support existing anti-capitalist ways of production, approaches of relating to each other, of actively resisting and creating autonomous spaces for all to skill-share and educate each other in order to imagine and approach the utopia of a liberated society.

In the end this is what this whole article is about. Striving towards our utopia of a political culture and practice.

Glimmers of Hope
And if it was not for all the glimmers of hope that I personally often find in the UK, the political culture and practice that I experienced in Copenhagen the last weeks would force me to look into a bleak future. With few exceptions there was everything but a move towards the goals formulated in this article. But I guess everybody can do the balance themselves.

Lastly it remains to be noted that of course none of the statements above is absolute. Maybe I have dramatised and exaggerated. But for me the tendencies are clear. Of course it’s not black and white. UK is no paradise and Germany is not hell. If you drop by get in touch and check out the anti-nuclear resistance, GMO-field squatters, occupations of animal-lab construction sites or woodland protest-camps against airport expansion or coal-fired heating-pipelines. To name just a few nice little projects.

So… Be on the watch, wherever you are.

"Jan Digger. Human being, anarchist, gardener and activist. Searching and learning."

Mutualism, yes and no - Iain McKay

Mutualism is a libertarian form of market socialism. It is most associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to call himself an anarchist. However, he did not invent the term but rather picked it up from workers in Lyon when he stayed there in the 1840s. Mutualism reached the peak of its influence during the Paris Commune of 1871 which applied Proudhon’s ideas on federalism and workers’ co-operatives before being bloodily crushed.

Mutualism aims to create a system of self-employed workers and co-operatives honestly exchanging goods and services in a market without interest, rent, profit, landlords or capitalists. Rejecting social revolution, it aims to destroy capitalism and the state by means of reform – a combination of more just and more efficient economic institutions (mutual banks and co-operatives) and pressurising the state from outside to enact appropriate reforms.

Revolutionary anarchism developed after Proudhon’s death in 1865, but it shares many of the same ideas. It takes his critique of property as a source of exploitation (“property is theft”) and domination (“property is despotism”), his analysis of the state as an instrument of class domination and destroyer of freedom, his arguments for decentralisation, economic and social self-management, and socio-economic federalism. It rejects his reformist means as well as support for markets in a free society.

The notion that credit and producer co-operatives would displace capitalism is rejected by most anarchists. Following Bakunin, we see the need for revolutionary action to end capitalism. This is because of the vast advantage that the capitalist class enjoys against the working class in terms of wealth, not to mention the support (open or hidden, but always active) of the state. The fight is too unequal for success to be expected. Instead, anarchists turned to the labour movement, strikes and other forms of collective direct action and solidarity to change society.

Even with the outside pressure of the people on the state which Proudhon thought was necessary to force it towards meaningful reforms, it is unlikely that it will transcend its class role and act in the public good. Revolutionary anarchists recognised that if there were a reform movement strong enough to pressurise the state in such a way it would also be strong enough to abolish the state – and the capitalism it exists to defend. It must also be noted that, assuming its means were viable, Proudhon saw the achievement of anarchy as a matter of centuries. The current eco-crisis does not permit such a time-scale.
The key area of disagreement in terms of vision is that unlike other forms of anarchism, mutualism keeps a modified version of market exchange. Some, particularly Marxists, reject this vision as simply “self-managed capitalism.” Ironically, this repeats the neo-liberal assertion that “markets” equal capitalism, so downplaying wage labour (and the domination and exploitation that goes with it). Moreover, this is not the case. As Marx himself repeatedly noted, this would be a different mode of production than capitalism as it was not based on wage-labour.

Anarchists and the market

While mutualism is not “self-managed” capitalism, it does not mean that this form of libertarian socialism is without flaws. Communist-anarchists argue that there are problems with markets as such, which are independent of, or made worse by, capitalism. It is these problems which make most anarchists hostile to the market (even one of competing self-managed workplaces) and so we desire a (libertarian) communist society.

At its most basic, markets soon result in impersonal forces (“market forces”) which ensure that the people in the economy do what is required in order for it to function. While the market is usually presented as a regime of freedom where no one forces anyone to do anything, where we freely exchange with others as we see fit, the reality is different as the market usually ensures that people act in ways opposite to what they desire or forces them to accept “free agreements” which they may not actually desire. Wage labour under capitalism is the most obvious example of this, but survival on the market can drive even the best intended co-operative to act in anti-social and anti-ecological ways simply to survive.

Operating in a market means submitting to the profit criterion. However much workers might want to employ social criteria in their decision making, they cannot. To ignore “profitability” would cause their firm to go bankrupt. Markets systematically reward anti-social activity as firms which impose externalities can lower prices and be rewarded by an increased market share as a result – particularly as it is impossible to determine whether a low cost reflects actual efficiency or a willingness to externalise costs. So the price mechanism blocks information required for sensible decision making (that something costs £5 does not tell you how much pollution it causes or the conditions of the workplace which created it). While there will be a reduced likelihood for co-operatives to pollute their own neighbourhoods, the competitive pressures and rewards would still be there and it seems unlikely that they will be ignored, particularly if survival on the market is at stake.

The market can also block the efficient use of resources. Eco-friendly technology, at least initially, is often more expensive than its rivals and while, over the long term, it is more efficient the high initial price ensures that most people continued to use the less efficient technologies and so waste resources. Thus we see investment in (say) wind energy ignored in favour of one-use and polluting energy sources. Any market system would be infused with short-termism, as co-operatives which are not would incur costs which their less far-sighted competitors would not – particularly as it would still be dependent on finding the money to do so and may still increase the price of their finished product so harming their market position – and survival.

Even if we assume that self-managed firms resist the economic temptations and pressures, any market system is also marked by a continuing need to expand production and consumption. In terms of environmental impact, a self-managed firm must still ensure sales exceed costs in order to survive and so the economy must grow and expand into the environment. As well as placing pressure on the planet’s ecology, this need to grow impacts on human activity as it also means that market forces ensure that work continually has to expand. Value needs to be created, and that can only be done by labour and so even a non-capitalist market system will see work dominate people’s lives and broader (non-monetary) measures of welfare such as quality of life being sacrificed. Such a regime may, perhaps, be good for material wealth but it is not great for people or the planet.

That self-managed firms would adjust to market forces by increasing hours, working more intensely, allocating resources to accumulating equipment rather than leisure time or consumption can be seen in co-operatives under capitalism. This is why many socialists call this “self-exploitation” (although this is somewhat misleading, as there is no exploitation in the sense of owners appropriating unpaid labour). Economic pressures will increasingly encroach on any higher ethical goals in order to survive on the market, be “efficient” and grow.

Market forces, in short, produce collectively irrational behaviour as a result of atomistic individual actions. Moreover, a market of self-managed firms would still suffer from booms and slumps as the co-operatives response to changes in prices would still result in over-production and over-investment. While the lack of non-labour income would help reduce the severity of the business cycle, it seems unlikely to eliminate it totally. Equally, many of the problems of market-increased uncertainty and the destabilising aspects of price signals are just as applicable to all markets, including post-capitalist ones.

While an anarchist society would be created with people driven by a sense of solidarity and desire for equality, markets tend to erode those feelings. Mutualism could even degenerate back into capitalism as any inequalities that exist between co-operatives would be increased by competition, forcing weaker co-operatives to fail and so creating a pool of workers with nothing to sell but their labour. If the inequalities become so great that the new rich become so alienated from the rest of society they could recreate wage-labour and, by necessity, a state to enforce their desire for property in land and the means of production against public opinion.

Communist Anarchism

So communist-anarchists fear that while not having bosses, capitalists and landlords would mitigate some of the irrationalities associated with capitalism, it will not totally remove all of them. While the market may be free, people would not be.

In conclusion then, communist-anarchists argue that even non-capitalist markets would result in everyone being so busy competing to further their “self-interest” that they would lose sight of what makes life worth living and so harm their actual interests. The pressures of competing may easily result in short-term and narrow interests taking precedence over richer, deeper needs and aspirations which a libertarian communist system could allow to flourish by providing the social institutions by which individuals can discuss their joint interests, formulate them and act to achieve them. That is, even non-capitalist markets would result in people simply working long and hard to survive rather than living. This would filter into our relationships with the planet as well, with the drive of economic pressures soon overcoming hopes of living in harmony within viable eco-systems.

Mutualists are well aware of the corrosive effects of market forces, tempering them with solidarity via an agro-industrial federation and a just price to reduce market fluctuations and uncertainty. However, co-operatives will still need to survive in the market and so are under pressure to conform to its dictates. In short, bosses act as they do under capitalism in part because markets force them to. Getting rid of bosses need not eliminate all the economic pressures which influence their decisions and these could force groups of workers to act in similar ways. Thus keeping markets would undermine many of the benefits which people sought when they ended capitalism.

Then there is the ethical issue. Market income does not reflect needs and a just society would recognise this. Many needs cannot be provided by markets (public goods and efficient health care, most obviously). All market decisions are crucially conditioned by the purchasing power – not everyone can work (the sick, the very old, children and so forth) and, for those who can, personal circumstances may impact on their ability to labour. We need to recognise that the needs of the individual do not always correspond to their deeds. While economic distress will be less in a non-capitalist market system, it still would exist as would the fear of it and the market system is the worst one for allocating resources when purchasing power is unequally distributed.

So there are certain features of markets that are undesirable regardless of whether they are capitalist or not. This is why most anarchists today argue for no markets, for the abolition of money or equivalents. In short: no wage labour AND no wages system (“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”).

To conclude, mutualism and communist-anarchism share many things in common. Both can agree on the need to build alternatives such as co-operatives in the here and now. However, for the latter this is not enough in itself. While they may make life better under capitalism and show that we do not need to live like cogs in the machine of economic growth, they will never transform capitalism. In fact, rather than change the system it is far more likely that the system will change them as they adapt to market forces in order to survive.

What we need to do is to create a culture of resistance in our workplaces and communities, a movement which, while fighting capitalism, seeks to replace it. In short, mutualism is not enough – we need revolutionary social movements.

"Iain McKay is the principle author of the Anarchist FAQ and regular contributor to Freedom newspaper. For more on Mutualism see “The Economics of Anarchy” (Black Flag, no. 230) and section I of An Anarchist FAQ (www.anarchistfaq.org.uk)"

Nick Griffin on Question Time - Raphael Schlembach

8 million viewers saw Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time last October; many more were involved in conversations about it, or read about it in newspapers or on the internet. By all means, the BBC platform that was offered to the chairman was a national, if not nationalist, event. You might have joined in the drinking games that were suggested on online forums and blogs: drink one finger every time ‘Evil Nick’ mentions immigration, two fingers every time he mentions Dunkirk or Churchill, and down your pint if he accuses someone of being a Stalinist or ultra-leftist. You might have taken pleasure at Griffin’s unwillingness to explain his views on the Holocaust, to denounce the KKK or to distance himself from the Third Reich. Ha, those Unite against Fascism (UAF) placards outside the BBC television studio are telling the truth: the BNP is a Nazi party!

Or is it? You might have also observed the awkward silence from the audience when Griffin spoke out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or mentioned the economic crisis. Is this not the opinion of a liberal lefty? Are the BNP an anti-war party? And how do we explain Griffin’s insistence that he is a hate-figure in British neo-Nazi circles? Are those UAF slogans mistaken after all?

I offer here some comments on three of Griffin’s remarks on Question Time that seemed to conflict with the UAF understanding of fascism – and that most left-wing commentators chose to ignore. They seemed to silence the Question Time audience as much as Griffin’s most vocal opponents on the left. Yet, they contribute to an understanding of the modern BNP that is vital to anti-fascist campaigners.

Nazis vs. the BNP

Outside the television studio, UAF had called for a protest against Griffin’s appearance on Question Time with placards declaring ‘The BNP is a Nazi party’. But inside, Griffin insisted that he is not a Nazi – or at least not any more. Who is right? Probably neither. To be sure, there are neo-Nazi elements within the BNP, in terms of membership, policies and international allies. Yet, Nazism is not the defining characteristic of the BNP’s agenda. In fact, Griffin is right when he says that he does not count many friends amongst the UK’s small neo-Nazi scene; even though this is statement which left UAF supporters stunned. So for once the (otherwise rowdy) Question Time audience was reduced to silence when Griffin explained:

“I am the most loathed man in Britain in the eyes of Nazis. There are Nazis in Britain and they loathe me because I have brought the British National party from the frankly anti-semitic and racist organisation, into the only party which in the clashes between Israel and Gaza supported Israel’s right to deal with Hamas terrorists.”

The short episode where Griffin struggled to balance an attack and a defence of KKK founder Duke does not appear to have gained him any more credit amongst neo-Nazi anti-Semites, as comments left on the white supremacist online forum Stormfront suggest. One forum member, with the user name ‘Ethelred’ stated:

“I thought it was quite a bad performance by Griffin in comparison to his other TV appearances. I didn’t like his attack on Duke but at least he got the truth out by saying Duke’s KKK was a peaceful non-violent one. It reminded me of the old Griffin – a good nationalist and on our side but after [Bonnie Greer] interrupted him with something that implied she was some sort of expert on the KKK just because she’s American-born [...] he seemed to retract that unfortunately and started attacking him.”

Another Stormfront member commented:

“Nick cemented his position as a zionist mouthpiece with his support of Israel.
Shame on him. He made us all look stupid by refusing to tackle the issues that matter and as for nudging and laughing with the black supremacist Greer, well I wanted to vomit. Why would you want to engage with that creature? … Griffin taking the pee out of K.K.K. hoods, saying that he’s not a “nazi”. He singularly failed to mention why we are called racists and why it is wrong, he wouldn’t go near the truth about the holocaust for fear of being called antisemitic, what a cowardly performance overall… Question time was a state sanctioned pantomime, with Nick being the tail end of the horse, firmly up the arse of Israel.”

Griffin has indeed made a remarkable transformation from his earlier neo-Nazi leanings to a more moderate, albeit populist, nationalism. And he has taken the BNP with him on this trajectory. Under its previous leadership, headed by John Tyndall, the party did not just differ in its use of tactics which included a much more antagonistic street presence. There has also been a political shift.

Griffin began his career as a politician in the neo-Nazi National Front and was then instrumental in helping to prominence the ideas of the ‘Third Position’ movement, inspired notably by Italian neo-fascist Roberto Fiore. ‘Third Position’ politics is essentially a move away from traditional racism and white-supremacism, and replaces it with an ultra-nationalist belief in the separation and co-existence of races. As such, Griffin early on showed an interest in black separatism and national liberation movements. But Griffin struggled to find support for his Euro-fascist ideology in Britain and, as leader of the BNP, resorted back to a form of ultra-nationalist populism coupled with old-style racism to win over a broad range of followers. In Britain’s neo-Nazi scene, he thus remains a controversial character who is mostly considered a sell-out.

Patriots vs. the war

It was another remark that Griffin dropped during the Question Time debate that most challenged the audience and his adversaries on the panel – when he suggested that the BNP was the only anti-war party represented.

On the BNP website Griffin makes this very clear: “The war is based on a series of grotesque lies, manufactured by the Labour and Tory party leadership. They claim that it is being fought to prevent terrorism. This is nonsense. Instead of preventing terrorism, the war there is actually encouraging it.”

The BNP’s anti-war stance has nothing to do with the humble recognition of Britain’s colonialist past. And certainly it’s miles apart from the anti-Islamophobia position of the Stop the War Coalition. It has more to do with a brand of nationalism that the party’s leadership have recently tried to push: ethno-nationalism, or ethno-pluralism.

Ethno-pluralism as a right-wing populist ideology is essentially an anti-immigration discourse that developed in the context of immigration to Europe from its former colonies in the 1960s. It attempts to describe and justify aggressive opposition to migrants as a ‘natural defence’ of one’s ‘indigenous’ culture. Cultures are seen as static and hermetically-closed entities with a homogenous internal identity. Whilst ethno-pluralist ideology regards different cultures and identities as formally equal, they are also seen as incompatible.

This new form of racism, a racism without races, thus bases itself on a right to difference. Different cultures, ethnic groups and identities need to be defended from cultural globalisation, multi-culturalism and universalism. Cultural rights are not bestowed politically by the state, but are somehow derived ‘naturally’ – hence the emphasis on history and tradition. Ethno-pluralism has thus an air of ‘anti-imperialism’ about it.

If nations are to co-exist alongside each other in a ‘natural’ order, aggressive and expansionist wars have no role to play in nationalist politics. Griffin can therefore justify the BNP’s opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq not only with reference to the death toll amongst British soldiers but also as part of a politics that claims the sovereignty of nations over ‘their’ territory.

The BNP vs. Usury

None of this suggests any BNP sympathy towards Muslims or the Arab world. On the contrary, Islamophobia is what most defines the party and its supporters today. So it was even more remarkable when Griffin on Question Time began defending some elements of political Islam and combined this with the evening’s only reference to the economic crisis:

“Islam does have some good points - it does not allow for usury and would not have allowed the banks to run riot the way they have.”

Here Griffin attacked the banks, greed and the political centre, much like the populist left and parts of the mainstream do. And, he hails in Islam one character – the opposition to usury.
Essentially, usury is lending money at interest. It was banned by the Catholic Church in the 12th century and also Islam is widely seen as demanding condemnation of the practice. Both the medieval European and the Islamic banking systems got around this by declaring loans to be investments (so the return is profit not interest) or by actually paying out less then the lending contract specifies, for example.

In common usage today, the term refers to the charging of unreasonably high rates of interest. What is more, it has historically become associated with Jews. Because of the (religious) laws in Europe and elsewhere that restricted interest charging to Christians, Jewish trade has often correlated with the sphere of money circulation.

Anti-Semitic imagery has traditionally attempted to create an analogy between Jews and money-lending. Fascist anti-globalisation ideology makes a distinction between industrial/productive capital and finance capital. The former is seen as honest, national and democratic. The ‘secretive web’ of financiers, speculators and capitalists, on the other hand, is characterised as Jewish. This is brought to its ‘logical’ extreme primarily in the German and parts of the wider European neo-Nazi scene, where nationalists have readopted socialist rhetoric, albeit coupled with beliefs in the ‘people’, ‘nation’ or ‘German values’.

So the remark about usury shows that anti-Semitism in Nick Griffin’s politics has not suddenly vanished. Anti-Semitism is still an element of BNP ideology, although now it manifests itself in the populist scapegoating of bankers and finance workers for the economic crisis.

True enough, in its populist form the BNP’s emphasis is mostly on anti-immigration and Islamophobic rhetoric. But its populist ultra-nationalism lets it stay in touch with the neo-Nazi obsession with what they see as an international Jewish conspiracy of bankers and speculators.

This is something that the UAF analysis is unable to grasp: where Griffin presents the BNP as a populist anti-greed, anti-sleaze and anti-war party, this is not to hide its true colours; rather it is entirely compatible with his version of ethno-pluralist nationalism.

"Raphael Schlembach is an editor of Shift Magazine."

Remember, Remember… Ungdomshuset

Mass arrests of anarchist activists, squatters and punks are nothing new to Copenhagen. Compared with the battle to protect an autonomous social centre in 2007, the climate protests last December hardly saw the worst of the Danish police.

An extraordinary wave of state repression against left-wing structures hit Denmark early in 2007. Large numbers of police, helped by anti-terror units, ran operations against Copenhagen’s “scene” of punks, anarchists and alternative youths. Hundreds of anti-establishment activists were arrested, some during peaceful anti-police demonstrations, some during violent riots, and some in their own homes. Most were not charged with any crime, but were remanded in custody for periods of up to 27 days, pending further “investigation” into their political conduct. Numerous alternative housing projects, bars and social centres were violently entered by anti-riot police units, using tear gas and breaking doors, windows and bones. Homes and even a high school were searched. Police also entered the offices of the group “ABC”, which provided legal aid and psychological support to the hundreds of prisoners, arresting everyone within it. Dozens of protesters were admitted to hospital after the worst days of police violence, some with severe injuries. During the heights of the street fights between the authorities and anti-police protesters, any Danish citizen with an “alternative look” about them could risk arrest, while foreign activists were liable for immediate deportation. Controls at the border with Germany were stepped up, as were police controls on the motorways leading to Copenhagen. On 1 March, citizens were advised by the authorities to stay out of the districts where major police operations were expected. Schools and shops remained closed.

At the centre of attention stood an alternative youth centre – the “Ungdomshuset”. The building was “given” to activists by the City Council in 1982, after a decade of campaigning in the 1970s for an autonomously-run social centre. In its 25 years of existence, the Ungdomshuset provided co-operative housing and functioned as a vibrant centre for youth culture. Ownership of the premises, however, had remained with the Council. In 2000, the Council sold the house to a right-wing Christian sect, which designated the building for demolition. Unwilling to give up their project, activists kept the house occupied and the centre running. At 7am on 1 March 2007, police and anti-terror units sealed off the streets surrounding the Ungdomshuset and began a full-scale eviction. A crane lifted a container next to the house from which police could enter the windows. Simultaneously, police used helicopters to reach the roof of the building. The eviction lasted about one hour. What happened inside is unclear. No press or bystanders were permitted near the scene. It is known, however, that two ambulances were called to the premises and that all 35 people in the house were arrested and were remanded in custody for initially 27 days.

When news about the eviction got around, the Copenhagen “scene” began to assemble in the streets near the Ungdomshuset. The same afternoon, thousands of people were in the area, forming a protest march, with some attempting to get close to the building. With emotions running high and fuelled by aggressive provocations from the side of the anti-riot police, some bottles and cobblestones were soon thrown at the lines of police. They, in turn, responded with tear gas and arrests. Tension on the streets of Copenhagen lasted for the next two days. During daytime, hundreds of protesters would form marches into the town centre, which were occasionally attacked by police forces. During quieter hours, anti-terror units would patrol the streets with armoured vehicles. At night, activists employed guerrilla tactics, building burning barricades and torching cars, just to disappear again when police arrived on the scene. The riots were used by the authorities to justify an unprecedented scale of repression. During the first 24 hours after the eviction of the Ungdomshuset alone, nearly 300 alternative youths were arrested by “snatch squads”. Many were severely injured during the protests, frequently being hit or run over by police vehicles. Some 270 people had already been arrested in the previous December, when police attacked a 1,000 strong anti-eviction demonstration and a riot ensued.

It was not long until the eviction made international news too. Following the eviction activists from other European countries responded widely with dozens of solidarity demonstrations. Support came largely from other Scandinavian countries and Germany with hundreds reported on the streets of Berlin, Köln, Hamburg, München, Göttingen, Frankfurt, Hannover, Vienna, Heidelberg, Gothenburg, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Leipzig to name but a few. Protesters in these countries also faced police oppression and brutality. The Danish consulate in France was occupied as well as a number of houses in Germany in solidarity with the Ungdomshuset.

The police reaction to the largely peaceful demonstrations in Copenhagen during the UN conference this winter were certainly outrageous, but have to be seen in a context of Danish policing over the past 25 years or so. COP15’s mass arrests have taken their place in a history of conflict between left-wing protestors and the Danish police which also includes the massive housing battles in 1986, the 1993 anti-EU membership riots, the 2000 anti-EU summit protests (where police fired live rounds into a demonstration) and the Ungdomshuset demonstrations of 2007.

The political success of the COP15 mobilisations is still to come… - Bertie Russell

A feeling of failure will undoubtedly be one of the most common emotions for those who spent a cold week or more in Copenhagen. I felt defeated after participating in an ineffectual affinity group, staring at a screen in the Støberiet convergence centre watching reruns of my friends being beaten, arrested and pepper sprayed. It is hard to associate any emotions with the ‘Reclaim Power’ action on the 16th other than regret, sorrow, and failure. In terms of affirming personal commitment to social change, the Reclaim Power action will not be remembered fondly. However, I believe to read the events of Copenhagen in this way is quite limited, putting the emphasis on personal emotions and experience rather than a broader political reading of the outcome of the mobilization. Contra to what my heart tells me, the mobilizations of Copenhagen were a success.

The mobilization around the UNFCCC’s fifteenth summit in Copenhagen was a politically messy process. As illustrated by the tiresome ‘shut them in or shut them down’ debates that dragged on for months like a bad summit hopping hangover, there was no easy ‘inside/outside’ relationship that provided simple alliances between those ‘against’ climate change opposed to those ‘for’ it. Rather we faced a complex institutional process that pulled together NGOs and governments around the desperate myth that they were there to ‘solve climate change’. The reality is that the COP15, despite the intentions of many of the participants, served as an attempt to inaugurate a new round of ‘green’ capitalist accumulation and to establish new regimes of political legitimacy. In the most literal of terms, these high level political processes are designed to capitalize on the environmental crisis.

Contra to major NGOs such as WWF that actively support the extension of capitalist markets and stronger state control as ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis, networks such as Climate Justice Now! (CJN!) and Climate Justice Action (CJA) understand that it is only through forcing profound systemic change that we are going to prevent the worst effects of global warming becoming reality. Influenced by the Durban Declaration of 2004, CJN! emerged at the Bali COP as a network of organisations with strong representation from the global south unified by their opposition to carbon markets and the burning of fossil fuels, and their shared commitment to building a global grassroots movement for climate justice. Over the past five years many of the member organisations have continued to be active within the COP process, actively resisting attempts to establish carbon markets and false solutions that serve only to further capitalist accumulation and state legitimacy. CJN! was responsible for initiating the ‘System Change not Climate Change!’ block on the 12th, of which CJA later became a co-organiser.

The goals of CJN! are broadly shared by Climate Justice Action (CJA), a predominantly European network of individuals and organisations that formed around a call to action in September 2008. A series of working principles and network goals provides CJA’s cohesion, echoing CJN!s desire to challenge false and market-based solutions and to build a global movement for climate justice. Whilst the heterogeneity of participants is reflected in the somewhat cautious wording, one particular goal – ‘To both sharpen our understanding of, and to address, the root social, ecological, political and economic causes of the climate crisis towards a total systemic transformation of our society’ – reveals the radical pretension of a network whose concerns go far beyond ‘climate change’ as an isolated and apolitical condition. CJA was responsible for initiating the ‘Reclaim Power: Pushing for Climate Justice’ action on the 16th. The decision taken by CJN! at the September meeting in Bangkok to play a role in co-organising both events transformed the political potential of the Reclaim Power action, the possibility of internal disruption of the COP and increased participation in the mass walkout overcoming any sterile inside/outside binary that it could so easily have fallen into.

Seen by some as the more ‘radical’ element of the mobilizations, Never Trust A Cop (NTAC) emerged out of the March CJA meeting in response to the perceived need for a more explicitly anticapitalist platform in the mobilizations. The March meeting was consumed by negotiations over the goals of CJA and the mass action concept, and the formation of NTAC was arguably grounded in concerns that NGO elements within CJA were compromising the politics of the network to the point that it was impossible to maintain an explicitly anticapitalist and antagonistic position. Indeed, NTAC’s original call out stated – “we will refuse to side with sell-out NGOs and all the would-be managers of protest”. Notwithstanding these concerns, NTAC’s ‘Hit the Production’ action was formally supported by CJA at the October gathering, whilst many individuals were active in both networks, suggesting there was little in the way of political division between the two. What NTAC offered to the mobilizations was ultimately a confrontational aesthetic utilised to mobilize a ‘European’ crowd with significantly different political histories to those in the UK. Despite the fact that it was less problematic for NTAC to articulate a critique of capitalism and the dangerous tendencies of environmental movements towards ecofascism, those claims that NTAC was ‘more’ radical/anticapitalist are mostly superficial, and are likely to be based on aesthetic judgement rather than political analysis.

Finally, CJN!, CJA and NTAC must be clearly distinguished from the Climate Action Network (CAN). CAN is the hegemonic NGO block within the COP process which tends towards apolitical contributions based on urging governments to ‘take action’. Campaign networks such as TckTckTck and Stop Climate Chaos act as the ‘public face’ of CAN and serve to demonstrate ‘popular public support’ for the bargaining positions of reformist positions within the negotiations.

In the weeks before Copenhagen I asked myself what it would mean to succeed. First and foremost, we needed to see the seeds of a global movement planted, we needed a new ‘Seattle’, we needed to create a refrain that allowed us to struggle shoulder to shoulder regardless of our geographies. Second, we needed to delegitimize the entire COP process, revealing it as an attempt to restart capitalist accumulation as ‘Green Capitalism’ and to reassert a political legitimacy grounded in a ‘Green authoritarianism’. Third, we needed a future. Quite simply, we needed to leave Copenhagen seeing new political possibilities that were not there before.

The events of the fortnight, not limiting it to the activist ghetto, lead me to answer positively to all three of my standard bearers of success. There were a number of catalysts, some in our hands and some not, that have led to the very real possibility of a global movement surfacing over the coming year. Dealing with these catalysts chronologically, the ‘Danish text’ leaked in the first week enraged those organizations that, despite their critiques of the COP, were still engaged in the COP process. These were largely NGOs such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, who despite critiques of not only the COP process but often capitalism and the state, engaged in the formal talks in the hope it offered the ‘pragmatic’ option in preventing the imminent destruction of their communities and livelihoods. The Danish text played a crucial role in confirming that the COP was not only flawed in principle, but also failed to fulfil any claim as the pragmatic option.

Secondly, the experience of the ‘System Change not Climate Change’ block on the 12th revealed the increasing divide between reformist NGOs and CJA/N!. Despite the scandal of the Danish text and an increasing clarity that the COP was destined to fail, the organizers continued with a rhetoric of calling on ‘world leaders [to] take urgent and resolute action’. This position clearly contrasted with the systemic critique articulated at the joint CJA/N! press conference, which was held inside the Bella centre itself the day before the Reclaim Power! action on the 16th. Participants from both climate justice networks denounced the possibility that solutions to the climate crisis were compatible with the extension of the capitalist system through mechanisms such as carbon trading and REDD. The press conference was immediately followed by the arrest of CJA spokesperson Tadzio Mueller, illuminating that the repression was occurring not simply against those ‘outside’ the Bella centre, but rather against dissenting voices per se regardless of their position inside or outside of the formal COP process. Any reading of Copenhagen that draws simplistic lines between those ‘inside’ and those ‘outside’ will fall far short of developing an understanding of where our affinities lie.

Thirdly, the action on the 16th pulled together these various threads to form a new political subjectivity - if only we are capable of realizing it. The explicit aims of the action were to delegitimize the COP itself, and to work upon building a social movement capable of building another world to that pursued by established institutions. When we decry our inability to breach the fence of the UN area as a sign of failure, we should recall what one member of the Italian social centre network articulated at the October CJA gathering – ‘We should not think that the measure of our political success will be found in the lines drawn in the sand. Rather, our success will be based on our ability to reveal and breach immaterial lines, political lines drawn in the air’. Unlike Seattle, where the political lines correlated closely with physical fences or police lines, the political lines of Copenhagen were between those who wanted to further expand capitalist accumulation and state control and those fighting for a more egalitarian world based on respect and a shared life with each other and the planet we live on. What was unique about the 16th, and what allowed these political lines to be revealed, was the homogenous police response to both those confronting and those undergoing exodus from the Bella centre. It mattered not where the dissenting voices came from, the physical fence between us was far less important that the emerging unification of dissent that was suppressed in every instance.

To be clear, the action of the 16th had enormous potential that was not fulfilled. If the fence truly had been breached, if there had been broader political and numerical participation, and we had something that really could be called a peoples assembly inside the UN area, the political affects may have been immeasurable. We can only dream of what could have been. Yet as it stands the COP was publicly revealed as a process that suffocates all dissenting voices by default, that excludes those that believe in a world based on anything but accumulation and control. This exclusion and suffocation revealed a shared political subjectivity that has the strength to become the basis of a global movement - all those who reject a world of accumulation, control and environmental degradation in favour of a world of egality, openness and creative potential. In short, all those who not only demand but will create ‘system change not climate change’.

The CJN! debrief and ‘where next?’ meeting held on the 19th in Øsknehallen brought together participants in the CJN! and CJA network, ranging from members of Via Campesina and ATTAC to Filipino fishing communities and UK Climate Campers. This diverse group of people announced together that what binds us is our desire for system change not climate change, that we have a basis of resistance and a dream of other worlds that can be realized together. This shared desire moves us beyond the post-political space of carbon towards a shared antagonism against capitalism as the root cause of the climate crisis we face. Undoubtedly what is meant by ‘system change’ is up for debate – we almost certainly do not agree upon what we mean by either ‘system’ or ‘change’ – yet the reinvigoration of this discussion necessitates a fundamental shift in terms of what it means to struggle ‘against’ climate change.

We live in exciting times where we face the very real possibility of building a global movement capable of engaging with climate change on a different terrain, yet if we are to realise this movement we must recognize the antagonistic subjectivity that affiliates us. The time for ‘carbon post-politics’ is over - we will not find affinities in the abstractions of carbon, it is not a language conducive to political movement. Instead we must realise a subjectivity based on an antagonism towards capitalism and control, a subjectivity that is not exclusive but capable of iteration across social, geographical and topical boundaries. We must develop a shared critical understanding of climate change as a power struggle rather than a neutral field where ‘we are all in this together’ – the peasant farmer in Brazil does not stand shoulder to shoulder with Wall Street and the White House.

A number of ‘recommendations’ towards this realisation emerged out of the meeting on the 19th - calls for a global day of action for ‘system change not climate change’ in the autumn are real and supported by a diverse network of people that share a fundamental desire for another world. The possibility of global-regional ‘Peoples Assemblies for Climate Justice’ to be held concurrently has had support from participants on every continent. Yet none of these things will happen unless we make them happen. It is up to us to make this movement move, to resist co-optation and capture by corporate solutions, political parties or reformist unions in favour of strategies that free us from the expanding cycle of capital that is responsible for climate change.

"Bertie Russell is involved in CJA and the Camp for Climate Action. The author would like to thank Sanne Braudel for her insightful reflections and commitment in correcting his inaccuracies."

Editorial - Friend or Foe

At the end of March, the Daily Mail published a story intended to discredit the Climate Camp. It ‘revealed’ the identity of one of the Camp’s two delegates flying to Bolivia to attend the ‘World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth’, called for by president Evo Morales. The story got re-published on Indymedia, later hidden by the site admins, attracting a storm of furious responses, with many registering their disgust at Climate Campers going to Bolivia.

Objections, however, were not based on the political decision to engage with state representatives and NGOs but rather upon the method of travel these delegates had chosen, flying the 6,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean! Some repeated the Daily Mail’s claims of hypocrisy, remembering the 2007 occupation of a site near Heathrow and Plane Stupid’s arguments against ‘unnecessary’ flights.

In SHIFT, we have always explored the problems of the ‘don’t fly’ argument, trying to show that fighting against individual lifestyle choices falls shorts of anti-capitalist politics. The resurfacing of the aviation debate again demonstrates this tension, as it misses the key political questions surrounding the Bolivian conference in Cochabamba.

Our interview with The Cornerhouse in this issue highlights the fact that fetishising CO2 leads many climate activists into the same impasse as UN negotiators and carbon traders. An analysis which puts the focus on carbon, and not on the flows of capital which produces it, will ignore questions whose solutions are vital for the creation of a truly radical movement. In this case, debate about methods of transport stifled discussions about the purpose of the conference and the broader question of alliances with state actors in general.

In this issue of SHIFT we thus seek to ask the question of alliances. The COP15 counter-summit saw the emergence of arguments for diagonalism; that is, a critical engagement with specific states and other organisations and institutions within them. But are these likely to reproduce the tensions and problems seen within both the World and European Social forums? Do the specificities of climate change, the issue around which new movements are emerging, provide new answers to the old question of political alliances? In times like these, just who can we rely on?

The carbon-centric focus of the debate that emerged around the sending of Climate Camp delegates to Cochabamba is, for us, a good example of how climate activists have a tendency to set up barriers to their aim of movement building through their ‘political’ focus (state intervention, lifestyle changes that are only realistic or desirable for the already wealthy). As we have argued before, calls for change that are motivated only by the desire to reduce carbon emissions often result in the perceived necessity of austerity measures or state-sanctioned controls. Working with the state or more mainstream organisations on environmental issues may then seem like an attractive solution.

But if we understand climate change as a social problem, as a by-product, no doubt, of the capitalist system, the appeal of joining forces with the state, or with its liberal apologists, becomes absurd. Conceptualising climate change as part of a broader system of environmental and social injustice does, however, points us in the direction of new allies; those who are disenfranchised and disempowered by capitalism, those who have lost control of their lives and of their relationship to their environments.

So, for us, the question of friend and foe is not first and foremost one of strategy or organisation, but of politics.

An interview with Larry Lohmann from The Cornerhouse

You are a member of The Cornerhouse which had a presence on the big ‘economics panel’ during the Blackheath Climate Camp in 2009. Yet, few climate activists will know much about your organisation. Could you introduce it, and the work you do, to us?

We are three people, three activists – all with different experiences. My colleague Nick [Hildyard], who you heard speak [at Blackheath], he’s been an environmentalist since he was a teenager and then became an expert on dams and dam struggles several years ago – and he’s still on call for this kind of thing. He also works on a range of other issues now, like finance and trade, the BAE corruption case, the Balfour Beatty corruption…

My colleague Sarah [Sexton], like me, had experiences as an activist in Thailand in the late 80s and early 90s. She works on issues of public health, pensions, the intersection of finance and pension issues, genetic engineering, both human genetic technologies and also agricultural.

My background is as an activist in Thailand for a number of years during the 1980s. I came to Britain after that and worked with Nick and Sarah almost from the beginning. In Thailand I was working on dam issues and land right issues, forestry and rights to nature kind of issues. I continued that when I was working in the UK. I got dragged into climate issues through this because of the intersection between climate politics and land rights politics when it became clear in the 1990s that under the guise of this techno-ecological approach to climate there was a way of annexing land and resources in the Global South in particular. So the more I got involved in climate politics the more I became aware that there was a gap certainly in the mainstream green-environmentalist approach to climate in Europe – and the more I looked into it the worse it seemed.

At some stage you also worked for The Ecologist magazine but then left. Was this also because you felt that there was a gap in mainstream green thinking?

Yes, that awareness was always there, but it sort of became unbridgeable in the mid 1990s. I originally came over to work with Nick who was working on The Ecologist, and Sarah also did for a couple of years when she arrived from Thailand. In a way of course we wanted to hang on to The Ecologist because we were a bridgehead that was respected by the mainstream green movement, which allowed us to approach social and political issues more. For us that was the value of The Ecologist magazine.

The founder of the magazine, Teddy Goldsmith, decided for some reason that he wanted to come back to the magazine which he had basically left for many years. I think he was egged on by his friends saying ‘these crazy lefties are taking over this august magazine’ and Teddy should do something about it. It was something like that. So it became an intolerable situation and we all had to leave.

The contentious issue there wasn’t climate change though?

No, the issue was basically racism and alliances with the far Right among the environmental movement, which remains a serious tendency in amongst certain sections of the green movement.

Was that related to arguments for population control?

Population certainly played a role, but it went beyond that. It was partly a question of viewpoints on population and so forth, where our view was completely antithetical to the view of Teddy or to that of the mainstream greens. But it was also a question of alliances and loyalties. For a lot of people in the green movement, the idea was that they were green, neither right nor left.

This is still the case today, for example George Monbiot at a Climate Camp saying that we should make alliances with people from right across the spectrum to push the climate stuff through as it is so important .

In the abstract I can certainly understand the need to be strategic and tactical about these things, but you have to look at it on a case by case basis. In Teddy’s case, he accepted an invitation by this extremely far right-wing intellectual think tank in Europe called GRECE to speak at one of their anniversary celebrations. That was a bridge too far for me, because it undermined our work. If people know that somebody connected with us was actually speaking at a meeting of these kind of intellectual racists in Europe, then we can’t do our work, we can’t make any alliances and we can’t be trusted. This was a question of practical politics. And we still have problems with this. Most of the mainstream green movement does not understand this issue at all, so we try to avoid the issue because whenever it comes up we always get faced with people saying ‘oh, you just had a personal disagreement with Teddy Goldsmith’ or ‘you didn’t like his politics’ or something, but it’s deeper than that. It is a question of alliance building and whether you build alliances or not with crackpots and racists.

As you say, you have moved on. Now the focus of your work is based around this concept of ‘carbon fetishism’, which for us is an important concept that the green movement, whether it is mainstream or radical, hasn’t really grasped yet. Could you start describing what you mean by ‘fetishism’?

This goes back to the elementary point that climate change is not a technical or purely physical-scientific issue. It’s not a question of teaching people in power about science. It’s a deeply political issue connected with questions such as ‘who has used the atmosphere in the past; who is using it now; for what purpose’. It’s connected with the whole history of fossil fuel exploitation in all respects, not just the climate respect. All these issues are unavoidable; equality, distribution and exploitation – the climate issue is all about that. It’s all about health, it’s all about anti-militarism, about connecting with the movement against militarisation of society. You can’t really deal with that kind of issue without looking at it in this way, without building alliances without that perspective in mind. I don’t believe a climate movement will be effective unless it does recognise that the issue is a political and social issue in that way.

And I think this continues in some sense to divide what we conventionally think of as the green movement. As you were implying, we have to think about which kind of alliances will be most effective in the climate debate, and this is not necessarily going to be with the a-political wing of the green movement. We have to recognise that sometimes our biggest problems are with our green colleagues, who sometimes are big fans of carbon trading. Because of their political analysis they think this is possible and say ‘you guys just wait around for the revolution and the revolution will never come’, this kind of familiar rhetoric. I think, for years we tried to see if this situation could be improved and if alliances could be built with people who don’t have our political analysis. But now, without rejecting this entirely out of hand, it is more important spending our time building alliances with labour unions, with indigenous peoples who are seeing the effects both of climate change and of the mainstream solutions to climate change impacting on their daily lives; building alliances with small farmers and with the world majority in the Global South.

These are the alliances which are most important in the long term. Also making alliances across issues, across national boundaries as much as possible, but recognising that a lot of the issues are pretty much buried intensely within certain local or national boundaries, but trying to work with that and working people whose issue is not necessarily climate change. I think the case of Ecuador is fairly clear: the local activists, a lot of the indigenous people, the municipal governments and so forth in the area, they are not climate change activists; they are concerned with the effects of the oil industry on their land and on society, and if this intersects with the climate issue and we can help make it intersect all to the good, but we have to recognise that it’s connected not in a purely theoretical way but in a way that you have to take into consideration in building alliances and in recognising the deeper nature of the climate issue.

I want to come back to the term ‘fetishism’. You seem to borrow it from Volume 1 of Capital. Even in the progressive climate movement, Marxism plays a minor role. So could you justify the use of that term and explain how it helps us understand these issues.

I like to experiment and learn, so I’m always looking for new ways of understanding things that I haven’t quite come to grips with. And I’ve known for a long time that I haven’t really come to grips with Chapter 1 of Volume 1 of Capital in a proper way because, although it is probably one of the most analysed passages in academic history, it is still very difficult to get a grip on the depth of Marx’s thinking in terms of this very complex process of fetishism. It is not a voluntaristic thing , it is not an ideology, it’s something which is embedded in everyday practice. Understanding fetishism helps us understand that climate change politics is not a question of calling all the world’s leaders into a science classroom and giving them a lesson about science. Commodity fetishism goes much deeper than that into practice.

It’s useful to explore partly because fetishism not only characterises the carbon market approach to climate in which you have a complex process of commodification but also deeply affects green politics in a way by which the fetish distracts your attention from the central relations that you need to talk about when talking about the climate issue; instead you focus on numbers and on things which begin to have dominion over you.

It seems to us that the central tenet of the notion of fetishism is to create equivalence; the idea that you compare different gases, different places and locality through an idea of carbon equivalence. That has led to solutions such as carbon trading which is mostly opposed by the green movement, yet mostly opposed because of an understanding of the ineffectiveness of the market rather than because it is seen as fundamentally a wrong principle.

Yes, fetishism is not recognised as part of the problem, but I think it is part of the problem. If you expend all this effort to create all these magical objects like emissions reduction units, or AAUs [Assigned Amount Unit cap], or 350 parts per million CO2 and start treating these in your everyday practices as magical objects which somehow will guard you against everything then you are prevented from dealing with the political and social relations that really matter.

We are reminded of the Climate Camp’s day of mass action – the Swoop – last year which was preceded by an online vote to decide its target based on ‘this one emits this much yearly’ and ‘this one emits that much over its lifetime’.

You can understand this, but yes it’s a problem and a good example of this fetishistic approach.

What kind of strategy would you suggest instead?

The strategy has to centre around building alliances with rather different social movements that are intent on structural change away from fossil fuels and away from the structure that fossil fuels represent in terms of being one of the central tools in the exploitation of labour and so forth.
You can’t just talk about emissions as if it were a matter of molecules. You have to bring in these social relations. What are emissions in the context of a ‘commons regime’? What are emissions in the context of a regime of unlimited capital accumulation benefitting a small minority? That’s different emissions, different carbon, the molecules are different in their social and political meaning. This is not a formula; we have to be open to different kinds of languages that express such points in a way that lead to structural issues.

Climate Justice? Climate Refugee? Capitalism, Nationalism and Migration - Steph Davies

These days, everyone from Coca Cola to the BNP has a position on climate change. Since COP15 there has been a general shift to the right across Europe with politicians invoking fear through alarming statistics seemingly connected to migration and the rhetoric of precarity and emergency that surrounds climate change discourse prospering through the recession. Migration has become the scapegoat for a myriad of problems, thus legitimising increasing levels of repression against “illegals”. Whilst an analysis of capitalism in connection to climate change is becoming more common (although at times tokenistic), its’ relationship to nationalism, especially in connection to climate change issues, is often overlooked. The development of the “climate refugee” further perpetuates this model, where nation states are called upon to manage migration and control populations.

The “climate justice” movement is a direct response to the failings of international democracy to deal with the threat of climate change, and is gaining momentum, as expressed through the mobilisations around COP15 and the World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights in Cochabamba, Bolivia. But what are the limits of this it’s new vocabulary?

COP15 and Migration

In Copenhagen about 2,000 people participated in the “Climate No Borders” demonstration, targeting the Ministry of Defence. The demonstration aimed to highlight the complexity of issues surrounding migration and climate change. The Danish Prime Minister -now leader of NATO- was responsible for promoting a reinforcement of Fortress Europe through the expansion of organisations such as Frontex, the controversial armed border agency, and “UADs” (“unmanned autonomous drones) as a response to the perceived threat of increased migration.

The “International Campaign for Climate Refugees” (ICCR) was launched at the Klimaforum during COP15. Delegates from Sudan and Bangladesh were among those calling for “a new legal framework for climate refugees to realise their social, political, cultural and economic rights.” This “framework” would result in an opening up of the Geneva Convention and is supported by NGOs such as the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and the Forced Migration Organisation (FMO). But what would a climate refugee look like? Without wishing to undermine or belittle those who are currently displaced or endangered due to environmental factors, can such a category ever be implemented? Does it not add further legitimacy to the racist methodology employed by the border regime? A regime that relies on the concept of “good” and “bad” migrants, where “victims” and “opportunists”, “economic”, “political” (and now maybe “environmental”) are segregated and forced to prove their worthiness, need and threat?

False Solutions and “Post-Politics”?

During COP15 the CJA (“Climate Justice Action”) and CJN (“Climate Justice Now”) networks demanded an analysis of concepts such as “climate colonialism” (or “CO2lonialism”) and “ecological debt” in an attempt to understand climate change as a systemic problem, the result of capitalist expansion and colonialist systems of domination. In a reader analysing the “post-politics” of climate change, it was argued that the CJA and CJN are “pushing the tension between the liberal carbon consensus and a properly anti-capitalist analysis to its limits.”

The Climate Camp model is also situated somewhere within this problematic maze. However, whilst the CCA has also highlighted “market-driven approaches” as a red herring, it has failed to out population control as a “false solution”. The CCA is currently dealing with some difficult tensions, briefly considering a rebrand to become “Climate Justice UK”. The discussion paper published after the Bristol gathering asked “whether CCA is first and foremost a movement against climate change, or a movement against capitalism”?

Another discussion paper reveals further attempts to confront these complex issues. After the Amsterdam meeting the CJA cited: “Climate justice means recognising that the capitalist growth paradigm, which leads to over extraction, overproduction and overconsumption stands in deep contrast to the biophysical limits of the planet and the struggle for social justice.”

Both the CCA and the CJA are engaging in a discussion around what the CJA terms “colonising capitalism”, and the “logic of profit”. Now is the time to engage with the difficult issue of capitalism’s bed fellow: nationalism. In order to acknowledge issues connected with what the CCA terms “socially just solutions”, it is essential that the dogma of nationalism and its methodology of authoritarianism are confronted as an essential component of the capitalist growth paradigm. The issues surrounding climate induced migration are inextricably linked to this. State sanctioned definitions such as the proposed “climate refugee” category will always reinforce these issues.

Re-Examining the Geneva Convention

The term “climate refugee” was coined is the 1970s and has been in a process of constant appraisal ever since. In 2006 the Maldives called for a re-opening of the Geneva Convention to include “climate refugees”, but this was scrapped by the UNHCR (United Nations Human Rights Commission), who “noted that most receiving States actually want to restrict the refugee regime further, rather than extend it in the current form”. During the COP15 summit, the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) and the UNHCR, failed once again to engage with the debate surrounding issues connected with climate refugees. In their joint platform towards the end of the conference they questioned the appropriateness of the summit for these types of discussions. Questions posed by the Bangladeshi and Sudanese delegates were left unanswered.

NGOs such as the EJF and FMO call for a greater level of dignity for those entrapped in the asylum system. However, their demands for a new category of “climate refugee” further segregates and fail to acknowledge practically the complexities of causes that lead to migration. It is important to acknowledge and act in solidarity with those already displaced by climate change, but any prescriptive attempts to create a category of climate refugee by opening the 1949 Geneva convention can never be sufficient, and endanger the already shaky foundations on which it stands. Already asylum seekers with so-called “good” cases are frequently deported on the grounds of a lack of “proof”. How can we ever really adapt this system which shows so little regard for the basic human “rights” it supposedly enshrines to include such a disparate category as climate refugee?

Members of the BNP and the far right attempt to use the Geneva convention as a tool to legitimise their hysterical claims. In an open letter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, some members argued: “The Geneva Convention clearly states that displacement by immigration is a crime against humanity. Thus any displacement would be Ethnocide.” The EDL also use this rhetoric, calling for all nations, from Israeli, to Hindi, to stand up against the threat of Sharia law, commonly citing the transformation of churches into mosques as a further example of this “ethnocide”.

Overpopulation

The BNP, the nation’s “true green party” argues that: “Unlike the fake ‘Greens’…the BNP is the only party to recognise that overpopulation – whose primary driver is immigration, as revealed by the government’s own figures – is the cause of the destruction of our environment.”

Organisations such as the Optimum Population Trust develop this argument through various campaigns such as “PopOffsets”, which aims to make its supporters “carbon neutral” by funding contraceptive programmes across the globe. James Lovelock and David Attenborough use the logic of the Gaia Hypothesis as a reason for tougher immigration policies in order to aid the planet in “self-regulation”.

The demands for limits on population are not only the remit of the right, as the Permaculture Association’s recently revised ethics demonstrate. The much discussed “third ethic” previously entitled “fair shares” (in conjunction with “earth care” and “people care”) has been replaced with: “setting limits to population and consumption”. An explanatory text acknowledges that “setting limits to population is not about limiting people’s free movement, tight border controls and a one child policy.” However, it fails to outline practically what a “limit to population” would involve. Who would set these limits? How would they be enforced? Once again, authoritarianism is not only unchallenged, but inferred.

Liberal Nationalism

The concept of “climate justice” necessitates an analysis of the displacement caused by climate change and the “solutions” proposed by nation states. In order to truly bring about climate justice we must acknowledge the myriad of reasons that lead to migration, not through the perpetuation of systems encouraging a victim mentality but in opening the borders, enabling free movement and stopping practices which make it impossible for people to stay in their homes. As the Anarchist Federation observed: “Nationalism can be liberal, cosmopolitan and tolerant, defining the ‘common interest’ of the people in ways which do not require a single race”. This liberal application of nationalism will only increase as “climate refugees” are enshrined in law, with those excluded further disempowered.

Migration and globalisation have disrupted fixed notions of class, with the conditions of individuals changing greatly through their precarious relationships to nation states. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that the “UN must take proper measures to realize people’s rights to the freedom of movement within and between state borders.” The ICCR calls for “a separate Safeguard Protocol (SP) that should be framed to address climate victims under a rights and justice framework…as victims of global injustice caused by unequal and undemocratic global architecture.” This “global architecture” is incapable of redressing any kind of balance or creating justice. In order to move beyond the dogma of victim and perpetrator it is essential to end all forms of migrations management which divide and categorise.

Reinforcing the Borders

Contrary to the picture painted by “populationists” climate change will not result in millions of people seeking asylum in Europe. The majority of those displaced through the impacts of climate change in Africa move within that continent. In January 2010 Israel began work on a second wall, stretching between Rafah and Eliat, in an attempt to secure the nation from the “surge” of migrants from Africa. A combination of a lack of resources required to embark on a journey to the EU, the increased militarisation of the borders of Europe, and the desire to stay closer to countries of origins means that many migrants will not travel to the UK.
“Fortress India” is being constructed along the Assam-Bangladesh border, inspired by Israel’s wall in the West Bank. On completion, the fence will be as long as America’s 2,000-mile border with Mexico, which is currently being reinforced using several different technologies employed by the US “Fence Lab” including concrete, razor wire, electric shocks and increased patrols and surveillance. 80,000 Indian soldiers of the Border Security Force “defend” the border, which has been legitimised by the impending threat of increased migration from Bangladesh. But the death toll is rising on both sides, with people being shot indiscriminately in order to ensure “national security”. Climate change is the perfect framework through which nation states can rationalise and reinforce their borders, from Bangladesh, to Calais, where migrant camps are routinely cleared by order of the Mayor who promotes “sustainable development” and a “preserved environment, a city pleasant to be in”.

In Bolivia the People’s Conference asked some difficult questions: “What means should be adopted to confront climate change migration? Why talk about migrants and not climate change refugees? How can the human rights of climate change migrants be guaranteed? How can developed countries compensate climate change migrants?”

Definitions emerging from the forum included “climate refugees”, “forced migrants” and the “climate displaced”. These concepts are useful in unpacking some of the main issues in relation to climate change and migration, especially in acknowledging the impacts of the freedom of capital and resources in contrast with people. However, the demands of the people’s assembly still call for legally enshrined definitions and aid funds, rather than challenging the border regime.

It is important to act in solidarity now to ensure that those displaced by climate change can be supported. Nation states will not provide the framework within which to do this. Neither will arbitrary definitions which further divide and rule, and fail to account for the unforeseen impacts of climate change. An anti-authoritarian response, including an opening of the borders, is the only possible methodology through which to confront the issue of climate change and migration. Any response to the threat of climate change seeking to acknowledge the “rights” of a specific group will fail to usurp the authoritarianism that protects economic expansion. Capitalism must be analysed in relation to the nationalism which ensures its continuation and this cannot happen within the framework of the “climate refugee”.

Steph Davies is part of the No Borders network, and has helped with several Climate Camps. She hopes that this year will see a greater engagement with issues connected to climate change and migration from networks fighting for social change.

Cochabamba: Beyond the Complex: Anarchist Pride - Dariush Sokolov

We saw the hole in the heart of the anti-capitalist movement gape more clearly than ever last December in Copenhagen, when the “Reclaim Power” demo gave up its assault on the Bella Centre after twenty minutes and sat down in a windswept road outside to hold a “Peoples’ Assembly”. So this was what non-violent mass direct action came to in practice. Inside the conference centre the “representatives” of the worlds’ nations chattered and stalled. Outside we duplicated their representative politics on a budget. Flown in tourist class from Bangladesh and Bolivia, “community leaders” and NGO apparatchiks, some elected by someone, some by no one, self-appointed, salaried or sponsored or who was asking, made their righteous demands as spokespeople for the “Global South”, to the applause of the white European activists.

That day’s events leave a bunch of wilting questions. One being: what is this uneasy relationship between privileged European activists and the representatives of the “Global South”? What kind of magic does it have to trump the usual commitments, dazzle away prized anti-hierarchical safeguards? So, following up on this Copenhagen pattern, Climate Camp approved its two “delegates” to the “Peoples Climate Summit” in Cochabamba called by Evo Morales, president of the “plurinational republic of Bolivia” — cue Daily Mail long haul flight outrage. And a similar proposal was even raised (though ejected) at the last No Borders network gathering. Could it be that an Aymara indigenous president in a stripy jumper is something other than a president; that a “plurinational” state is something other than a state; that a top-down NGO run by brown people from the South is something other than a top-down NGO; or that the politics of representation stops being a problem across the equator? Doesn’t Bolivia still have borders, an army, and prisons — prisons where our comrades still rot behind bars?

I can’t help feeling this relationship indeed fingers a hole in the heart of this movement — or to put it less dramatically, a lack of confidence in our beliefs, a lack of feeling in our principles. In Copenhagen it was as if we were saying: we privileged European activists, we’re not able to act and fight for ourselves, in our own names, with our own anger, for our own desires — so we have to represent, you could even say colonise, the demands of others more needy, more worthy. Of course, we wouldn’t everclaim to speak for the South … but we can make alliances with those who all so happily make those claims, politicians, “community leaders”. So the symbiosis of the white activists and the brown activists, united in our representation of the teeming unknown multitude below, bound together
in careerism and middle class guilt.

Pink tide

It could also be that some people are genuinely excited about what’s going on down in South America. There is a real shift in power taking place in the continent, a real movement away from the existing pattern ofdomination. Morales’ election victory in December 2005 may not, as he claimed, end 500 years of colonial power, but it may be one in a number of steps away from a century of Yankee power in the South.

Other tidemarks in the Latin American “Pink tide”: Hugo Chavez, ex-military coupster, elected president of Venezuela since 1999, survived a US-backed coup in 2002, and now with a second constitutional change in 2009 entitled to keep on running indefinitely, using the revenue from nationalised oil company PDVSA for aid “missions” in Cuba and Bolivia aswell as the slums of Caracas. After the Argentinian crisis in 2001-2 effectively destroyed the hold of the IMF and the “Washington Consensus” on regional economics, Nestor Kirchner’s government, elected in 2003, defaulted on international debt and ran a cheap peso policy to rebuild export industry. Brazil, the biggest, richest and most powerful South American state by far, fell into the centre left with Lula’s victory in 2002: orthodox market economics, a booming consumer economy, together with anti-Yankee rhetoric and the beginnings of a welfare safety net. Bolivia and Ecuador — where Rafael Correa was elected in 2006 – newer and smaller members of the pink club, have gone fastest along the road of “21st century socialism”.

Nationalisations, growing independence from global financial markets, indigenous rights, basic welfare policies – as well as plenty of gloating and fist-waving at the US. Social democratic governments are moving South America towards some of the welfarist rights European workers squeezed out of capital after WWII. Behind the scenes are global economic shifts: on the one hand the boom in commodities (oil in Venezuela and Brazil, Bolivian gas, industrial Soya plantations in Argentina and Brazil, etc.) fuelling China’s rapid industrial expansion; on the other, the bubble bursting in the decrepit debt and service economies of US and Europe. The power of global capital shifts to the East and South, wealth is being redistributed, and some crumbs are really finding their way to the “people” – though plenty more, for sure, to the elites in Sao Paulo and Caracas.

This redistribution is taking place well within the state/capital system. The new Bolivian constitution of 2009 recognises the rights of la pachamama, mother earth – alongside the army, the courts, a beefed-up Senate, and all the usual institutions of a republic. The new pink Latin states are more popular, more inclusive, that is - stronger states. Populist economies are better distributed, more stable, that is - stronger market economies. Economies based on the same model of petroleum, industrial agriculture, extraction, and growth before everything. This is the message behind the rhetoric that doesn’t make it to hopeful English-speaking radicals. When Evo Morales announces in Copenhagen that capitalism is “the worst enemy of humanity” Anglophone media of both left and right hype up the rebel pronouncements. But there’s minimal coverage, left or right, when vice-president Álvaro García Linera quietly repeats that Bolivia is building “Andean-Amazonian capitalism” (albeit as a Marxist “intermediary stage”); or when Morales, back at home, praises “nationalist military” and “patriotic entrepreneurs”. This truth, which doesn’t key into the hopes or fears of either side, isn’t news. Though he certainly got more coverage for his ideas, in the Cochabamba summit opening speech, about a link between homosexuality and hormones in chicken feed.

Of course anarchists on the ground know what’s going on. In January 2006 anarchist organisations from across Latin America published the “Caracas Libertarian Declaration”. They wrote: “it seems that a new historical cycle is opening up in Latin America in which the people deposit their anguish and hopes in social-democratic and populist governments … Consequently we reaffirm, with the backing of rich historical experience, that there are no statist or vanguard paths towards a socialist libertarian society. To be credible, such a society must be based on the direct participation of grassroots social movements and their non-negotiable self-managed ascent.”

While “Northern” radicals look away from Chavez’ militarist posturing, the anarchist publication El Libertario keeps on denouncing the army murderers in safe government positions, and “Venezuela of the multinationals”. Or in La Paz, anarchofeminists Mujeres Creando are sticking up murals of Evo wanking over the Miss Universe pageant he’s hosting in Santa Cruz. Even in South America states are still states, and anarchists are still anarchists.

Incorporation

Of course the point of activists going to Cochabamba wasn’t to work with the state, or to help draw up yet more demands, wishlists, fantasy bodies — UN covenants, peoples’ commissions, climate justice courts, new human rights treaties, global economic funds, … Rather, it was about hooking up with the radical groups of all kinds hanging around at the fringes. And no doubt it was a great networking opportunity. But what opportunity did Cochabamba represent for the government organisers? What were we doing for them?

The advances of the 21st century Latin pink tide resemble the 20th century gains of European social democracy. There are strong parallels in means as well as ends. Chavismo in Venezuela is closely tied to the military, but the forces behind Lula or Morales are more genuinely popular, newly created left parties built out of alliances of labour and “social movements”. See the history of the UK Labour party, which built a political play out of the power of trade unions and the co-operative movement plus Fabian left intellectual leadership. The story is old but it goes on: when weak popular movements challenge the state, they get crushed; when they get too strong, the state invites them in. Anyone who’s ever been involved in workplace or community organising knows how it goes, and the rules are just the same in Britain and Brazil.

According to the philosopher Spinoza, when a body encounters another body with which it agrees “in nature”, they can join together in a “joyful meeting”, forming a more powerful joint body. In an anarchist relation built from affinity, individuals or groups come freely together to mutually advance each other’s work. But if the two bodies are of opposing natures, the weaker may simply be destroyed or decomposed by the stronger. When a grassroots body meets up with a fully functioning State Leviathan, the best result we can hope for is incorporation or assimilation. Only the State comes off with increased power, because whenever we recognise its terms we legitimise it, and the basis of every State is the acceptance of its legitimacy, its right to rule.

This is the other side of the political pink tide. Whatever happened to the Brazilian MST, the world’s biggest landless movement? With over a million members, a 20 year history of mass direct action for real, of grassroots organisation and popular education, the movement’s demands for land reform are stalled for good, caught by its friends in government in a double bind of officialisation and continuing repression. What happened to the Argentinian piqueteros and factory occupiers, great revolutionary hope of the new millenium? Spontaneous movements of the dispossessed were soon channelled into political dead-ends, the Trotskyist movement which peaked and dwindled, or official Peronism behind Kirchner. The tested populist mix of national capitalism, protectionist industry mixed with soup kitchens and noisy demos, did the trick once again.

Minority, without the complex

As Uruguayan anarchist Daniel Barret (Rafael Sposito, passed away last August) writes in 2008: “it’s not news to anyone that anarchists are a tiny minority in Bolivia, just like everywhere else on the planet … and as, except for a few countries in the prime of anarchosyndicalism, we always have been.” But what does this minority status imply? If anything, rather than abandoning our principles, it means holding even tighter to them. “To be an anarchist, without ‘minority complex’, is an act of savage self-orphanage, of proud conviction, adopted by those who individually and/or collectively refuse to be followers of processes controlled by others, and whose basic disposition is to give life to self-owned and genuinely emancipatory practices.”

Anarchists are freaks. Do we seriously believe in a world without the state, without capital, without property, god, the family, borders, without all these time-honoured rules and norms and institutions that hold society together? In living self-organised lives, in free associations of affinity, creating new types of relationships as yet undreamt of, challenging domination and hierarchy on every level? Crazy or not, what’s undeniable is that as anarchists our desires and beliefs are largely out of step with those of just about everyone else we ever meet. How do we work with others without being assimilated, without compromising our freakish ideas?

Rather than pining for some imaginary multitude — because we’re not going to build a mass movement, not any time soon — we celebrate what we are, what we have, what we can become. There are minoritarian joys and powers — freedom of movement, spontaneity, creativity, flexibility, invisibility, daring. We can create, provoke, irritate, inspire, and above all, infect those around us with new desires and practices. When we position ourselves in the thick of grassroots struggles — rather than in sticky liasons with their leaders and assimilators — we can have effects well beyond our numbers. And we speak, and more importantly act, for ourselves, anarchists without apology.

Dariush Sokolov is an anarchist and no borders activist. He blogs at http://partemaldita.blogspot.com/

Entering the Crisis: Is the (re)invigoration of a global movement our only answer to the present?

NB Dear Reader, the footnotes to this article serve partly as a subtext.

Naomi Klein wrote before the protests in Copenhagen last December that we “will witness a new maturity for the movement that ignited a decade ago”. Turbulence magazine, a visible theoretical force in the run up to and during the mobilisations in Copenhagen, identifies climate, or the bio-crisis, as having the potential to be the common ground for a movement that can replace the ‘one no many yeses’ of the Seattle era. Thus last winter in Denmark we may have witnessed the slightly quiet birth of the ‘climate justice movement’. This article will critique the conceivable trajectory of this movement and briefly present another (perhaps non-mutually exclusive) call to the present. (1)

From COP15 to COPInfinity

The transition from one summit to another, along the shifting frontiers of a global project for capital, provides the activist a series of platforms to assert her objections. The shut down of the World Trade Organisation in 1999 and the events in the run up to and after it challenged the legitimacy of neo-liberalism. Our movements brought together voices from communities in India who fought for water that had been privatised by Coca-Cola, landless peasants in Mexico who had been robbed of their past by way of the present due to IMF laws, to cheated South Africans who had been sold out by a corrupt government to foreign business. Everywhere the stories carried the same narrative: the path being cleared for the neo-liberal project. Neo-liberalism told us it was motivated by progress, but through this global movement we found a way to say, no, it was profit.

December 2009 and things have changed. Significantly the crisis of neo-liberalism has made even its architects question its sustainability and the rumbles of the bio-crisis are heard from Alberta (2) to Blackheath (3) to New Orleans. In Copenhagen our mobilisation brought - or aimed to bring - attention to the flawed (unproductive, non-democratic) UN process. Like many of the meeting points in the alter-globalisation movement, this mobilisation was predominantly organised by activists in the global north, often inspired by indigenous cultures and struggles of the global south. Activists took the opportunity for a counter summit, our “best practice” (Turbulence), to present the world the existing or threatening manifestations of capital’s destructive project and at the same time put forward the solutions articulated through a set of demands. (4)

Yet in the coming together for counter summits we create opposition consistent with the spectacle of the summit itself. If and when it was possible to put the legitimacy of COP15 at risk we did so by the use of a counter spectacle.

During COP15 we adopted the People’s Assembly, an indigenous practice taken from South America, as a form by which we asserted oppositional messaging to the UN process. The result becomes a counter spectacle providing a valuable platform for repressed voices, much less than it put into practice our own People’s Assembly amongst the tear gas, the cameras and activists in the Bella centre car park.
Leave fossil fuels in the ground. The solutions articulated by the demands of the protest are clear and make sense to human life. Yet who were we talking to? The non-product of the meeting, the Copenhagen Accord, shows that it is evident those behind the fences and police can not respond to reality.

Essentially the counter spectacle can only aid us by legitimising real action. ‘A global movement’ is not an end in itself. This form of objection alone can be as thin as the paper carrying the images of protest. It becomes a reflection without existing.

How many activist people’s assemblies will it take before we realise we need to become people, first? Either by necessity or desire the demands in Copenhagen produce a common trajectory for a social movement. However they can only remain baseless until we build the means to put them in place. Without gaining a future shaped by many hands and minds far beyond conference centres, board rooms and parliaments, demands only add to the endless feedback loop of protest.

But what if, as happened at the WTO summit in Seattle, our counter spectacle overwhelmed the hegemony in Copenhagen? Where would we be now if we had crossed the heavily guarded or flimsy bridges (5) into the Bella centre as a much hyped flood of a people’s opposition? That we lacked the numbers may have been due to the limited resources we have to articulate the significance of the COP15, both in terms of the social-bio-crisis itself and the event as part of a movement strategy. Or it may be that the common sense amongst active anti-capitalists does not replicate the idea of our history existing in cycles, i.e. that another ten years of anti-capitalist politics planned to be similar to the last is our only way forward.

Not every opposition surfaces in the form of a spectacle. (6)

Diagnolism

This is not to say that a global climate movement will assume the identical form of the Seattle era. The concept of diagnolism has perhaps been one of the more interesting developments in the emerging tactics of this emerging movement.

During the COP, diagnolism was perhaps expressed by ‘the inside outside strategy’. The idea being mobilising protesters outside to enter while at the same time mobilising representatives inside to walk out in disgust and solidarity. We could see this as a the potential for new alliances with frustrated NGOs and representatives from states with little power in the (imperialist) process. However it was also systematic of the rock and hard place position between the general awareness of climate change as an intense global problem demanding a ‘quick resolve’ by state power and the politics of organisers and participants of the counter spectacle. Essentially this strategy was a result of the debate by activists in the run up to the mobilisations whether to ’shut them down or lock them in’.
Yet not communicating directly to the heads of power structures (vertical) nor purely through non-hierarchical alliances (horizontal), may persist in this movement. As Turbulence outlines “The counter-globalisation movement was suspicious of – often even opposed to – institutions per se, constituted forms of power […] But when the crisis of neoliberalism irrupted, it became apparent that this mistrust of institutions had translated into an inability to consistently shape politics and the economy.”

Diagnolism, if the term refers to a shift in our ideas towards power structures, can only be useful from this point on, i.e. with the understanding that the COP process has failed. The Copenhagen Accord was another product from a series of spectacles by the collaboration of imperialist and corporate power aiming to retain a legitimacy of management. If proof was needed, it is clear these collaborations offer nothing despite any length of diagonal engagement. There is now no dichotomy between climate change demanding state led solutions and climate change demanding social action.
However, diagnolism is useful if it means leaving behind the purity of our activism in order to take up entry points available to us to deconstruct power. (7)

The urgency of the situation demands time. The vastness of the dessert demands that we condense.
We turn now to a different call to the present. A call for the real, for the body that stands before the mirror giving us the basis by which to exist. Introducing the Invisible Committee.

The Invisible Committee have become known for an alleged connection to events in Tarnac, a small village in France, where a preventative raid and 9 arrests were made for terrorist conspiracy charges in November 2008. Also known are their well crafted and emotive texts one of which, The Coming Insurrection, was reviewed on Fox News by Glen Beck who called it “the book of anti-common sense” and that “as world economies go down the tank, the disenfranchised people are set to explode”.
Briefly here I am outlining my own interpretation of what I see as four themes (with much cross over) to their theoretical and lived proposals. (8)

“Faced with the evidence of the catastrophe, there are those who get indignant and those who take note, those who denounce and those who get organised. We are among those who get organised.” (9)

- Invisibility and Milieus

The activist allows the potential of her courage to be contained by the definition as an activist. With this label she will consistently follow power structures around without ever constituting a force by which to present actual challenge. Subculture becomes a product of our alienation and offers little potential to enter the fabrics of society. This can be seen clearly if we take the example of French revolutionaries moving into a country village where they broaden a social base including helping with the running of the local bar, shop and food deliveries. It becomes hard to say who is and who isn’t a comrade and the environment as a whole shifts to one of autonomy and, perhaps, antagonism. A different approach may be needed in cities where there is a lack of space and lack of ‘neutral space’. We find in cities whole areas are dominated milieus (the Turkish area, the Muslim district, the middle class neighbourhood, the gay part of town). Invisibility is both a way to grow in the shadows and expand without need for the dead weight in forming organisations. When we understand what is evident in the world around us we do not need to be told what to do, we shall know it without saying a word.

- The Party and Cohesion

For us the question is how do we take power without concentrating it? To the Invisible Committee it is how it is to be done rather than what.

The Party is invisible. It is every wild cat strike, it is every anonymous blockade to the network, every hacked and destroyed database, every pound stolen from every bank and fed underground, it is Sarkozy’s ‘Scum’ and every car in flames.

The Party is any force that realises itself against the organised power structures of the desert only to disappear once the damage has been made, reforming as and when necessary. Through the damage caused by The Party we are allowed to see a social war take shape without ever having to know who is on our side. Perhaps The Party fulfils similar needs to the ones that led Turbulence to call for climate as the ‘common ground’.

- An Autonomous Material Force (10)

A sinking future for neo-liberalism and its vision of progress brings down with it the institutional left, who, during the emergence of the neo-liberal project took up its position as one of distribution for the gains made by capital. Now as capital finds less frontiers for expansion this contract is cut. The left has no basis to life any longer. It has neglected the very premise of its project – a method of living. Without any other basis for life, behind society’s empty stage creep in new and old forms of fascism as seen in the rising popularity of right and far right parties in Europe.

The future the activist fights for must be built, from small, in the present. Only the expansion of a lived reality can oppose the desert and offers an alternative to anthropologies of dominance.

- Crisis and Insurrection

For the Invisible Committee revolutionary insurrection depends upon the expansion of the communes. As our independence from the metropolis grows so can the strength and confidence of our offence.
Crisis is the meeting point in which insurrection becomes inevitable. The Invisible Committee wish to show to us a system in collapse where mainstream politics has been reduced to the management of dysfunction. It is here where we are invited into another world. One where we depend on our selves and the people we know by face and voice to produce our lives, one where the world is no longer an exterior place - ‘the environment’, one where community becomes political infrastructure, where friendship and solidarity become currency, where the basis of our needs, social and material, are shared in a world where it is possible to live and fight from. This world, in which humans are social beings with motivations beyond fear and personal gain, is waiting for our move.

“We have begun”.

To Conclude

A global climate movement can talk in the stillness of a photo but a future waits for us to grow in the shadows; it’s entry points are gathering on the horizon. We shall meet you there.
This article is dedicated to the Birds of the Coming Storm.

FOOTNOTES

(1) Prelude – from a village in France
Anne-Marie visits and I tell her about the unearthing of pipes in the garden. She looks at the tracks of a digger and spots something. “Here” she says, bending over “the flower that comes from this bulb is very beautiful. Here is another also.” We find several more bulbs laying on the surface of the torn up grass. “Take these and find the rest. When the digger returns they will die. They become beautiful flowers” she says. I thank her and place the bulbs in old news paper and put them in the shed. Before she leaves I ask “how long do they take to bloom?” “If you plant them today” she tells me “then at least two years”.

(2) Home to ingenuous communities and the second biggest source of oil after Saudi Arabia in the form of tar sands. The removal of the tar sand is completed by trucks as big as two story houses leaving vast gaps in the forest visible from space.

(3) The site of the last UK Climate Camp.

(4) Leaving fossil fuels in the ground; Socialising and decentralising energy; Relocalising our food production; Recognising and repaying ecological and climate debt; Respecting indigenous peoples’ rights; Regenerating our eco-systems

(5) An inflatable bridge to power. The days were counting down to the protest set to be the biggie and I had already been feeling a disappointment and disempowerment towards our counter spectacle. Somehow through knowing some imaginative people in the UK scene I had become involved in a plan to make a bridge over the moat that separated us from the conference by 5 foot deep and 20 foot wide absolutely freezing water. Ten points for our ability to organise anything like this under pressure but the plan to link up 8 inflatable mattresses with rope brought home to me the position of our confrontation that week. On the day, to my deepest surprise we managed to set up the bridge and on the other side a line of giant cops with dogs and mace had formed. A girl called out on a megaphone “who’s excited about crossing the bridge?!” No one. Myself and a couple of comrades ended up going over armed with some sausages for the pooches strapped to our waist. We had taken parts in the counter spectacle. After being bitten and pepper sprayed we made it to the car park where the People’s Assembly was originally planned to be held. “What happened to the people?” my mate asked me as we sat back to back in handcuffs.

(6) Well Amsterdam was under occupation by the Nazis, Jacoba Maria was made to repair SS uniforms. Each week Jacoba was careful to wrap her work in ordinary brown paper and string and place it in a pile amongst others at the offices. Inside her packages were the socks of several SS men, all with the foot holes sown shut.

(7) Last year, once a month, the local Mayor, shop owners and people in the village came together for a meeting with the water agency. A proposal was put forward by a young man named Theo that if the village installed its own rain water collection and purification resources there would be a constant supply all year round. The idea was met with opposition from the agency. However money was collected amongst the community and a non-interest loan was set up from a sympathetic rich individual. In January the village disconnected its taps from the water board and plugged into their own supply. The meetings continue but without the agency representative.

(8) For a much more in depth (and to me slightly intimidating) theoretical approach to the long list references and influences in the Invisibility Committee’s work see http://www.metamute.org/node/12806

(9) The following quotes are taken from The Call and The Coming Insurrection – free to download at zinelibrary.info

(10) In front of the mirror is the commune. “Communes come into being when people find each other, get on with each other, and decide on a common path.” Through the collective, resources are shared and acquired, skills are developed and actions planed. A social base is found. The collective can approach a new environment with the basis to communise it. Friendship becomes the language of our politics.

The author wrote this piece well in France. it came about through reflections on experiences of climate and anticapitalist activism in the UK and many illuminating discussions with friends on ‘ways forward’.

Possessed or Dispossessed? - Jane Stratton and Lauren Wroe

Neither of us are experts in mental health, nor do we have a long history of involvement in radical or democratic health activism. We don’t claim to know everything about these issues. We weren’t around in the 60’s/70’s when movements around democratic mental health really took off in the UK, the States and other areas of Europe, particularly Italy. One of us bought Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Anti-Oedipus’ four years ago- it’s been a good door stop so far.

However, what we have seen through our initial encounters with mental health activism and mental health organisations and services is a lack of analysis and critique that we have come to expect where our friends and colleagues have engaged in other political, social and environmental issues. Our gut instinct is that mental health, and in fact most kinds of health care, are seen as personal issues that are either best dealt with by professionals or through personal choices such as alternative healthcare, healing or therapeutic communities or alternative self-help groups. In this article we are not pushing for another single issue campaign, or for the exploration of alternatives to mainstream psychology (although we recognise the importance of these). What we are asking is why isn’t health, and especially mental health an issue that we more regularly see as part of our anti-capitalist politics?

Here we want to talk about our own experiences and why we think mental health, when looked at with the same level of analysis as many of the other issues we engage in, should be an ongoing point of conversation for anti-capitalists. We hope to feed into a conversation that we rarely hear in our networks and to find those people who are already talking about these issues politically.

Our experience

The ‘anti-capitalist movement’ we have been a part of in the UK (we offer this definition very broadly and with caution!) constantly strives to create its own infrastructure, whether this is motivated by apocalyptic visions of the future or autonomy from capitalist social relations (or both) everyone’s at it. Squats, housing co-ops and social centres. We build our networks to consist of people who can do accounting, plumbing, squat defending and cooking. We like doing things together and creating our own spaces, and we know how to do it. But for the past too many years we’ve arrived in fields around the UK and Europe, put up some tents, made the running water happen, fought the cops and then… invited a group of ‘action medics’ to set up a tent where we’ll later go to them with our splinters. On the one hand we strive for autonomy and on the other we treat some of our individual and social needs as services to be provided by others. The effect of this is not only that we hand over responsibility and control of our physical and mental health to others, but that we fail to engage with health as a political issue.

For example, in another time and place, some people are starting a transition town group in their local area. In transition town collectives working groups for all the vital aspects of life are set up. This time we remember that health needs addressing. At our first transition town meeting, we attended the health brainstorm. We listened to people discuss the morally deplorable manner with which the NHS disposes of its waste, and casually (probably under-)estimate the amount of plastic that the NHS uses so irresponsibly, “How can we go about persuading them to return to sterilising metal equipment?” Beside providing another example of our obsession with carbon emissions at the expense of social issues, we again failed to identify health as political.

We always seem to forget about health. We talk about authoritarian immigration laws, ID cards infringing on our civil liberties, incarceration of political prisoners (etc. etc.) but a quick look at the health section of Indymedia shows a fine example of the lack of debate there is in our movements around healthcare. There are hardly any posts under the health section of the web page and the ones that are there are mostly concerned with animal rights and incinerators. Why don’t we talk about how capitalism creates mental and physical health problems on both a global and individual level? Or health inequality? Or arbitrary diagnostic criteria that attempt to pathologise the personal burdens we carry from living in such a demanding society?

Mental health and anti-capitalism

When attempts are made to tackle issues surrounding mental health we seem more than happy to tolerate a conspiratorial understanding of society and power that we deplore elsewhere (psychiatrists controlling the masses etc. etc.). The authors believe it makes more sense to understand mental health discourses and practices as largely economically contingent, rather than as the result of some reactionary ideology peddled by a brain washing elite. Mental health practitioners are bound by the same economic limitations and requirements as everyone else, drugs are always the first port of call because they’re cheap, and, as we all know, medical science and research is dominated by pharmaceutical companies because the research just couldn’t happen without their money (significantly the majority of randomised clinical trials undertaken to evaluate the efficacy of drugs versus other forms of therapy are sponsored by the very same companies who manufacture the drugs). But the problem runs deeper than this, historically the industrial revolution facilitated new attitude to ‘madness’ and health, the transformation of nature through manufacture opened the way for ideas about the transformation of people, through transformative therapies and rehabilitation. We saw a move away from the view that madness was an incurable affliction and a move toward therapies intended to ‘cure’ what were now understood as mental illnesses with the view of rehabilitating people back into cooperative and productive members of society. Capitalism requires us to be productive and thus mental health practices and discourses are oriented towards this necessity.

Attempts at reforming mental health services without addressing capitalism inevitably fail. Moves to community care were seen as a great success for the democratic mental health movement in Italy where psychiatric institutions were abolished and all psychiatric and mental health services were outsourced into the community. The eighties and nineties saw a similar move in the UK. Victorian asylums were closed and psychiatric and psychological services were moved into the community. Whereas there is no doubt that psychiatric services are now ‘better’ than they were in the sixties, the failure to challenge the entirety of the system within which mental health services are situated led to what has been described as the mere outsourcing of psychiatric services into peoples homes. The asylums may have gone but the institution hadn’t and couldn’t change.

On a more grass roots level we also limit our potential for change when we revert to DIY life-stylism rather than radically critiquing the health service and the economic system and social processes that produce it. Anarcha-feminists are generally better at politicising health, it was feminists who focused the idea of autonomous health by starting to check their own breasts for lumps. But they also fall into a trap of lifestylism often talking about how to deal with ’so called’ PMT or how to make your own sanitary towels (we hope never to sit through one of these again) rather than how political and economic forces negatively affect people’s everyday experience of healthcare. Why do we never have a radical position on why most health resources are used treating the results of excessive food, alcohol and drug consumption? It’s not enough to encourage healthy, green, organic and active lifestyles or tell people to stop watching telly and get an allotment. In practice this is what doctors try to do everyday in order to lower peoples’ cholesterol and blood pressure, but after years of experience, they know they will always revert to drugs. Similarly it’s one thing to tell someone with high blood pressure to do a bit more exercise and quite another to tell someone suicidal who probably has inadequate housing and may be unemployed to radically change their lifestyle. That just doesn’t cut it for the majority of people. Instead let’s talk about society and what makes it that way.

Consumer and individual choices alone do not carry the antagonistic element that would have the potential to realise change in our society. Whilst this reduction of social problems to the individual diverts attention it also places undue pressure on people who already live in a highly pressurised and externally managed environment. Many attempts at linking Marxist theory and mental health have identified alienation as having psychological or individual origins, but alienation originates from social organisation. Capitalism and the State require us to be active and productive citizens, to embrace our ‘rights’ and responsibilities and to participate equally in liberal democracy. We are dispossessed by society and labelled mad or unfit not then, because we are seen as being ‘possessed’ (as was once the case), but because we are no longer useful. Our focus therefore has to be on this form of social organisation that requires us to participate in limited and pre-determined ways.

This leads us to one other concern, and that is the anti-medical, anti-corporate or anti-progressive streak that dominates some areas of mental health activism. A progressive socially critical position recognises that capitalism manifests in the ways we relate to each other in our everyday activities and not just in the big corporate monster or your local super-market. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water we feel that certain technological and social advances, whether that’s drug treatments, medical science or professionalised health services, should be embraced as the product of human creativity and innovation with a valuable and necessary role in society rather than purely as the product of an exploitative capitalist economy. For example rather than shouting down anti-depressants, we should talk about why capitalist economics make antidepressants the best and most ‘effective’ treatment for every person experiencing depression? Instead of criticising health and social care workers, we should recognise the time pressures on their work, the necessary corporate funding that keeps training courses, institutions and research centres afloat and the knock on effect this has on how health services are delivered.

Finally, we feel it’s worth saying here that we are not denying the truly debilitating impact of some emotional and psychological experiences on people’s lives. By saying that mental health has a social and economic dimension we do not intend to belittle the experience of the individual, rather we are asking that our understanding of and activism on health issues has an antagonistic element and a social orientation.

Continuing the conversation

Like we said earlier we’re not pushing for another single issue campaign, rather we’re asking that when we are confronted with issues regarding mental and physical health we see them as political and as part of our struggle as anti-capitalists. Alternative approaches to a range of psychological ‘illnesses’ and experiences exist all over the country, the Hearing Voices Network works with people on an individual and collective level toward finding new ways of understanding and living with experiences of voice hearing. Mad pride and ‘bed pushes’ through city centres are examples of attempts to highlight the injustices experienced in the mental health system and to offer a voice for the ‘dispossessed’ to shout back. But rather than focusing too much on solutions and protest we want to continue exploring how ‘madness’ and health are embedded in social and political processes. We believe that the movement towards a truly democratic ‘mental health’ must be an anti-capitalist movement.

Jane Stratton is involved in the No Borders network, an action medics collective, and studies Medicine.

Lauren Wroe is co-editor of Shift magazine, researches in critical social psychology and is involved in the No Borders network.

Remember, Remember… The Wombles and the European Social Forum

The relationship between the WOMBLES and the ESF process has been complex. Our involvement in the social forum discourse started when we were invited to participate in the first London Social Forum (LSF) in October 2003. The LSF had taken a critical position towards the various leftist parties (like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and their front group (Globalise Resistance), who had sought to dominate the ESF mobilising process while actively opposing local social forums. It was clear to us that there were progressive attempts to go beyond the hierarchical characteristics of traditional left politics and engage with the rise of anti-capitalism and its subsequent radicalisation on a grassroots level.

Despite our continued scepticism over the origins of the WSF and ESF leadership dynamic, we saw it as a positive step forward, it at least meant that we were engaging with other parts of the political spectrum we had previously been wary of. During this initiative we came into contact with many people who had a passion to organise using consensus and collective decision-making, something in the past that had only existed as a reality within anarchist/anti-authoritarian direct action movements. Though their methodology was different, the experience educated both sides.
Initially enthused by the political openness and direction of the LSF we [as individuals from the WOMBLES] fought hard within the London ESF organising assembly for an inclusive, accountable & transparent process. We had argued in Paris (ESF 2003) that the UK had no grassroots support for a European social forum in 2004 and would be dominated by the retarded political agenda and reactionary forces of the UK Left. This turned out to be prophetic & ultimately true.

We officially left the London organising process when the position of compulsory affiliation fees was imposed from above by the ESF leadership. We have never sought the approval or recognition of the ESF as a body and we make no apologies for our continued critical assessment of the role and function of the ESF as a whole.

The WSF/ESF did not advocate anti-systemic change. It merely asked for “capitalism with a human face”, “a new social contract for global justice”. So, we can see the WSF, and also the ESF, as a new “reformist International”, as “extra-institutional social democracy” which has adjusted itself to the new internationalised politics of capital (and the simultaneous decline of parliamentary politics at the level of the nation state).

Practically, the ESF, as an extra-governmental agent which tries to influence EU policies, must present itself as “a legitimate negotiator”. Therefore, it acts within the limits of present institutions without challenging them at all. Its co-operation with institutions of the status quo, such as national governments and parties, and its condemnation of any anti-systemic movement that radically breaks the imposed limits of social control are manifestations of its compliance.

The synthesis of the ESF is quite problematic. Its main characteristic is “plurality/diversity”, as it results from a drive for inclusivity. This plurality/diversity helps the circulation of different experiences, ideas, struggles. Moreover, it manages to attract people who are starting out in their political activity. So, it seems to have positive aspects. Yet, it unavoidably displays a lack of a comprehensive, common social analysis and common action of participating ESF groups, which in turn drives the ESF, as a body of power, towards minimalist objectives.

Let’s take this point further, differences in analysis suggest different goals in the social struggle. Very briefly, as anarchists/anti-authoritarians, we conceptualise capitalism as a system which develops through two dynamic streams - the first one has to do with “capitalists’ competition”; the competition between capitalist institutions (such as companies), which is grounded on the market economy and leads to “economic development”, to the commodification of every aspect of our lives (vertical expansion) and to the marketisation of every part of the planet (horizontal expansion). The second trend, and more important for us, is “social competition”, the competition between capital and society, related to the historical development of the state (i.e. from the liberal state and its crises to the welfare state/social-democracy and now to the “security networks”/neo-liberal state; from the society of discipline to the society of control etc.).

The lack of such analysis by the WSF-ESF as a whole leads it to the inclusion of organisations i.e. non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which are a-critical and indirectly facilitate capital’s expansion, both in terms of commodification and marketisation (NGOs speak about “under-development” in North Korea and then Nike comes in) and social control (Amnesty International throws the “bombs of ethics” in Yugoslavia and then NATO intervenes). In other words, it leads it to the inclusion of groups and organisations whose actions are not against capitalism at all.

This is to me what we are faced with, an ideological perspective that goes beyond theory, that reaches right within the mindset of the mainstream majority and holds it therefore fearful for change - this is the issue, that change, the idea of change may give us reason to exist, to feel like we are going places, but reconciled with the fear that the security we have and the process of change will ultimately change the familiarity of the power structures we profess to despise. This is the Left, this is our involvement and connection with institutions - from horizontalism to diagonalism, the academic terminology machine launching a thousand PhDs, arguing that power is too complex to solely be classed a binary relationship, them and us- at this point we can only look at our own experiences, we can only know what is right and wrong, not from an analysis that has more to do with who is presenting it rather than what is presented, its neither Callinicos or Negri. When we reach the final hurdle, and are in the last straight, the superficiality of our movement, the subcultures, the terminology, the representation of who are allies and who are our enemies, the movement of movement slowly unravels. Through the facade of solidarity and ‘unity through diversity’ emerge the core deciding factor which dictates and enforces all others - the division between those who deem it necessary to use state and capitalist constituted power and those that seek to destroy it.

The energy and anger and momentum of this ‘movement’ came from the streets of Genoa, Prague, Nice, Evian, Gothenburg, where state forces were happy to teargas us, happy to break our bones as we slept in school buildings, happy to shoot us in the back as we ran away, happy to murder us in cold blood, the very same forces we now go to for funding to hold these Forums, the same forces that “welcome the anti-capitalists” (Jacques Chirac, Paris ESF). The same forces we allow to arrest and beat fellow ESF participants before our very eyes as we make political speeches from the stage under the watchful eye of government employees. The ‘movement of movements’ unravels itself and reveals an empty space.

If government leaders failed to stem the tide of mass anti-globalisation protest on the streets of Europe on a practical level, then it had to be contained by other means. The ESF can be seen as one of those means. In these terms it retains no political legitimacy. Indeed the ‘English exception’ becomes the blueprint.

We took a critical stance against the ESF/WSF not because of the way it was developing but because its central premise was flawed at its inception, incapable, or unwilling, of generating outwards beyond the contradictions that hold it together. When the façade slipped, like it did during those days of the ESF in London, it clumsily revealed the true nature and intentions of the ESF - a party political conference in a safe, controlled environment from which the ESF (through its leadership) could declare itself a credible negotiating partner, not the enemy, of both capital and governments.

The recent discussions on diagonalism represent nothing more than what the WSF/ESF were attempting to initialise from 2002, and therefore what the Leftist apologists of the state try to justify as progressive. Post-modern capitalism has existed due to these discussions of radicality being incorporated into an extensive network of reformist and assimilatory processes, as a mechanism which absorbs discontent rather than radiates it. Diagonalism continues this “proud” history of oppositional recuperation, when pushed hard enough the mask slips and we realise that instead of being a new transcendental force, its interests lie in the maintenance of hierarchically constituted power and the maintenance of the capitalist value system. Our struggle is difficult and risky, it’s best that if we are to risk everything then we should at least do so for everything rather than for nothing.

We leave you with a quotation from another black ski-mask wearing renegade: “I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet”

The WOMBLES group was started in the autumn of 2000 by a group of anarchists who were inspired and radicalised by a series of serious mass direct action demonstrations in London and around the world at that time. The WOMBLES promoted anarchist ideas, libertarian solidarity, autonomous self-organisation and humour. In 2004 the Wombles were involved with critiquing and organising against the European Social Forum conference held in London. Members were involved with organising an alternative space and occupying the main stage before Mayor of London Ken Livingstone could give a keynote speech. Whilst the Wombles are no longer active, a website is still regularly updated.

Editorial - Fortress Europe

“A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of movement?” Movement and migration have again become the topic of parliamentary debates, pub conversations and street protests. They have become the challenge to the social, democratic and liberal veneer of European reality. That is, the continuous movement of migrants making a mockery of the idea of Europe as an impenetrable fortress, as well as the social and political movements that resist securitisation and precarity from within its borders, sometimes in solidarity with immigrants, sometimes not. The point of the collection of articles in this issue is then to start taking seriously the proposition ‘no borders’, also in the context of international no border camps such as this years’ camp at the heart of the EU’s administration in Brussels.

Europe is far more than a collection of borders. As crisis deepens, the up-scaling of the management of capital and populations is forced to intensify. Increasingly, this is justified through a quasi-nationalist reference to the idea of ‘Europe’. “We (Europeans) are all in this together.” It is an idea which garners support from both the left and the right of the political spectrum, both seeing it as insulation from a predatory outside, be that predatory capital or dangerous foreigners.

Europe is a site of conflict. There is struggle not just about where to dra¬w its borders or how open they should be. At stake is the very identity of the continent and what form of governance this should entail. Some, such as Antonio Negri, put in a claim for a left-wing, social and democratic European Union. Others, such as numerous trade union campaigns, reject the idea of the European Union altogether. Sometimes it seems like the achievements of the labour movements are protected more easily in the national setting than in a globalised, supranational one. Ben Lear argues for a way out of this conundrum that is neither national(ist), nor international(ist).

Sociologist Saskia Sassen (in an interview with Shift Magazine of which we publish an extract in this issue) spells out how the question of globalisation cannot be answered with a return to the nation. Instead she argues for an understanding of the complex and interdependent relations between global(ised) actors and migration flows. We need to comprehend the reasons behind migrations, which often lie in the policies of nation-states themselves.

Angela Mitropoulos, in another interview in this issue, goes further than that. Her understanding of a no border politics entails support for the autonomy of movement across borders. Questions are not asked as to why people migrate, but their right and ability to do so becomes a political act in itself.
Markus Euskirchen, Henrik Lebuhn, and Gene Ray identify the European Borderland as a new site of struggle for anti-capitalists fighting for the abolition of immigration controls. However, Europe throws up new obstacles for campaigners and migrants attempting to subvert it from both inside and out. Acknowledging the disparity of these efforts within and beyond Europe they question the role of ‘bordercamps’ and ‘EuroMayDay’ marches as manifestations of these struggles.

Such campaigns or instances of activism need to go beyond a mere criticism of individual national or European policies. Fortress Europe would hardly be a better place to live without its surveillance networks, data banks and border guards. What is at stake is a critique of European totality, one that questions its construction as a space that is deemed somehow more inclusive, democratic and social, ignoring the fact that capitalist reality does not allow for any of these things.

An Interview with Sociologist Saskia Sassen

The question on the relationship between the national and the global is an interesting one to start with. Especially when we talk about globalisation, because the main idea is that globalisation destroys the national border and it becomes less important, but now we don’t see this. Borders are increasingly important.

Of course. The language of globalisation is pretty ambiguous, on the one hand, for me and this is critical politically and theoretically, most of the global happens inside the national but it is not recognised as global. What we recognise as global is mostly very powerful actors, the WTO, the IMF, the multinational corporations, the financial firms etc; and these actors produce a huge penumbra that hides and obscures all the other, the little presences if you want, and they also have the effect of disempowering. If you’re not one of them you’re out, you’re provincial, you’re a local, you’re immobile. I think that we have to change the language, the code through which we understand reality. So number one, globalisation has certainly opened the borders for flows of capital, information, certain kinds of products, outsourcing. It took law and making new kinds of regulation to enable these cross border flows. On the other hand we have also put in a lot of effort in building up the border vis-a-vis other flows.

The migration question is probably the most important one; so are the refugees. They often find closed borders when they most need to not encounter those borders. Secondly, something that has really not been noticed is that globalisation has produced a new kind of bordering, which is a bordering that cuts across the traditional borders and produces a space of cross-border circulation. But you can’t enter that space, it’s an elite space. For instance under the WTO, the NAFTA and all the other free trade agreements we have invented, we have made a subject with portable rights. This is a transnational professional class. They have special visas and all kinds of rights in all the WTO member countries. We have produced similar regimes for the IMF top level staff and the WTO. This means we can produce the capacity to create a subject with portable rights, something which many immigrant activists have asked for, to have portable rights; something which workers who depend on their employers for rights, for their insurance, also want. It’s a big movement in the UK to try to give portable rights to workers.

We have produced this subject, we’ve just made it elite. We have produced a new kind of bordering, this is just one example. There are multiple such borderings, where if you’re outside of this transnational zone you have no access. This is as tough a border to cross as some of these traditional, conventional borders. The point is that globalisation has actually produced a whole series of new borderings besides strengthening the old borders vis-a-vis the flows of migrant workers.

From this point of view what would the answer be? Would the answer be that of re-nationalisation, of bringing the nation-state back in?

No, I don’t think so. I think that we have a renationalising in the politics of membership, in other words anti-immigrant sentiment - “this is just for citizens” - we have strong renationalising tendencies. Structurally speaking there is much less of it than ideologically speaking. You see that also within the EU, the way the sovereign, the government speaks, they speak as if they have the capacity to control their borders vis-a-vis migration when in fact many of their competencies have shifted to the EU level. The government will take certain decisions, the legislator might approve those that restrict migration but then the international courts will eliminate them. We have very interesting conflicts of that sort. So that tells me that structurally speaking there is a greater amount of internationalism if you want, within the EU, than there is in the language and the politics. This includes that of the working classes which feel threatened because they don’t have jobs and then lateralise the conflict so they go against the other poor, the immigrants, rather than contesting.

But I do think that part of the role of this lies in a misconception about migrants. I think it’s very interesting in the case of the UK a report has come out that by this past summer, 50% of the Polish workers that had a right to come here had returned home. We need to create the possibilities for much greater circulation. There was a time when a lot of us who were politically active protecting the rights of immigrants, we contested the desirability of promoting circulation. But now we know, given the inbred racism and exclusion, that many migrants, perhaps a majority, would like greater flexibility to come in and out rather than being attached to one employer, which means that if they leave to go back home then they lose their job. Many of these immigrants live fuller lives in their home cities and villages than they may have in our fancier cities. So we have to revisit what was politically correct twenty years ago, when the notion of temporary work permits was seen as not empowering the immigrants. Many immigrants say “all I want is to work for three months, I don’t want to become a citizen of Germany or the UK, I just want to work here for three months and then go home where I have a real life”. That is a big shift, because this used to politically be an issue of empowering people for the sake of equality.

Now the other thing that I have long argued is that migrations do need to be governed, that’s different from controlled. I think that the attempt to control borders is a self-defeating proposition in two senses. One, you create a massive distortion such as the Mexico-US border, people often say it’s militarised but I think its weaponised, it’s an active weapon, the border is a weapon basically. The military are continually active, they have tribunals, research divisions. But a weapon is far more elementary. Again one of the issues that you’ve probably heard that I’ve said is this notion that we have enormously complex systems to produce elementary brutalities.

So, I think that what we have done at somewhere like the Mexico-US border is an immensely complex apparatus to produce an elementary brutality. Now, once you deal with humans that way, you basically can kill them or let them die in the desert. The notion that you only do that vis-a-vis the outsider is a fallacy, sooner or later it’s kind of a cancer inside of the system that is going to spread. So I say at some point this will affect us, the protected, the citizens. We now see in the United States where a lot of people who are being arrested for supposedly violating the border are citizens but the system is slow in reacting. So they are sitting in jail, we have 300,000 people sitting in jail in the last two years still waiting to get a hearing. They’ve not even been condemned, and some of them are citizens, but citizens who look like immigrants. I think this is a point in a trajectory that is unsustainable and when we are at a later stage in this trajectory we will look back and say “what happened there?”

So there is a difference between controlling and governing borders? Is this the idea that controlling borders is something that is essentially ideological? A case of controlling the global movement of black and white people? Whereas governance might stem from a more systemic necessity toward controlling and managing labour? We are wondering what your reasons are to support this idea of ‘governance?’

Well governance and governing are a bit different, governance is supposedly a system which goes beyond national. But I speak about governing in a very generic sense whoever the entities. Controlling is what we are doing now but it isn’t working and the actors involved have recognised this. There was a famous June meeting in Rabat almost two years ago, where for the first time thirty European and thirty African countries got together and discussed “how do we do this”. The enforcement of the borders is leading to enormous abuses in terms of other normative orders, human rights etc. It’s not just human rights though. We are trying to enforce a law and in that process governments are violating other laws. At some point the coding will include all these violations and it will become unsustainable. So, for me, the notion of governing means a whole bunch of elements but it certainly has to be a co-operation, the sending governments are also highly objectionable in a lot of things that they have done. They really don’t care. They haven’t done anything to develop. There is lots of corruption. We’ve got to find a system where multiple interests are brought into the picture.

At a much higher level - a really aspirational level - really doing away with borders, I don’t see that happening any time soon. So when I say governing I mean having a reasonable mix of elements so that you don’t also have borders with no controls which become a savage space, we don’t want that either. So I mean governing in the best sense of the term, not controlling but governing. This is a reality because in a way migrants, especially when a new migration begins, are a historical avant-garde which signals a reality, a change that is much larger than these people who are moving or their actions. I’m a bit of a structuralist; I think they move because something shifts and so then they migrate, and it’s always, mostly, a minority, an absolute minority that migrates. So that indicates something.

And as I have often argued, in my first book for example, we, the receiving countries, often build the bridges to export capital and our goods to the countries that then produce the migrants. And so you have all these old colonial patterns being reproduced. Often, then, the language of immigration suggests ‘here is a sending country’ and ‘here is a receiving one’, so immigration describes a certain part of the circuit. Whereas for the migrant, it might be the second half of a circuit that starts here in the ‘receiving’ country – but we never bring this in. So when we go to war, in Vietnam, say, or set up export processing zones in Haiti and in Dominican Republic, we assume that they’ll come. I often argue that, politically speaking, the language of immigration is so charged with content and with notions of how these migrations happen whereas often it’s an individual that decides to leave, for example and then it’s up to the receiving country to be nice or not so nice. But in fact it is us that have produced these actors. So we almost need another language in order to understand these complex processes.

If we are to govern then we have to recognise and understand their complexity, rather than this notion of “how do we make sure that not too many come”. That is not governing. Rather that is the idea that we have to control better and that we need countries to make sure that they control who comes and who doesn’t - that is a quota. That is a control system, or maybe governance. But by governing I mean a really rich, complex understanding.

So one of the things that I proposed in the U.S, a long time ago, is that whenever a new big international decision is made, a law, a statute, a piece of legislation is brought in, say outsourcing, or going to war, you should always have ‘immigration impact’ statements. If you are going to invade or set up operations in this country, you are building a bridge and the drug dealers, the people traffickers, whoever, are going to use it; they are the unexpected users of what we make. So when a national state takes international actions, there are consequences. Now in this case what is amazing in our current histories is of course, the combination of two things; one is the colonial past that is still operative in many ways. The other is what we did with neo-liberal policies in ‘sending countries’ where, over the last 30 years, we literally destroyed small, traditional operations that were very inefficient, but therefore of course, there were a lot of people hanging in there. So employment structures were like sticky webs; nobody could quite totally drop out. That is why countries that have long had poverty suddenly produce emigration. You can not reduce that emigration simply to poverty. Something else had happened to activate that poverty into a migration sending factor. Governing means taking all those complexities into factor. That means that in the case of the United States, the Pentagon and the State Department, they are also part of the story, it’s not just the Immigration Police.

And then coming back to the European Union, the big issue is that the EU does not have an immigration policy – when the EU goes for the asylum seeking or even the refugee convention, it reinserts itself in a really unilateral mode. Because the asylum seeking regime is opting out of the international refugee regime; a very well established regime, where the national state has responsibilities that cut across. The asylum seeking system allowed every state, individually, to do what they want, so you have all these different policies within the EU. So in some cases they gave you money, temporary work permits, but not in other countries. There again the EU has, very often, a civilising influence. So the EU said ‘we’ve got to standardise’. But still the asylum seeking regime gives the national state more arbitrary powers than the international refugee regime. If you don’t have a serious immigration policy and you have the potential for immigration – and you know, given that we destroyed their national economies and everything else – then you have these people trying to enter via the asylum regime and then they are straight into the unilateral hands of a state that is not entirely accountable to an international regime.

So the national state is the problem. It’s not a particular national state. It’s way beyond a political party. It is how a national state sees the world: absolute lack of internationalism, of a sense of interdependencies. That for me is at the heart of the intractability. That’s what I have been saying: there’s an ironic development of an internationalism in national states focused on global finance, on multinationals. Is that capability transferable to migrations? Can something happen that means we can start to be more intelligent about the environment, you know, anything that is a global commons, and migration is.

One of the things that we, as activists, as actors in a grassroots social movement, are very keen to do is to see migration as a social movement itself, as something that is autonomous from border control, and possibly from other forms of governance as well. We wondered what you think about that idea?

I think of these as aspirational projects that matter. It’s like when we think of citizenship as being about equality, it’s not a reality at all, it’s an aspirational project that matters. I also think that politically it is very interesting to think about this not as mobility, but as a political, social movement. I like that because again it gets beyond this thick category with all its excesses of meaning of immigration; you know, with these images of all the poor masses of the world that come that seek refuge in a generous country. My god let’s get out of that! Now I just gave you the hardcore side there, let’s be clear about that. But the other side then is ‘who is the migrant’. There’s this extraordinary book by a Spanish women named Natalia Ribas Mateos, she has a way of talking about the migrations between Tangiers and Spain. She captures a whole space that doesn’t fit into the traditional idea. She looks at these women, basically women, that are circulating. She captures a choreography of movements that are their own space, they don’t function as the typical image of the migrant, well of the immigrant, that is the really typical image. She also did a fantastic study on Albania. She studies the Mediterranean really as a space of connectivities rather than barriers. So I really like what you are saying, because it’s one way of extricating the subjects, in the postmodernist sense, an actor, not as a subject to, and recovering a subject that is not the “thick” immigrant. There’s something else there: each one of us is multiple subjects too, and the same thing with the immigrants. So we need to recover the grandmother, the woman that is the artist etc.

And then there is also the social movement. I like the notion that you can’t collapse the subject into “the immigrant”, which isn’t necessarily a bad word always - it’s very powerful. If we really want to create an opening of the mind then we really need to sometimes not use “the immigrant”, but say “the young artist”, “the old artist”, “the activist”, you know whatever it is. They are all those things. And frankly you know many of the activists are immigrants, certainly in the United States. Say for example organising in labour unions; that can be much easier when there are immigrants involved because there you have the community for solidarity etc. It’s re-humanising the immigrant in a way; and in this case, making an active actor. I really like that in what you are saying. But it’s really only a partial project, there are so many other versions of this.

Another thing we’d really like to talk about is the concept of the city that you use. Because we have the global, we’ve got Europe, we’ve got the nation. And then there’s a city, as a different space, where migration also plays a role, and maybe the city would govern migration differently?

Exactly. The city is a weak regime and the human rights regime is also seen as a weak regime. Right now I’m playing around with this idea of cities and the new wars: asymmetric wars, gang war, the new racisms, these are beyond a level of negatives that we associate with a normal situation. And what we are seeing in the US is serious, they’re just killing young immigrants, young gangs are killing, it’s just so extreme in the US right now, and in Germany, and here too a bit? Or maybe less so here. So the city is, number one, space, coming to Europe, a point that can be seen in its complexity as a weak regime that has its own governing impact. Now secondly the city is a sufficiently complex place that any given immigrant becomes multiple subjects in the course of the day: the parent brings the child to school, the worker, the person who meets with friends. You de-naturalise the immigrant. It’s not just the immigrant, if you describe a day in the city, you move through many spaces, each of which has its own complex reality and the person fits into that. And finally it’s a space for a kind of informal politics; protests against a landlord who is gentrifying, against police violence, where the citizen, the migrant, the tourist, they’re all there, they become the demonstrators. The city is also an interesting space for the making of new types of political subjects, political actors, often very “light” political actors, whereas if you organise on a farm in California, there is no “light”, you become immediately the rebel, the troublemaker. In a city it is all so much more diffuse, there are all these multiple worlds. So I think always of the city as a space for the making of new types of politics, of informal political actors.

The financial firms are also informal political actors, because financial firms, multinational corporations are private personas, literally. They are not supposed to be in the business of doing politics, but the CEOs themselves directly do politics, we know that. And finally, there is no central planner, no central powerful urban government, or it’s a national government like in Tokyo or Beijing. So the Chinese have, in Shanghai, a controlled project, they removed forcibly 3 million people from the centre of Shanghai in order to build 700,000 high rise buildings, now that is a controlled project. Every day you have dozens of revolts, of all sorts, but the government has accepted this. They have also some intelligent people in the central committee that have said, no, never again in Shanghai. So those to me are natural experiments that show that the city is an interesting space. And there is of course a lot more to be said.

Now something else in my work that might be interesting to you is this analysis, there are two elements of it, where I argue that there are citizens who are authorised, they are authorised by law, but they are not fully recognised, they are minoritised citizens. And then on the other hand there are unauthorised citizens in a city, undocumented immigrants, and they have lived there for a long time, they’ve raised families, they participate in the daily routines of the neighbourhood, which may have mainly citizens. So although they are unauthorised they are recognised. And I juxtapose those two extremes, it’s an interesting space. And there is a material base to this, it is not just a projection, an interpretation, because throughout their material daily practices they have built the material ground for their being recognised, by their neighbours etc. And then I go further, you must have come across this yourself, there is this standing joke among immigration experts that when an amnesty is declared or implemented you need to have violated the law for at least a solid 10 years to qualify. We all used to say they’re irrational and we laughed. And now I have totally reinterpreted this, and I say, you know what, time, 10 years, whatever, stands for all these material practices. So that the unauthorised immigrant has actually built the material ground for the law, the possibility of giving her amnesty, and that’s a heavy word. So rather it’s not the irrationality of the law, it’s rather that 10 years stands for the active making of the grounds for being incorporated. And that points out something very interesting for the practices of social movements. And we know this from squatting, at least we did in the good old days, that if, in the Roman code, you possess something for 20 years, it is yours, by law. So there is something about time, temporalities, on the side of the powerless that is a very interesting issue. It’s a sort of structural condition recognised in law that can really work if migrants begin to construct themselves as a certain type of actor, like social movements, or whatever. We have to consider time, it’s a trajectory. So now it may seem like a purely aspirational project, as I was saying, but in some years, it might actually have constructed a new type of subject. We have this in Europe I would say, we have SOS-Racisme and all of these other organisations that have been around for decades. And there’s the sans-papiers, now obviously sans-papiers is a broad category, but those who are the activists, it seems that these days they have become a kind of category of their own, they make a forceful claim that they have the right to stay. That possibility also comes out of all the work that SOS-Racisme has done, and this question of time. And now I’m speaking as a theorist, but these are ways that you can unpack this “thick” subject that is either loved or hated that is “the immigrant”, that loses her humanity, certainly at this end. Anyhow, I think we’ve said it all.

"Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007). For UNESCO she did a five-year project on sustainable human settlement with a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries, as part of the 14 volume Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net ]."

Climate Camp Diary (2010, Edinburgh)

Thursday 19.08

“I hope the weather stays good for you. Enjoy Climate Camp.” The officer from Lothian and Border Police waves us through to the site’s entrance with a smile.

Our first impressions of Climate Camp in Edinburgh are dominated by the surreal nature of this year’s location – right in the Royal Bank of Scotland’s back garden (which is some kind of carefully landscaped site of woodland, wild meadows and nature trails). Just 200 yards across the tiny Gogarburn stream are RBS’s headquarters, a 3-story building of glass and concrete. We can watch some of the 3,000 employees sitting at their desks, and they can watch us erecting our tents and straw-bale toilets.

On the way to pitching my tent, I can’t help shaking my head in disbelief at seeing a group of uniformed police officers carrying water canisters to the camp’s main entrance. Apparently, until the water supply has been established, the cops are lending a hand.

One officer is nonetheless impressed by our organisational skills. They are on 12-hour shifts, he says, and despite being promised a hot meal for lunch they only get a sandwich, an apple and a packet of crisps. Some lucky ones got hold of an extra Mars bar.

The cops stood on the little footbridge that is the most direct way to RBS HQ (and to the bus stop on the other side of the building) complain that the stab-proof vests and their ‘tool’ belts are weighing down on their backs, and are sure that their changing night/day shift patterns will have the effect of shortening their lives by several years. With the government’s new pension plans they are now facing a 35 year (instead of 30) service. It’s like I walked in on a shop stewards meeting. But what do they think of RBS, I ask instead. ‘If I see one of them I’ll ask for my bank charges back’, says one PC, laughing.

Friday 20.08

There are many newcomers at Climate Camp again this year, and again many of the old faces have stayed away. Nonetheless, it feels a lot less ‘trendy’ and ‘gap-year-like’ than the previous camps in and around London. The obligatory strategy and evaluation workshop asks the question: ‘what are we good at, and what not’. The newcomers tell us enthusiastically how welcome they feel, while those who have stayed away are not around to say why. The person next to me mumbles: ‘we’re good at telling ourselves what we’re good at, and shit at realising what we’re shit at’.

Back on the gate by the footbridge to RBS, the friendly banter between cops and campers continues. It gradually becomes clear that the officers positioned on the bridge haven’t actually been briefed to stop protesters from crossing. A polite ‘excuse me’ is enough, and some 150 campers cross for the first time with a sound system on a bike trailer for a walk and dance around the HQ.

Saturday 21.08.

Today is the official start of the camp. It’s all about the day of mass action to shut down RBS HQ, and wider strategy discussions about the future of radical climate activism. At one of the meetings, most applause is reserved for a passionate defence of the climate camp’s ‘process’: ‘After Drax, people complained about the lack of community engagement, so we went to Sipson and set up a permanent space near Kingsnorth; then people said we weren’t action-focused enough, so we organised the Radcliffe Swoop; then people criticised that we weren’t anti-capitalist enough, so we put up a ‘capitalism is crisis’ banner at Blackheath and now we’re at RBS’. The camp has certainly had a dynamic and responsive process, and I dread to think where it would be now had it not been for its informal hierarchies, but I wonder about the ‘you criticise – we do’ distinction that I’ve heard several times already. It’s almost as if debate, argument and criticism excludes you from the ‘we’ of the climate movement.

Sunday 22.08.

Eco-Wombles? Not padded out, but dressed in white overalls and with a handful of hammers between them, a couple of hundred campers make good use of the negligible police presence on the footbridge and push back the few officers who stand in their way. This time it’s not just for a dance, but for a semi-determined attempt to enter the RBS building, while a 3-person slingshot launches a balloon filled with molasses at the building. A couple of the large windows are broken with hammers, but there are still too few to hold back the police who quickly regroup and manage to push the crowd back towards the camp.

A ‘de-brief’ for the day’s events comes with a surprising twist. The breaking of windows is not condemned by ‘pacifist’ campers but by two indigenous Canadians who describe themselves as ‘guests’ of the Climate Camp and as representing their nation, the ‘Frog Clan’. Back in Canada they are responsible for their activities abroad, they say, and feel they can no longer stay at the camp. They ask for ‘respect’ from the rest of us and that their workshop (which was interrupted by the incursion towards RBS) is rescheduled. The camp seems split, or unsure how to react. While some strongly defend ‘property destruction’ as part of a ‘diversity of tactics’, others apologise unreservedly for it. Only one person commented that we should ‘not put indigenous peoples on a pedestal’, though it was reassuring to hear much approval for this sentiment around the camp fires later that night.

Monday 23.08.

The day of mass action. With the rain having set in, it wasn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea to get up early to shut down RBS offices and branches across Edinburgh. A few groups of activists did use the morning however to leave the camp (sometimes without even encountering a police officer) to disrupt activities at a couple of offices and the main RBS admin building.

Most were back in time for what had been rumoured to be the spectacular highlight of the day: an assault on RBS’s headquarters with the help of a wooden siege tower complete with a mounted rhinoceros battering ram (made out of paper-maché!). It turned out to be more farce than action, yet surreally spectacular it was. Built on wheels too far away from the camp’s exit it took some 50 activists, ‘armed’ with bows and arrows, with painted faces and animal masks, more than 3 hours to pull and push it in front of the police lines. A marquee that stood in its way had to be swiftly taken down, just like a few branches of a tree (after much discussion and apology to the tree) that stopped the rhino’s slow progress towards RBS. It ended with an underwhelming ‘bump’ into the bonnet of a police van, amidst shaking heads and murmurs of the ‘Camp for Climate Comedy’.

Despite all, I must agree with Harry Giles’ assessment on Indymedia Scotland: ‘I defend to the hilt any action’s right to be utterly absurd and completely unworkable’.

Immigration Rights and No Border Struggles in Europe - Markus Euskirchen, Henrik Lebuhn, and Gene Ray

Immigration rights and no-border movements in Europe are protesting and resisting an emerging border regime characterised, first, by a shift from traditional borderlines to extensive and intensive borderlands and zones and, second, by a public discourse that distorts representations of migrants in specific ways, as both criminals and victims. Protests and campaigns against the (old and) new strategies of control and exclusion have become a major field of action for many grassroots groups in Europe.

However, until today we can hardly speak of a coherent European immigration rights movement. Activists are evidently well connected across the European Union, and camps and demos often draw several thousand people from different countries. But overall, protests and interventions remain dispersed and uncoordinated. It is difficult to piece together an even rudimentary overview of the immense quantity and variety of creative actions across the continent. With few exceptions, such as the French “Sans Papiers” movement of the 1990s or the Spanish legalisation campaign of the early 2000s, immigration rights campaigns hardly ever make it into mainstream media news coverage.

Why has a strong and coherent European immigration rights movement failed to develop from the new forms of struggle and protest? To a large degree, it is the new border regime itself – the European Borderland - that makes it difficult and personally risky for undocumented and precariously employed migrants to organise themselves politically or even to participate publicly in campaigns organised by networks of the radical Left, the activists of which at least are not exposed to these constant threats of deportation or detention. This has certainly contributed to the failure of many campaigns up to now to develop into robust and effective social movements capable of actually stopping or reversing the trends toward border and immigration policies driven by the politics of security and fear.

However, as we will see, this “failure” has not been an utter one, for this field of struggles has produced a steady stream of inventive forms and tactics. Currently, migration struggles appear to be one of the most active, creative and engaging fields for radical politics in Europe, and grassroots groups increasingly bring together topics such as environmentalism, international migration, police brutality and precarious labour in inventive and compelling ways. In this essay, we will look in more detail at two recent examples of radical immigration rights struggles, the “activist camp” and EuroMayDay, and discuss them in the broader context of radical left tactics and strategies.

The Activist Camp and the EuroMayDay Parade

The activist camp – or “bordercamp,” as it is also called in movement discourse – is an organisational form that emerged from the experiences of past struggles in Europe, among others the militant annual campaigns to block the transport of nuclear waste in Germany. In the US, the nearest thing to this model is probably the travelling direct-action training camps organised by the Ruckus Society in the 1990s. In Europe the form has been developed further by the no-border and anti-racist movements, and by the ad hoc networks of groups preparing the large-scale international protests against the G8 and other summit meetings of dominant states and institutions.

The first European no-border camp took place in 1998 at the German-Polish border. It “was initiated to allow refugees, migrants and undocumented migrants, such as the ‘Sans Papiers’ in France, and members of support and campaign groups from across Europe to forge new alliances and strengthen solidarities in a ‘ten-day laboratory of creative resistance and civil disobedience’.” Since then, various camps and caravans have been organised all over Europe. Frequently synchronised with important EU-summits, they often function as counter-summits, bringing together hundreds and sometimes thousands of activists from different countries and diverse political affiliations within the radical Left.

Theoretically, these camps come quite close to Hakim Bey’s notion of the TAZ or “Temporary Autonomous Zone”: organised negations of capitalist logic and normality that appear for a limited time in some crack or interstice of everyday life. With their colourful and festive tent cities, their “Food Not Bombs” style communal kitchens, and their radically democratic “assembly” processes modelled on anarchist tradition as well as the EZLN in Chiapas, the European activist camp solves the logistical problem of materially sustaining international activists gathered for coordinated protests and at the same time pre-figures alternatives to capitalist hyper-individualism and competition.

But many participating activists are also critical of these activist camps. Critics point out their limitations and internal contradictions. The camps are necessarily self-selecting and therefore far from ideally inclusive – not everyone, after all, is cut out for the rigors of camping. And while realisation of direct democracy in the camps is indisputable, the strains of organising everyday life and the time-consuming processes of collective decision-making, or “conflict transformation,” can become paralysing. Finally, despite the fact that camps disappear before they can develop any permanent structure they still attract police repression – and indeed may even facilitate it by concentrating activists in delimited locations. However, the camp model remains a unique tactical form for building critical masses of activists from different cities and regions over periods of several days, and grassroots groups are now trying to extend the movement beyond political camping and some of its tendential problems. And while the activist camp is a tactical, rather than a strategic form, it does push against the limits of tacticality. The camp, as a social space, doesn’t just erect tents; it also constructs, each time, some of the conditions for a different kind of collective life – an alternative way of living that can be realised here and now, while struggling in common for radical social transformation within the existing reality. In this way, the camps push against the very contours of the dominant way of life. This, ultimately, is the source of the tensions within them – and also what draws repression from without.

The second example we want to point to is EuroMayDay. These colourful rallies and marches are organised by a large network of grassroots groups from across the so-called undogmatic Left. They aim to connect struggles often fought separately and to bring together workers, students and migrants in a common anti-capitalist front. The first EuroMayDay march was held in 2001 in Milan, where it now gathers up to 100,000 people each year. Since 2004, the process has spread all over Europe with radical and anarchist groups participating in dozens of cities. In 2007, an international assembly met in Berlin and agreed on six demands for EuroMayDay 2008:

- full legalisation for all persecuted migrants
- the right to form unions and other forms of self-organisation free from state repression
- an unconditional (or universal) basic income
- a European living wage
- free access to culture, knowledge, and skills
- the right to affordable housing

In response to this program, the question can be posed: do we really need yet another May Day parade in Europe? The EuroMayDay marches aim to solve a dilemma that emerged within organising on the Left over the course of the 1990s. Neither the traditional labour day rallies organised by Social-Democratic, mainly co-opted bureaucratic trade unions, nor the autonomist black-block style confrontational demonstrations were able to offer a viable pathway to a broad and radical social movement capable of effectively taking up new issues around migration and precarisation. In this context, EuroMayDay – sometimes compared to a leftist carnival procession spiced up with Salsa bands, political pamphlets and banners, and humorous yet radical direct actions– is an experiment aiming to re-occupy, re-frame and re-define the highly symbolic First of May.

Within the radical Left, EuroMayDay has often been criticised for exactly this: being fun and party-oriented. Many radicals fear that it goes too far in the direction of the carnivalesque, to the point that it de-politicises May Day. Moreover, EuroMayDay suffers from the usual weaknesses of programmatic marches. As a tactical form, a parade can at best open social space for the performance of radically alternative representations. But the gap between representation and reality returns at the end of the march: the mobile carnival does not demand enough from those it attracts to radically transform their ways of living. Finally, it’s not so clear who the EuroMayDay demands are directed to; while few leftists would argue with these six aims, none of them are clearly linked to the political means that could realise them.

From our perspective, however, EuroMayDay has at least been fairly successful in attracting new and diverse grassroots groups, subcultures and individuals, including undocumented migrants. It provides a common forum and shared experiences that potentially are the basis for closer coordinated actions in the future. And while the carnivalesque approach does risk trivialising the problems of responding effectively to the causes of social misery, the emphasis on humour, parody and surprise rather than direct confrontation does protect the demos from the usual stigmatising reflexes and strategies of mainstream media. In any case, it seems to us that both the trade union marches and more militant black-block clashes with riot police also tend to become de-politicising in their very ritual predictability. The vector of re-politicisation begins where predictability ends, and in this sense EuroMayDay is an impressive and viable attempt to rescue May Day by reinventing it.

Immigration Rights Struggles in Europe between Incoherence and Subversion

Despite well-connected international networks, the many actions and campaigns across Europe remain dispersed and without effective critical mass. One obvious reason for this is the fragmented political landscape of the EU. Language barriers, highly differentiated regional labour markets and a variety of national political cultures, policies, practices and institutions make it difficult to transform dozens, if not hundreds, of local initiatives into a truly European movement. But more importantly, the effects of the new border regime itself pose serious obstacles and challenges for grassroots movements – especially when it comes to connecting local activists and migrants across national borders. As a result, there is still no unified social movement that can produce political effects at the highest level of the EU, where questions of common visa policies, cross-national law enforcement cooperation, asylum and deportation standards, etc. are being negotiated and developed.

However, from our perspective, the decentralised character of the current struggles also has some clear – if mainly tactical – advantages. Small and locally grounded movements tend to learn more quickly and adapt more flexibly to new challenges and situations than can larger, more institutionalised organisations. They also tend to be more democratic and participatory and for this reason also more effective in tapping the creativity and energy of their activist membership. The protests around the G8 Summit in Germany in the summer of 2007 and similar large-scale, highly-visible international protests demonstrate the capacity of small groups and networks to organise effectively across borders in preparation for specific scheduled events – even if these mobilisations usually dissolve soon after. These are the tactical strengths that correspond to the strategic weaknesses we have indicated.

In fact, policy makers and politicians seem to fear the fluid and unpredictable character of the current movement, especially when the line is crossed between co-optable law-abiding demonstrations and more militant civil disobedience. In 2008, after one of the largest French deportation prisons was completely destroyed by revolting inmates, a French minister expressed fears of “an accumulation of incidents of that kind in the near future” – meaning riots, revolts and similar explosive upsurges of resistance.

The recent uprising in Greece and that in the French banlieues in 2005, as well as others elsewhere, indicate that his fears are not ungrounded: in a context characterised by persisting forms of institutionalised racism, reduced social entitlements, increasing precarisation of labour and deepening militarisation of everyday life, unexpected explosions of popular revolt are always just around the corner. Such uprisings, often triggered by incidences of police brutality or murder, are difficult and risky for states to deal with; false moves can easily pour gasoline on the flames of revolt and expose the depth of a generalising crisis of legitimation circulating through the capitalist “democracies.” The production of borderland also produces its own specific and explosive forms of social misery. If such uprisings are to develop into effective forces for radical social change, however, the strategic weaknesses of de-centralised protest movements would have to be overcome. In the struggles over borders and immigration policies, this would mean developing organisations adequate to contemporary realities – namely, to the deterritorialised but nevertheless efficiently coordinated border regime that has emerged in Europe in recent years. The flows of migration driven by the dialectic of desire and the relentless coercions of globalised capitalism are already a material force. Borderland names the structural and institutional constraints that, so far, block this force from becoming a factor of emancipation. To overcome this blockage, the no-border movement would need to develop strategic capacity and collective agency that could open – and defend – a pathway to the goals of free mobility and access to social rights based on residency. In the current balance of social and political forces, this means: shaping discourses more capable of disarticulating the hegemonic representations of immigrants within the prevailing politics of fear and security, and reaching beyond the comfort zones of radical-leftist politics to build more durable and effective coalitions for struggle.

"A longer version of this article was presented at the Radical Art Caucus panel, “Migration Struggles and Migratory Aesthetics” for the College Art Association annual conference in Los Angeles, 25-28 February 2009, and can be found online at www.metamute.org"

Interview with Angela Mitropoulos

At the end of September this year, No Borders activists held a protest camp against European security and immigration policy in Brussels. What kind of bordering practices would you say the location of Brussels represents?

Brussels becomes important as the administrative policy location, in terms of the organisation of technologies but also of forms of knowledge around what borders are and whether they should change, be relocated or shifted. In terms of the No Borders camp, for the last ten years they have become an important way of putting people at the threshold of border technologies and borders as such, resituating ourselves at the threshold of those practices and contesting them at that very physical, proximate level. So, No Borders camps are important for experiencing the real materiality of borders.

The issue of materiality is what we want to get at. In a large city such as Brussels which is also a city of immigrants this is certainly given. On the other hand the rationale of the camp is very much the symbolic aspect that is represented by the institutions of the European Union. So is this not different from going to, say, Calais or Lesbos?

Yes, this is an interesting shift, especially in terms of taking yourself to one of those administrative-political centres. In a sense it’s a way of strengthening and congealing the various streams of No Borders activities around Europe and of looking into FRONTEX and these kinds of practices. Though I guess I’m not the person to talk about the details of political action in Brussels, with my history being more in the context of Australia.

When we do talk about Europe, though, do you think we are letting the nation-state off the hook? Do supranational institutions such as the European Union have sufficient powers, also with respect to immigration policy, that should make them a prime target?

There is an interesting thing that happened over the last ten, fifteen years – globally – which is the notion of the harmonisation of border controls. So you have, for example, Australian immigration officers situated in Indonesia. The border, in effect shifts, and you have different states co-ordinating their border policing. You can’t think of the nation-state without thinking of it as part of an international complex. Historically, both emerged together. And the proliferation of the nation-state as the prime political form has been an international process. So these things kind of mesh. I would say you can’t think about one without thinking about the other – historically and practically.

Then what do you think of the theories, put forward for example by Antonio Negri, that the European Union represents a post-national constellation that should be welcomed by anti-state activists?

I think this is wrong. That’s why I say you have to think of these two together. On the one hand, political emotions are mobilised in increasingly nationalised forms. Nationalism, I think, has been on the ascendency for almost 20 years, for very particular reasons. Anti-immigrant sentiments rise, but that was always hinged upon the international proliferation of the nation as the political form. That’s why I think it’s wrong to think of the supranational structure as separate, or even to welcome it. Border policing is a way of creating differential markets, and of distributing people across those spaces. This requires a level of international cooperation, but this also requires the mobilisation of national sentiment at the same time.

We could say that the No Borders network has always focused more on social and individual autonomy than on the idea of the post-national. You also use the term of autonomy a lot in your writings.

The concept of autonomy kind of emerged in discussions around the Documenta [The Documenta X 1997 in Kassel, Germany, sparked the foundation of the German-wide ‘No One is Illegal (Kein Mensch ist Illegal) network – ed.]. The concept of autonomy was a way of thinking of the act of migration itself as a political act. It supersedes notions of border control but it also supersedes notions of how people think of themselves as nationally situated.

You mentioned the Documenta. This would be a reference point for only very few people involved in No Borders organising today. Could you say a bit more about the beginnings of this in Europe?

Ok, let me think. At the end of the 1990s there was a kind of spin-off session at the Documenta X that started talking about ‘No Borders’ as one word and started thinking about a No Border network. In terms of its composition, it emerges at the same time as political groups that increasingly use the internet as a form of organisation. So you have this geeky aspect to it, which is tied to things like FLOSS or OpenSource, and it starts to think of this informational flow alongside the flow of bodies. So initially the No Borders network is at some kind of juncture between OpenSource politics and migration politics. It was quite an interesting moment of putting these two things together, but also of thinking through the tensions between these two aspects. For example, in internet stuff or digital labour stuff the notion of visibility is significant, but in migration, often, clandestinity is very important. So there was also conversation in the early days about migrants needing clandestinity to move in an undocumented way, and the ways in which people who worked with media could aid that but also at times the way they had to think through the possibility that that might be a problem for migrants. So you had to navigate those two elements – that was interesting in some of the early discussions.

Do you think that since then the responses by authorities has changed in the sense that maybe at that time what we were seeing was a form of control of movement, whereas now movement is being recuperated into forms of management of migration flows?

I think there was always a sense in which the state creates illegalisation. The state illegalises certain kinds of movement and that creates the possibility for people working at cheaper rates, that creates the possibility for all kind of work practices, for example. So there is always a sense in which there is a point in integration, especially for undocumented migrants. But politically there has always been the tension between the NGO politics around managing migration and the No Border position, which states emphatically that we don’t care why people move, that’s up to them and that’s not something we need to concern ourselves with. The No Border position was about making this possible. If people wanted to stay where they were they could stay, if people wanted to move they could move.

This then gets us away from the idea of the migrant or the asylum seeker as a victim?

Yes, totally. Everybody makes decision in whatever conditions they find themselves in. They are not necessarily free agents, but they are not victims either. In a sense they make a decision within a certain context to cross borders and not wait for this crossing to be authorised.

Could we connect this to the idea that No Border activism is not just about helping the ‘other’, but that it is actually about our freedom of movement as well? Or can the No Border philosophy be accused of a radical liberalism, as just a more militant version of NGO work?

One of the really interesting things about No Border politics that I have seen unfold in a really concrete way is that it forces people to not think like a state. It forces people to think through their politics, not only about migration stuff, but a whole series of themes – and then to relinquish that moment of sovereignty that you have, of being a British citizen or an Australian citizen or whatever. This is a very corrosive and practical way of thinking about politics, without thinking like a state.

Would you see this also the difference between a ‘no borders’ and an ‘open borders’ position?

Yes absolutely, because an open borders position still wants to make some decisions about whether people are asylum seekers, or refugees, or economic migrants, while the No Borders position wants to erase the border, both in an epistemological sense and in a political sense. And that makes it quite powerful, I think.

"Angela Mitropoulos is a writer and activists based in Australia. Her writings can be found at http://archive.blogsome.com/."

Neither National nor International: Notes against Europe - Ben Lear

This article seeks to critically discuss our movement’s relationship with the European Union in its entirety. Many on the Left of capital, whilst critical of Fortress Europe and its lack of political accountability, are generally positive about the EU and see it as playing a progressive role in national, continental and global politics. This article will focus on those who are supportive of the EU project as this position accounts for large amounts of those on the reformist Left. This does not mean that parts of the Left are not critical of the EU in its perceived entirety as well as its specific manifestations, such as migration control. The NO2EU campaign, backed by the RMT union, which offered “left-led opposition to the Euro super state” during the last European Parliament elections, is one example of left wing anti-EU politics. However, the similarities between this form of anti-EU politics and the anti-EUism of right wing parties such as the BNP and UKIP are alarming. Indeed the commonalities between far right and left wing positions demonstrate the need for an explicitly anti-national as well as anti-capitalist position.

The Strange Bedfellows of a New Europa

Europe as an idea and a scale of political organisation is not a natural phenomenon. Its perceived borders and characteristics have been produced, and contested, through the actions and ideas of many, often disparate, groups, individuals and organisational actors over a long period of time. The political community of the EU is being continually produced and reaffirmed by a host of physical and political processes. In the same way that the British or Spanish states did not exist as we know them today before a deliberate project was launched to build them, (replete with national dishes, outfits and anthems), this is the same with Europe. The political ideas which shape the direction the EU takes are being produced simultaneously alongside its policies. As anti-authoritarians we must begin to unpack the host of arguments for and against the EU, from both the left and the right of the political spectrum, before we can begin to take meaningful action against it. Whilst the No Border network and those organising around the EU Stockholm Programme’s plans for increased integration of EU security architecture are notable exceptions, many on the radical Left have not yet begun to develop an understanding of the new political terrain that European integration reveals. This is particularly true for many of us here in Britain. Indeed NO2EU may be one of the only attempts at formulating a coherent EU position from any actor that can be deemed vaguely on the Left. For many of us involved in anti-capitalist movements here in the UK, the EU just isn’t an issue at the moment.

Many commentators on both the Left and Right of the political spectrum see Europe as a counter-balance to rampant global capitalism and undemocratic elements. In these arguments Europe is seen as embodying the legacy of the Enlightenment and a blueprint for other societies to follow. Democracy, peace and systems of state welfare are frequently mentioned. Indeed, in the wake of the Iraq war “old Europe” was seen as a potential counter-balance to American militarism, whilst at the start of the financial crisis the social welfare model of capitalism prevalent in some parts of Europe was held up as a better model than the “casino capitalism” of other states, America in particular.

Famous leftwing academic Antonio Negri came out in support of the recent EU constitution, arguing that it provided a counter-balance to American-led globalisation:

The (European) constitution is a means of fighting Empire, this new globalised capitalist society. Europe has the chance of being a barrier against the “pensée unique” of economic unilateralism: capitalist, conservative, reactionary. But Europe can also construct a counter-power against American unilateralism, its imperial domination, its crusade in Iraq to dominate petrol. The United States has understood this well, and has, since the 1950s, fought like a madman against European construction.

Indeed support for the supposedly benevolent, enlightened EU is common among many who would place themselves within the Left. Europe is seen as an example of an alternative, socially responsible form of capitalism at odds with the predatory capitalism of the US. As Rob Augman argued in the first issue of Shift Magazine there are similarities between certain alter-globalist positions and those emerging from the far right. In the vision of a benevolent Europe of peoples these similarities are once again apparent.

Many that support the EU project utilize other aspects of what is selectively chosen as the European heritage. Over the past decades we have witnessed the far right move away from positions focused on racial identity to more cultural forms of exclusionism. Philosophers such as Alain de Benoist, the “terza posizione” (third position) of Roberto Fiore and political groups such as the British National Party are prominent examples of this move away from racial exclusion to ultra-nationalist populism based upon ideas of culture. Every cultural group needs an “Other” with which to compare itself, against which to define the boundaries of itself. In Europe in the past decade we have seen the rise of a strong populist movement against Islam. Throughout the EU Islam is being portrayed as this Other, as something alien and incompatible with what are increasingly being seen as the characteristics of Europe; namely democracy, secularism and human rights. Across Europe the far right, who in the main have moved away from explicitly racist positions are now beginning to develop strong anti-Islam positions exemplified by Geert Wilders in Holland and the English Defence League. These positions, which variously criticise Islam or its militant Islamist interpretation, focus on some of the anti-democratic and oppressive features of specific forms of Islam and argue they are incompatible with European ideals. The veil in particular has become a key area of struggle with France’s national assembly voting to ban it, parts of Northern Italy banning it and several other countries such as Belgium discussing a ban. In defining what is anti-European, a European identity is being formed.

This is a form of exclusionism not explicitly based on racial prejudice but on the perceived failure of Islam to adhere to what are seen to be European characteristics. Rather than being a characteristic of the far right this hostility towards Islam is becoming a part of the political centreground. As well as being seen as the site of a more “humane” form of capitalism, Europe is also seen as the beacon of freedom and democracy. This has led many within the right to portray Europe as being in conflict with “Islamo-fascism”. This discourse is making its way into mainstream public debates. The European project is an inherently exclusive one, it is interesting that support for this project comes from both the moderate left and right of the political spectrum.

Whilst many support the EU project, there are also those that do not. As already discussed with regards to the NO2EU campaign these movements recognize that even by current standards the EU is an undemocratic institution. However, in their attempts to tap into the financial crisis by appealing to populist anti-banker sentiment, these very same movements often argue that Europe is run by and for the bankers. This is a worrying regression to conspiracy theories in which mysterious bankers pull the political strings in order to ensure maximum profits. Indeed those on the Left arguing for a Europe of peoples rather than bankers and the necessity of a European Populism share an interesting discursive similarity with many on the far right who also see Europe as under threat from rampant speculative capital. Meanwhile, those not calling for the revision and democratisation of Europe, such as British anti-EU parties such as the BNP and UKIP, seek a return to national politics, a regime that has been more systemically discredited by the Left. The new political battleground appears to be distinctly European.

Neither National, Nor International

Whether pro or anti-EU the positions we have looked at so far share the same shortcomings: false perspectives on capitalism and therefore false solutions which will be unsuccessful at best or exclusionary and oppressive at worst. Both of these positions base their economic analysis on the premise of an outside or foreign predatory capital, often financial in nature, and propose an internal, tangible economy as a solution. This distinction between fictitious, rampant finance and tangible, honest work is inaccurate and dangerous. Capital, when expressed as money and circulated within the financial system, is but one moment of the capital-labour relation. To distinguish between the financial and the productive economy, i.e. the production of things and services, fails to recognize the totality of the system. Whilst finance capital may be the purest expression of value production, it is the production and consumption of commodities in the “real” economy which produces the capital which flows through the finance system. This distinction serves to insulate the capital relationship from criticism and divert it towards calls for a Tobin tax or the nationalisation of the banks instead. Capitalism isn’t a conspiracy run by a cabal of fat cat bankers nor is it the imperialist project of the USA. Those that see it as such have a foreshortened critique of capitalism. Our critique can not be about the “excesses” but the totality. The true secret of society, the real power that drives it, is not that of a secret elite ruling in the shadows, but rather the social relationships that we enter into every day. We make capitalism. To exit capitalism does not entail outing the bankers/Bilderbergers/lizards but in developing ways in which humans can live outside of the value relation. Attempts at curbing the power of finance capital are reformist at best.

Support for the EU is not and can not be considered an anti-capitalist position. It is important to recognize that the social welfare model that EU supporters applaud was the outcome of the struggles of workers movements and was a solution to falling rates of profit. Indeed, it looks likely that solutions to the current financial crisis will involve cuts and state led austerity rather than the production deals of the sixties and seventies. Globally, the next decade looks likely to see the costs of this recent crisis socialised in order to guarantee a stable environment for future rounds of growth. Europe, with its history of state intervention and socialised welfare, appears in a strong position to force through the seemingly necessary cuts. During the Greek uprisings “we are an image of the future” was a common slogan daubed on walls and across banners, unfortunately this statement has been proven correct in an unintended way. The austerity drives being implemented in Greece in order to satisfy bail out conditions is likely to become a common feature throughout Europe. In Slavoj Zizeks book “First as Tragedy, then as Farce” he suggests that, in the context of the collapse of the neo-liberal project, future political conflict will be between socialism, or socialised capitalism, and communism. We cannot support the “enlightened” capitalism of Europe; it must be rejected as fiercely as the neo-liberal project. As the EU becomes the scale at which capital becomes organised, so our resistance must be upscaled.

The supporters of Europe vary in their reasoning and rationale, whether seeing it as a bulwark against ‘Islamo-fascism’ or a defence against predatory financial capitalism, their arguments rest on shaky ground. The EU is a political structure that is emerging to help manage both capital and populations. As austerity measures are pushed through the necessity of an integrated security apparatus will become more evident. The Stockholm Programme is the latest EU wide attempt at integrating the currently national security systems of its member states. This will inter-lock with the EU’s integrated migration management system. The up-scaling of specific state functions is a necessary response to the demands of contemporary capitalism.

Neither here nor there

As anti-capitalists therefore, we must resist the EU. The EU is not and can never be an anti-capitalist structure. This rejection can not fall into a foreshortened critique of finance capital or slip into the chauvinism of nationalists. We must embody a third position which is neither national nor inter-national. Our critique is not geographical, about where the borders of our political community should lie, nor is it technical, about the forms in which the domination of capital over life will take place.

In “At the Borders of Europe” Etienne Balibar suggests that “Europe is for us first of all the name of an unresolved political problem”. Whilst for Balibar these questions are geographical and entwined with the politics of citizenship for any movement which seeks to supersede capital we must produce a new answer. Europe, perhaps, is the reformulation of an old problem. That problem is capital. We must be wary about getting sidetracked into discussing the management of capital. Our solution will not be geographical, or technical, but a political one in which we collectively search for an exit from the capital relation. The future battleground for Europe will not be on its militarised borders, nor will its opponents be “foreign” capital. Europe’s real antagonists must be us and the movements which we form.

"Ben Lear is an editor of Shift Magazine."

Editorial - Opium of the people?

The past few months have seen an ever increasing stream of protests and events, of political analysis and of new groups being formed. These moments seem to be increasing in both intensity and occurrence and have made it such that a lack of coherent understanding of the ‘the cuts’, the protests that they have sparked and the responses that they have been met with, is understandable both in this editorial and amongst all of us. As we take a step back to reflect both on the past year’s historic attacks on welfare provisions and jobs, and the rise of popular protest against the new Con/Dem government, we are left mostly with questions and a feeling of, ‘what happened/is happening’ and ‘where are we going next’?

Shift is a project that aims to provide a platform for, and intervene in, movement debates. When we met several months ago, before Millbank brought a different set of political issues into focus, to talk about the theme for this issue we felt that the rise of the EDL and the uncritical nature of many Left/Islamic partnerships indicated that religion is an important issue to be discussed.

Religion has been and still is an important component of many political movements, including our own. The Muslim Association of Britain’s membership of the Stop the War coalition and the partnership between Respect and various hardline Muslim and Hindu groups are only the most obvious examples. From solidarity campaigners involved in organising around the Israel-Palestine conflict to the Tamil protests that brought Parliament Square to a halt, the presence of Quakers and Buddhists in peace campaigns, or the Christian café and ‘Islamic perspectives’ workshop at Climate Camp, religion is a presence within our movements and the wider world we seek to engage with. Religion, and Islam in particular, is also becoming central to emerging forms of far right politics. As the anarchist writers, Phil Dickens and Paul Stott explore in this issue, we must reject both fanatical Islam and fanatical Islamophobia. As Alberto Toscano discusses in our interview with him, the political mobilisation of religious movements is rarely ever progressive. Even those religious movements which seek to resist capital and power, such as the European Millenarian peasant revolts of the 1500s, can be conservative in their aims.

So whilst crisis and instability can bring with it a stronger longing for transcendental authority, our criticism of religious influences within radical movements both right and left must be part and parcel of the critique of capital and authority, where we understand the function of religion in capitalist society as one of veiling material social relations and turning social domination into an issue of morality alone. We believe this understanding can also guide us in our response to the cuts, where we must situate our response to these ‘reforms’ an expression of anti-capitalist struggle, rather than a protectionist, nostalgic or moralistic clinging to a defunct welfare state and democratic process. Indeed, recent nostalgia for the energy and dissent of the poll tax riots is perhaps a dangerous and false comparison to fall back on, one that ultimately shows a lack of ambition in collectively imagining the possibilities that ruptures such as those felt under Thatcher, and now again under the coalition, can open up.

This is the message delivered in our final two articles. In their respective analyses of the emerging anti-cuts movement, Werner Bonefeld, Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell argue forcefully that a politics based on an ‘anti-cuts’ position can never do anything more than defend the present. And why would we be interested in defending that present, replete as it is with wage labour, environmental destruction and instrumental education systems? The alternative they present is to move towards a politics that seeks to not only dare to reimagine, but also to control, the future.

Indeed, the future hasn’t felt nearly as exciting, or nearly as daunting, in a long time. We hope the articles contained in this issue can help spark the vital discussions needed for moving into that future.

An interview with Alberto Toscano

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Perhaps you could start by giving us a brief overview of your theory on fanaticism.

As the subtitle of the book [Fanaticism: On the uses of an idea] suggests, my aim in writing the book was to explore the way in which the idea of fanaticism has been polemically employed, in particular to stigmatize doctrines and subjects that stray from certain normative understandings of politics. Unlike certain sociologists and political scientists (most recently Gérard Bronner), I have not produced a theory of fanaticism as a more or less unified phenomenon, but rather a critical analysis of some key episodes of intellectual and political history in which the accusation of fanaticism has played a prominent and symptomatic role (the Radical Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Cold War). A conceptual history of fanaticism reveals a systematically ambivalent or even paradoxical term, which is marshalled to oppose excessive universalisms and intransigent particularisms, steadfast atheism and religious allegiance, modernist utopianism and supposed atavisms. What intrigued me about this Janus-headed notion is the manner in which it combines two ideological traits of our allegedly post-ideological present: the condemnation of political projects aimed at radical social transformation and the identification of threats to ‘the West’ in absolutist religious movements. Heirs to both the Cold War denunciations of communism as a political religion and to a colonial discourse of counter-insurgency targeted at the fanaticism of religious revolts, many of those who today plead for Western civilisation and Enlightenment against internal and external extremisms repeat that peculiar trait of anti-fanatical discourse: the use of the very same idea to denounce a universalist politics of abstraction and a religious reaction to imperialism. To the extent that our political common sense has been shaped by the various polemics against fanaticism, any attempt to revive a radical politics of emancipation has to confront fanaticism’s history and its enduring uses. Two in particular deserve attention: the suspicion of a ‘politics of abstraction’ that would disastrously reduce the complexity of social life, and the view of fanaticism as a levelling of social differentiation – whether in the guise of the secular state’s transcendence over religious and cultural affiliation or in that of the separation between the political and the economic. As I try to show in the fifth chapter of the book, we can take our cue from aspects of Marx’s account of religious, political and economic abstractions to move beyond the invidious either/or: liberalism or fanaticism.

Alongside radical Italian writers collective Wu Ming, you recently contributed to a new collection of speeches given by Thomas Müntzer, radical Protestant leader of the 1524-25 peasant rebellion against the political-religious establishment. In his 1850 title The Peasant Wars in Germany, Engels became the first to read the peasant revolts as an expression of class conflict, albeit articulated through the only language available at the time i.e. that of religion; would you agree with this position? If so, we wonder what emancipatory potential and limitations you see in a) these historical antecedents to modern anti-capitalism; and b) religious movements.

While I think there is still considerable mileage in a class analysis of religious mobilization, Engels’s model risks relying excessively on the presumption that capitalist modernity brings to an end the disjunction between social relations and consciousness that gives religion its emancipatory rationality in pre-capitalist times. This means that Engels both overestimates the necessity of theology (some peasant programmes, for instance that of Gaismair in the Tyrol, are remarkably ‘materialist’ in their demands) and underestimated the manner in which religious languages persist in the context of capitalism’s uneven and combined development (a phenomenon acutely identified by Mike Davis in terms of the “re-enchantment of catastrophic modernity”). That said, Engels does emphasise a striking temporal and ideological dimension of the interaction between political contestation and religious vision, when he notes that the peasant’s rearguard millenarian resistance against a rising capitalism also allowed them to anticipate a future beyond capitalism. This utopian surplus was the object of Ernst Bloch’s fascination with this moment, and of his refusal to accept that the relationship between the economic, the political and the religious (or better, the utopian) was to be conceived according to a linear, progressive concept of time. As for the lessons to be learned from such moments, aside from the abiding attraction of their languages of transfiguration and refusal, things are not so clear. They are movements that respond to the violence and anomie of the imposition of capitalist social relations on other forms of life, and could thus be regarded, to borrow from Beverley Silver, as ‘Polanyi-type’ defensive movements against the capitalist expropriation of the commons and the disembedding of the economy from society. In that sense, they are of scant use for thinking of political opposition in worlds really subsumed by capital. On another level, the intransigent affirmation of another – even transcendent – justice, or the repudiation – even of a moral type – of this world, are not easily discarded by a politics of emancipation. For better and (most often) for worse, religious movements flourish when the sense that justice is immanent in the ways of this world wanes. But their motivational power is often inversely proportional to their capacity to identify the levers of real change.

We’d now like to concentrate on the relevance of all this for modern day political movements - both progressive and reactionary - many of which, particularly those on the far right, are now engaged in conversations surrounding religion. Is Marx’s phrase “the opium of the people” still relevant? What did he actually mean by it?

‘Religion’ is such a polysemic term that it is often extremely difficult to identify precisely what is at stake in the supposed resurgence of religion as a political force. My impression is that, aside from well-circumscribed academic domains with little political influence, political-theological debate is of little contemporary import, and that religion as experience, or even ecstasy, is also a rather marginal concern. What is really at stake today is the refunctioning of certain doctrinal and cultural repertoires to fashion large-scale collective solidarities in political, social and economic contexts marked by anomie, anxiety, crisis, catastrophe, disaggregation, and the ravaging advance of seemingly unstoppable military or economic powers. Unlike irreligious universalisms, religion can both be a goad to militancy (in this sense some have suggested that Marx would have done better to write of the cocaine of the masses…) and a salve against the painful experience of history (opium was medically used in the nineteenth as a painkiller, not just for intoxication). This ambivalence gives it considerably greater resilience than worldly ideologies for which failure can often appear as a terminal indictment. That said, I think it is important to note that, when it comes to politics, the supposed return of religion (itself a sociologically problematic notion, as one can make a strong argument for de facto secularisation in terms of everyday practices) is more a by-product of the drastic setbacks to emancipatory projects and ideals than it is the re-emergence of something ‘repressed’ by a secular ‘age of extremes’.

In terms of how your theory of fanaticism contributes to our understanding of liberal democracy, we’d like to refer to the work of such as Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek regarding post-politics (see also Shift’s Issue 8 interview with Erik Swyngedouw). These thinkers have made the claim that in our current post-political condition, dissident voices face a choice between incorporation into and neutralisation by the liberal democratic consensus on one hand, and being written off as fundamentalists or extremists on the other. Does your work on fanaticism have anything to say on this, for example on whether this is really a new phenomenon? And how can radical emancipatory social movements respond to such a situation?

Not only is this not a new phenomenon, most of the arsenal of anti-emancipatory criticism and invective is already in place by the time of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, to be periodically dusted off and reused whenever there is a threat to the political norm – whence the staggering lack of insight or originality in phenomena like the French nouveaux philosophes of the late 1970s, or their contemporary epigones. At the same time, excessive concern with one’s ideological detractors, especially when they’re of quite low calibre, is debilitating, whether it means trying to pre-empt their criticisms (bending over backwards to show one is not a ‘totalitarian’, in what cannot but appear a partial admission of guilt) or over-identifying with the accusation to provoke one’s adversaries. Radical social movements would be better off attending to the interesting history of the Left’s internal critiques of extremism (be it in Marxian critiques of Jacobinism, Leninist critiques of ultra-leftism, anarchist critiques of Leninism, left-communist critiques of Party idolatry – a whole history of ‘fanaticism’ that still remains to be explored), but also at trying to define radicalism in terms that are not merely mirroring those of their accusers. As contemporary movements around health, education, public services or the commons demonstrate, there are many demands that are both difficult to stigmatise as extremist (e.g. free education) but which at the same time contain remarkable anti-systemic potential. This is the irony of a world in which what Mark Fisher has aptly dubbed ‘capitalist realism’ makes it so that seemingly reformist goals have a kind of millenarian aura.

Finally we’d like to ask you about the relevance of your ideas on fanaticism for the Left’s relationship with Islam. How can the Left relate to fascist groups such as the EDL who oppose a political Islam to secular ultra-nationalism on the other? Similarly, what would a non-liberal/radical critique of religious fanaticism look like?

The EDL is a racist organisation and is obviously to be dealt with like the various far-right groups that have preceded it, and which it continues to overlap with (namely the BNP). Its rhetoric of a non-partisan opposition to political Islam is a thin veneer over a particularly disturbing mutation of racist thuggery. Aside from the necessity of making common front in local, national and transnational struggles against racism, I don’t think the Left needs to develop a particular relationship to ‘Islam’, any more than to ‘Christianity’ or ‘Hinduism’. First of all, it is dangerous to reproduce the governmental rhetoric, often verging on the neo-colonial, of ‘Muslim communities’ or the retrograde idea that being a Muslim (or a Christian, or a Jew) is somehow transitive with political identity. This can lead to a culturalist condescension that impedes political development. If individuals or groups which draw inspiration from their religious allegiances support egalitarian, anti-capitalist politics then it’s obvious that leftist movements should explore alliances with them. A critique of religious politics has to be part of a broader critique of abstractions, that is of the manner in which abstract entities can dominate human collectives – whether their form is that of the State, Capital or God (and these forms of domination obviously differ greatly, and relate to one another in intricate ways, such that we can have a ‘religion of Capital’ as well as capitalist religions). The distorted universalisms peddled by repressive forms of religious politics have to be countered by projects of social and political emancipation that can channel or recode their anti-systemic drives and truly challenge the narrowness of religious allegiances (which in the final analysis are never fully universal, contrary to contemporary paeans to the atheism in Christianity) at the level of everyday life.

Originally published in Shift magazine

Alberto Toscano teaches sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is an editor of Historical Materialism and the author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea and The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze.

British Islamism: towards an anarchist response - Paul Stott

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Update: In 2015, Paul Stott confirmed on his blog that he had voted UKIP in the 2015 General Election, and was quoted as a UKIP member by the Irish Times in 2016.

In 2005 George Galloway defeated New Labour’s Oona King to win the parliamentary seat of Bethnal Green and Bow. It had been a highly charged campaign, with Galloway’s Respect Party working hard to particularly win over local Muslim voters due to King’s support for the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq. Galloway, Respect and their backers celebrated at the East London Mosque, where Gorgeous George made it clear in his acceptance speech who he thanked for his victory: “I am indebted more than I can say, more than it would be wise – for them – for me to say, to the Islamic Forum of Europe. I believe they played the decisive role.”

This article aims to kick-start a debate about how Anarchists should respond to the development of Islam and Islamism, (which I define as the political presence of Islam and the desire to develop norms of Muslim behaviour) in the United Kingdom. It is a debate that is long overdue.

Background

There are few things correct about Samuel Huntingdon’s clash of civilisations thesis, but one element he did get right was in recognising that the late twentieth century saw a global Islamic resurgence. That resurgence was – and is – an event as important as the French or Russian revolutions. The French expert on Islamism, Gilles Kepel, traces this resurgence to material factors. Urbanisation and population increases brought about by medical improvements fractured traditional rural brands of Islam in countries such as Egypt and Pakistan. This combined with the coming to power of anti-colonial movements in the Muslim world. These governments – whether nationalist, monarchical or ‘Socialist’ – usually failed to deliver the aspirations of liberated peoples, and instead became characterised by corruption and incompetence. Islamic evangelism provided – and continues to provide – ‘answers’ to such problems. That answer is Islam, a complete design for living. And that answer is applicable globally.

As late as 1989, it was very rare to talk about British Muslims, or Muslim communities. The existence of a conscious, political British Islamism arguably emerges from the most contentious background of any ‘ism’ – the agitation against Salman Rushdie, following his book Satanic Verses, and support for the death sentence issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Writers such as Kenan Malik and Anandi Ramamurthy have covered the fact that historically British Asian politics was both vibrant and often left leaning, via groups such as the Indian Workers’ Association and Pakistani Workers’ Association. A generic black or Asian identity was common – religious designation, and religious division only emerging after top down multi-culturalism was introduced from both national and local government following the 1980s riots.

Here communities were given labels, political representatives found for those labelled, and resources and political influence distributed accordingly. The realisation that sections within Muslim communities, voting as blocs, could come to hold considerable political influence soon became evident to all of the major political parties.

Political Currents and Developments

As left communists Aufheben illustrate [in their article Croissants and Roses, 17/2009 – the ed.], this stripe of multi-culturalism has little to do with progressive politics. One of those instrumental in calling for a national Muslim representative body was Conservative right-winger Michael Howard. In the decades since the Rushdie affair, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain have come to considerable prominence, and Kepel is not alone in arguing that this influence mirrors, in part, colonialism. Representatives of the local power simply cut deals, on a ‘you scratch my back and I scratch yours’ basis with the governing power. In time, it is in both sides’ interest to maintain such arrangements, providing they work.

Many English cities have witnessed the curious sight of Asian (usually but not always Muslim) councillors switching overnight from one political party to another. During the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 a group of Muslim councillors in Margaret Beckett’s Derby constituency made the shock discovery that the Labour government supported Israel and would not condemn it for bombing civilians. Whatever next! They promptly switched to the Lib Dems, although cynics suggested their move had more to do with thwarted local ambitions, and offers from their new party, than anything else. Perhaps the classic example of just how scurrilous local politics has become in some cities is the 2008 defection of Tower Hamlets Respect Councillor Ahmed Hussain – all the way to the Conservative Party!

It is important to stress the centrality of the mosque in some of these developments. For some years now a reading of sources as diverse as Private Eye, the East London Advertiser, academics such as Delwar Hussain or journalists like Andrew Gilligan would lead you to the conclusion that the most important political institution in east London is not the Labour Party or a trades union – it is East London Mosque, dominated by the Islamic Forum of Europe and Jamaat-e-Islami. The election of Galloway, and a mosque-backed Independent in the 2010 Tower Hamlets mayoral election, reinforced this. In Waltham Forest, at one point no fewer than 16 councillors were attending Lea Bridge Road mosque – what price political openness and transparency in such circumstances?

It is worth noting that in office, Islamists have proved as useless at representing the interests of the working class as anyone else. Whilst Tower Hamlets residents are paying for the dubious honour of being a ‘host’ borough of the 2012 Olympics, all the events scheduled to occur in London’s poorest local authority have now been moved somewhere else. Whilst Independent Mayor Lutfur Rahman mouths impotently about legal action to bring the marathon back to the East End, the Chairman of East London Mosque, Dr Muhammad Bari, sits alongside Princess Anne and Lord Coe on the board of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The presence of Dr Bari’s beard ticks the multi-cultural box, but delivers nothing for the people of Tower Hamlets.

Things That Go Bang

One area where national power expects local power to deliver is in the reduction of radicalisation and terrorist plots from Islamist youth. Although rarely acknowledged, a small, but not insignificant number of British Muslims have been fighting, killing and dying in their version of Jihad for the best part of three decades, in places as diverse as Bosnia, Kashmir, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Israel. The first British suicide bomber died in Srinagar as far back as 2000 – so much for the idea that such attacks solely occur because the government was stupid enough to follow the Americans into Iraq.

From 2009 Home Office figures, 92% of those in British prisons for terrorist offences affirm themselves to be Muslim. It is worth noting that these are not usually international actors – 62%, a clear majority, are British citizens. Since the 7/7 attacks the government has spent millions on de-radicalisation programmes, and a new term ‘Al Qaeda inspired terrorism’ has been coined. The fact that British Jihadis existed well before Osama Bin Laden’s name was widely known is conveniently forgotten, and a concerted government and police drive has occurred to remove any religious terms from discourse about terrorism. This has been the backdrop to an on-going conflict between government and Muslim representative organisations. Programmes such as Preventing Violent Extremism have been attacked for ‘stigmatising Muslims’ until Prevent was extended to include the far-right and even, ludicrously, animal rights extremism.

One consequence of such arguments has been that each new conviction following a terrorist plot, or each involvement of a Briton in a plot abroad, is presented as a surprise, or attention is instead switched to exposing ‘Islamophobic reporting’ by the media, rather than the act itself. This reached surreal levels when the 2009 Christmas Day ‘underpant bomber’ became the fourth former executive member of a University Islamic Society to be involved in an attempt to commit the mass murder of civilians. The Federation of Student Islamic Societies responded by insisting there was no evidence Muslim students are more prone to radicalisation than anyone else. What more evidence do we need?

An Anarchist Response?

Anarchists need to avoid the type of auto-leftism that dominates certain groups. We should be better than simply repeating the discourse of ‘Islamophobia’, and Muslims solely as victims, that the left has produced readily since 9/11.

Secondly, as Anarchists we should fear religious belief per se – because of its irrationality, its treatment of women, its ability to divide human beings and its long association with injustice.

We need to be realistic. Outside of the fantasies of the EDL and Muslims Against Crusades, shariah law is not about to be introduced in the UK. But there are politicians daft enough to cede power to shariah courts and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals at a local level (certainly for civil matters), and there are certainly Muslim organisations in our cities happy to soak up whatever power they can. If history has taught us anything, it should be that when power is ceded to religious currents, they rarely if ever give it back. Anarchist rejection of the law may not sit easily with campaigners such as Maryam Namazie and the One Law For All campaign, but we need to reflect on whether it is better to support such campaigns than see the consolidation of structures based on superstition, hierarchy and patriarchy.

Islamic organisations, backed by significant funding both from within the UK and abroad, are becoming a permanent presence in parts of the education and welfare systems. Having learned nothing from religiously divided education in Northern Ireland (where most children go to separate Protestant or Catholic schools from the age of five) the development of Muslim only schools is likely to not only do little for integration in our communities, but will even reverse it.

As London Mayor, Ken Livingstone awarded £1.6 million to East London Mosque for its welfare programmes – oh for the days when religious institutions that needed money for ‘good work’ did jumble sales! Such processes consolidate reactionary groups such as the Islamic Forum of Europe - they gain status, funding and power. There is no need for secular institutions to ask what services members of the public want or need when they can instead ask the mosque or any representative organisation that steps forward. We need to be aware Cameron’s big society may provide further opportunities for such nonsense, not less.

We must also fear the increased racialisation of politics. If there is such a thing as the ‘Muslim community’ with elected representatives, there is by definition such a thing as the white community. And we should know where that brand of politics takes us. There is a need to stress the type of alternative, bottom up multi-culturalism that we live with and support daily – getting on with neighbours, colleagues and school friends as people, not as identities based on their colour or creed. Joining together with people as fellow workers and fellow members of working class communities targeted by cuts will be a lot easier on that basis, than the multi-culturalism of the state and the left.

Such an approach to me is Anarchism, and we need to stress that practice, whilst never abandoning Anarchist principles such as ‘No Gods, No Masters’, in the years to come.

Originally published in Shift magazine

Anarchism and British Islamism: putting things in perspective - Steven Johns

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A response by Steven Johns of libcom.org to Paul Stott's article "British Islamism: Towards an anarchist response".

Paul Stott opens his article stating that it aims to kick-start a debate about how anarchists should respond to the development of Islam and Islamism in the United Kingdom. It is a debate that is long overdue."

Jumping straight to his conclusion, I would first like to emphasise that I agree with his final points wholeheartedly:

There is a need to stress the type of alternative, bottom up multi-culturalism that we live with and support daily – getting on with neighbours, colleagues and school friends as people, not as identities based on their colour or creed. Joining together with people as fellow workers and fellow members of working class communities targeted by cuts will be a lot easier on that basis, than the multi-culturalism of the state and the left.

This being the case I hope that my disagreements with the rest of the article are taken in the constructive spirit they are intended.

My disagreements with the rest of the piece go right back to the opening paragraph, to the statement that this is "a debate that is long overdue". Anarchists love nothing more than to argue incessantly over irrelevant issues (look at me now!), often the more irrelevant the better.

Islam and Islamism and our approach to them is one such issue. On the website I help run, libcom.org, for example we have dozens of articles about Islam, and we have had dozens of debates about it in our forums over the past eight years - far more than we have about any other world religion. Anarchists are certainly not immune to a media frenzy, unsurprisingly, as things we read about in the paper and end up discussing with friends and co-workers we want to discuss with one another as well.

However, we should always remember that the media is not neutral, it has an agenda, and so to counter this we should always try to put things in perspective. The main issue with Stott's article is the complete lack of perspective.

The clear scale of the exaggeration of the issue is quite well illustrated by this statement:

[the global Islamic] resurgence was – and is – an event as important as the French or Russian revolutions.

Now I ask on what basis is this even close to being true? The French revolution was the triumph of capitalism over feudalism, setting the scene for the dominant new economic system for the entire planet. The Russian revolution was the world's first major proletarian revolution and experiment in socialism, which was crushed and instead turned into the second imperialist superpower and led to the Cold War, which dominated much of the world's political life, including class struggle, over the past 100 years.

The supposed growth of political Islam has had nowhere near as big an impact as either of these two events, no matter what the Daily Star says. I say "supposed" growth because despite a recent resurgence I would question whether political Islam now even has the same influence it did 30 years ago.

Political developments
The article continues to discuss "Asian" and "Muslim" Councillors switching from one political party to another. I fail to see what is surprising about local politicians being opportunistic with their party affiliations. What is new here, or different from politicians of any other ethnicity doing the same?

As for the statement "the most important political institution in east London is not the Labour Party or a trades union – it is East London Mosque", this seems more like hysteria that fact. Having lived in East London myself for nearly 10 years I think I can pretty much safely say that the mosque has had zero impact on my life, apart from possibly being responsible for the two most ridiculously close together bus stops in London.

Paul does identify various people with some form of authority who are associated with the mosque. However, I am sure you could identify many more influential people associated with a particular synagogue or church. But would this have any political utility? Perhaps, but then why single out Muslims here, especially given how they are being victimised by the media, the far right and elements of the government?

I also find it quite concerning that Paul refers to "Islamists" in office being as useless at representing the working class as anyone else. Of course I agree that you can't represent the working class in elected office. However, Mayor Lutfur Rahman seems to be referred to as one of these "Islamists", but he is not. His religion is Muslim but he himself is a left social democrat.1

Are there actually any Islamists who have been elected to positions of power in the UK? After a brief search I have been unable to find any. But it is conceivable that there could be a couple, but whether there are or not there are still far far more Christians in positions of power whose religious ideas affect their political ones. So why the focus on Muslims?

Bang
Now, onto the terrorism, which seems to be the main problem which Paul identifies with Islamism:

Although rarely acknowledged, a small, but not insignificant number of British Muslims have been fighting, killing and dying in their version of Jihad for the best part of three decades, in places as diverse as Bosnia, Kashmir, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Israel.

I assume the author knows the number of these fighters, as he states it is "significant" so I would ask out of curiosity what is the number?

Whatever the absolute number, absolute numbers are not relevant without any sort of context. In terms of Bosnia, white socialists (not to mention NATO) went to fight there on the Muslim side, so why does this paint Muslims in a particularly bad light? As for Israel, far more British people go there to fight for the IDF. And Afghanistan and Iraq? The vast majority of people there shooting people and blowing things up are not Muslims, they are white people (probably mostly Christian) in the British Army. So again why focus on Islam here, when in terms of the amount of violence actually being carried out it is so much less than that by people of other religions?

As for the statement that:

The first British suicide bomber died in Srinagar as far back as 2000 – so much for the idea that such attacks solely occur because the government was stupid enough to follow the Americans into Iraq.

I would ask who ever said that suicide bombings happened solely because the UK invaded Iraq?

Plenty of people - correctly - stated that the UK being involved in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq would make the UK more of a target for Islamic terrorists, and surprise surprise it did.

I am particularly surprised that a former Class War member now seems to be condemning anti-imperialist terrorism. Class War were virulent supporters of the IRA: religion-linked terrorists who attacked civilians in the UK because the UK had invaded "their" country. What is the justification for supporting them, but not Islamic terrorists, despite the invasion of Muslim countries being so much more recent?

Regarding the comments around Preventing Violent Extremism, while the government attempted to state that it was meant to address all kinds of extremism, it wasn't just scapegoating Muslims, this was just window dressing to try to make them not look racist. Everybody who had something to do with PVE knows that it was just aimed at Muslims - the funding was even mostly allocated according to how many Muslims lived in an area. 2

When in my Council PVE was due to come in, many staff were concerned that it would be used to stigmatise Muslims, and asked me to raise this as a union issue, stating that Islamic extremism has never been an issue in our area, so why couldn't we use the funding to do more integration type work and oppose all types of extremism including racism? Management told us not to worry, saying that it would be used to target the far right as well. But it was not, it was only aimed at Muslims. I'm aware that one worker in the IT department even refused instructions to generate lists of Muslim children to be targeted by the project as she felt it was discriminatory.

Stott moves on to criticise the Federation of Student Islamic Societies for "insisting there was no evidence Muslim students are more prone to radicalisation than anyone else" pointing at four Muslim students convicted of terrorist offences as supposedly definitive evidence to the contrary.

As an anarchist, does Paul see any qualitative difference between the authoritarian violence of a state (by the British Army) and the authoritarian violence of a proto-state (Islamist terrorist groups)? I certainly do not - and far more Christians in role in the Army to go around murdering Muslims than do Muslims murdering Christians.

Or is violence only bad or evidence of "radicalisation" when it is not carried out by the state, its only legitimate user?

Moving away from an anarchist response?
Paul slams politicians "daft enough to cede power to sharia courts and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals at a local level". But this statement again seems to play up to tabloid hysteria about "sharia law". People must voluntarily agree to attend these courts and tribunals, which it is true do discriminate against women, which is terrible. However, if they do discriminate in a way which contradicts UK law then British courts can be used to overturn discriminatory decisions. And while it is true that some "volunteers" are effectively forced into attending, banning these courts would just force them underground, and women would still be forced in the same way to attend. These courts are also directly comparable to Jewish Beth Din courts which have been around in the UK for hundreds of years - so again why the focus on Muslims?

Supporting state bans on voluntary alternative systems is not an anarchist position.3 Helping women being pressured into attending these discriminatory courts resisting, or supporting them getting discriminatory decisions overturned however could be. Ways we could practically do this include opposing cuts to bodies which inform people of their rights, opposing cuts to women's services, interpreting services, legal aid etc.

The article then complains about public money being given to Muslim bodies like East London Mosque. I also oppose public funding of faith organisations. However singling out a Muslim organisation without making any comparison to the huge amounts of public money given to Christian or other religious organisations obscures the real issue, and makes Muslims seem like the problem.

In the conclusion states that "anarchists need to avoid the type of auto-leftism that dominates certain groups".

But more importantly at a time of unprecedented public sector cuts we need to avoid the racist tabloid hysteria which is deliberately scapegoating a tiny, disproportionately poor and working class section of society for all our problems.

This article makes no attempt to put the "problem" of Islam into any kind of context by comparing with other political forces or religions which are predominantly white. In fact it expressly tries to avoid putting the problem in context by avoiding actual numbers and using percentages. E.g. "92% of those in British prisons for terrorist offences affirm themselves to be Muslim" - pointedly not mentioning that this is not 92% of thousands, but 92% of only about 100 people who are in prison for terrorist offences in total, and not mentioning that "terrorist offences" is a very broad term.

It doesn't even put the problem of Islamic terrorism in the UK into any sort of perspective. Muslim terrorists have killed under 60 people in the past 40 years, whereas nationalist terrorists, some of whom Class War supported, have killed many times that number.4 In Europe, 99.6% of terrorist attacks are carried out by non-Muslim groups. And of course if like me you see no qualitative difference between the violence of terrorists and the violence of states, then this needs to be compared with those deaths as well in terms of determining what the biggest issue is - and these numbers do pale in comparison to the 650,000+ deaths in Iraq only up to 20065. Of course, Paul is doing a Ph.D. in British jihadism and so I'm sure spends a huge amount of time researching and thinking about Islamic terrorism so this could mean there is the appearance of attributing it with disproportionate importance.

Of course we should continue to criticise religion and religious intolerance, as well as the state's divisive top-down multiculturalism. On this note I would echo Paul's recommendation of Aufheben's article on the development of the Muslim community in Britain. But that doesn't mean that we should join in with a racist tabloid witchhunt. We should avoid language or behaviour6 which encourages non-Muslim working class people to view Muslims as a problem, and alienates Muslim or Asian working class people, possibly pushing some towards extremists.

And given that the working class is under the biggest concerted attack from employers and states in decades, we should be extremely wary of focusing our attentions on other working class people whom the media are demonising. Especially given the sidelining of political Islam and the escalation of class struggle in the North African/Middle Eastern revolts, we should be organising alongside Muslims and people of all religions in our communities and our workplaces against the savage public sector cuts. We can demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Islamists in opposing austerity here and in the Middle East and show that it is by uniting in our common class interest that we improve our lives and our conditions.

• 1. The only website which refers to him as an Islamist that I can see (and an "Islamist supremacist" no less) is the nutty Zionist website Jihad Watch
• 2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1e684162-1f94-11df-8975-00144feab49a.html#axzz1LtLQWqb7
• 3. Members of Class War have in the past also abandoned anarchist principles on Islam, supporting France's state ban on the headscarf.
• 4. The IRA for example have killed over 10 times as many civilians. Source: 1969–2001: 1,821 deaths, including 621 civilians. Source: 2002 online update of 1994 book — Malcolm Sutton (1994) Bear in mind these dead ... An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland 1969–1993, Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, ISBN 0-9514229-4-4.
• 5. http://articles.cnn.com/2006-10-11/world/iraq.deaths_1_gilbert-burnham-death-rate-ali-dabbagh?_s=PM:WORLD
• 6. I would include here as an example Class War's burning of a decidedly dodgy effigy of Mohammed .

Fascism, fundamentalism, and the left

edl.jpg

Since the May General Election, we have been witnessing the slow demise of British fascism as we know it. The British National Party’s spectacular failure tore open divisions and animosities that had been long brewing below the surface. Resignations, sackings, splits, and general disorder have turned the party in on itself. At the same time, the new government’s austerity measures and the fight back they have provoked has pushed racial politics to the sidelines, as people once more awaken to the realities of class war.

And yet, the English Defence League continues to grow. Part of this is down to the unique position it finds itself in. Not being a political party, it cannot suffer a decline in electoral fortune. Not being a social movement, they needn’t worry about grassroots organising. All they have to do is call demonstrations, and people will come. They offer an outlet for neo-Nazis, football hooligans, loyalists, and others just looking for a fight and a flash point, and as long as that is the limit of their ambitions they remain immune to the political factors which brought down the BNP.
The other side of the EDL’s success is down to political Islam.

I was tempted to say the “rise” of political Islam, but that wouldn’t be strictly true. Being an extreme minority position whose ideals are alien to most people on this island, it has no base with which to build a broad-based movement for political reform, nor to galvanise the populace into revolution. It will remain the preserve of a tiny band of lunatics espousing abhorrent views, and all that will change is how much attention they are given.

Cross-radicalisation

Unfortunately, at the moment, the answer to that is “a lot.” With stunts such as burning poppies on Armistice Day, and threatening to march through Wootton Bassett, groups such as Islam4UK and Muslims Against Crusades can stir up more than enough public outrage to make themselves seem important. The government’s use of the SAS to protect shopping centres, and the continual playing up of the terror threat, likewise adds fear to that outrage. And this feeds the atmosphere and sentiments that keep the EDL going.

Despite what it says, the EDL does not exist merely to “peacefully protest against militant Islam.” Chants such as “we hate Pakis more than you” and stunts like throwing pigs’ heads at mosques tell of overt racism and deliberate provocation. At its demos, supporters who break police lines regularly invade and attack Asian communities. For the EDL, the distinction between ordinary Muslims and militant Islamists does not exist.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that the message of clerics such as Anjem Choudary played a part in their rapid expansion. Founder Stephen Lennon has spoken before of how “preachers of hate such as Anjem Choudary have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups in Luton for years” whilst “our government does nothing.” This led to him and others deciding to “start protesting against radical Islam, and it grew from there.”

But this isn’t just a one-way process. It has been noted on more than one occasion that the EDL attacking Muslims provides “constituent parts” for those who would radicalise vulnerable people to encourage them to “go through the gateway towards being radicalised.”

The role of class is not insignificant in this process. Fascism grows by feeding off anger and feelings of marginalisation amongst the working class, and offering a solution that turns one section of the working class against another. Islamism is no different. The only difference is that one ideology is appealing to the white working class with patriotic and nationalist sentiments, whilst the other is appealing to the Muslim working class with religious sentiments. The antagonism between the two strands actually helps to form a symbiotic relationship. The two opposing ideologies feed off one another.

The failures of the left

Unfortunately, the anti-fascist movement has failed to recognise the implications of this. In particular, groups such as Unite Against Fascism have adopted a very black-and-white approach to this issue which has played into the EDL’s view that all those who oppose them are “in bed with radical Islam.” It has also resulted in accusations of “Islamophobia” being hurled about in a way that made the entire movement look ridiculous.

For example, back in June the EDL announced plans to march on Tower Hamlets in opposition against what UAF called “a peace conference, organised by a Muslim charitable foundation and aimed at building understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.” It emerged that this was in fact an event being organised by the Islamic Forum of Europe, “a virulent form of political Islam that is fascistic in nature like Jaamat Islam and verges on the anti-Semitic and is very exclusivist and undemocratic.”

That description comes from a statement issued by a number of local groups, including Muslim and Bangladeshi organisations, in opposition to the EDL’s “demonstration.” However, in taking such a position – “against fascism in all its colours” – the groups behind the statement were accused of being racist and in league with fascists.

Such an attitude will be familiar to anybody who has dealt for long enough with UAF and the Socialist Workers’ Party for whom they operate as a front group. Five years ago, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell criticised UAF for inviting Sir Iqbal Sacranie, then head of the Muslim Council of Britain, to speak at one of its events. He dubbed it “a sad betrayal of liberal, non-homophobic Muslims,” saying that “Sir Iqbal’s homophobic views, and the MCB’s opposition to gay equality, echo the prejudice and discrimination of the BNP.” For these comments, he was accused of “claim[ing] the role of liberator and expert about Muslim gays and lesbians” and of being “part of the Islamophobia industry.” Clearly, absurdity knows no bounds.

The problem is that those afflicted by such a narrow perspective are currently the most influential in the broader anti-fascist movement. UAF is able to draw in the support of students and young people on the sole basis of vague, anti-racist politics, whilst keeping class analysis out of the worldview keeps funding from mainstream organisations coming in. Thus, they are able to simply marginalise and ignore tricky debates such as this when it suits them.

Hope not Hate have, especially of late, shown a lot more political savvy in this regard. They recognise that “hate breeds hate,” and that “the EDL breeds Islamic extremism and Islamic extremism breeds the EDL.” This is certainly a better position than UAF’s. However, ever the statists, they delegate responsibility for “mak[ing] a stand against extremism on both sides of the divide” to “the Government.”

They, too, ignore class issues and reduce the matter to one of “extremism.” In essence, that those who diverge too far from the narrow spectrum of mainstream politics must be taken care of by the state.

The problem with this, as the left should be all too aware, is that under such auspices the definition on “extremism” goes beyond violent fascists and religious lunatics espousing holy war. Forward Intelligence Teams and police “evidence gatherers” are becoming ever more commonplace on demonstrations of all kinds, particularly those in opposition to the cuts. Their job is to gather footage of “domestic extremists” – that is, those who take to the streets to protest, picket, and make their voices heard.

By this definition, trade unionists, environmentalists, anti-war activists, and anti-fascists are extremists as much as the EDL and Muslims Against Crusades. As such, asking the government to “make a stand against extremism” sets a very dangerous precedent indeed.

Militant working class self-defence

Even if the English Defence League wasn’t a fascist organisation grounded in loyalism and hooliganism, it wouldn’t be an effective vehicle to challenge political Islam. It is a purely reactionary movement, more concerned with feeding right-wing anger than challenging the radicalisation of Muslims.

They don’t organise within Muslim communities. They don’t counteract the religious arguments of the Islamists with a class argument to address the real issues that affect and concern Muslims and non-Muslims alike. They don’t stand in solidarity with those who oppose the extremists in their own midst. And they don’t distinguish between issues of religious bigotry from those of religious freedom in order to distance themselves from the far-right and racism.

This is the approach taken by militant anti-fascists, who counter the propaganda of the BNP and EDL with a working class perspective. We argue from this point of view precisely because it is this argument that both the far-right and the mainstream media have worked to obscure, and to twist in favour of a racial or national interpretation of the world.

Likewise, for working class Muslims there is an enormous effort to paint the world around them as defined by religion. The Islamic far-right talks of holy war in the Middle East, ignoring the fact that capitalism and the control of markets is the root of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention the fact that it is poor Arabs and Muslims who are dying and being oppressed, whilst the wealthy are able to serve or integrate into the class of people who benefit from the war. They certainly don’t mention how the regimes they seek to implement are, elsewhere, crushing workers’ movements as readily as those for women’s and LGBT equality.

The aggressive ultra-nationalism of the EDL only pushes class further off the agenda. Their approach allows community “leaders” – “moderate” as well as Islamist – to shore up their own position with the threat of outside invaders. It creates a sense of defiance that only exacerbates the division of the working class into supposedly homogenous “communities” based on race or religion, allowing the ruling class and various other interests to continue playing us off against one another.

Not only does such a situation make it harder for militant organisation against the various shades of far-right, it also thus makes it harder to organise around attacks on our class. The current climate of austerity is just one example, and questions of race and religion don’t merely distract from the matter at hand but turn us against one another whilst the ruling class wreaks havoc from above. This is how fascist regimes came to power in Europe in the 1930s, but it is also how the totalitarian regimes of the Middle East keep class antagonism crushed under-foot. A populace mobilised in the cause of holy war, or contained by a climate of fear instilled by strict religious laws, necessarily finds it difficult to see anything other than faith as the prime mover of world affairs.

In response, what we need is militant working class self-organisation. Grassroots mobilisation across all sectors of the working class, in the first instance, galvanises people to take a stand against threats such as fascism and Islamism.

But it is not just about defending the areas we live in from the forces of reaction. By organising in this way, we see the power that ordinary people can have, collectively, to make a difference. This helps to rebuild a genuine sense of community – based on vicinity, rather than faith or ethnicity – and the further organisational strength that this brings. Not only does this make anti-fascism far more effective, but it shores up our position in the broader class struggle.

Phil Dickens is an anarchist, anti-fascist, and trade unionist from Liverpool, England. He writes regularly about class struggle, racism, fascism, and imperialism, and his blogs can be found at http://truth-reason-liberty.blogspot.com and http://propertyistheft.wordpress.com

Originally published in Shift magazine

From the Defence of the Present to the Control of the Future - Bertie Russell & Keir Milburn

The recent student unrest has massively expanded political possibilities in the UK and Europe. The game is afoot and the next move is to generalise the struggle beyond the education sector. For many an ‘anti-cuts’ message is the way to do this. There is a danger, however, that the logic of this position contains the mechanism of its own failure. We urgently need to foment a shift away from a politics that defends our own powerlessness, to one where we can become the collective authors of our own histories.

The last month has finally seen hope raise its head again. Spilling across liberated streets, universities, banks and politicians’ offices, the question can be heard echoing - ‘is this what making history feels like?’ Beginning with the tired press hysteria surrounding the ‘violence of Millbank’ on the 10th November, hundreds of thousands of school, college and university students have been in a state of permanent mobilisation. Over the following month, at least 27 universities experienced an ‘occupied space’ of some sort, each with its own distinct political and social relationships.

Beyond these ‘traditional’ but undoubtedly diverse campus occupations, the University of Strategic Optimism have conducted successful lectures in a branch of Lloyds TSB and a Tesco supermarket, the offices of Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming were briefly taken over, a Lib-Dem conference was forced to ‘re-schedule’ under the security threat posed by potential mass protests, the Really Open University conducted a three-day workshop series in Leeds beginning the Re-imagination of the University, and students occupied the Tate Britain gallery hours before the (once) prestigious Turner Prize ceremony was due to take place. Alongside the student mobilisations, the UK Uncut network has emerged, organising creative disruptions of ‘tax-dodging’ corporations such as Vodafone and Topshop. Then there was 9th December – a day when, after a high level of generalised disobedience culminating in the poking of the Duchess of Cornwall through the window of her Rolls-Royce, David Cameron was forced to concede that ‘the small minority’ could no longer be used to explain away social unrest.

So far, these diverse interventions, expressions and events seem to be resonating together. While the mechanisms of connection aren’t always totally clear, each occurrence seems to be amplifying, and being amplified by, the others. What is far from clear, however, is the ‘frequency’ on which this resonance is taking place. To put this differently we might ask, what is the shared politics that ties these events together?

Dissecting the defence of the present

“Why do men [sic] fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?” Baruch Spinoza

The dominant political logic of the unfolding events appears blindingly obvious: ‘We are all against the education fees and cuts! That is why we act together!’ This is the official story portrayed in the press, whilst National Union of Students (NUS) President Aaron Porter is unequivocal in stating that ‘students have taken to the streets to protest against the government’s attacks on further and higher education’. Placards on marches across the country proclaim ‘Stop Education Cuts!’ with numerous variations thereof. Notably, school and college students have been brought to the streets and the occupations through the proposed scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). Some, not least the NUS, have attempted to add a party-political spin to all this through calls of hypocrisy towards the Liberal Democrats; a placard on a London march perhaps best summed this up – ‘Shame on you for turning blue’.

The Browne Report and the Comprehensive Spending Review have undoubtedly been a catalyst in getting a limited cohort of people, most of whom are students of some kind, to ‘take to the streets’. However, to cast the recent contestations within an ‘anti-cuts’ framework is to make an inherently political decision that places strict conditions and limitations on future events. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be against the government cutting EMA, or withdrawing funding for teaching and research for all non-STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – eds.] subjects. On the contrary, it is suggesting that making ‘anti-cuts’ demands the key form of expression for the movement could leave us tied to the very conditions against which we are so vocally opposed.

This appears paradoxical; how can you be complicit in the conditions which you are opposing? The problem lies in the reactive nature of the ‘anti-cuts’ position. To paraphrase Werner Bonefeld speaking at last year’s Anarchist Bookfair, ‘being ‘anti-cuts’ is not a political expression’ – it is an empty or vacated position that remains characterised by the conditions against which it resists. It is this unplaceable emptiness that characterises the reactionary form of expression; it is precisely ‘empty’ of any collectively articulated values, dreams or desires. As such, the ‘anti-cuts’ form of expression contains an inherently ‘conservative’ frequency. It is not a collective belief or feeling that there can be other futures, but a demand that the world must remain the same - united in the defence of a scenario in which nothing changes.

The political rationale of the ‘anti-cuts’ position is therefore not the collective creation of different conditions of existence, but rather a negotiation of the conditions of the present. Forgoing the collective potential for us to author our own histories, it unwittingly participates in negotiating the social conditions in which existing historical processes can continue – the exacerbation of social inequalities and the continued exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. The danger in the anti-cuts expression is that it comes to represent social inertia, rather than social movement - a commitment to the conditions of the present.

And what of the conditions of the present? Do we really want to defend these moribund, anti-social and elitist institutions? In the case of the university, its role has historically been to reproduce a small elite - normally from highly privileged backgrounds - capable of filling social roles of ‘governance’, either as politicians or as bosses. Although this filtering process is still very much a feature of the highly variegated universities, the university as an institution increasingly operates as a machine to produce a new form of docile, precarious, yet highly trained worker appropriate for the ‘contemporary state of the economy’. The university now operates as a factory producing a steady supply of multi-faceted immaterial labourers capable of working effectively in the cultural and information industries.

Within the university itself, the imposition of numerous metric systems leads to the consistent degradation of both teaching and research. The sole purpose of teaching has increasingly become to ensure students ‘get a job’; all focus turns to the ‘employability factor’ of courses, as academic-managers increasingly pander to the demands of corporations in shaping course content. Working conditions become increasingly precarious, as part-time and sessional contracts proliferate and everyone from support staff to senior academics are expected to ‘unofficially’ extend their working days. Smart phones and wireless broadband means there is no longer an excuse to not be plugged into the edu-nexus 24/7 – the edu-product must be delivered at all costs. If you aren’t responding to an angry email from a disgruntled student whilst you are taking a shit on the toilet, then you aren’t working hard enough!

The imposition of an ‘anti-cuts’ expression serves to endorse what currently exists, to validate institutions that separate and compartmentalise society in the private interest. But it also mistakes the terrain upon which the current struggle is taking place. The primary purpose of the ‘cuts’ is not the reduction of a temporary deficit in the public finances. They are, rather, aimed at further entrenching a certain conception of the future. By altering the composition of society they seek to eliminate other possible futures. This means that any movement that emerges in response to the ‘cuts’ must also operate on the same terrain. We can’t do so, however, by agreeing upon a single alternative blueprint of the future, around which we would then unite. You fight the closing down of possibility by opening it up, by widening the field of potential historical actors – we are engaged in a battle over the conditioning of the future.

What keeps a movement moving?

“Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality… Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable”.
Michel Foucault

Our critique of reactive politics does not assume that this position prevails amongst those who have been taking to the streets and lecture theatres. There have been many moments over the last months that have exceeded this logic; indeed it is the nature of movement to exceed.

Social movements form in relation to specific issues and the logic of those issues influence the initial shape and composition of the movement. As the current movement formed in relation to ‘cuts’ in education, many assumed that the movement would come to understand itself in terms of an inter-generational antagonism, as those who benefited from a free education pull the ladder up behind them. In fact, the movement has primarily defined itself in terms of both the need for extra-parliamentary action (inaugurated by a boot through the window of Conservative Party HQ), and the re-emergence of class as a legitimate way of talking about politics (even if the operative conception of class is still quite static and sectional - “David Cameron – Fuck off back to Eton”).

This can reveal to us a more universal dynamic - movements move because they exceed the specific issues of their emergence. Movements create an excess, they are more than the sum of their parts. If movements are to continue to move then they need to find forms of expression for this excess. This does not usually involve creation out of nothing, it often involves certain elements of the movement turning away from mere function and towards expression. A movement comes to understand itself through expressing itself and it is by gaining control over this expression that the movement gains control over its own movement.

In the case of the Global Justice movement, it was a certain form of organisational process that turned from function to expression; consensus decision making became central to how the movement came to define itself. What was at first a seemingly unremarkable method of facilitating meetings became a motive force that opened up a new field of potentials and came to mark a new conception of politics. Of course the form of expression need not be an organisational form, it is also possible that the wheel will turn a full circle and that certain demands may become an expression of the excess of the movement. Directional demands are designed precisely for this purpose; what takes precedence is not the demands themselves, but the positive compositional effect they have on the ‘movement actors’.

There is of course the danger that these very expressions – which at one point were exciting and dynamic processes that collided beings and events together in new ways – become stagnant, having a pacifying effecting on movement. Perhaps the most recently identifiable stagnation was the ‘camping’ refrain that took hold of the Camp for Climate Action. That refrain, which emerged out of an earlier cycle of street-protests against intergovernmental summits, provided an exciting compositional effect that changed how and what was possible. The idea of a yearly camp, however, reflects a certain understanding of what is possible, it reflects a certain, low, level of intensity of the struggle. Both of which inform a certain conception of what politics is, who does it and where it takes place. The form through which a movement expresses itself contains a specific temporal and spatial conception of politics and if this gets out of sync with shifts in social relations then that mode of expression becomes redundant.

In fact doesn’t this lead us to a real excess that has been created by the recent ‘student’ movement? Political activism has begun to escape its status as a specialist interest, bringing into question the who, where and how of ‘history-making’. It is now quite legitimate, across new sections of society, to think politically and to act collectively. There is a new level of intensity to the struggle, with weekly protests accelerating the movement’s collective learning. The movement needs to express this new reality in ways that allow it to keep moving.

Of course it’s not always obvious which function will be turned to expression. It seems likely though that the best mode of expression will be a form of action that will simultaneously act as an expression of our power. Perhaps by prefiguring the sort of change that we are anticipating – e.g. Rosa Parks who sparked a struggle against segregation on US public transport by enacting the world she wished to see and simply sitting in the wrong part of the bus. Or perhaps it will be a form of acting that shows how the reforms and cuts rely on our cooperation to implement – e.g. the Poll Tax non-payment campaign or the Italian auto-riduzione movement in the 1970s.

The urgent task at hand is to ask what form of expression we can forge that will tip this over from a defence of the present to a general movement that controls the future. What is it that will allow not just ‘student’ uprisings to resonate together, but for this to overflow into all sectors of society - precisely so that these ‘sectors’ are no longer perceptible (neither students, nor workers, nor mothers, nor the poor, nor the middle class etc.)? What steps do we need to take to move this from an ‘interest group’ contesting a narrow issue to the generalised desire of people acting as authors, participating in the collective writing of many histories?

Bertie Russell and Keir Milburn are both based in Leeds.

Nirvana holds no promise of ‘life after capitalism’

There is a blind spot where the subject of Buddhism is concerned in certain ‘activist’ and lefty circles. Where religion as a whole is condemned as dogmatic and regressive, Buddhism often escapes the critic’s disdain unscathed. This is not necessarily a bad thing; such criticisms are often formulaic and react to the concept of religion without a semblance of informed engagement with the teachings themselves.

Three points are often cited for the argument that Buddhism should not be understood on the same terms as other religions, namely that Buddhism denies the existence of a god, that Buddhism denies the existence of the soul and that Buddhism is an empirical, experience-based teaching; followers being expected to test teachings for themselves through personal experience rather than accept them with ‘blind faith’. Whether or not Buddhism can be regarded as a religion according to the same criteria as other world religions is a question that has occupied commentators on the subject for centuries. I will not attempt to resolve it here, but I will, for the sake of the article, consider it as such; it seems to me that denying Buddhism’s position alongside other world religions is the result of a reductive reading of the material available to us. Or else it is an ill considered excuse for the spiritually inclined ‘atheist’. It is not my intention to cast aspersions on the spiritually inclined, simply to get things straight – if religion is what you’re after, Buddhism’s not a bad one to go for. But if you seek in Buddhism a vehicle for historical change and social emancipation, you will come up against fundamental limitations.

I intend to do two things in this article, firstly to explore, in brief, the social and political history of Tibet and Lamaism in Tibet in order to examine some of the complexities around the West’s idealisation of the country. I see no purpose in re-visiting the dialectical dispute between the traditional Left and the Human Rights position. On no level do I defend the occupation, neither am I comfortable with the idealising of any culture, as though it were some essential quality of a ‘people’ (a very un-Buddhist position, incidentally). Secondly, I will explore some of the core teachings of the Buddhist scriptures and consider their compatibility with certain core assumptions held within activist circles.

Like all world religions Buddhism can be found in many different avatars across the globe. This article is concerned with a particular image of the ‘undogmatic’ Buddhism that is enshrined within leftist circles in the West. This interpretation of Buddhism is based, most explicitly, on Tibetan Buddhism and so Tibetan Buddhism is the focus of this discussion.

A religion is not synonymous with the culture it exists within and to discuss Buddhism is not to discuss Tibet. However, an idea enshrined in the minds of many progressives is that of the Tibetan people’s staunch position on non-violence and their regard for all sentient beings. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the Free Tibet movement dominates much of the West’s awareness of global human rights concerns – after all, Tibet is understood to be a peaceful, egalitarian society in which all human and animal life is respected and cherished, ruled over by a tyrannical regime. I don’t want to undermine this position absolutely. Certainly the Chinese rule of Tibet is deeply problematic, to say the least, but the particular idealising of Tibet common in the West is no less so and, furthermore, serves primarily to dehumanise Tibetans and reduce their emancipatory process to a non-political struggle.

Tibet

If we look at historical accounts of Lamaism in Tibet, the picture that emerges is rather different from the idealised, romantic visions perpetrated by Western supporters of the religion. There is nothing particularly nasty or exploitative about the history of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, relative to the history of the world, but neither is it an idealised utopia that is separated from the bloody history of the world. The narratives of exploitation, class and inequality persist everywhere.

Until the late 1950s, Tibet looked like many other feudal societies we are familiar with. The land was largely owned by wealthy monasteries and secular landlords, divided up into manorial estates and worked by serfs. The land owners accumulated enormous levels of wealth at the expense of peasants’ labour. Serfs were tied in lifelong bonds to work the land of the masters and were subjected to heavy taxation. Monasteries acted like banks, lending money to pay the taxes and charging such high levels of interest that many were held in debt to them for years.

Physical violence and religious conflict were certainly not absent in pre-1959 Tibet, either. Punishment for petty crimes was often brutal and monasteries fought between themselves over land possession and local power. In short then, the power structures in ‘old’ Tibet were no better, and no worse, than those in feudal Europe. And just as in Europe, industrialisation did not deliver on the promises of peace and prosperity.

There is no justification for the Chinese oppression in Tibet, try as many contemporary Maoists might to find one, but neither can we say that the Chinese destroyed an ancient culture of non-violence and harmony. ‘Culture’, indeed, seems to be the buzzword for many Free Tibet campaigners, omitting that there is nothing natural, unchanging or authentic in the patterns of social life. If anything, the Chinese occupation has taken a feudal society into the transition towards (state-)capitalism; not communism.

And with the large patterns of migration brought about by industrialisation, mainly of Han Chinese into Tibet, the post-feudal society has had to deal with a significant amount of ethnic tension. Chinese ownership of factories and shops, and their political power, has not made redundant an analysis of exploitation based on class, but it has added nationalist sentiments to the mix. Man has the ruthless capacity to rule over other Men, and over his natural environment. Religion can at times provide justifications for this rule and at other times can do the opposite.

The road to Nirvana

The real area of contention when considering Buddhism from a progressive, emancipatory perspective is to be found in its core teachings. All too frequently reduced to non-violence and meditation, a cornerstone of Buddhist thought is the principle of ‘Dukkha’, or suffering. According to Buddhist philosophy, all life is suffering, suffering is caused by grasping, or desire, and the only escape from suffering is to break the cycle of life, death and rebirth – ‘Sams?ra’ - and achieve ‘Nirvana’.

In Buddhist literature, ‘Dukkha’ is illustrated using the image of a potter’s wheel. A person experiencing suffering is like a rusty, old wheel. As the wheel turns, it squeaks and creaks and sticks at certain points in its cycle. A person who is free of suffering is like a perfectly oiled wheel, turning smoothly and quietly on its axis.

The sticking point here is that these key Buddhist teachings present an ahistorical and therefore inward looking account of suffering. Buddhist philosophy holds that suffering is implicit in the realm of human existence, so emancipation is achieved not by changing society but by escaping from it. The nature of the universe is constant fluctuation, the nature of Man is grasping for permanence, therefore, constantly disappointed by reality, Man’s only reasonable response is to remove himself from it entirely.

The nature of the universe and the nature of unenlightened Man combine to make suffering unavoidable. The constantly changing universe is the problem, not the particular society that Man has created, and so there is no struggle that he can embark on to change it, other than an internal one. Capitalism, exploitation and inequality become ‘manifestations’ of suffering, rather than reasons for it.

Even the language of activism appears out of place here – to struggle is to grasp, to grasp is to bring about disappointment, disappointment is suffering. Activism is necessarily action-based and Buddhism is necessarily based on the philosophy of stillness as a means of removal from suffering.

One way of looking at this distinction is that Buddhism advises inner change for the sake of personal emancipation and progressive politics demands outer change for the sake of human emancipation. In defence of Buddhism, though, the perfect response to the attainment of enlightenment is the choice to remain within the cycle of ‘Sams?ra’ as a ‘Bodhisattva’ and to work to bring about the enlightenment of all sentient beings.

Compassion is the ultimate articulation of Buddhist practice, but it is a spiritual, rather than a political, articulation. A Buddhist story tells of Siddhattha Gotama’s journey to enlightenment, which is said to equal the period of time it would take to wear away a mountain by stroking it with a sheet of silk once every hundred years. The striving for emancipation on a global scale, then, becomes meaningless without subscribing to the entire Buddhist metaphysical position. Without the patience of the enlightened mind suffering the world over is inevitable for a very, very long time.

Of course, to take the philosophy of self-responsibility, combined with the metaphysical assumptions of multiple life-times and realms of existence, to its logical conclusion brings us to the rather uncomfortable position that social inequality, wealth, physical handicap and all other distinguishing factors are merely the result of worthy or sinful actions committed in past lives. Conversely then, this philosophy of self-reliance arcs back on itself (a never ending Möbius strip) and becomes the ultimate irresponsibility – unconscious of the lifetime which gestated the fruits of my fortune, I am free to take no responsibility for them in this one. Karma becomes the irrefutable, all embracing alibi.

This metaphysical justification for our social positions renders emancipatory struggle futile. Rather, we are advised to cultivate Right Action and Right Mindfulness and trust that the fruits of our labour will be revealed to us in future lifetimes. Sickness and poverty, then, become the result of an unenlightened mind (the sicker, the more unenlightened) whilst wealth and health are the just rewards of deserving actions in the past. A social critique based on the politics of power and inequality is uncalled for here. That Buddhism encourages compassion and the goal of ‘enlightenment for all’ seems (to the unenlighened mind, perhaps) a poor substitute for equal access to food and health care in this lifetime.

In 1996, the Dalai Lama apparently issued a statement that read, in part, “Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. [Marxism fosters] the equitable utilisation of the means of production [and cares about] the fate of the working classes… For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.”

It is a nice sentiment and, in a sense, might transcend a certain ‘narcissism of minor difference’, except that the difference between Buddhism and Marxism isn’t really very minor, and the core difference is situated precisely in the Dalai Lama’s definition of Marxism – that is based on moral principles. But understanding the struggle against capitalism as a ‘historical materialism’, this surely stands at odds with the ahistorical and non-social view of ‘change’ in the Buddha’s teachings.

Polly has studied Comparative Literature and Comparative Religions at The University of Kent and now works as a freelance oral historian in London.

‘What is the alternative?’ - Werner Bonefeld

I

I want to start with a quotation from a Socialist Workers Party poster that I saw on the way to the Anarchist Bookfair. It said: ‘Fight Back the Wrecking Tory Cuts’. There is no doubt that the cuts have to be rejected and will be opposed; society will try to protect itself from misery. ‘Fight Back the Wrecking Tory Cuts’ says something disarmingly obvious, and yet there is more to it than it seems. What does ‘fight back the cuts’ entail as a positive demand? It says no to cuts, and thus demands a capitalism not of cuts but of redistribution from capital to labour; it demands a capitalism that creates jobs not for capitalist profit but for gainful and purposeful employment, its premise is a capitalism that supports conditions not of exploitation but of well-being, and it projects a capitalism that offers fair wages ostensibly for a fair day’s work, grants equality of conditions, etc. What a wonderful capitalism that would be! One is reminded of Marx’ judgment when dealing with the socialist demand for a state that renders capital profitable without ostensibly exploiting the workers: poor dogs they want to treat you as humans!

This idea of a capitalism without cuts, a benevolent capitalism in short, is of course as old as capitalism itself. In our time, this idea is connected with the so-called global financial capitalism that came to the fore in the 1970s. At that time, Bill Warren, for example, argued that all that needed to be done was to change the balance of power, of class power, to achieve, as it were, a socialist hegemony within capitalism – a strangely comforting idea, which presupposes that the hegemony of capital within capitalism is contingent upon the balance of class forces and thus changeable – ostensibly in favour of a socialist capitalism achieved by socialist majorities in parliament making capitalism socialist through law and parliamentary decisions. What an easy thing socialism is! All one has to do is vote for the right party, shift the balance of forces in favour of socialism, and enact the right laws. With the left enjoying hegemony, the state becomes a means to govern over capital, or as Warren saw it, to make money work, not for profit but for jobs, for wages, for welfare. This argument makes it seem as if money only dissociated itself from productive engagement because of a certain change in the balance of class forces. And the crisis of accumulation that began in the late 1960s – what do we make of this?

In the 1980s Austin Mitchell demanded the same thing in his book ‘Market Socialism’. He says ‘we need a state who will make money its servant, so that it is put to work for growth and jobs, rather than the selfish purposes of the merchants of greed.’ Later this became a demand of the anti-globalisation movement, from economists such as Joseph Stieglitz to proponents of the Tobin Tax, from journalists such as Naomi Klein, who wanted “no logo”, to political economists such as Leo Panitch who wanted the state to de-commodify social relations by putting money to work on behalf of workers within protected national economies – protected from the world market.

In the last 20 years ‘fighting back finance capitalism’ was a rallying cry for those who declared to make money create jobs, conditions, employment, that is, to create – in other words – the capitalism of jobs, of employment, of conditions.

Within the critical Marxist tradition, this sort of position is associated with the social-democratic conception of the state. This conception focuses on the way in which social wealth is distributed. It has little to say about the production of that wealth, other than that the labourer should receive fair wages for a fair day’s work. The perspective does not take into account the way in which we as a society organise our social reproduction; the question of the economic form of our exchange with nature is seen as a matter of benevolent state intervention.

This separation between production and distribution presupposes something that is not taken into account: distribution presupposes production. Distribution presupposes a well-functioning, growing economy, that is, capitalist accumulation. So the social-democratic position, which I outlined earlier with Panitch, Bill Warren and others, including the SWP, in fact translates working-class demands - for conditions, for wages, for security, in some cases for life - into the demand for rapid capitalist accumulation, as the economic basis for job creation.

Let’s talk about the working-class, this class of ‘hands’ that does the work. Does the critique of class society entail an affirmative conception of class, which says that the working class deserves a better deal – employment, wages, conditions. Is class really an affirmative category? Or is it a critical category of a false society – a class society in which wealth is produced by a ‘class of hands’ that have nothing but their labour-power to sell? To be a productive labourer is not a piece of luck, it is a great misfortune. The critique of class does not find its resolution in a better paid and better employed working class. It finds its resolution only in a classless society.

Class analysis is not some sort of flag-waving on behalf of the working-class. Such analysis is premised on the perpetuation of the worker as seller of labour power, which is the very condition of the existence of capitalist social relations. Affirmative conceptions of class, however well-meaning and benevolent in their intentions, presuppose the working-class as a productive factor of production that deserves a better, a new deal.

As I stated right at the start, it is obviously the case that the more the working class gets, the better. For it is the working class that produces the wealth of nations. It is the class that works. Yet, what is a fair wage?

In Volume III of ‘Capital’ Marx says something like this: ‘price of labour is just like a yellow logarithm’. Political economy in other words is indeed a very scholarly dispute about how the booty of labour may be divided, or distributed. Who gets what? Who bears the cuts? Who produces capitalist wealth, and what are the social presuppositions and consequences of the capitalist organisation of the social relations of production, an organisation that without fail accumulates great wealth for the class that hires workers to do the work.

II

I want to step back a bit to 1993, just after the deep recession of the early 1990s and the second of the two European currency crises. It was on 24 December 1993 that the Financial Times announced that globalisation – a term which hardly had any currency up until then – is the best wealth-creating system ever invented by mankind. And it said, unfortunately two thirds of the world’s population gained little or no substantial advantage from rapid economic growth.

In the developed world the lowest quarter of income earners had witnessed a trickle up rather than a trickle down. So since the mid 1970s - and Warren picks up on this - we have a system where money, the incarnation of wealth, is invested, incestuously as it were, into itself, opening a huge gap, a dissociation between an ever receding though in absolute terms growing productive base. This created something akin to an upside down pyramid where a great and ever increasing mortgage, an ever greater and ever increasing claim on future surplus value accumulated – mortgaging the future exploitation of labour. This mortgage tends to become fictitious at some point when investor confidence disappears - when, in other words, the exploitation of labour in the present does not keep up with the promise of future extraction of value.

It is against this background that Martin Wolf argued in 2001 ‘what is needed is honest and organised coercive force’. He said that in relationship to the developing world. And Martin Wolf is right – from his perspective. In order to guarantee debt, in order to guarantee money, coercion is the means to render austerity effective. Or as Soros said in 2003: ‘Terrorism provided not only the ideal legitimisation but also the ideal enemy for the unfettered coercive protection of a debt ridden free market society’, because, he says, ‘it is invisible and never disappears’.

So the premise of a politics of austerity is in fact the ongoing accumulation of humans on the pyramid of capitalist accumulation. Its blind eagerness for plunder requires organised coercive force in order to sustain this huge mortgage, this huge promise of future exploitation, here in the present.
Martin Wolf’s demand for the strong state does not belie neo-liberalism, which is wrongly caricatured as endorsing the weak and ineffectual state. Neo-liberalism does not demand weakness from the state. ‘Laissez faire’, said the late Sir Alan Peacock, formerly a Professor of Economics, ‘is no answer to riots’.

‘Law’, says Carl Schmitt, the legal philosopher of Nazism, ‘does not apply to chaos.’ For law to apply order must exist. Law presupposes order. Order is not the consequence of law. Law is effective only on the basis of order. And that is as Hayek put it in the ‘Road to Serfdom’: ‘Laissez faire is a highly ambiguous and misleading description of the principles on which a liberal policy is based.’ ‘The neo-liberal state’, he says, ‘is a planner too, it is a planner for competition’. Market freedom in other words requires the market police, that is the state, for its protection and maintenance.

Capitalist social relations, Schmitt claims, are protected by an enlightened state, and in times of crisis a more or less authoritarian direction becomes unavoidable. Chaos and disorder create the state of emergency which call for the establishment of a strong, market facilitating, order making state. The state is the political form of the force of law - of law making violence.

For the neo-liberals, disorder has nothing to do with markets. It is to do with what they perceive as irrational social action. That is, they see the democratisation or politicisation of social labour relations as a means of disorder, it undermines markets and renders state ungovernable. The state, however - argue the neo-liberal authors - has to govern to maintain order, and with it, the rule of law, the relations of exchange, the law of contract. Free markets function on the basis of order; and order, they argue, entails an ordered society; and an ordered society is not a society that is politicised, but one which is in fact governed – by the democracy of demand and supply, which only the strong state is able to facilitate, maintain, and protect.

III

What is the alternative?

I think the difficulty of conceiving of human self-emancipation has to do with the very idea of human emancipation. This idea is distinct from the pursuit of profit, the seizure of the state, the pursuit and preservation of political power, economic value and economic resource. It follows a completely different idea of human development – and it is this, which makes it so very difficult to conceive, especially in a time of ‘cuts’. One cannot think, it seems, about anything else but ‘cuts, cuts, cuts’. Our language, which a few years ago spoke of the Paris Commune, the Zapatistas, Council Communism, and the project of self-emancipation that these terms summoned, has been replaced by the language of cuts, and fight back, and bonuses, and unfairness, etc. And then suddenly, imperceptibly it seems, this idea of human emancipation - in opposition to a life compelled to be lived for the benefit of somebody’s profit, a life akin to an economic resource - gives way to the very reality that it seeks to change and from which it cannot get away – a reality of government cuts and of opposition against cuts. Government governs those who oppose it. Human emancipation is however not a derivative of capitalist society – it is its alternative, yet, as such an alternative, it is premised on what it seeks to transcend. The SWP poster, with which I started, focuses this premise as an all-embracing reality – cuts or no cuts, that is the question.

What is the alternative? Let us ask the question of capitalism differently, not as a question of cuts but as a question of labour-time. How much labour time was needed in 2010 to produce the same amount of commodities as was produced 1990? 50 percent? 30 percent? 20 per cent? Whatever the percentage might be, what is certain is that labour time has not decreased. It has increased. What is certain, too, is that despite this increase in wealth, the dependent masses are subjected to a politics of austerity as if famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence. What a calamity: In the midst of ‘austerity’, this rational means to perpetuate an irrational mode of production, in which the reduction of the hours of labour needed for the production of the means of subsistence appears in reality as a crisis of finance, money and cash, the struggle over the appropriation of additional atoms of labour time persists as if the reduction of the life-time of the worker to labour time is the resolution to the crisis of debt, finance, and cash flow. Indeed it is. Time is money. And if time really is money, then man is nothing – except a time’s carcass.
And here, in this calamity, there is hope. The hope is that the struggle against cuts, is also a struggle for something.

What does the fight against cuts entail? It is a struggle against the reduction of life time to labour time. The fight against cuts is in fact a fight for a life. For the dependent masses, wages and welfare benefits are the means with which to obtain the means of subsistence. The fight against the cuts is a fight for the provision of the means of subsistence. And that is, it is a conflict between antagonistic interests, one determining that time is money, the other demanding the means of subsistence. This demand, as I argued at the start, might well express itself uncritically as a demand for a politics of jobs and wages, affirming the need for rapid accumulation as the means of job-creation. It might not. It might in fact politicise the social labour relations, leading to the question why the development of the productive forces at the disposal of society have become too powerful for this society, bringing financial disorder and requiring austerity to maintain it. Such politicisation, if indeed it is to come about, might well express, in its own words, Jacques Roux’s dictum that ‘freedom is a hollow delusion for as long as one class of humans can starve another with impunity. Equality is a hollow delusion for as long as the rich exercise the right to decide over the life and death of others.’

Werner Bonefeld is Professor of Politics at the University of York. He recently published ‘Subverting the Present - Imagining the Future’ with Autonomedia.

“No Messy Politics Please, We’re Anarchists!”

SHIFT provides a space for those of us defining as anarchists and based in the UK to ‘constructively’ critique ideas and movements. As the participants from the No Borders network referred to by Dariush Sokolov in his article Cochabamba: Beyond the Complex – Anarchist Pride (printed in Shift issue #9), who took part in the First World People’s Conference on Climate Change (CMPCC), we want to engage with the dialogue opened in #9. We agree with several of the points made, particularly the calling out of “economies based on the same model of petroleum, industrial agriculture, extraction, and growth before everything”. However, we reject a simplistic notion of relishing ‘our’ minority anarchist status. Here we reflect on the chasm we see between maintaining ‘purity’ of ideology and the reality of actually doing politics.

To be clear, we were always critical of what is going on in Bolivia and of other ‘progressive’ governments in Latin America. The glaring contradiction between Evo Morales’ anti-capitalist/eco saviour speeches and his ongoing extractivist industrialisation is just one of the reasons we wanted to attend, to hear what was going on and to report back. In all its complexity we felt that the CMPCC, coming as it did, hot on the tails of the fuck up that was COP-15, was an important event to engage with.

We spent a month in Bolivia participating in the summit working groups, workshops and panels on borders, militarisation, and climate migration, the autonomous parallel process known as Mesa 18, and various mobilisations. The booklet that we co-wrote on our return, Space for Movement – Reflections from Bolivia on Climate Justice, Social Movements and the State, is based on interviews with some of the people we met, and wrestles with big questions that the conference raises.

Dariush’s article suggests that we asked to go as delegates and that this was ‘ejected’ by the No Borders network meeting. The problems of representation in non-hierarchical groups is not our focus here. However, our perspective is that when we sought agreement to refer to ourselves as part of the UK No Borders network, at least some our comrades appreciated that we were asking for input, supported us going as individuals, and understood our reasons. To imply that we were ignorant of the power politics we were entering into was, to be honest, insulting.

The potency of serious political positions are too often trivialised in the mainstream, by reducing people to inaccurate categories (e.g. ‘layabouts’ or ‘violent thugs’ ). On the other side, ‘we’ seem all too ready to resort to equally lazy labelling, when we maybe want to make a real political point? We would like to ask, who are the white, English-speaking, privileged, careerists laden with middle-class guilt that Dariush refers to in his article? What if one of ‘us’ who went to the CMPCC was a working-class queer person of colour, fed up with being invisibilised and treated as a ‘minority’ both within the mainstream and the activist ghetto? For a generalisation to exclude the exception, to make this mistake even once, is to deny the political identity and positionality of all those who do not fit the stereotype. This creates yet another psychological border separating ‘us’ from ‘them’ within our very own movements.

These labels are powerful, isn’t that why we resist categorisations? For example, we highlighted problems with the term climate refugee in draft statements of the CMPCC, and pushed for the inclusion of references to repressive migration controls. A minor change yes, but these battles on the level of discourse are important, especially when we consider how political views are often formed, articulated and negotiated through written and spoken language.

Some of our strengths as anarchists include our refusal to be duped or easily seduced. Our critical minds question everything and, with apparently no positions of privilege to defend, we are willing to call out hierarchy and power wherever we encounter it. But, if the way we do this means that even people involved in anti-authoritarian groups and active in networks are called upon to doubt their political convictions, is it any wonder that others are put off from joining us in struggle? We will continue to honestly debate our actions, but we will also call out problems that we see within ‘our’ minority.

Of course we need shared values and principles but ‘we’ seem too quick to judge, without seeking to understand each other’s motivations. This can lead to a hyper-critical tendency that seeks to defend an imagined ideological ‘purity’. Who is the judge? Who sets the standards? Can someone be polluted by a particular action, the vegan who eats honey, the environmentalist who takes a flight, the No Borders activist who works with the local church-led refugee group? With our almost insurmountable mountain of radical positions, do we exclude those not up to the mark or do they simply choose not to participate? Unchallenged this rigidity inhibits our ability to create strong, diverse movements.

Climate change is here:
This brings us to the elephant in the room. The co-option of climate change discourses, by everyone from the BNP to consumer ad campaigns, seems to have led many anarchists to conclude that there is no point engaging at all with ‘the biggest threat to humanity and the planet’. We see that this position, although an understandable response, risks slipping towards collective denial or nihilism. Climate change is a real and current war on the world’s poor and whether we like it or not it does impact heavily on the global context we are working in. Increased militarisation of borders is just one state response to this reality that negates freedom and equality. We remain committed to fighting for climate justice, even though we are suspicious of how this discourse has already been framed and manipulated.

The Shift editorial made the valid point that fetishisation of carbon emissions associated with flights detracts from the real systemic cause of the crisis, i.e. capitalism. In this they concur with much of the discourse coming from Bolivia, as Evo says, it’s a matter of life and death; patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism are all threatening life on earth. Morales and other ALBA leaders propose their vision of global socialism as the only solution, and that’s where of course we differ. However, sharing some common analysis of causes, even at the level of rhetoric, we saw that it was important to enter into the sticky, grey areas of dialogue in order to distinguish our solutions.

Too often the millions of people that are expected to be displaced by climate change are referred to only in terms of ‘overpopulation’ and a threat to be managed. Statistics get bounded around, numbers of people, black numbers on white paper but what do they mean? At the first major international gathering of social movements which put climate migration on the agenda, we ensured that borders and increased militarisation were visible and argued that freedom of movement for all and freedom to stay are crucial to emerging climate justice discourses (see the article Freedom of Movement and Borders in an age of Climate Chaos on our blog).

As Dariush says, Bolivia does indeed still have borders, an army, prisons. In our work there, we heard different contextual understandings and certainly realised the Eurocentric basis of a No Borders position. For many it is the ability to keep out rich, Northern corporations and NGOs that was seen as the function of a border regime. But in a country where anti-capitalism seems to be the rule rather than the exception, with strong transnational solidarity and indigenous rejection of nation states, we found that what is often a freakish political position in Europe, for many, seemed uncontroversial.

There is much to be said for embracing the outsiderness of being an anarchist, especially in influencing power dynamics within and between movements. However, contrary to Dariush’s assertion that, “our desires and beliefs are largely out of step with those of just about everyone else we ever meet,” we found more in common then we had imagined. Many of the problems we encounter today have come about as a result of minority groups forming around collective ideologies, dreams and demands, which are imposed on the majority through coercion. Whilst the current anarchist movement is a minority in numbers, it is surely our belief in basic shared collective desires within the majority that calls us to organise, to act, to speak out, and to face the consequences. Movements will form, uprisings will happen, whether we are in them or not. But we believe that it is crucial that we locate ourselves in the wider struggle, and to do this we need to create relationships of mutual respect and spaces for dialogue.

Bolivia can be seen as an example of how movements are co-opted, how states can adopt radical rhetoric without relinquishing domination and control. We met with Bolivian political actors both within and against the state, who having fought side-by-side on the barricades now find themselves in very different political territory. There are ongoing struggles and attempts to expose the attacks on the social base that brought the ruling party, Movement for Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS), to power. However, for many Bolivians who were part of this process, there is no clear good/bad position when it comes to Morales and the MAS government. One compañera spoke passionately of her distrust of their socialist project, and a deep sense of betrayal from former comrades (see recent open letter to Evo Morales at http://narconews.com/Issue67/article4292.html). She was clear though that had we been from the right, she would have articulated her position differently to us. The threat from the European descendent oligarchs and the outside powers and financiers that support them remains strong. There is much to challenge, but also to necessarily defend. Bolivians we met didn’t seem ‘duped’, but repeatedly told us that it wasn’t about one man or one party, but about a wider push for change from below that would inevitably take many paths.

So how does this relate to what’s going on this winter on these islands? Who hasn’t asked themselves recently, why, when the system continues to expose itself; the banking crisis, MP’s expenses, police brutality etc, there isn’t more resistance? In an unfolding climate of coalitions and community organising in the UK against the cuts and the unprecedented attacks on the working-class, it’s crucial that we take ourselves to where politics is happening. This is what we call messy politics. This is also when our ‘ghetto’ can truly serve its purpose, providing nourishment, support, etc. Everytime we step out of our comfort zones, there is a balance to be found between staying true to our beliefs and actually engaging with people. Ultimately, each one of us has to reconcile these tendencies and we don’t argue here for any one strategy; however we echo Bristol Anarchists against the Cuts;

“For us at least is not about tunnel vision on the anarchist utopia and everything else can go to hell…If anarchists only involve themselves with the clandestine then they risk becoming even more marginalised at a time where we could be making headway.”

Despite mainstream media portrayals, the recent student protests were not an anarchist conspiracy shielding itself behind witless and innocent young scholars. They were however, in Bristol at least, infused from within and without with a little of that anarchist pride and rage, and have been practically, tactically and ideologically supported by local autonomous spaces and anarchist groups. Revelling in our minority status stands in contrast to seeing ourselves as part of a much broader struggle. The real work of building bridges, of developing true mutual aid and solidarity entails remembering that we’re not always right, being willing to admit our collective shortfalls and that we have things to learn too. To bring about real transformative, social change, exclusivity in our movements must be challenged, both in the global context of the bio-crisis, and in our locally based struggles. Once we accept that uneasy or unlikely alliances will at times be inevitable, we can begin the real work of how to build internally strong movements that can resist internal break down or external neutralisation. Or are we really more interested in dividing people into friends and foes?

Alice and Yaz live in Bristol and have been involved in the No Borders network for several years. The blog from their time in Bolivia is ayya2cochabamba.wordpress.com. The booklet they co-wrote on their return is downloadable in English and Spanish.

Editorial - Whose Ritz? Our Ritz!

So that was it. We had ‘our’ moment, ‘our’ J18. March 26th was the day that the emerging anti-austerity movement had been waiting for, and there were certainly parallels (both political and aesthetic) to the heydays of the ‘movement of movements’, as little as 10 years ago, when black-clad anarchists turned their backs on the marches of global justice coalitions to smash the windows of McDonald’s, Starbucks and luxury hotels.

After Millbank, nobody knew what was going to come next, but could it have been predicted that we’d return to the aesthetics of the black bloc? After Millbank, despite the escalated forms of action that took place, the distinctions of good protester/bad protester, anarchist/liberal, student/worker were hard to uphold. But what did the smashing of the Ritz, on March 26th, amongst other ‘symbols’ of capitalism/wealth, signify?

Smashing up Oxford Street and the militant forms of ‘action’ that took place on the day no doubt felt exciting, a break from several things - passive marching, respect for private property, obedience to the law etc. And in this way they can certainly be experienced as transgressive - revolutionary even - a ’step up’ from the traditional lobby, march, go home format. This was the first time that you could seriously talk of a black bloc in the UK. Spontaneous and presumably unplanned, this did not hamper the unravelling of events once people got to the West End/Soho: surrounded by the symbols of wealth and capital, energy high, the city became an outlet for the frustration of the workers, students and unemployed who took part. However, although there were elements which felt like markers of progress on the day - the levels of militancy, the amounts of students still active since the education protests and the unquestionable antagonism toward the current political/economic system - there were also familiar flaws and potentials which weren’t taken advantage of.

While the black bloc was vanguard in its form of action (we mean this both in a negative and a positive sense: negative in its separatism and scorn towards public sector workers on the demo; positive in its move to create a discursive space outside of the sanctioned and sanitised world of Barber, Miliband & Co), its content was a shameless and at times embarrassing political patchwork borrowed from the much more articulate UK Uncut and from social democratic populism dressed up as ‘class war’. Black bloc tactics are an important strategy to protect ourselves and to maintain the same anonymity that the authorities use to protect corporations, the police, etc. But a strategic focus on tactics should come hand-in-hand with a political strategy and analysis. At a time when the discourse of the anti-globalisation left makes sense, with the political/economic system blown open and exposed for what it really is, how do these forms of action make use of this opportunity and resonate with those outside of the militant activist ‘ghetto’?

But then again, the UK Uncut message, however media friendly and attractive it may seem is also deeply flawed. By focusing on tax evasion we run the risk of supporting the legitimacy of the state and hiding the inherent inequality of capitalism beneath calls for fairness (‘we pay our taxes, why don’t you’). Attempts at trying to match up this ‘lost money’ with the budget cuts also serves to mask the political element of the cuts behind simple, technocratic solutions.

For many anarchists and anti-capitalists there was a strong ‘get rid of the rich’ message. Whilst this might be a first step toward a class analysis we must be careful with anti-rich politics. Millionaires are not the same as the bourgeoisie. From many anarchists there was a peculiar combination of ’smash the state’ but also calls to ‘tax the rich’ (presumably a call to increase income tax, inheritance tax, taxation of financial transactions, and similar). While no-one was arguing for austerity, no-one really seemed to be making the case for ‘luxury for all’ either. Arguments that placed capitalism at blame, structurally, for blocking universal prosperity, were lacking. The ‘anarchist’ alternative seemed to rely almost entirely on the redistribution of wealth, rather than on the argument that there is no distribution without production, and that it is this sphere of work that we have to address to really provide a class struggle alternative and an alternative to the attacks on our quality of life.

Whether we were smashing windows, occupying Fortnum and Mason’s or marching on the main demonstration, there is clearly a concern here that we are separating ourselves off, giving ourselves a very distinct identity from each other, from ‘ordinary people’. Contrary to Millbank and Dec 9th, where even Cameron admitted that a majority of people were making trouble, March 26th saw the dusting off of the traditional protest narratives of the violent minority. So if there’s a group of maybe a few thousand annoying the cops in Piccadilly/Trafalgar Sq. while 300,000 are listening to speeches by the Labour leader, there’s clearly the question of how we relate to wider struggle against cuts, especially those of the public sector workers present. This will be a key task in the coming months - one which is, unfortunately, much harder than breaking a plate glass window.

A day in three parts - Nic Beuret

black bloc.jpg

March 26th saw over half a million people take to the streets of London to protest against the latest regime of austerity, cuts and social reorganisation. This multitude of bodies had no one single (or simple) demand. Their dissent flowed through select channels on the day; three well worn acts of an old play, one that looked tired and failed to evoke much feeling from the audience or the actors on the streets. What comes next is the pressing question, but we need to first look at why the play failed to resonate. What happened on the 26th and why did it leave so many with such an empty feeling?

ACT ONE - THE MARCH

The march on the 26th was significantly larger than had been anticipated when the Trade Union Council (TUC) reluctantly called it last year. The TUC’s complicity with the human rights organisation, Liberty, and the Metropolitan Police around the management of the protests was born of a particular fear – one that may still come to pass. Their fear was (and is) that the mass of bodies on the march would not merely flow smoothly into electoral politics but instead move beyond it into some realm of civil disobedience. They fear that we will move past the existing consensus that organises our lives and become ‘ungovernable’.

In many ways their fear is justified – disobedience is becoming attractive and the impotence of electoral politics (and the bankruptcy of the Labour Party) is patently clear. Since the global downturn began there has been a return of workplace occupations and wildcat strikes in the UK, and a series of uprisings and revolutions around the globe. Their fears were heightened by the militancy of the student protests last year and the actions inspired by groups like UK Uncut as well as the range of disobedient struggles by groups defending libraries, nurseries and other services and spaces.

The sheer scale of numbers involved in the march speaks to the powerful potential for disobedience and resistance. On their own, however, numbers are just one public relations element in the electoral cycle; fodder for headlines, opinion polls, party manifesto promises and back-room deals - much like the Iraq war protests of 2003. Complicity with the police was the only possible response to the not-yet disobedient mass, to contain it and direct it towards acceptable political spaces and ward off any possible contagion from its proximity to more radical forms of politics.

In many ways the moment of fear may have passed, in part because the radical left failed to make the most of the potential on the day. Disobedience is not the preserve of the radical left.

Disobedience and resistance are both continually coming into being throughout society. But the tides of rebellious desire, spontaneous in their eruption, also tend to ebb without channels within which to flow. Spontaneity and organisation have a necessary (if conflictual) relationship – in whatever form they take (gang, collective, union, party, social network, etc) – that is necessary for substantive social transformation ‘from below’. The radical left has an important role to play here; not as leaders but as co-conspirators, comrades organising resistance through their proximity to other potentially rebellious bodies.

The two main co-conspiratorial bodies on the day – UK Uncut and Black bloc - both failed to make something more – more disobedient, more radical, more disruptive – out of the day. UK Uncut because of their organisational and political limits and the Black bloc because of their separatism and misjudged theatre of militancy.

ACT TWO - THE OCCUPATION

Somewhere in the order of 4,000 people headed off from the TUC march towards Oxford St on the 26th. However singular and distinct they were, their actions were largely conditioned by the narrative (political and organisational) of UK Uncut, and a much smaller number as a part of the Black bloc. So while the radical left in general can be said to have fallen short of what was possible, particular attention has to be paid to the two ‘groups’ that demarcated the disobedient space on the day.

After March 26th it is clear that UK Uncut has reached its political and organisational limit. Beyond the critique of the ‘leaderless network’ form adopted by them over the last year, their network on the day failed. By all accounts the dispersed actions were poorly coordinated and left largely to the initiative of individual groups who lacked the means to effectively communicate between themselves. The main occupation on the day was so badly organised that several of the groups, organised by flag colour, were ‘led’ by people who didn’t know where they were going or what the action was.

This lack of organisational capacity speaks to a larger problem. Calling UK Uncut a ‘banner that actions can take place under’, a network that needs no further coordination or leadership of any kind, both mystifies the actual organisational processes that are at play and works to inhibit the development of other forms of coordination. UK Uncut is clearly not leaderless - it is obvious that there are some core personnel narrating the story via ‘owned’ communication channels and by the dominance of their voices both within the network and publicly (manifesting an invisible hierarchy of the most unreconstructed kind). All this is enabled by the rhetoric of a leaderless network. There is no such thing. All structures have spaces, processes or bodies that have more or less access to power than others. The important question is not whether or not there are leaders, but how power is distributed and decisions made.

If the problems with UK Uncut were purely organisational, it would be easy enough to call some form of spokescouncil (as in the days of the anti-globalisation movement), or arrange some form of participatory democracy or delegate structure. We can speculate that perhaps the fact that this hasn’t happened echo’s some of the similarly problematic processes within Climate Camp – a political precursor to UK Uncut. It also points to the urgent need to analyse the NGO-ification of social movements in the UK. But the problems of UK Uncut go beyond organisational forms and into its political content.

Tax avoidance is an easy entry point for many people and it directs outrage towards those that embody a kind of capitalism that is built on theft and dispossession. However, while it might be easy and simply it misdirects people and their outrage in three important ways.

Firstly, it rests on a false assumption - one that moves people back towards the kind of policy-driven politics that the TUC favour. The basic political ‘ask’ (to use the NGO concept that underpins so much of the strategy of UK Uncut) is that if all the tax that large corporations avoided was paid there would be no need for cuts. The problem with this is that the cuts are not necessary per se (i.e. for purely economic reasons, as evidenced by the variety of economic strategies being pursued by other neoliberal governments) – the cuts and restructuring are political and would still be taking place if the tax was paid. Targeting ‘unpaid’ tax reinforces the idea that it is this ‘missing’ money that is the problem and ignores the immediately political nature of the restructuring.

Secondly, targeting tax avoidance as a practice accepts the reduction of politics to economics. Part of the neoliberal project is to reduce politics to a narrowly defined species of economics. Individual responsibility and a belief in the market as a fair mechanism for distribution are both essential to neoliberalism. Fighting the political reordering of society by calling for companies to play fair ‘just like us’ leaves this form of politics intact. What UK Uncut is calling for is mere correction, one brought about by a (very) ‘civil’ disobedience.

Finally, the main actor prefigured in UK Uncut’s actions is the ‘good citizen’ – one who does the right thing, who pays their taxes, participates and above all believes. This wholesome figure, if it ever existed, is certainly fracturing under the weight of the crisis. This is exactly where the outrage and defiance we have seen over the last six months comes from, with the betrayal of the old form of citizenship and aspiration, of the promise of social mobility and the payout on entrepreneurial activity. Using this figure reinvigorates what is now a false constituency and misdirects people’s anger and rage.

What attracts people to the actions of UK Uncut is something that many seem to instinctively grasp as appropriate to the moment – the occupation. The occupation as an idea has been bubbling up through the imaginary within the UK – from Climate Camp to the numerous workplace occupations that have taken place over the last three years, as well as examples from Greece to France and Tunisia to Egypt. Occupation has a strong grip on our imagination of disobedience. It is this that we should take from UK Uncut - people recognise it as an appropriate tactic for this moment and one that speaks to our reappropriation of time and space.

INTERMISSION

The terrain of the 26th was marked out by two different forms of protest that both led back to existing political forms of expression, both aimed at reform and both ultimately correlated to a reduced constituency. What we saw was a mass of bodies from a range of networks, organisations, groups and tendencies take part in these two spaces. While the potential existed within this disparate multitude to go beyond the limits of the TUC march and the UK Uncut spectacular occupation, on the day this did not manifest itself. Hope lies with some of the actions and forms that emerged before the 26th – such as the university occupations, the local anti-cuts actions and town hall ‘riots’, the various service actions and campaigns around childcare and the NHS.

This hope requires that people quickly recover from the fact that while most organisations were building for the TUC march or actions on the 26th, few had any plans for what comes next. Despite a vast amount of the radical left proclaiming otherwise, the latest neoliberal restructuring of our lives is not a re-run of the Poll Tax. It is in fact completely different. Our parallel is not with the Poll Tax but with the Structural Adjustment Programs that until 2008 have been taking place in the global South. We need to look to the forms of resistance in South Africa, Mexico, Argentina and elsewhere, and not to the much-reified Poll Tax resistance and riot.

ACT THREE – THE BLACK BLOC

According to those that took part on the day, at their height the Black bloc numbered around 500. While the boundaries between the Black bloc and the remaining mass involved in civil disobedience were not absolutely distinct, the Black bloc was a clearly demarcated form on the day, and needs to be analysed as such. Especially, it marked itself out as the militant anti-capitalist body above all others.

The Black bloc as a form came into its own during the anti-globalisation movement. Its purpose was to form a visible anarchist body that engages in property damage against specific targets that embody capitalism. It was, ten years ago, an attempt to engage in a form of militant theatre that broke with the non-violence mantra of other protesters and to bring into the movement a form of class analysis that was perceived to be lacking.

On March 26th, as an alternative to both the TUC march and the UK Uncut inspired actions, the Black bloc’s propaganda of the deed had two implicit aims: to deepen and generalise the militancy on the streets and draw attention to a critique of capitalism through its choice of targets. The Black bloc failed on both points.

The Black bloc does not represent militancy – this isn’t, but should be, obvious. Reviewing the various analysis and conversations surrounding the events of the 26th, it would seem that this is the perspective of many on the bloc. There were 4,000 people actively engaged in radical disobedience on the day and 500 on the bloc at its peak.

The majority of the militants who have come out of the various protests over the last six months, many of whom engaged in property damage, chose not to join the Black bloc. This does not mean that they were any less militant for it. Militancy cannot be reduced to property damage, nor is property damage the most militant form of protest. As the history of Black struggles in the USA teaches us, sometimes taking a seat in the ‘wrong’ place can be the most militant action of all. Militancy has become generalised, and with 4,000 militant bodies in the streets, what was the point of the Black bloc as a separate entity? As a piece of militant and aggressive theatre it wasn’t needed to maintain visible antagonism on March 26th, or to develop the existing militancy out there on the streets. Nor did it generate ‘more’ militancy in the same way the Millbank riot in November 2010 did. Why?

Millbank was a mass action – it wasn’t a self-defined group that smashed its way into the Tory HQ but a huge section of the demonstration. Its character as such made it resonate – it was open and undefined. The protests that followed had similar characteristics: huge sections of the crowd were involved in fighting the cops during December, for example. This open and undefined nature created spaces where bodies came together to find a common need for militancy. It was this free-for-all nature that generalised militancy; the open relationships in struggle without pre-definition beyond a shared anger and rage. And it is the closing down of this space that was the ultimate achievement of the Black bloc on the day.

By failing to do something that took things further that others could join without losing their own political identities, or by refusing to act as just a part of the larger mass, the Black bloc actively separated itself from the remaining militant bodies and ruptured this openness.

This exclusivity meant that the imagery of the Black bloc in action struck no chord in its audience. All they saw was empty theatre – what they were expecting from ‘the anarchists’. Symbolic actions, including attacking banks, can be vital moments in a rebellion. But the power of these actions comes from their resonance – people must feel the moment and realise what lies at the heart of that feeling. But what they saw was a group of bodies alien to them, apart, engaged in actions they could not be involved in or identify with because they were not the Black bloc. The Black bloc ultimately marks out a territory – we are the militants, taking the battle to the state and capital, and you are not – that fractures the potential for mass insurrection. There are times this alienness can serve to excite the imagination, but when it is but a small part of a larger militant mass, it has the opposite effect and undermines its own reason for being.

FINALE

The frustration with the 26th is born of the potential to move through those limits that currently define our resistance. A potential that was not fulfilled for a transgression that somehow didn’t come to pass.

It is clear that the politics of the TUC and the old electoral left are long past being able to serve even reformist ends. It is less clear what emerges beyond the politics of UK Uncut and the Black bloc. What was surprising was the lack of visible presence from the other main character on the stage in the lead up to the 26th – the students as a singular body. After all it is this body that made many think something more was possible. As individual occupations and groups they were there, but somehow their presence was not felt, not as a moment of rupture. Perhaps it was impossible that they could provide this moment on the day. Perhaps something else was needed. Or, perhaps, the day was made for something more subtle and quiet – a series of subtexts and whispers that ran between the lines and acts of the play.

We haven’t really begun to explore what militancy could mean – we don’t really know what is possible anymore. We need to move out of our old roles and habits, and find new ways to inspire resistance and revolt and make both endure. The day could have been, and should have been, a space to explore what this could be. But we lack, as a radical left, the places for these conversations and seductions to happen. After the 26th it’s become painfully clear that we need forms of organisation to carry this militancy further. If militant organisation has any meaning, it is in this – to inspire revolt and make it endure beyond the moment of insurrection and riot.

Originally published in Shift magazine

Nic Beuret is currently a member of The Paper collective and was on the buggy bloc with his daughter on March 26 (while his partner caused havoc in the city). He has variously been involved in a successful community nursery campaign in Hackney, resisting job losses as a shop steward in his workplace, local anti-cuts campaigning and No Borders activism in Australia over recent years.

Anarchists and the Big Society

The Big Society is an unnerving idea, one that has tripped many with even the slightest public conscious as they stagger towards confronting the austerity regime. Amidst the dismantling of social provisions of the State, it seems this vacuous rhetoric goes straight to the heart of undermining the traditional foundations of progressive movements; calling for cooperation and solidarity in lifting society to a higher plain of socialisation. It is, of course, a divisive use of language, but even so, it has been approached with caution. There is nothing new taking place when the ideas and values of the Left get swept up with and become part of the status quo. This time, again, Conservative party intentions seem not only to incorporate but also to subvert or blunt the political concerns of broad groups from community charities to squatted social centres.

When the government asks its subjects to “come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want” , it’s fair to take a skeptical step back and reflect on what is going on. Not just because it seems out of character for a Conservative government to propose an approach that offers such a particular form of social agency. Looking back, our experience of modern Thatcherite conservatism is one of social destruction and decapitation of the means for social action. Of course, few on the broad left would ponder on the idea of the Big Society without skepticism and we only need scratch the surface to reveal the dogma of Neoliberalism. David Cameron is, after all, following in the footsteps of Thatcher, but the Big Society is something more than a ploy to differentiate him from the deeply unpopular ‘there is no such thing as society’.

When the Big Society was first introduced as a potential policy for the new government it was met with instant scorn and distrust. Britain’s large Third (or charity) Sector has dealt with funding cuts while continuing to make up for a lack of political will to tackle the social grievances in this country. Any calls for charities to further their provision of social services while putting a halt on funds was seen as insulting and misguided. An embarrassing policy U-turn for the government was anticipated.

But the concept hasn’t gone away. Charities and voluntary organisations never had the unity of perspective, nor the political impetus, to present a real challenge. Instead they criticise the perspective of the government for their lack of consultation and their failure to recognise charities need more money, not less. Then, reluctantly, they work longer hours and accept more volunteers. Initially, it is easy to denounce the Big Society as incapable of delivering – in the short term in particular the results will be sparse – but in the long term the success for the government will be more subtle.

The Tories claim the argument for a free market has been won. Despite this they have always known there are winners and losers and that markets still need something (pacifying) to hold the fabric of society together. The Big Society is the attempt to expropriate community and compassion, to ‘provide’ the ideas of social responsibility (outside the State) without providing anything at all.

Charities and publicly funded institutions will call the Big Society unsuccessful. And that’s fine, but the danger is we lose sight of the government’s long term objectives, to re-establish the role of the state – to dismantle and reassemble the notion of the ‘public’ – and make way for a new moral order that sanctifies the existing social divisions while incorporating social action as a solution to the inability of capitalism to close the divide.

Our 21st Century Big Society claims to hand power to communities through decentralization and fosters a spirit of social action. This presents a problem. Social action among communities has always taken place. Big Society is a huge insult to all those in established institutions, plus all those who work tirelessly outside these institutions - often for no financial return - in the interests of community and social change. Those who struggle to stabilise the social deficit between the rich and the poor, those with and those without opportunities, between the exploited and the exploiters.

The means of community resistance is now being triumphed as the saving grace of our future homogeneous and socially aware society. The role of the state is changing. It can no longer function with the pretence of being a publicly contested space, a place for ideologue and bastion of public need. Now we have managers of the economy and administrators of law and order. When we consider the changes in State form we can see the removal of political ideas which are being replaced with a logic of economic governance. The Big Society is the perfect solution for a small government that protects total capitalism. The rolling back of the State is precisely a removal of social responsibility for (homes, health, education) the things it took so long for social struggles to achieve. Such changes will inevitably provoke protest.

Chants of ‘No Cuts’ and ‘pay your taxes’ that have been heard across the protest landscape suggest the State should uphold its responsibility to serve our needs and mediate our social life. Furthermore, there is a moral plea being proposed to the rich to avoid legal loopholes, perhaps even for State law to be firmer in regulating capital. We could say these pleas call for a stronger, bigger State. Or simply suggest a confusion of ideas among the direct-action Twitterati.

An evident insecurity has also taken hold among anarchist and anti-capitalist circles. The drive towards cooperative organizing, community empowerment and resilience has left many in fear that their actions will complement the rhetoric of the State. Particularly, anything that is volunteer led, without funding and is mostly achieved at the expense of the time we have left after selling our labour, is understandably ill at ease. What needs to be tackled is not the method of social action, but rather the cause.

So how are anarchists supposed to interact with a shrinking State and public condemnation of the removal of State support initiatives? Why are anarchists against the austerity cuts? What are we protecting here?

An ideological push towards total-market-capitalism is being presented as an economic necessity with a social policy to salvage the cohesive quality that social rights once achieved. But beneath the image it is clear that Tory plans to foster cooperation are shrouded in a veil of economic slavery and consolidation of a republic of property. As a global phenomena, the establishment of State administered legal systems - which work most effectively for the protection of property rights - cement capitalism in the logic of the State. Of course, it has been like this for some time; however, the destruction of the ‘public’ consciousness of the State marks the final process of the separation of Politics from Economics.

This diversionary separation, once achieved, ensures the safeguarding of the economic logic and perfomative role of the government that operates on two different strata. Any challenge is met with Law and Order and sanctioned State violence. And so, the coercion of the State lies in its protection of forms of living and dissemination of moral norms. The protection of rights of property - and the moral order that follows - exacerbates exploitation and directly binds the nature of the economy to the State. State politics and the economy are presented as power, or forces, in their own right, but are in fact wholly linked and support each other. Social relations are embedded in the economic inequalities that are protected and maintained by State law. The majority of populations are denied access to valuable property or ownership of resources that give opportunities for capital accumulation.

The Big Society is a negative policy that aims to make up for the inequality and disproportionate allocation of resources that create the social inefficiency of Capitalism. It is a policy that aims to affect the grievance without affecting the cause. We could call this a meta-policy, following market economics, which accepts existing socio-economic relations as given, yet outside the realm of politics. Furthermore, the Big Society extends the myth of abstract equality. Before the law, it is claimed, we are all equal and equality of rights equates to an equality of being and meritocratic impartiality. Meanwhile, the inequality of society is separated from the politics of the State. Any social divisions deriving from this inequality are smoothed out, or made (somehow) irrelevant, in part by the participation in an imagined community. Instead of exchanging wages for labour, active members of Big Society initiatives receive moral fortitude for their actions and sense of belonging to a community committed to social values and provision of care. We are all in this together.

Capitalism, many would argue, is a planetary catastrophe. The Big Society aims to make the catastrophe of communities in Britain more bearable while reproducing socio-economic relations for the benefit of a certain class. The unequal impact of these austerity cuts, the integration of market capitalism into all aspects of social life, the proliferation of crisis-capitalism - the march of the zombie - can only be made bearable through an assault on the mediator of socio-economic relations, as well as development of forms of living and social relations that do not seek to extract capital from relationships; not simply by cooperative social actions - at one’s own expense - that leaves the social reproductive potential of capitalism in place.

We should not be afraid of the incorporation of our language and ideas into the rhetoric and function of the State. We must occupy the rhetoric! Transform it with an understanding of our relationship to the State. It is an invisible hand that, safeguarded by the State, creates the division, exploitation and mechanisation of social life. It must be revealed as the hand of the State.

The necessity now is to subvert this negative cooperative society for a more positive one. For a community where social action can encounter a new form of lived social experience. An experience that can inform a new politics by its critique of State form, recognition of economics as politics and creative engagement with social reproductive forces. We are human by our own being, and not the membership of someone else’s vision of society. The Big Society separates community from the means for people to establish their own communities as they please and are desirable for them. It separates citizens (equal under law) from the wider context of citizenship – the potential of social agency – and ignores the binary between citizens and the state.

Only once it is realised that equality, democracy and liberty cannot be provided by a government authority that protects private property are communities able to locate the critical part of their struggle for social care. The other, creative part will be realised in the production of communities to come. We want to protect our public services (many of which were founded on the principles of working-class self-help initiatives), not because we rely on the State for support but because it is part of an experience beyond Capitalism that was forced on the State. The Conservatives may develop their policies around an anarcho-capitalist vision of the future, by dismantling the State’s ‘public’ function, but anarchists should continue to point to the destruction of the Common in the relations of people to economic value. The anarcho-capitalist Big Society poses a development in State form but not a change in the relevance of anarchism. Property is still theft, not simply in a classical sense in the denial of its collective possession and use for other purposes, but, under the tyranny of rent and sanctity of profit, of the social means to a life of one’s choosing. When it comes to social action, we are not all in this together, but we should come together, for the Common and beyond the State.

Percy is involved in the University for Strategic Optimism

March 26th and the aftermath – where next for the anti-cuts movement?

london-riot-march-26-2011_3.jpg

Well, we should have seen it coming. The police, media and protest organisers were talking up the prospect of “violent troublemakers” “hijacking” the TUC march for weeks in advance of March the 26th, and a few smashed windows and paint bombs later, they showed us - in the words on the Daily Telegraph - “Britain's face of hatred” in all its spectacular glory.

The distinction between “legitimate”, “peaceful” protest on the one hand, and on the other the “violence” of property destruction was used and abused in the aftermath the demonstration, with Teresa May describing “black shirted thugs” rampaging through the West End, championing the arrest of 146 protesters and outlining further curbs to the right to protest. While the number of arrests was consistently quoted in the media within the context of “violence”, the overwhelming majority (138) of them came from the mass arrest of the peaceful occupants of Fortnum and Masons. In fact, only three people were charged with criminal damage, and two with assaulting police officers.

While the mainstream media and police had already set up their distinction between “peaceful” and “violent” protesters well in advance of the day, and made maximum use of it afterwards, this division began to be mirrored in radical circles in the distinction between the peaceful disorder of UK uncut and the “violence” of the window-breakers. Some UK Uncutters appeared to object at being lumped in with the black bloc, and sought to distance themselves from its actions. Describing their occupation of Fortnum and Masons in an article for The Guardian the following day, Alex Pinkerman pointed out that “Balloons and beachballs were the only things being thrown in the air. A basket of chocolates was accidentally knocked over so we picked them up.”

While the binary distinction between “peaceful protesters” and “hooligans” is obviously questionable, there is some mileage in comparing the actions of UK Uncut and the black bloc. Mainly, this is because of the nature of the targets. Some of those of the bloc's were simply posh shops and other ostentatious displays of wealth, Topshop was smashed because of the Arcadia group's tax dodging, and the Ritz Hotel is owned by the Barclay brothers, who live offshore their own Island, Brecqhou. Fortnum and Masons, which was occupied by UK Uncut, is owned by Wittington Investments and has its own elaborate tax-dodging schemes.

In this article, we want to look at some of the issues surrounding both forms of protests, and make some suggestions for the direction of the anti-cuts movement.

The promise and limitations of UK Uncut

The UK has seen a wave of high-street demonstrations under the banner of the UK uncut campaign, many of which have been organised locally following call outs distributed through the internet. The protests have seen a number of stores associated with Tax-Dodging picketed, occupied and flyered in cities and towns up and down the country.

The targets of the campaign have been pretty specific. The most high-profile company to be taken on has been the UK-based telecoms giant Vodafone, which is the most profitable mobile phone operator in the world. Last year veteran investigative magazine Private Eye broke a story on Vodafone's successful tax-dodging, which had involved setting up a subsidiary company in Luxembourg purely to route profits from the company's acquisition of Mannesman through a country with a more agreeable tax regime. After a lengthy legal battle, which apparently was going HMRC's way, the taxman agreed to let Vodafone pay a tax bill of £1.2 billion, rather than the full £6 billion in estimated tax. Vodafone have since dismissed the £6 billion figure as a “urban myth”, despite the fact their accountants projected for it in their own bookeeping. Understandably, the story produced a groundswell of anger, of which these demonstrations are a product.

Target number two is head of the Arcadia group empire - and author of the Efficiency Review advising the government on how to shape its cuts - Sir Philip Green. Green, who made his fortune on the back of workers in South Asia working 12 hour shifts for poverty wages, took home a paycheque unprecedented in UK history when he paid himself £1.2 billion in 2005. This was paid to his wife, living in the tax-haven of Monaco, so as to avoid tax.

The demonstrations have garnered a good deal of attention from the authorities and the media, both of whom have launched investigations into the “ringleaders” of the protests. On their own, the demos have caused a fair bit of disruption, and brought to light the fact that the same government seeking to impose historic cuts in the standard of living in the UK is also allowing its friends in business to avoid fulfilling their tax obligations, if nothing else shattering the great lie that “we're all in this together”.

There are evidently positive aspects to the protests, but some of their limitations are immediately striking. Fundamentally, the protests don't push beyond the logic of social democracy, in fact, playing devil's advocate one could go further and argue they are compatible with a right-wing populist analysis of the crisis: tax-avoiding multinational companies are sucking money from the country, unlike the hard done-by 'British taxpayer', forming another fundamentally alien parasite on the country's back – add it the the list with the EU, immigrants, etc…

Furthermore, the basic logic of the callouts is the need to uphold the rule of law – these companies have a legal obligation to pay their taxes, which they shirk. This much is stated up front by UK Uncut, who, styling themselves as “big society revenue and customs”, state that “if they won't chase them, we will”. Essentially, the argument as it stands is for the state to live up to it's promise and to actually deliver on the idealised face of its material function. The role of the state in capitalism is to underwrite the functioning of the capitalist market. The state is a prerequisite of capitalism in that the ability to guarantee private property rights and therefore the ability to buy and sell requires a legal and judicial system and repressive state body there to make those rights possible. What makes any property yours or mine, but much more importantly what makes the property of the capitalist his is ultimately the ability of the state to adjudicate and guarantee that he can dispose of his accumulated wealth as he pleases. In practice this means the need to mediate parties and maintain the social fabric in the face of potential unrest – translated into bourgeois ideology in its current, successful iteration as an even-handed regime of “fairness” where we are all taxed, prosecuted, and end up on the receiving end of cuts fairly. Witness every political party attempting to outdo one another by positing the “fairness” of their plans for the economy and attacks on working class living standards in the UK. The state is a subject of criticism because it fails to fulfil its promised role correctly, not because this promised role, along with the toleration of tax avoidance and the regime of austerity all step from its role as a key actor in the continued existence of capitalism.
However, saying this is not to dismiss these protests out of hand or deny they have positive aspects that can be built on, or that there is no space for growth and dialogue. To remain aloof to nascent movements and all the inevitable contradictions real people in the real world bring with them as they become politically engaged is to condemn ourselves to irrelevance.

One positive feature of the demonstrations is the fact that protesters in many cases are willing to create disruption as a tactic. Effective direct action, be it in the form of strike action, demonstrations or occupations is effective by virtue of its ability to disrupt the normal functioning of society. In a society entirely based on the accumulation of capital, this means the disruption of the economy. Occupations of high-street stores have the capacity to inhibit buying and selling and affect directly the normal working of parts of the economy. If we are to effectively resist these cuts, we will have to recognise that ultimately symbolic protests and petitioning representatives to manage capitalism differently isn't going to cut it. The rowdier of the UK Uncut protests have involved high-street linchpins like Topshop being effectively shut down and unable to trade. Such disruption needs to take the form of mass action, and links need to be built with shop workers – the vanguardist paradigm of a few activists on an “action” supergluing themselves to things is no basis for a mass movement, and promisingly many UK Uncut activists recognise this fact.

Another positive aspect of the protests – with qualification - is the fact that the line spun by the government, opposition and media on the ultimate inevitability of the cuts agenda is being rejected. Clearly, the “there is no alternative”, “Britain is bankrupt” line on cuts to public services isn't washing with people, and with good reason – it's hardly a convincing argument when HMRC is haemorrhaging billions in unpaid tax. This rejection is obviously positive. However, this needs to be qualified. Ultimately, if those on the receiving end of these attacks feel the need to balance the state's books on capital's behalf by offering alternate solutions to Britain's deficit there is a problem. Firstly, because we can question the degree to which public debt is a “problem” for capital anyway, as opposed to an integral part of the functioning of states in today's world which is neither inherently “good” or “bad”.1 Secondly, the overall subordination of everyday life and our needs to those of the economy needs to be questioned. Many attacks on tax-avoidance take the desirability of a healthy national economy as a given, with tax-dodging companies being seen as at least in part to blame for capitalism's present difficulties.

Of course, nascent movements are going to be full of contradictions. People don't develop a perfect analysis (if such a thing exists) overnight, and any mass movement against the cuts that may appear is going to be full of all kinds of illusions in social democracy, the labour party, the petitioning of our representatives, the rule of law and order and so on. There remains the possibility of escalation and radicalisation, that participants in such campaigns can move beyond the initial limitations they have. There are a number of positives to such protests which can be built on without tempering constructive criticism.

“Violent protest”

There are criticisms to be made of black bloc-type actions too, but first it is necessary to question some of the common assertions about these kinds of protests, which inform some of the most common criticisms. One obvious point to make is that the policing of protests, even the “fluffiest” of peaceful demonstrations makes any situation implicitly violent. The role of the police is to exercise the state's monopoly on violence; under capitalism this means providing the underpinning of commodity exchange and capital accumulation by guaranteeing property rights and containing any social unrest that could pose a threat to capital. In the context of a demonstration, the police's presence represents ultimately the threat of state violence.

Another obvious point is that property destruction is not violence – violence is the harming of living things, breaking a window is damaging an inanimate object which can be replaced by another. By this reasoning, the overwhelming majority of the black bloc's actions were nonviolent.

However, there are criticisms to be made of this kind of spectacular protest. One is practical – the risks involved as far as prosecution goes compared to the outcomes are significant. Another is that the black bloc strategy can lend itself to a kind of protest tourism and the separation of political action from our daily lives. There are many activists for whom politics is something they do at the weekends, “actions” unrelated to day-to-day organising and agitation in communities and workplaces, the front line of our exploitation by capital. There isn't much evidence that this was the case in London, but nonetheless it is a tendency associated with these kinds of actions that must be borne in mind.

Still, the “disorder” was much more captivating for many of the marches participants than both the official rally and its unofficial rivals, such as that organised by the National Shop Steward's Network, which was a washout. Many demonstrators, admittedly overwhelmingly younger than the majority of the TUC marches participants, were pulled into the unofficial splinter marches and direct action which the black bloc were part of. The author even saw a fair few afternoon drinkers out for a pint before the football getting involved. So much for the elitism of this actions, as was roundly asserted on the internet in the following days.2

Moving forward – dialogue, direct action, and mass action

March 26th was inspiring, both in the numbers who turned out to show their opposition to austerity and the willingness of many to break out of the straightjacket of police-”facilitated” protest. But mass demonstrations like it are not going to beat the cuts.

Ultimately, being right isn't what matters. We can turn out in the hundreds of thousands to make the point that the deficit is a fraction of what it was for decades after the war, that the cuts aren't necessary, that they are opportunistic, that they are laying the bill for the financial crisis at the feet of those who didn't cause it, that the government could raise funds by cracking down on tax evasion, by selling the banks it owns, by returning corporate tax levels to somewhere near what they were for most of the postwar period, etc, etc. We're right, but that isn't what matters.

What matters is the balance of power between capital on the one side and those it exploits on the others – all those who have to work for a living, will have to work for a living (students) or those who must scrape by on the dole. The government feels confident enough that they won't face significant resistance that they're even cutting the pay of the police and prison guards.

So how do we go about building a movement against austerity that can win?

First, by resisting attempts to divide and rule. We have to reject the narrative of “peaceful” protests being hijacked by “extremists”, of property destruction as being inherently “violent”, or of UK Uncut being the legitimate face of direct action as opposed to hooded youths.

Secondly, by taking what is effective from the protests which have emerged so far. Occupying a shop en masse and denying it a day's trading is an effective way of causing economic disruption for those who are not in a position to go on strike or take other workplace action. This logic can be expanded to carrying out economic blockades, which have been used with success in the past 20 years as part of protest movements in South America and France. Direct action is only meaningful when it is mass action which has an economic impact – it is alienating and counterproductive when it becomes the preserve of activists “doing actions” for their own sake.

Thirdly, by not fetishing “non-violence” - either as unthinking reverence for property even when it belongs to a company like Fortnum and Masons, or refusing to defend ourselves in the face of police violence. Peaceful protesters chanted “this is not a riot” and held up their hands as they were brutally kettled and dispersed during the G20 demonstrations in 2009 – it didn't stop them being beaten by the police.

Originally published in Shift magazine.

• 1. http://libcom.org/library/public-debt-makes-state-go-round
• 2. See Andy Newman at Socialist Unity: “The self-indulgent actions of a small minority of protesters yesterday in occupying Fortnum and Masons, and enagaging in vandalism at the Ritz and elsewhere was I believe tactically mistaken, and elitist.”

March 26th – The emergence of a new radical subjectivity?

black bloc.jpg

The explosion of militant activity that escaped the A to B route on March 26th led to the inevitable round of condemnation from both the authorities and the mainstream media, as well as the busy hum of internet debate between those in the direct action/anarchist communities and the wider anti-cuts movement.

For us, these subsequent debates have attempted to return participants of direct action to easily codified ideological positions, and as such, has disguised the transformative and fluid nature of a new antagonistic radical subjectivity.

November 10th – the emergent radical subjectivity

Since setting the agenda with the storming of Millbank on November 10th 2010, the student movement has posited a combatative character for the broader fight back against the governments austerity measures. Students have shown an advanced level of self-organisation and a capacity to respond in the face of increased levels of state repression. The attachment to a more ‘immediate’ means of action has led to a convergence with the proponents of direct action, anarchist and autonomist ideas. This ‘meeting of minds’ has produced a dynamic and antagonistic sphere that exists within the broader anti-cuts movement.

The actions at Millbank were welcomed by many in the anarchist/direct action movements, as a breath of fresh air, ushering in a new cycle of struggle that would overturn the long period of sterility in street based action. While the 10th November was reflective of a growing dissatisfaction with parliamentary politics, it was broader in participation than the pre-existing far-left and anarchist groupings. While anarchists and other militants were present, the day belonged to a new, and as yet unidentified, political subjectivity. This subjectivity has since grown in size, confidence and militancy throughout the student demonstrations, occupations and actions that characterised the winter of 2010.

The first crisis of this new movement came on December 9th, when parliament voted through the rise in tuition fees. Rather than abandon the struggle as a lost cause, a period of ‘regroupment’ around university campuses began. Plans were laid out that intended to extend the terrain of struggle beyond the confines of the university. In London, this was expressed in a wave of squatted occupations, such as the nomadic Really Free School, the Anticuts Space in Bloomsbury and the occupation of the Jobcentre in Deptford. These spaces adopted the organisational form and aesthetics of the university occupations defined as they were by political openness, debate, creativity and horizontal formation.

March 26th - One Day, Two Spheres

The March for the Alternative, organised by the Trade Union Congress ( TUC ) - had a clear aim. The Labour Party and their Trade Union allies did all they could to ensure a clear pro-labour, pro-growth message to the day. As March 26th approached, it became clear that two political spheres were beginning to appear on the public stage – the institutional and the antagonistic. The former defined by the limitations set out by liberal democracy (an A to B route, march, rally, appeals to parliament), the latter by its aspiration to circumvent or transcend these limitations.

Dozens of autonomous feeder marches were organised and were subsequently declared “unofficial” by the TUC. This act of control was the the first demarcation between these loosely defined spheres. Many of these feeder marches were organised through the networks and spaces established out of the previous winter’s struggles. As such these marches were characterised by their autonomous and decentralised political forms, some of which had no or limited consultation with the police on agreed routes.

Politically organised calls, such as the ‘Radical Workers’ and ‘Militant Workers’ Blocs further aided the exposure of participants on the feeder marches to more radical identities and ideas, with a large militant Black bloc of around 600 people forming at ULU. The unwillingness from the TUC – the institutional sphere - to embrace the diversity of messages emerging from within these movements, was significant in enabling radicals and militants free reign to build up strength and influence.

The ‘antagonistic sphere’ of the anti-cuts movement acknowledged the limitations of ‘calling upon parliament’ to effect change. Despite the contradictions that exist inside it (e.g. UK Uncut’s militant lobbying) commonalities are shared that emphasise direct democracy and direct action as a means of affecting change.

UK Uncut’s action has focused on a sustained campaign of targeting tax avoidance by corporations. They employ peaceful civil disobedience, theatre and occupation as the form their actions take. The viral dynamic, reproducing replica demonstrations throughout the country, is testament to the accessibility of this form of action. Actions that are both open and participatory, not reliant on someone’s physical ability to confront the police or damage property. Their actions carry with them the possibility of ‘another’ world - transforming banks into nurseries etc - and as such are an interesting model for symbolic protest that both disrupts the flow of capital and posits the possibility of another post-capitalist relationship to space. As such the form their action takes has an ability to generalise but is contained inside a restrictive content that does not seek to posit a systemic critique. While proponents of UK Uncut come from a broad cross section of society, its numbers have been blustered by students radicalised in the fees struggle. As such many of their actions have cross-pollinated, carrying both anti-tax and fee messaging.

There is also another aspect of this broad antagonism, one characterised by property destruction, combative attitudes towards the police and the ability to circumvent police “kettling” techniques. All these experiences, as well as the legalistic and anti-surveillance lessons were learnt in the recent cycle of struggle and as such created the basis for the popularity of the Black bloc for March 26th.

We suggest that UK Uncut and the Black bloc, rather than being projections of separate ideological concerns, are reactions to existing modes of resistance and democracy. Therefore an unofficial union has occurred, a united front of antagonism to the current order of things and for the time being have empathy for each other. UK Uncut’s message is too limiting to express exactly what is necessary to say about the cuts, the crisis and capitalism. The Black bloc freely articulates itself through a symbolic immediacy, but is unable to build the conditions for a wider participation. UK Uncut as well as the Black bloc need each other, and the refusal to denounce one another is reflective of this. As our conceptualization of this sphere suggests, it’s a space that is in constant development, one that seeks to escape fixed identities.

Identity and Boundary maintenance

‘Militancy’ is often conflated with an anarchist identity, bolstered by a lazy media, who at the first opportunity will define any form of action that steps outside of legalism as being derived from an anarchist politics.

Political identity informed by ideology has a tendency to calcify thought. Ideologies contain preformed sets of ideas and interpretive tools that attempt to assimilate and codify possible interactions in line with its own principles.

While the hundreds of red & black flags that many took up on the Black bloc, were useful in reaffirming and uniting the bloc on the day it easily codified the bloc as a purely ‘Anarchist’ expression. In reality the bloc’s ‘politics’ was more than that of its symbolism. Many on the bloc removed their dark clothing, replacing it with normal clothes so as to join UK Uncut outside of Fortnum & Mason’s. We assert that this was more than a means to disappear into a crowd, but representative of the new radical subjectivity, that possesses the ability to shift from one form to another inside this antagonistic sphere.

Placing the ‘militant action’ into a more defined and political constrictive ideology has enabled the media and police to manage the actions of this “violent minority” as separate from legitimate participants (contained inside the institutional sphere) – this narrative exists as the default position of the establishment.

This equation of the Black block with anarchism has been repeated in the analysis of various left commentators and political blogs. Many of these have denounced the Black bloc actions as belonging to an anarchist vanguardist minority. This is ironic given that many of these political commentators supported similar militant actions at Millbank, seeing those as an articulation of a generalised radicalism. Therefore the aesthetics of the Black block (tied to an anarchist/militant identity) have contained how far the actions have resonated.

It could also be argued that the Black bloc on March 26th was an expression of anarchists’ new found confidence to act in conjunction with others, as well as a means by which people radicalised in the recent wave of struggle could enact a militant symbolic engagement.

Some in UK Uncut have been quick to distance themselves from the property damage undertaken by the Black bloc and posit themselves solely as proponents of peaceful, civil disobedience. This has been undertaken for a variety of reasons – as a defence, to enable such actions to continue without huge levels of policing; and to keep UK Uncut’s core message of tax justice separate from other ideological expressions.

Those in the Black bloc who have spoken to the media, have also extended the hand of solidarity to UK Uncut (see Brighton Solidarity Federation’s Open Letter), again promoting the ‘diversity of tactics’ narrative but ideologically positioning themselves outside of what they see as UK Uncut’s limited analysis.

This ideological ‘boundary maintenance’ is an attempt to ‘own’ activity on the day, to clearly delineate and equate action (form) with politics (content). This disguises the fluid nature of the new subjectivity, positing instead pre-formed identities and limitations.

Conclusion

We state that both participants of UK Uncut and Black bloc exist within a commonality, defined by a shared history and a mutual attraction. That this commonality is the basis of a new antagonistic sphere, wider than these two visible elements, that have characterised and shaped an attraction beyond the dominant institutional space which is fast loosing ground to it.

This was illustrated on March 26th when huge crowds stayed to support the Fortnum and Mason’s occupation, the crowd swelling into the thousands, who were then involved in cat and mouse games with the police, resisting baton charges and police dispersal. As yet the political content of this subjectivity is still developing but posits a radicality in its forms, if not currently in its content.

The new subjectivity is categorised by a tendency towards consensual decision making, a rejection of hierarchy, open political debate, participation and a fluidity in how it articulates itself. Our initial investigation leads us to pose more questions than we have answers. These include - but are not limited too: What are the political demands or aspirations that exist within the fuzzy boundaries of this ‘antagonistic sphere’? In what sense are these demands radical? How will this sphere interact with or expand into other forms of struggle?

Taking inspiration from the new movements we believe that inside the context of symbolic engagements, we need to re-conceptualise the meanings of actions that capture the public imagination, inspire confidence and participation whilst fostering collective power. We need wherever possible to escape the straitjacket of the rigidity that ideology can impose on these tactics, that ultimately leads to their over-coding/association with fixed and easily manageable identities.

On the evening of March 26th , Business Secretary Vince Cable, in a pre-written press release, reinforced the coalition government’s message that the demonstration will not change the course of the governments austerity measures, a definitive response to the institutional sphere. It seems that the institutional sphere is fast running out of space to move and accommodate the demands from the antagonistic sphere for more radical action.

The next challenge we see is how this ‘antagonistic sphere’ mutates to embrace any new wave of industrial disputes also faced with cuts and whether or not it can resonate within these struggles. This will be the true test of it and may begin to ‘flesh out’ its political content. When previously contained symbolic actions spill over onto the terrain where capital requires a discipline and dominance for it is stability, things will really start to get interesting.

Originally published in Shift magazine

Popular education as a doomed project? - Inga Scathach

There’s the rumbling of a groundswell. You can hear it murmuring if you eavesdrop at activist-type gatherings. Unless you listen really closely, you may be mistaken in thinking it to be another utopian proposal, flung haplessly into the ring of consensus decision-making. But this is not a recent radical fad to be horizontally-organised beyond all recognition: popular education has been practised in Latin America for the past 70 years. Developed as a way of working with politically marginalised communities to identify the sites of their disenfranchisement and act towards addressing it, the region’s political ignition has seen its popularity grow. From its emergence in Brazil, the technique has gone global in the past 30 years, with particularly strong uptake in countries (at the risk of falling into lazy categorisations) in the global south. What distinguishes popular education from other forms of education? And why is it increasing in popularity?

Largely credited to the fieldwork and writing of Paulo Freire, popular education is based on the recognition that conventional forms of education replicate the oppressor-oppressed relationship. This Hegelian understanding addresses the authoritarian approach favoured by formal education as a dialectical relationship. By drawing on Hegel, it also echoes Marx’s bourgeoisie-proletariat dichotomy, and allows us to understand education in the context of the social relations that exist to reinforce capitalist and colonialist functions. By recognising the function of traditional forms of education as hegemonic, popular education supposes to offer a radical alternative that emancipates participants rather than perpetuating their subjugation. So, how does it work in practice? It is first important to note that even within a form of education that eschews the prescription of a curriculum, popular education theory has an aim: to address political marginalisation and confront hegemony as an emancipatory process.

The main aim of popular education is understood as conscientisation (a somewhat clumsy translation from Freire’s native Portuguese - conscientização) for action. Both components are key here, as “to surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognise its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation.” Conscientisation is a process of increasing critical consciousness of our present condition and the situation of self within existing power dynamics, and feeling compelled to respond to this by taking action. Popular educators reject any notion that people can become politically conscious without also wanting to act on their understanding, or that genuinely political action can take place without analysis. Consciousness and the will to act are acquired simultaneously and are facets of the same process. In order to build a political awareness, learners and educators need to participate in a mutual process of unpacking each others’ ontological assumptions. Henry Giroux acknowledges the imperative of dialogue and discussion in this exploration of ideas by referring to developing a “language of critique” and “language of possibility”.

The role of pedagogical philosophy as a method of confronting hegemony was explored in depth by Gramsci, while Augusto Boal explored variations on the dialectic form in his Theatre of the Oppressed. More recently, bell hooks has applied a feminist, anti-racist approach to university education and come to very similar conclusions on aims and methodology. It is hooks’ work that helps us address the question of popular education’s ever-increasing exposure, and why it might be gaining attention in radical circles. Speaking in a US context, she suggests that “without ongoing movements for social justice in our nation, progressive education becomes all the more important since it may be the only location where individuals can experience support for acquiring a critical consciousness, for any commitment to end domination.”

Reluctantly drawing tenuous connections between recent political developments in the UK and an ongoing global emancipatory project, there appears to be a correlation between growing interest in forms of education and rapidly diminishing economic and political agency: the simultaneous decimation by the British right of what little democracy remained in Higher Education has coincided with the launch of the government’s meritocratic Free School programme; meanwhile, there has been a surge in alternative education projects such as the Really Open University, Really Free School, Ragged Universities and Open Schools, while large numbers of school, college and university students of all ages are becoming radicalised into direct action and property destruction. Having been the preserve of education theorists and a clutch of radical educators, the buzz around popular education is getting steadily louder in our changing political climate. But is it a helpful tool, a cumbersome methodology or a lethal weapon? Does it work?

It’s not just radicals and progressive educators on the left that are falling over themselves to comment on this project. The inclusion of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed on the reading lists of most US teaching programmes (and many UK ones) has triggered a backlash from the hard right. Sol Stern asks “How did this derivative, unscholarly book about oppression, class struggle, the depredations of capitalism, and the need for revolution ever get confused with a treatise on education that might help solve the problems of twenty-first-century American inner-city schools?” Stern’s question is a sobering reminder of the vulnerabilities of our approach, and of too hastily extrapolating meaning from a few snatched phrases of conversation or comments on Indymedia. The word on the street might be that popular education is where things are at right now but adopting popular education methodology is not necessarily indicative of political perspective. That its key theories are being explored within the American educational establishment should be enough to temper any blind acceptance or over-zealous enthusiasm.

If we come good on our intentions to be honest with ourselves, popular education is discussed frequently in radical circles but rarely translates into practice. One theory is that conscientisation is crippled by process. Through facilitated and mediated workshops, rather than open and dynamic storytelling, exchanges of experience become neutered. Without the shared learning and emotional outpouring of lived experience, individual perspectives prevail, and the process fails to find the flash-point of community solidarity, indignation and a call to action. Non-radical educators put popular education techniques into practice regularly. It’s easy to use participatory methods and use words like “empowering” and “inspiring”. However, the explicit aim of popular education is to inspire action, which raises questions about the integrity of many so-called popular education projects. So, how can we ensure that popular education doesn’t become just a toolkit for facilitating yet more meetings?

It would be naïve to believe that the oppressor-oppressed relationship is simply a relational dichotomy between individuals. The true oppressor-oppressed dichotomy is internalised - with the oppressed replicating the behaviour of the oppressors, with which they have become acculturated, and vice-versa - and can only be addressed through honest self-reflection and evaluation, or praxis. The nature of this internalised dialectical relationship means even the most committed pedagogue is still engaged in a process of self-emancipation. In part because of this impossibility of fully transcending the self, popular education is not inherently anti-oppressive. In fact, at times it can replicate the very same social relations it attempts to expose. From a feminist analysis, the emphasis on sharing lived experience through storytelling has been used to feminise political projects and legal battles. In a group dynamic, it also allows the loudest voices to dominate, and these usually reflect the relational privileges in the group. The abiding struggle of educators is to facilitate without leading. In trying to create space for horizontal learning, popular education practitioners risk exposing themselves and learners to the tyranny of structurelessness (ed.: for more, see Jo Freeman’s seminal 1970s text The Tyranny of Structurelessness) - whereby hierarchies become established via the attempted negation of their very existence.

The rhetoric of popular education, with the specialised terms and concepts discussed in this article, raises questions of who has access to what information and who then controls the content of discussions and flows of dialogue. Both Arlene Goldbard and Joao Bosco Pinto have criticised the all-too-frequent attempts of self-styled activists to embark on ‘awareness raising’ crusades, involving the dissemination of pre-selected knowledge misleadingly branded as popular education. Although increasing numbers of practitioners are adopting popular education techniques in various settings, there is no possibility of an emancipatory encounter without confronting our own motives, and abandoning the mythology of consensus.

Theory aside, the practice of popular education is a sticky affair. With an arsenal of techniques that includes theatre, storytelling and art, popular education carries the risk of being adopted by liberal arts organisations or the kind of social movements that promote self-improvement over confrontational political action. As with any radical project, there exists the tendency to fascinate and attract lifestyle activists, and while this seems somewhat contradictory to its raison d’être, popular education is proving no exception. In spite of aiming itself squarely at politically marginalised communities, it is frequently co-opted as a tool for the left to wave around while only really putting it to any use within existing networks.

Part of the enthusiasm for ‘doing’ popular education stems from a global south fetishisation that has been increasingly widespread in Europe since the heyday of the alter-globalisation movement. The proliferation of the technique through peasant movements in India and Argentina triggers ‘outreach’ obsessives into a heroic fantasy of liberating the working class; while its long-standing connections to Latin American struggles also lend popular education a certain cachet to revolutionary communists. Popular educators need to move beyond an understanding of political marginalisation as poverty and small-holdings, and furthermore beyond popular education as the only means of developing critical consciousness. Framing the pedagogue as a missionary-liberator who radicalises the marginalised through supposedly emancipatory techniques is missing the point: “I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.”

Popular education is not imperative for conscientisation, merely an approach to developing it. The international student protests that have been taking place over the past six months demonstrate that students are developing a critical political consciousness and, crucially, innovating and hybridising modes of action in direct response to understanding the conditions of our existence. Our marginalisation is not over land rights or indigenous practice, but it is still over our political agency. We are educated with the linguistic and creative skills to articulate our desires, but we cannot yet transcend the dialectical relationships that govern our lives. It is the political climate, not an educational paradigm, underpinning the conscientisation of today’s students.

In response to hooks’ comment, is there still a place for popular education when social movements emerge? Perhaps a useful way to see popular education is as a method of agitating for conscientisation where the conditions for this don’t already exist. This means recognising the goal of popular education as planned obsolescence. As an approach confounded with contradictions, perhaps it only reaches the point of resolution when its continued existence is no longer required. Are we radical enough to face the facts?

Inga works with popular education and anti-oppression practitioners across the UK on projects aiming to support local struggles and community self-defense. http://www.sowestand.com

Remember, remember: Climate Camp

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Since the first ‘climate campers’ descended on Drax coal fired power station back in 2006, SHIFT has maintained a critical dialogue with the camp. This dialogue has at times been a process of development for both projects, at others a running battle. In February, the attendees at the Climate Camp ‘Space for Change’ gathering made the decision to enter into a metamorphosis; leaving behind the traditional ‘one camp a year’ model to allow for more flexible and effective forms of action. This short article will take a retrospective look at the role of the Climate Camp, as an embodiment of a radical environmental politics, as well as a structure for organising towards social change. Looking back over the (many) internal and external critiques that have been thrown it’s way, we are left asking: considering the unquestionably important contribution the Climate Camp has made in shaping environmental and anti-capitalist action and discourse in the UK, what lessons can we learn?

The original principles of the camp were as follows:

1. Climate change is already happening and its effects will be catastrophic if we don’t act now.
2. New technology and market-based solutions are not enough to address the problem - tackling climate change will require radical social change.
3. There is a need to work together in our communities to come up with solutions. We cannot rely on business and government to bring about the radical changes that are needed.

No sooner had the camp put up its first marquee, done its first action and had its first media presence, the interventions into the seemingly less radical principles started crashing in. As an article in Last Hours magazine, printed after the first camp, concluded, “It seemed like a lot of people at the camp seemed to be placing faith in our movement – or this one week of climate camp – being able to stop climate change. We really need to be more realistic (which doesn’t mean being more compromising it means being more demanding)”. Following this there was an attempt by the ‘Westside’ neighbourhood to get the camp to adopt the PGA hallmarks “as a way of reaffirming the radical basis of the Climate Camp”. Whilst there has undoubtedly been a strong critical current arguing that the camp, in many ways, has failed to live up to these principles, here at SHIFT we maintain that this critique was always intended to move us forward, to challenge ourselves in the present and to learn from the past. In 2009, together with Dysophia, we produced the reader ‘Criticism without Critique’, a collection of many of these dissenting voices. What were the major criticisms?

Carbon fetishism.

This is particularly pertinent when we consider the current Japan nuclear disaster and George Monbiot (our celebrity climate camper) coming out in favour of nuclear on the basis that (reflecting on Fukushima) nuclear is objectively less harmful, to people and the planet, than coal. Leaving any social or political factors out of his analysis, in the same way that the focus on the airport industry, or indeed any other ‘top contributor to C02 emissions’ does, is a reductionist presentation of the complex and inherently everyday social relationships of human and natural resource exploitation, private property, commodity exchange and profit that underlay global environmental and social injustice. Similarly the COP-15 summit was described as ‘post-political’ in its failure to engage with environmental issues beyond the level of carbon emissions.

Ethical Lifestylism:

“The decision to go to Heathrow was wrong”, (Shift editorial, issue 1). Whilst this was also a criticism of the focus on carbon and the demonization of the aviation industry as a distraction from the ‘root causes’ of climate change, we also felt that “the emerging social movement against climate change is as radical as an ethical lifestyle guide”. We were wrong. The camp evolved radically; the first camp booklet promoted a list of lifestyle choices that was to become unthinkable in later years. However, we still argue that the focus on individual lifestyle change as a means for promoting or agitating towards large scale political change is a prominent feature of the anti-capitalist left and is at best naïve and at worst conservative. Hence we would contest this reflection on the camps decision to come to an end: “This tendency (to criticise lifestyle change) was seen in Climate Camp with some people saying action should never impede the actions of individuals and that ‘government and corporations’ should be the sole targets. The anti-cuts campaigns are much more comfortable from this position (as long as we ignore the contradiction of anarchists complaining about a reduction of state intervention in our lives)”. The focus on lifestylism isn’t problematic because it’s a drain on our energy, it is a much bigger head fuck to work with a total systemic critique, and the anti-cuts struggle, I would agree, offers the perfect platform to challenge the capitalist political system in its entirety.

The state/austerity:

(Shift editorial, issue 7).

At the Blackheath climate camp we held a workshop titled ‘Green Authoritarianism’ where we aimed to challenge state led solutions to the climate change problem. We were shocked by the response. Again, pertinent to the anti-cuts movement that is currently in its infancy, the tendency to defend certain features of the state that we saw as immediately beneficial (such as taxes, in the case of Blackheath) is a sticking point.

(Shift editorial, issue 7).

Indeed there are many lessons that the anti-cuts struggle can learn, both politically and organisationally, from the Camp for Climate Action and its decision to drop an organisational structure that was beginning to limit its potential. As many have said this is a brave move, and one that should be celebrated and embraced as we negotiate the role of the anti-capitalist left in the fight against the cuts.

(‘Metamorphosis’ Statement made by the Climate Camp after the ‘Space for Change’ gathering).

But how do we go about this? Many have already started to ask this question and highlight potential difficulties,

(’The Movement is Changing, Long Live the Movement’, Res0nance.)

Many attribute the camps move away from a more up front anti-capitalist position to the desire to ‘build the movement’ and make environmentalism ‘more accessible’ to the general public. In many ways the Camp for Climate Action has eventually ceased to exist (in its previous guise) as it no longer resonates with the ‘hardcore of anarchists’ whose creativity and passion gave birth to it, or with the ‘ordinary people’ with whom they so desperately tried to appeal to (via ‘fluffy’ methods of protest, corporate style publicity and a savvy media strategy). As I consider this dilemma I think of the current arguments we are having about the role of anti-capitalists, particularly in their manifestation as ‘black bloc’’ at the TUC march on March 26th. Anti-capitalist politics do not translate easily into ‘action’ but they do make sense and we do not need to water down the messaging to appeal to ‘ordinary people’. The media is not a tool for us to use and a reduction of anti-capitalist politics to direct action or over simplistic lifestyle politics loses us friends both inside and outside of the anti-capitalist movement. Instead of trying to ‘win people over’ by rose tinting our anger and rage we should speak honestly about the frustration that we all feel and recognise it in the less valorised forms of action that people take everyday, we should explain our choice of tactics, whilst being open to listen to other ways of creating change.

The climate camp was continuously responsive to criticism from all angles, accused of rejecting a more radical anti-capitalist position they responded with workshops, targets and banners that attempted to address the links between capitalism and climate change. The camp has set the path for many new people towards anti-capitalist politics and has proved itself to be an example of an open-minded and flexible experimentation towards radical social change. Asking we walk!

We consider ourselves to be climate campers, we were there from Drax to Edinburgh, heckling in the corner and washing up in the kitchen, getting shouted at in workshops and putting up the very marquees that housed them. The experiences that the Camp for Climate Action gave us are invaluable and we wouldn’t be having these conversations without the energy and creativity that many, many people, have put into these experiments. For this we thank you! See you on the streets!

To ‘the movement’: on work and unions in an age of austerity - Tom Denning

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We begin with who we are

Movements tend to reproduce their own social base and subjectivity according to the tactical repertoire which constitutes them. The things they do determine who takes part, and who takes part determines what they do. Thus, a movement based around students, unemployed people, NGO workers, and those with jobs that allow them a high degree of personal flexibility, tends to reproduce itself based on a set array of actions: camping, occupying or blockading commercial property, street-theatre, banner drops, etc. – with an apparent diversity, but all a characteristic response to the lack of a mass social base rooted in contexts of everyday experience in which non-activists can be mobilised for . . . action.

The ecological anti-capitalist movement has largely been constituted outside, and to an extent, against, work. It has not therefore, often, found itself with plurality of militants at a single workplace, or in a given industry, who need to, or who could, struggle within that context. Where the movement has had such a plurality; there is quite probably little or no collective awareness of that fact, and there has been little or no effort to bring them together, or support them. Their social position has not been seen as a potential tactical lever by the movement as a whole, and perhaps not even by the workers themselves.

Therefore, the movement tends to relate to workers’ struggle, and therefore to unions, as something outside itself. When activists need to get normal jobs in large workplaces – and they show enormous creativity in not doing so – they often leave the movement; particularly if they also need to put time into a family. So – as in the case of debates over open cast mining, or coal-fired power stations, unions appear as an external ally or adversary: not something we’re part of.

Just as there is, in general, no useful revolutionary theory not based on revolutionary practice, there is no useful critique of trade unionism which does not rely on, or imply, a practical project to supercede unions in practice. That is: cheering or denouncing unions, whether from inside or outside, is wholly sterile. Even a nuanced critique, which understands the countervailing dynamics of the union form (how they express class struggle; how they hold it back) is somewhat sterile, unless it is linked to practice. Such a nuanced critique is nonetheless necessary.

The unions: what they are

Unions, in Britain today, seek to bargain with employers over workers’ terms and conditions and are based on a mass worker-membership. They are stable institutions, persisting through occasional disputes, and rather longer periods which see little conflict at all. From these facts, a number of dynamics follow.

Firstly, unions appear as an expression of workers’ self-organisation, and reflect, to an extent, workers’ opinions and perceptions. However, they are also better adapted to compromise – which is what they spend most of their time doing – than they are to struggle. As permanent institutions based on a fairly passive membership, they acquire a permanent administrative staff and a leadership to run them – what is often called ‘the bureaucracy’. In the absence of permanent industrial warfare or revolution, they need to be able to compromise with the employer. And therefore they also need to compromise with the state, which seeks to regulate industrial relations through a legal framework which appears to offer a proper procedure for industrial action, but without making it too easy. Thus, over time, unions develop an institutional interest in capitalism, and a symbiotic relationship with the state. In the UK, this relationship is expressed partly, but not wholly, through the unions’ support for the Labour Party.

However, this process is not something entirely apart from workers. The mass of workers themselves accept capitalism and the state, and it is their lack of willingness to engage in relentless anti-capitalist struggle which provides the basis on which unions are founded. So, all is well between workers and unions? Not at all. Typically, the leadership of the union has a greater interest in compromise than the base; a fact which is often exposed when workers decide to struggle. They probably weren’t all that interested in the union when it wasn’t organising struggle, but when they do engage, are confronted with an organisation which has become more suited – in terms of its form and leading personnel – to compromise than the sort of action they want, or need, to win. Just as workers seek to organise through their union, they also discover a conflict with the official leaders, structures, and rule-book.

These dynamics also affect the nature of trade union demands. Not only are the demands not revolutionary, they very rarely move beyond wages and redundancies, to question the content and nature of work, and the place of the worker within society as a whole.

Unions are therefore best understood as the expressions of two countervailing dynamics.

On the one hand, unions are a basic form of workers’ self organisation against the day to day predations of capital; they express – albeit in a very staid manner – the class struggle. On the other, unions are institutions which seek to control and limit that very self-organisation, limit the militancy of its members in pursuit of that aim, and limit the scope of demands they raise. These tendencies are both so strong, and so integral, to unions that it is rare that one entirely wins out. The extent to which one prevails over the other differs from time to time, and place to place, depending on the circumstances.

Ideas about trade unions

Most Trotskyists identify the struggle over work precisely with the trade union struggle; and attributes the failings of unions in large part to a ‘crisis of leadership’, which can be solved by themselves being in charge. They are probably also officially in favour of democratising the unions, and will generally support unofficial action. Trotskyists generally accept that unions are ‘not revolutionary’ (the remnants of a critique of trade unions which was common in early 20th Century Marxism), but rarely have a general structural analysis, such as the above. They do not, typically, prominently raise the possibility of struggle beyond the unions.

The orthodox ‘ultra-left’ position adopts the opposing view. Rather than seeing unions as institutions ripe to be captured and redirected by revolutionaries (and implicitly free of a structural relation to capital and the state), they see unions solely in their aspect of a limit to the class struggle. This, at its worst, results in a total disengagement from trade unions, and a tendency to denounce every defeat of the working class as evidence of ‘union sabotage’. There is little acknowledgement that workers organise class struggle through unions, still less that workers often choose to end disputes themselves. Blaming ‘the union’ posits a bogeyman, wholly external to the workers’ movement – and prevents serious engagement with the subjective and material sources of workers’ interest in compromise with capital. It also lets us off the hook: given that we have failed to build support for our ideas – direct action, participatory democracy, anti-capitalism – don’t we have cause to take a hard look at ourselves?

A third position, which is often held implicitly but very rarely expressed, is that of critical routineism. Many libertarian activists who are formally critical of both perspectives are involved in their union because they want to do what they can to oppose day to day injustice. They don’t necessarily want to take over the union, and are aware of the limits of trade unions, but neither do they have a clear idea of how to go beyond it. Often, the union will take up alot of their energy, not leaving much time for extra-union-routine politics. Whilst individually critical of unions, their day to day activity doesn’t move beyond trade unionism.

Critique beyond theory: the need for an independent practice

Earlier in this article, I argued that the lack of an independent libertarian revolutionary practice in relation to work was not only a product of our movement’s sociological isolation, but a cause of it. We’ve seen that unions are the crucible of countervailing dynamics, which express class struggle, just as they stifle it. We’ve seen that trying to take over trade unions is likely, in the end, to be as futile as denouncing them from the sidelines; and as unlikely to develop an anti-capitalist dynamic as individualised routine. What does that leave? Loren Goldner calls it ‘extra-unionism’: “be in the union, be outside the union, but your perspective is beyond the union”. But how?

There are no easy answers. But it’s possible to suggest a few different approaches.

Industrial networks. At present, our movement makes no serious attempt to ensure that militants working in the same job or sector get together to organise collective work. A first step would be to make it part of our regular practice that health workers and education workers, for instance, meet in fora such as the Anarchist Bookfair. Discussing perspectives for organising solidarity and agitation could form part of this.

Solidarity unionism. In the US, the IWW has developed a workplace organiser training which has been taken up and adapted by the Solidarity Federation here in the UK. The purpose is to train workers how to build collective confidence and power on the job, without relying on official structures or mediation. In the US, the Starbucks and Jimmy Johns workers’ unions have been two important consequences of this approach. We need to stop thinking of ‘direct action training’ as based on a discrete series of skills, such as lock-on and tripods, but instead about we involve non-politicos in direct action. Contact SolFed if you’re interested.

Base groups and bulletins. In the 1970s, libertarian socialists in Big Flame and the early International Socialists adopted an effective organising model. It was particularly well suited to large factories, but there may be a way to apply it today. Militants based inside and outside the workplace would work together to produce a regular workers’ bulletin, designed to reflect the experience of work and struggle, and help workers communicate with each other. Rather than laying down ‘the line’, at their best they’d show the radical implications of being honest about our working lives, and provide a way to organise politically at work, without relying on the union. The support of outsiders was often necessary due to the pressure of work, family-life, and union activity.

Workers and service users: in and against the state. Cuts are attacks on service users and workers. In the late ‘70s, another period of public sector cuts, workers and service users found ways to organise to support each other, in a way that cut against the capitalist logic of the state sector which divides the working class against itself. These attempts are documented in chapter 6 of the book In and Against the State.

We live in an economic and political reality very different from the high points of class struggle, characterised by mass expressions of workers’ autonomy. But, once again, workers are in the front line. Where will we be? To find a way to answer this in practice will require ingenuity and experimentation. But unless we learn to speak with our own voice, we will never be heard. And if we are never heard, we might as well be mute.

Some of Tom Denning’s previous articles discussing the movement against cuts can be found on the Red Pepper and New Left Project websites, as well as for the May Day International project

Originally published in Shift Magazine

Editorial - Looting, arson and organisation

As a magazine we have always tried to published commentary on current affairs in movement politics, as well as allowing for undogmatic, critical reflection and debate. Recently this has been particularly challenging; a pattern has emerged for the Shift team over the last year. It goes like this. Develop a concept for the next issue, begin commissioning articles, band around a few ideas for an editorial, and then… seemingly from nowhere, an uprising. Suddenly, the students are smashing up the Tory HQ, Mark Duggan is shot dead by police and riots are spreading across the country and we find ourselves, our ideas, hopelessly irrelevant. Stop press. Change tact.

The riots, and the responses they have elicited (which are depressing both in their mundane predictability and their dystopian surreality), are dominating discussions by left-wing activists up and down the country. Accordingly we chose to adapt the theme of this issue to account for the complexity of feelings, analysis, solidarities and conflicts these riots have inspired. We’re not going to re-hash these conversations here; what the events of the last few months have shown us, is that it’s not about us any more. It never was. But the idea that ‘we’ (activists/anarchists/lefties) occupy some privileged vantage point from which we can put the world to rights, with our tried and tested methods and arguments, is more absurd, more irrelevant now, than it ever was. Judy, one of our three new columnists who will be sharing their thoughts on everything from the riots to the persistence of conspiracy theories in the radical left, contends “we need to get over the idea that we already know how to do social change”. The idea that we need to give up our identities as activists, our insular anarchist culture and our direct action tactics resonates through all of our contributing articles.

Elsewhere in this issue, Emma Dowling and Begum Özden Firat, in their reflections on the heyday of the anti-globalisation movement, stress the importance of everyday struggle, away from the spectacle of summits, camps and gatherings. It is through this ‘everyday struggle’ that we recover the agency of our own communities, on a local and global scale. Rather than making demands of the state, of capital, these struggles “act for themselves without the worry of representation and communication of their views and ideals”. It is our task now, as John Holloway argues in his interview with Shift, to see the connection between the global struggles against financial institutions and the more localised battles on the streets against police violence or the draw and exclusion of consumer society, “the lines of continuity, the lines of potential, the trails of gunpowder”.

The anti-globalisation movement has been described as being unified by ‘one no, many yeses’. Can this characterisation, which accounted for the diversity of actors and demands that were present, be applied to the current struggles emerging in the UK, and beyond, in the past year? The student protests, the Arab Spring, the European square occupations of the Real Democracy movement, the UK riots? The gut response of many seems to have been to dismiss the riots as ‘not political’, in that they represent consumerism, thuggishness and un-channelled rage. Drawing on the anti-globalisation movement as a framework from which to explore the current uprisings, Emma Dowling and Begum Özden Firat argue that there was a tendency when reflecting on the summit-hopping movement to overstate the coherence of the participants and that, for the most part, it is only at the level of everyday struggle that we can overcome the divisions and identities that capital enforces on us and that the state uses to pit us against each other. When we consider the overwhelmingly classist response to the ‘looting’ and the draconian prison sentences they received, it is important to ask, how is it that we feel more solidarity with institutions that exist to control and exploit us, than with our neighbours, peers and friends?

So where does this leave us? It is obvious that not everyone is a comrade, and that the barriers that prevent us from organising and acting together can run deep, stemming from racisms, sexism, nationalisms, etc. Indeed the nationalist elements in the Real Democracy movement and the racism in the UK riots speak to this, but maybe the task is to engage with these struggles rather than to revert into the safety and insignificance of anarchist/activist theorising/direct action/lifestylism. After the riots many on the Left asked, “where were we?”, but maybe the problem isn’t that ‘we’ weren’t there, but the ‘we’ itself.

An interview with John Holloway

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You write in the tradition of autonomist Marxist thought, locating the anti-capitalist struggle at the level of every day life. How were these ideas developed? Starting with a brief outline of the state derivation debate, what was this a reaction against? For anyone who is unfamiliar with your writing, can you explain how these ideas were developed through your work with ‘Common Sense’ and later ‘Change the World Without Taking Power’ and ‘Crack Capitalism’?

Yes, I think that we have to start from the everyday nature of anti-capitalist struggle, to see that resistance to capitalism is an integral part of living in capitalist society. If we can’t do that, then the struggle against capitalism becomes inevitably elitist, and self-defeating. This statement may seem a long way from the state derivation debate of the 1970s, but I don’t think it is. The state derivation debate, which arose in West Germany at the end of the 1960s and which Sol Picciotto and I introduced to English-speaking discussion in our book ‘State and Capital’ (1978), argued that the best way of understanding the capitalist nature of the state is to see it as a particular form of the capital relation, the relation between capital and labour. In other words, in the same way as Marx derived the different forms of capitalist social relations (money, capital, interest and so on) from the more fundamental forms (ultimately, I would now say, from the dual character of labour in capitalist society), so it was necessary to complement that process by deriving the existence of the state as a particular form of social relations from the more fundamental forms of capitalist social relations.

The important thing is that this locates the capitalist nature of the state not in what the state does (its functions) but in its very existence as a social form distinct from other social forms. It is its particularisation that constitutes the state as capitalist. This is obvious in a way: it is the very fact that the state (by its very existence) takes the communal away from us and hands it to paid functionaries that makes the state oppressive and alien, irrespective of what it actually does. From this it follows, I think, that it makes no sense at all to think of changing society through the state. This seems an obvious conclusion, but at the time nobody actually said it, as far as I remember, and some people who had followed the debate then seemed surprised when I made the point explicitly in ‘Change the World’.

For me the important step on from the state derivation debate was to argue that form has to be understood as form-process, as a process of forming social relations, a process of channelling them into patterns compatible with the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Thus the state is a constant process of statification, money is a process of monetisation, abstract labour is a process of abstraction of human activity, and so on. All these categories are conceptualisations of an active struggle that is taking place all the time, an active struggle that permeates the lives of all of us. Thus, to say that the state is a form of capitalist social relations, and to understand form as a process of forming, leads directly to seeing everyday life as an active struggle between this process of forming and a resistance that says “no, we refuse, we will go in a different direction, do things in a different way”. Everyday life, then, is a constant moving in-against-and-beyond capital. (The article which makes the basic step in the argument from form to form-process was a paper called “The State and Everyday Struggle”, which I wrote in 1979 but which wasn’t published in English until 1991, when it was included in Simon Clarke’s book on the ‘State Debate’.)

There were of course other steps along the way, especially the London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group’s ‘In and Against the State’, where working with Jeannette Mitchell, Cynthia Cockburn and others really pushed me into a different way of thinking about writing, and then the experience of the Edinburgh journal ‘Common Sense’ (with Richard Gunn and Werner Bonefeld as driving force) and the later books on ‘Open Marxism’ (published by Pluto in 1992 and 1995).

I moved to Mexico in 1991 and then came the Zapatista uprising of 1 January 1994, with their call to make the world anew without taking power, and this created such a stimulating new context for thinking and talking about these ideas, constantly animated by discussion with friends, colleagues and students here. From this flowed ‘Change the World Without Taking Power’ and all the discussion that that stirred up, which brought me into touch with lots and lots of exciting groups all over the place. And the constant question of “what do we do? What do we do when the world around us is falling apart?” – which led to ‘Crack Capitalism’.

Elsewhere in this issue we are taking a critical look at the organizational forms of the anti-globalisation movement and asking, as we enter this new round of struggle, what lessons can be learnt? Keeping with this comparative perspective, how in your view can analysis of the state of global relations of capital (crisis) and class contribute to our understanding of how current struggles differ from those of the anti-globalisation movement? Are there practical, organizational implications? What, in the arguments made in your previous work, must be kept and are there areas of the analysis that require further development in response to current/changing conditions?

I see the Days of Rage proclaimed by the various Arab movements from the start of the year as announcing a new phase of struggle/life in-against-and-beyond capital – heralded by the Zapatistas’ Festival of Righteous Rage (Digna Rabia – I tend to translate it as Righteous Rage under the influence of Linton Kwesi Johnson) a couple of years ago. The reproduction of capital in the present crisis can be achieved only through a vicious and probably prolonged attack on the way in which we live, work, play and relate to one another. Capital can survive only by transforming human life on earth, probably with the medium-term consequence that it makes that life (and its own existence) impossible. The great capitalist attack (what the Zapatistas call the Fourth World War, or what is often referred to as neo-liberalism, but it is important to see that it flows from the logic of capital, not from the policy options of governments) is already doing enormous damage.

The very idea of being human, of wanting to be more than a thing, becomes inseparable from rage against the rule of money, rage against that which is destroying humanity. In a world of mass destruction, humanity rages, rationality rages, dignity rages. More and more, we live in a world of rage, but not all that rages is rational, or dignified, or points the way to a future for humanity. Perhaps the question for us (especially after the riots in England) is how we take our place within that tidal wave of rage, whether and how we can point it (or bits of it) in directions that open up a future for humans (and indeed other forms of life). This is not just a question of writing books or answering interview questions but of developing practices that point against-and-beyond capital. Hope lies in the fact that millions and millions of people are already doing that – cracking capitalism. I’ve just read a paper by Kolya Abramsky that is circulating, where he argues that the choice that confronts us now is between dignified and undignified rage: I think that is absolutely right.

You talk about living ‘in, against and beyond’ the dynamics of capitalism, in a constant struggle to live a meaningful life against the enforced meaninglessness of capitalist work, or abstract labour. However, when we push away from capital we enter into insecure and uncharted territory. To free ourselves of the limits of work, or to refuse to toe the line, is that not a rather privileged move?

It might be a privileged move – in many cases it is – but I don’t think we should dismiss privilege so easily. Privilege may be a responsibility. If some of us live in circumstances where it is easier for us to disobey than it is for others, it would be absurd to argue that therefore we should obey, submit ourselves to the disciplines of capitalist labour.

But in fact it is not (or not just) like that. For most people, being freed from labour is not a matter of choice, but a result of being pushed out. To be unemployed or precariously employed is not generally a conscious option, but the question is then what we do with that and how we see it. People who are pushed out of the capitalist system of social cohesion are generally forced to develop other forms of social support, other ways of living. In spite of all the difficulties, these may be embryonic forms of a different society and the real, material bases of anti-capitalist revolt. The more radical piquetero groups in Argentina, for example, turned from campaigning for more employment (“the right to work”!) to fighting for creating meaningful forms of activity (doing) outside capitalist labour (most clearly articulated by the MTD Solano). And it is the creation of structures of mutual support by the excluded, particularly in the cities, that has provided the material basis for most of the important anti-capitalist revolts in recent years (in Latin America and elsewhere).

To us, it seems like the everyday instances of antagonism that you describe in your work, the girl reading the book in the park instead of going to work, are rather small victories. Considering the widespread resistance to abstract labour that you describe, and that we are currently experiencing with the increased militancy of workers and students, does your focus on these individual actions not lack ambition?

Not at all. The important thing is the lines of continuity, the lines of potential, the trails of gunpowder, that lead from the girl in the park to the 15th June in Syntagma Square or the Zapatista uprising. If we do not see and nourish those lines of continuity, we lock ourselves into a ghetto of despair.

We are finding it difficult to conceptualise how this widespread everyday resistance to abstract labour, the ‘scream’, can manifest as anything more than a form of moral or ethical lifestylism? Without a strategy for collective action is your argument not at risk of, at best, being interpreted as a form of lifestyle politics and at worse leading us into a false sense of camaraderie or community based on an unarticulated and abstract notion of rejection?

I don’t understand. Is the revolt in Greece not a scream, or the Zapatistas’ ¡Ya basta!, or the “que se vayan todos” (editor’s note: “all of them must go”) in Argentina, or the occupation of the squares by the indignados in Spain, or indeed the Russian revolution, or any revolt that you care to mention? And where did all those massive social screams originate if not in the daily unperceived struggles and discontents of thousands and thousands of people? And how can we understand the links if not by focusing on the lines of continuity? The point of talking about cracks rather than autonomies is that cracks move, often unpredictably and at lightning speed.

The overlap in values between the UK Coalition government’s discourse of community empowerment under the Big Society initiative and anarchist, autonomist politics (see Percy’s article in issue 12 of Shift) is a good example of how our actions and ‘alternatives’ can be incorporated by the state. How can the “against and beyond” of your notion of “in and against and beyond” be emphasized by those involved in community organizing in this political climate? How does it translate into practical action as we fight cuts in state services with alternative visions of social provision?

The state is the movement of the incorporation of alternatives – that is what it means to talk of the state as a form of capital. How can we resist this process? Probably only by going in the opposite direction, by communising. To think of capital as a form of social relations is to say that power is not a question of who-whom (Lenin’s brilliantly dreadful formulation) but of how. Capital is a how, a way of doing things, and the only way we can fight it is by confronting it with different hows. Our hows are the movement of communising, a coming together and determining from the bottom up, which clashes as it moves with the falsehood of community empowerment. Any process of determining from below will quickly come into conflict with property and money, whereas community empowerment promoted from above is premised upon respect for those forms which make community empowerment impossible.

There are already many attempts to translate this sort of idea into practical action against the cuts. I think the important thing is to show in practice what the alternatives mean. As far as possible, we should not defend ourselves in their terms but assert clearly what we are (often already) doing. In education, for example, many of us already take as a starting point the view that the only education that makes sense is one that points towards a future for humanity, and therefore aims at the destruction of capitalism. Sometimes we feel afraid to state what is probably obvious to most people, but often it is important to state the obvious. The best defence is usually attack: attack the schools, attack the universities, attack the hospitals.

With regards to the latter point, how do you think this analysis applies to the recent ‘riots’ that were sparked by the shooting of Mark Duggan. These were clearly a reaction to state oppression and the exclusion of communities from capitalist wealth, but there were arguably regressive elements to many of the actions that were taken. Whilst these actions can be understood as antagonistic to the stranglehold of capitalism over our lives and cities, can we understand last weeks riots as part of a progressive, anti-capitalist struggle?

What the English riots make clear is the terrible danger of a world to which rage is more and more clearly central. It is only through rage (the scream) that social change can come about, but rage is terribly dangerous. It can flow very easily against us, into terribly destructive forms. On the one hand, I rejoice in the explosion of anger and the looting of the looters, on the other hand the riots make clear the destructive potential of social anger. I think Kolya Abramsky is right in pointing to the fact that our opportunities for creating a better world may be momentary. There is a sense in which the more negative aspects of the riots are an expression of the failure of the British students to do what the Chilean students are now doing, just as it might be argued that the appalling violence in Mexico today is due in part to our failure to seize the opportunity opened up by the Zapatista revolt. The war we must win is the war of rage and I suspect that the only way we can do it is through the nitty-gritty movement of communising. Crack capitalism, in other words.

In a recent interview with Variant, the interviewers picked up on your critique of political engagement with democratization, if the latter exists without a commitment to the abolition of “money-capital-state-abstract labour”. Yet democratization is at the heart of the radical political ruptures we are currently witnessing – with a crisis of state power (dictators toppled in the Middle East and North Africa and liberal democracy in crisis in Greece and Spain) coupled with experiments in participatory democracy within the political movements that have pushed this crisis. For us, these are exciting as they have a mass element that has been missing in the political movements of our lifetime. Do you think the Real Democracy movement in Spain, or the democratization movements of the Arab World contain this element of rejection of “money-capital-state-abstract labour”? What can we take from these experiences in developing the radical politics you have in mind?

I agree entirely that these are very exciting movements. Real Democracy is a threshold-concept (as indeed are all the great concepts of struggle). It opens a door and invites us to go further. We can refuse the invitation and stay where we are, with the empty abstraction of democracy, as no doubt some will, or we can accept it (as will many others) and think what real democracy could look like. And there we see that the experiences of Tahrir Squate, of the Puerta del Sol and Syntagma and so many other squares in Spain and Greece point us clearly in the direction of a collective process of determining from below, a process of communising. And this movement of communising becomes immediately an attack on determination by the rich, by capital, by money. Inevitably, I think, it clashes with the rule of money-capital-state-abstract labour. I assume that people who prefer to talk just of democracy (Hardt and Negri, for example) realise this, but prefer to let the movement itself discover that money stands in the way of real democracy. I can see an argument for that, but I see the process of theoretical reflection as part of the struggle to go as far as we can along the road that has been opened. Part of the struggle against re-integration of the movement is to say clearly that real democracy is and must be a frontal assault on the power of money.

The great power of the movement in Greece is that it makes as clear as clear could be the frontal opposition between Real Democracy and the Power of Money. You’ve probably seen the video showing, on the one hand, the thousands of protesters in Syntagma Square, and on the other, just a few metres away, the democratically elected representatives of the state grovelling to the Power of Money. Dignified rage, righteous rage, bright light of hope in a dark night.

John Holloway is a Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla in Mexico. He is the author of Change the World Without Taking Power (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010), and Crack Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2010)

Fairy dust for all! - Raphael Schlembach

Last July, SHIFT Magazine invited the authors of the new book ‘Moments of Excess’ to give a talk to the inhabitants and visitors of a Manchester housing project. For about an hour, they talked about sorcery, Harry Potter and ‘fairy dust’.

The authors’ collective Free Association that penned the articles in the book has long moved on from the more classical anti-intellectualism of its roots in the anarchist group Class War. Towards the close of the 1990s they had argued for the dissolution of Class War instead formed an affinity around theoretical readings and discussions.

When they talk about sorcery and fairy dust, this is with a nod to one of their intellectual engagements, that of the first chapter of Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’. Capitalism, explain the speakers of the Free Association, is not a rigid ‘thing’, but a set of dynamic ‘social relations’. And for Marx, the specific character of capital makes these social relations appear as ‘natural’, unchangeable. Against capital then, the Free Association attempt to introduce magic: the ‘supernatural’!

To see whether the magical imagery introduced by the Free Association is capable of demystifying the apparently natural and showing capitalist relations for what they really are – social and historical – let’s have a closer look at their Marxian reference point.

Towards the end of his first chapter in Capital, Marx writes about the ‘secret’ of commodity fetishism. Not dissimilar to the language used by the Free Association, Marx also evokes the magical. For him, however, it is the commodity that is somehow “mystical”, “enigmatical” and “mysterious”, he describes it as a “social hieroglyphic” and “a riddle”.

But for Marx, magic – or ‘fetishism’, as he terms it – isn’t a good thing. It is part and parcel of a bourgeois ideology that deems itself rational, yet is much closer to the “mist-enveloped regions of the religious world”. Just as people have invented God and have found themselves really governed by Him, they have granted magical powers to the commodity and to money.

So with all this capitalist sorcery at work, is it not a bit self-defeating that the Free Association wants to add another layer of fairy dust to “the mist” (Marx) of capitalist productive relations?

The idea of magic also pops up in the Free Association’s book ‘Moments of Excess’. It’s not about fairy dust or sorcerers but about the magical feeling we gain from taking part in these moments of excess, be they Seattle, Stokes Croft or Millbank - experiences of togetherness, affinity and power.

The Free Association’s book makes clear that we cannot put our hope in an activist magician to get us out of the capitalist mess. There is nothing supernatural required to begin thinking and acting beyond capitalist social relationships; no need for superheroes, priests or superstars. If capitalism is reproduced by us all, everyday, then it is on this everyday level that a lot of our efforts to build a different world have to be focused.

Indeed, the book does also tell the story of extraordinary events and possibilities created by ordinary people. Sometimes it is in these moments of excess, the authors write, “that we feel most alive, most human”. Maybe it is the magic entailed in the experiments and alternatives of the ‘movement of movements’ that makes us most clearly see through the capitalist mist and gives us glimpses of new forms of social organisation. After all, the Free Association has taken its name from Marx’s phrase (also in Chapter 1 of Capital) that “the life-process of society does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men.”

Raphael Schlembach is an editor of Shift Magazine.

Give up Lifestylism! - Lauren Wroe, Josie Hooker

‘Ethical lifestylism’, or the practice of adapting one’s individual lifestyle habits (where you shop/eat/work) as a means of promoting or facilitating social change, has always been something of a bug bear for SHIFT. However as the political climate transforms, with uprisings in the UK, Europe and the Arab world, we want to return to this critique as we consider how to relate to and act with the struggle against wide-scale economic and political crisis. Do our old methods and tactics still stand up to the challenge? Arguably they never did. This article will lay the way for a series exploring the relevance of lifestyle politics in the current political climate.

Back in 2007 we attended the climate camp at Heathrow airport. The camp set out to tackle the root causes of climate change, and as difficult as it is to determine where these factors manifest and how best to tackle them (especially when you are tied by the camp/direct action model) camping outside large infrastructure targets seemed as good a choice as any. The political focus at this camp was often directed toward corporate expansion and profiteering and the subsequent and unnecessary short-haul business flights, rather than holiday makers on their two week package holiday from work. However we felt the choice of airport as target was in some ways a symptom of, and could all too easily slip into, an attack on flying as a holiday/’lifestyle’ choice and quite often it did (see Shift Editorial Issue 1 and Jessica Charsley’s article in the same issue ‘Climate Camp- Hijacked by Liberals). We felt that this failed to acknowledge the dimensions of class and privilege that make it harder for some people to take a 4 week holiday in a bus to southern Spain rather than booking a budget flight to accommodate for their kids and their 7 days off work. This isn’t to glorify the limitations of work and money, but rather to acknowledge class and privilege as barriers that must be overcome, rather than reinforced, by radical political movements (see Climate Camp and Us, Shift, Issue 7).

We used the term ‘lifestyle’, then, as the focus of these actions were usually highly individualised, isolated acts in which a person made decisions on how they live their lives, within capitalism, in a more ethical or moral fashion. It is the individuality of these actions, their ignorance of the social dimensions of capitalism, that we found problematic, rather than the ‘everyday’ level at which the actions are taken. It can be argued that these actions are empowering, allowing the individual to re-gain control of their lives, but often it seems to result in division and finger-pointing; pinning the blame for social problems onto each other whilst letting the structural factors off the hook.

There is also an assumption here that social change will come about as more people realise the error of their ways. But the demands made by those advocating more ethical lifestyles are often impossible escapes, further trapping us into the work, consume, logic of capital. They are often easily co-optable/tolerable forms of resistance. This is not to say that skipping, shop lifting, skiving (to name a few) are not meaningful actions; it depends on the context and the manner in which they are carried out. For example thousands of people shoplifting in a non-identitarian, collectively politicised way, could potentially be very powerful (think of the radical and popular auto-reduzione movement in Italy)!

However there is often a strong element of ‘turning one’s back on society’ characteristic of collective ‘lifestyle’ projects, housing co-operatives being an example. Whilst these mutual aid networks can be a vehicle for exploring new ways of housing and organising ourselves, if we retreat into these communities as ‘viable alternatives’ to capitalist reality, we run the risk of isolating ourselves from the reality of capitalism and the everyday struggles of work, housing and community. They are powerful tools if they remain engaged and antagonistic and don’t become mere havens for ‘radicals’ and hippies. Along with many other lifestyle choices, veganism, squatting, etc, we have to acknowledge that these are havens for us, not everyone’s idea of autonomy from capitalism would look the same.

When we fail to acknowledge this we are guilty of a kind of ethical vanguardism, peddling the idea that we could live better lives within capitalism, if only we could be bothered or were educated enough. There is also pseudo-religious, sacrificial element here, that we are the martyrs for social change, but considering the often subcultural irrelevancy of our actions our sacrifices and preaching often fall on deaf ears anyway. When we make these sacrifices we are, in fact, not martyrs; we are further reinforcing our identities as ‘activist’ and ‘anarchists’, this is our haven, this is where we fit (un-problematically) into society.

As we see it then lifestylism as we describe it here is a tendency that emerged in a very specific context. In recent years it has represented, at best, an accentuation (in de-politicised form) of the New Left tendency towards identity politics; or perhaps a certain inertia vis-à-vis the absence of an exciting politics to replace that of the anti-globalisation movement or, with the mainstreaming of environmentalism, that of the radical green movement. At worst, however, it embodies the gravest shortcomings of identity or “new social movement” politics stripped of all radical (or even properly political) content.

The heady unraveling of crisis after crisis following the collapse of Lehmann Brothers in 2008 has of course transformed this landscape beyond all recognition, bringing structural factors to the fore in a way that the anti-capitalist wing of the climate movement could do only on limited terrain. Gone is the consensus that ‘There Is No Alternative’ (to capitalism) – and even the seemingly unshakeable paradigm of liberal democracy has taken unprecedented blows to its legitimacy in recent months. In short, politics – that is, possibility – is back! And it hardly takes a Marxist or a class war veteran to point out that this return of the political has been closely associated with the return of class as a serious political issue.

With the very fundamentals of our social organisation in question and the re-emergence of class-based politics, then, the inadequacy and irrelevance of the lifestylism into which our [the authors’] political generation was born is laid bare. Indeed, we imagine that our readers need little reminding of the fact that the recent ruptures (which, as we write in the wake of the August riots and the victory of the Libyan rebel forces over the Gadaffi regime, only seem to increase in pace and intensity) have had very little to do with the practices that we identify here as lifestylist: with living in a housing cooperative, consuming ethically or belonging to a minority subculture. Indeed, in this climate where “the alternative” is on the lips of hundreds of thousands of people, the alternative that an ethical lifestyle supposedly embodies (that old, self-satisfied call to ‘be the change!’), not surprisingly, has very little traction.

So why, then, the continuing attention to what we can all agree is an obsolete practice?

The answer, for us, is two-fold. Firstly, the allure of ethical choices and lifestylist solutions is still strong. With increasing pressure to find ‘answers’ to our present predicament, it’s not surprising we look to our existing repertoires and their cut-out templates: when asked at a protest “so what is there if not capitalism?”, we might offer the example of workers’ coops. However, while important on their own terms (and the strengths and limitations of autonomous institutions and infrastructure is something we’d like to address in this series), these alone will not topple capitalism: indeed, taking (always limited) ‘control’ of our own exploitation is very different from abolishing capital/value as the root of the labour relation. Similarly, if we recognise lifestyle choices for what they are – that is, expressions of personal preference for a particular brand of freedom (the freedom we call autonomy) that can make our lives under capitalism more palatable – there is also a danger that in these harsh times we retreat inwards to these comfortable islands that shelter us materially (or however else) from the raging storm beyond. Yet this alluring comfort zone isn’t only material. If we recognise activism as a lifestyle/identity in itself, there is surely also the danger that, faced with the disorienting new political climate (and the associated identity crisis of identity politics), we cling to that identity in a bid for status and security.

The second motivation for insisting so heavily on the exorcism of lifestylism speaks to the question posed by various contributors to this issue of SHIFT: ‘where are we?’ Because the ruptures of the past months and years have not only revealed, as we’ve argued above, just how heavy a price has been paid for our departure from the traditional left in the post-1968 period (in terms of a dislocation from class politics). They have also been a clear reminder of the weakness of the traditional left (testament, then, to the necessity of the departure in the first place): indeed, from the cowardice of the NUS leadership last November to the glaring failure of the unions to generalise the J30 strikes, more and more people are experiencing this inadequacy first hand (betrayal has indeed been a defining experience for the new ‘Millbank generation’).

In the present climate of social unrest and political possibility the stakes have therefore never been higher. Yet if we have the ambition in us to believe in an autonomous, radical left worthy of its name, we must be sure that the question ‘where are we?’ is interpreted as we intend it: as a criticism not of our absence, but of our tendency to assume the importance of our presence, regardless whether the latter takes a politically adequate form. Because for us ‘where are we?’ is patently NOT an invitation to head into the fray armed with vegan curry for the masses, to bicycle our way to global communism or to advise the rioters on how to source their loot ethically. Neither, though, is this call to a ‘we’ meant as a re-assertion of the identity into which we users of the ‘activist toolkit’ tend to fall. Indeed, the final lesson that recent events have given us is that we perhaps didn’t go far enough with our critique of lifestylism and ethical choice first time around: it was all too easy to make jibes at those environmentalists whose “radical” credentials amounted to nothing more than the appropriation of direct action to ends of state and consumer lobbying in favour of individualist, lifestylist solutions. Targeting this unapologetic liberalism was perhaps a straw man that allowed us to cut short the critique of a practice that was perhaps too close to home: that is, activism as a lifestyle itself.

It is in this spirit that we wanted to publish this series. We wanted to remind ourselves of the dangers of the activist identity, and the lifestyle that goes with it; because it is these that present such an obstacle to our entering into the process of creation of a new politics. We [the authors] believe that there is a role here for the radical, undogmatic left, but only if the latter stands for more than an identity or a set of lifestyle choices; only if it is willing and able to formulate and promote positions that are adequate to the politically complex – and increasingly dynamic – world we inhabit. Give up lifestylism! Give up activism!

Lauren Wroe and Josie Hooker are editors of SHIFT Magazine.

Insurrection and a conservative revolution: some thoughts on the recent riots - Raphael Schlembach

1. What if there was a riot and we weren’t invited?

The question sums up the dilemma that an undogmatic and autonomous left has battled with since the riots and looting that started in Tottenham early last August.

After the black bloc on 26th March, Parliament Square on 9th December or Millbank on 10th November lat year, collective outbursts of anger on Britain’s streets seemed once again inextricably linked to a progressive political project. Riots had become a bit of a romanticised ideal, fostered maybe by the kind of images that Crimethinc & Co have painted of them, by the youtube images of anarchist demonstrations in Greece, or by the battle stories recounted of the resistance to Thatcher’s austerity Britain. So when reports came through of burning police cars in Tottenham, many would have had an initial moment of hope and excitement.

The problem was: riots are not always pretty, and do not always follow a clearly-defined political direction. This time, alongside a sense of collective joy, solidarity and youthful energy, they displayed a certain disdain for human suffering.

Most anti-authoritarian responses recognised this complexity. They did not feel the need to state an ‘unconditional solidarity’ with the rioters, nor did they let themselves be drawn into condemnation. But there is sometimes a tendency to fetishise chaos and violence as being insurrectionary, or even regenerative (in this case it was mainly the SWP that saw the riots as a legitimate and necessary expression of class anger, without – alas – forming a visible street presence themselves; one article in Socialist Worker called for ‘All Hail to the Mob’ ). In an inverted form, the right has been guiltier of fetishising the rioting by focusing on violence as the main expression on the streets those days (neglecting the many other expressions of political anger, togetherness, and solidarity). When a man steals ice-cream from a vandalised shop to hand out to the crowd outside, as reported, this can hardly be explained away as ‘violence’ or ‘rioting’. Or similarly, when a friend was given a few packets of cigarettes by looters coming out of a cornershop, this sounded more like Robin Hood than greed.

2. Conservative fears

A related problematic response to the events was the kind of Schadenfreude that can come along with the phrase ‘we told you so’. Nihilistic and apocalyptic visions of an end to law and order can at times accompany insurrectionary theories, and many, secretly or not so secretly, would have taken pleasure in the talk of social collapse.

As insurrectionary literature goes, ‘The Coming Insurrection’ is a good example for that kind of language of decline and collapse. The text describes a “permanent state of deterioration” and a “chronic state of near-collapse”; a state of capitalist modernisation that destroys traditional family and community ties.
The problem here is that the prediction of social collapse, of decline of community and solidarity, of the kind of values that make society function, is often inherently tied in with a conservative fear of cultural and moral degradation. And this conservatism can sometimes disguise itself as openly radical.

The best example here is probably the ‘conservative revolutionary’ ideas that spread far across Europe in the early 20th century. These, like sometimes still today, were tales of deterioration and inadequacy of the Western values of social mobility and individual development in the face of a rapidly modernising world and portray a deep-seated pessimism towards progress. Mostly, the conservative revolutionary response was the call for a radical nationalism and chauvinistic authoritarianism. Oswald Spengler’s book ‘The Decline of the West’ is emblematic for this, but many went much further and argued that only a complete radical transformation, a (spiritual) revolution, could reinstall the kind of social bonds that had been destroyed by Enlightenment-type liberalism.

3. More than victims

While a progressive answer to the conservative repression after the unrest is to state its social context of alienation and austerity, there is an inadequacy in the left’s demand for more welfare support and better public sector provisions. It’s not that these aren’t bitterly needed. But it risks becoming a policy of appeasement, a policy that tries to pacify the ‘dangerous underclass’. The logical outcome of seeing those engaged in the riots as neglected kids is to look towards the councils, youth services and welfare state for an answer.

So how should an undogmatic and anti-authoritarian movement respond? To begin with, we should probably be wary of treating those involved in rioting, looting, and mugging simply as victims of failed state provisions. To assume so risks being patronising. These kids and their families won’t be bought off with a new swimming pool, youth club or basketball court.

It is of course very tempting to ‘think like a state’. What would ‘we’ do if we were in government? How would ‘we’ redistribute wealth to benefit those that appear worst off? To counter this, many that see themselves as part of an undogmatic left have long argued for a notion of autonomy.

From the perspective of autonomy, the riots are surely political. They assert an agency against the idea that they are merely a reaction against urban poverty. They make no demands, not of the institutionalised left, not of the state, not of capital. They simply act for themselves without the worry of representation and communication of their views and ideals.

So importantly, these riots can be seen as ‘more than just riots’, with a sense of strength developing, a sense that (young) people are powerful if acting together. As Gus John, veteran chair of the Manchester Black Parents Organisation, says in his new book about Moss Side in 1981: they are “not just disenfranchised by lacking wages through which they can live dignified lives; they are also denied the tools by which they can organise in defence of their lives.” Many people would have experienced these days in early August as empowering, not because of but in spite of the lack of formal demands made to politicians.

4. Community and consumerism

The problem for the left is also one made in-house. The values that these riots stand for and the values that the left represents are often fundamentally opposed. The first gap already appears when we look at the notion of community. This has not just been a left-wing buzzword but has received tremendous, and at times mislead, support from anarchist and anti-authoritarian groups. Community-organising has put on the map ideas of rootedness in a locality and belonging to a place.

In their own way, the riots symbolise an attempt to break out of these communities. Community can be repressive. Community can be authoritarian, based around family and hierarchy, it can be small-minded and insular. Those who are burning their communities, their neighbour’s cars, their social housing offices, their local off licenses certainly don’t seem to have much respect for this kind of notion of community.
They look much further than the borders of their own estates and neighbourhoods. They present an individualism that cherishes adventure, machismo, and personal advancement. Just like the 1968 rebellion was for many young people also a rebellion against family ties and society’s established structures, today’s youngsters won’t be much inclined to listen to local elders and community leaders.

Annoyingly then, the riots are not political in the sense that we would like to see them. They are destructive without being nihilist. They accept consumerism and entrepreneurialism, even to such an extreme that they are prepared to go to prison for a flat screen TV. These youngsters have chosen consumerist society as the society they want to live in, not the small idyllic communities that so many social conservatives want to imagine. As ‘The Coming Insurrection’ states so poetically: “They find it more humiliating to work shit jobs than to go to prison”. They do not however reject the capitalist promise of a life in luxury.

If we want to detect anything radical in the riots then it is exactly that which is decried as immorality. It is the idea that we won’t settle for the scraps of affluent society and be appeased by ‘immaterial’ values. But the left’s task is to show that the consumerist promise in a capitalist system will always be unfair, violent and unfulfilled.

5. Conservative gains

The response to the social unrest of the past few months, including the public sector strikes and the student demonstrations, has been a massive shift to the right, and particularly to a conservative authoritarianism. This was surely to be expected from the usual quarters such as certain tabloid papers and the government coalition. However, this has also included liberal and social democratic commentators as well as the ostensibly non-partisan judiciary.

There has been overwhelming public support for harsher policing, for stronger authoritarian intervention and punishment, even for an outright class war upon the poorest in society. The calls for death penalties, for live ammunition to be used against looters, for benefit cuts for those convicted of petty crimes and their families, are essentially a moral assertion of conservative values.

Our first task is probably to identify and understand this social conservatism for what it is; especially where it hides itself behind a moral positioning against all kinds of deviance from rules and regulation.
A couple of popular arguments spring to mind here. The first follows a familiar, ‘progressive populist’ line: ‘the self-enriching behaviour of bankers and politicians is morally just as deplorable as that of the looters’. It is not just left-wing voices; also the right has made the connection between looting and the MPs’ expenses scandal. This is not surprising. The moral populism that demands decency, honesty and altruism from both poor and rich fits perfectly into the conservative framework.

A similar problematic was created by the short-lived appearance of vigilantism in some neighbourhoods and the longer-lasting and much-publicised ‘community clean-up’ of damaged high streets. Some have stated the principles of mutual aid and self-organisation as reasons for cheerleading such initiatives, and there were indeed some positive community responses in the aftermath. But again there is a more sombre side to this, not only because EDL activists were sometimes in the midst of such activity. The (far) right obviously lays a traditional claim to this sort of self-managed response. Historically, social unrest of the kind we’ve been seeing has given legitimacy to a vigilantism that is fundamentally racist and classist. As much as we want to see neighbourhoods and communities looking out for each other, there is an inherent view that authorities can no longer protect us from those elements that don’t play by the rules.

What we have painfully felt in these days and nights in August is – once again – the lack of organisation of the left. The EDL mobilised hundreds of their supporters onto the streets within a couple of days of the rioting. The main TV stations, including the BBC, were practically calling for martial law. The courts made a mockery even of the idea of bourgeois justice. But it took days before any meaningful left-wing intervention into the ensuing debates. A rare example of in-the-streets organising was a ‘Give our kids a future’ march through North London.

It is clear that the gap between the left and the urban (black/youth) movements has increased drastically since the Tory years. The riots in 1980/81 were preceded and followed by much organisation, meetings, engagements, anti-racist music festivals and more. Without this connection, it is not surprising that such popular outbursts of anger don’t take a more political turn.

Raphael Schlembach is an editor of Shift Magazine.

Interview with Occupied London

Can you briefly explain to our readers what the Occupied London project is and where the inspiration for editing this book came from?

Occupied London started off as a free anarchist publishing project in London in 2007. We felt that at the time neither of these was happening in the city often enough, so we strove to create a journal that would try and overcome the boundaries of anarchist discourse both in, and for the city; that would try going to print in spite of the digital times in which it lived; that would remain free despite the culture of commercialisation encroaching it.

We also wanted to take a look at issues of urbanisation surrounding us globally and soon enough many of us found ourselves returning right where we had started from, that is, the anarchist movement in Greece. As we saw and lived the revolt of December 2008 and its aftermath we felt the urge to document what had happened and the traces of the revolt in our everyday lives. That is how the idea for the Occupied London blog and eventually the book came about.

As important as the 2008 December uprising was, of equal importance (if not more) are the possibilities which emerged out of this event. Several of the chapters discuss this legacy, could you briefly discuss the ways in which the December uprising has translated into more long term political projects?

A revolt – a rupture in normality-so-far – would be nothing without this rupture marking a longer presence into peoples’ everyday lives. The uprising of December is no exception to this rule. Apart from anything else, the rupture of the winter of 2008 has armed many people with a strong belief in the effectiveness of the politics of the everyday: from neighbourhood assemblies (relevant, more than ever, at the time of the supranational IMF rule) to concrete interventions at a local level (the self-organised parks in Exarcheia and in Patisia, Athens standing as prime examples) to the spontaneity and the dynamic nature of particular actions (such as the impromptu street confrontation and attacks on one third of all the MPs signing the IMF agreement to date). For us, these all show that peoples’ conceptualisation of what is possible has changed, once and for all. And we can only thank December for that.

Some of the most interesting sections of the book challenge the existing anarchist movement to move beyond its current limits, discussions which resonate equally well here in the UK. Is there much willingness within the Greek anarchist scene to move beyond its limits and how successfully is this being translated into practice?

It would be very convenient (or perhaps even relieving) to say so – that the anarchist movement has kept up with pushing beyond current limits or, in other words, that it has kept up with what it has always been, at least for as long as we’ve known it: a transformational movement, a movement at the boundaries of society that is willing and ready to push things to an extreme, an awakening force at the time of the ultimate hypnosis, the comfortably numb financial prosperity of the nineties. Sadly, to say so today would mostly be a lie. We saw a cataclysmic change in social order as we had known it, with the IMF/EU/ECB deal changing the existing landscape of power for good. And yet the response from the ground – for the best part – has mostly been ‘business as usual’. This glaring disparity could not possibly last long and, sure enough, it revealed itself and collapsed during the Syntagma Square mobilisations. The birth of the square occupation movement saw the anarchist movement split right down the middle: on the one side, the tendencies unwilling to give up what they had carefully cultivated and protected as a subculture surviving in the midst of a wild capitalist euphoria during the nineties. On the other side, a tendency that was willing to join, or at least stand close to some emerging forces that were trying to challenge the newly formed status quo. It is not possible to judge if the second has been successful, not quite yet – since history’s page has yet to turn. It is only possible to judge who has at least tried to turn it.

The book deals with the event that was December 2008 and the potentials that have been opened up in its wake. Can you discuss the relationship between the anarchist movement and the recent struggles born in response to a new round of EU and IMF loans, most notably in Syntagma Square? Is there a connection between the “indignados” movement and the anarchist movement?

It is by now impossible to talk of a single stance of the anarchist movement in relation to these emerging struggles. It would therefore be more logical to talk about our own position, since we collectively participated in the Syntagma movement in a number of ways. The anarchists who participated in Syntagma had several reasons to do so. For many, it started off with the fairly straightforward wish not to see the mobilisations hijacked by fascists and other reactionaries – and the only way to achieve this would be by being present there and take action when such practices would occur.

Yet beneath this, there was a much larger opportunity to be grasped: the Syntagma mobilisation was a very dynamic and profound situation which had vast political potentialities not only in resisting the government effectively but also in forming a completely new political condition in the aftermath of this movement: we saw genuine popular general assemblies attended by four, five thousands at a time; we saw a near complete consensus against police and corporate media, and so on. Direct democracy is obviously not a panacea, as it is a practice that does not necessarily formulate the content: for example, an assembly could potentially decide, in a very direct democratic manner, for the most fascist things in the world. And yet, the daily assemblies in Syntagma were constituted by people who for their largest part would not tolerate racist and fascist statements or practices.

After all, rallying, marching and occupying Syntagma Square in Greece is an action that is symbolically linked with previous counter-establishment revolts that primarily originate from the far Left: the building housing the parliament in Syntagma used to house the palace before and has always been both the symbolic and actual centre of state authority. So the occupation of Syntagma Square had several anti-establishment implications from the beginning.

This movement in itself was also hostile toward both State authority and the government. At the same time it was very inclusive and massive, with weekend gatherings peaking at 200,000 or 300,000 people. The majority of these people had never taken to the streets before. These newcomers – new political subjectivities – got a first hand experience of what State and police repression really meant during the Syntagma mobilisations. Naturally, the plexus of power of course did not discriminate and used its all-time classic repression, including corporate media propaganda, and the rest of the tactics that had been used for years against anarchists or far Leftists. These are the same tools that have always been used against the enemy within. It is just that this time, this enemy was too large and too inclusive. And so, many people saw their illusions about authority collapse. An old anarchist slogan in Greece claims that “[political] consciousness is born in the streets” - this time round, consciousness was born in the squares too.

From here in the UK the recent spate of struggles seem complex and chaotic, whilst many support the protest uncritically others are keen to highlight the role that nationalists and even fascists are playing. How prominent is the nationalist position within current struggles in Greece?

This question will inevitably link back to the previous one and the split of anarchist reactions to the Syntagma movement: indeed, several anarchists refused to be linked to Syntagma because nationalists were there too.

The Greek government and corporate media obviously played an old card, that of evil foreigners wanting to take advantage of Greece. “We are all in this together”, they say, or “we all have to tighten the belt”, as the expression would go, “because the country is under attack”. It is true that the supposed “rescue” agreement eliminates some of the most basic principles of the so-called national independence, which was one of the illusions nourished by the Greek state for years in order to achieve social peace. So yes, there were nationalists waving Greek flags in Syntagma or people who just considered it unfair not to be governed by Greek passport holders but by “foreigners”. But at the same time, a lot of these people do understand that what matters is not where a capitalist comes from, but that they ruin their lives. It is just that right now these bankers, speculators, capitalists, their political personnel and the rest of their gangs overdid it and stopped throwing to the rest even those crumbs they did before.

Putting aside those conscious nationalists who think that Syntagma is matter of national revolution, of the people there some would wave a Greek flag because they had no other flag to identify with any more – we don’t think that’s positive, but it doesn’t make these people de facto nationalist, let alone fascist. The social dynamics there are far more complex than that. An example? On 27th June, anarchists marched to the square, fly-posting and chanting anti-fascist and anti-nationalist slogans. When they would chant slogans such as “In Turkey, Greece and Macedonia, our enemy is in the banks and the ministries” or “national unity is a trap”, thousands would be clapping along, waving their Greek flags to the rhythm of the anti-nationalist slogans! Very surreal, but also very typical of the fluid and complex new political subjectivities that emerged during the crisis.

This is not to underestimate the nationalist potentialities of the Greek flag, nor to say that it is OK to participate in actions along with Nazis. In early June, during the Athens gay pride, some fascists in Syntagma Square tried to interfere in the parade – and anarchists were there to fight homophobia and Christian Orthodox ideals about sexuality and so on. Similarly, during the general strikes of 15th June and 28-29th June fascists who were spotted in Syntagma were beaten up and the riot police came to their rescue, attacking anti-fascists in order to save them. Yet at the same time, on 15th June fascists tricked a lot of other demonstrators into thinking that anarchists were undercover police officers and some anarchists were attacked as result.

This is all to say that the situation is extremely fluid; we must be extremely vigilant in dealing with and distinguishing between fascists and people just waving a Greek flag, as these are not the same. At the same time we should also be extremely alert about the nationalist elements incorporated in Syntagma: after all, it is possible that some of the people there participated in the anti-migrant pogroms of May 2011.

With the movements now leaving the squares and entering the neighbourhoods how will this affect the form and content of the struggles around the austerity package? Is it even possible to speculate on what is likely to happen in the next few months, let alone year?

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to speculate what might happen. One because this would amount to a prophecy and prophecies fail the prophets, and second because the situation changes so rapidly and the daily life in Greece at the moment is so fluid that just about everything is possible. Three months ago nobody would even imagine the Syntagma movement would ever happen; and two years ago we wouldn’t have been able to imagine Greece ever getting an IMF loan. At this present moment, it seems that the local (neighbourhood) assemblies have got a huge boost thanks to the Syntagma movement; new ones were formed and the previously existing ones became more empowered and received more social legitimation.

We think that the move away from the square and into the neighbourhoods was a great idea that came out of the Syntagma assembly and kept being mentioned nearly every night during June. The question now is how to sustain the momentum during the very difficult winter that is coming and how to transform direct democracy into radical action. Both are necessary in order to challenge the establishment: the people’s assemblies via creating an antagonistic socio-political formation and radical actions directly on the streets - especially now that the Greek police are becoming increasingly militaristic and the government passes new laws for the repression of any form of dissent. A final element that we consider important is that of materiality: how will the assemblies address the material issues of everyday life as these emerge during this crisis, how will they pick alternative/antagonistic economic practices and how will they establish more fixed and permanent material infrastructures across neighbourhoods?

This interview was conducted in July/August 2011 by Ben Lear, who is an editor of SHIFT magazine

The Mirror Cracks from Side to Side – Of Global Uprisings and Movement in an Age of Austerity - Emma Dowling, Begüm Özden Firat

Events that happen in one place – especially with the instantaneous relay through communication technologies – make ripples in others. In Egypt, protesters occupied Tahrir Square and the Egyptian flag found its way to Wisconsin; protesters in Puerta del Sol declared ‘they want to be like Iceland when they grow up’, and hushed so as not to wake the Greeks. In 1999, after protesters descended upon the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, images of the ‘Battle of Seattle’ circulated the globe: soon after, wherever global elites met, protesters were there to challenge them. A ferocious force composed of a multiplicity of social subjects from a myriad of existing political movements had suddenly become visible under one ‘no’ to the neoliberal project. This ‘movement of movements’ put global elites under significant pressure and made opposition to global capitalism speakable within a broader public. It also generated its own forms of organisation, building on and challenging previous models of internationalism, by-passing the nation-state as the necessary primary political community.

Global Events, Global Spaces

Global – or at least globally interpellated – events, chains in an ongoing political process defined this movement, the global was constituted both as a terrain of struggle and as the very site of organisation. These kinds of events involved moments of open antagonism against global governance institutions in the form of summit protests in which the network People’s Global Action (PGA) played a key role, and also included World (regional and local) Social Forums as spaces where a transnational social movement was forged in face to face meetings. The ‘global’ was claimed as context, emphasising global connections and making the links between what happens in one place and what happens in another. Collective experience created transnational networks grounded in the materiality of common exchange and engagement, strengthening the power to act across national boundaries.

Yet these processes had their own problems, not least the reification of the global as a distinct sphere. Protests against the G8/G20, the IMF or World Bank, created a picture of global governance as centralised at summit meetings, when actually the political economy of governance is multi-faceted and multi-level. Many emphasised that it did not matter so much what global elites did, it mattered more that movements could come together to recognise one another, feel collective power, articulate their resistance to a public and use the opportunity to build movement through being together. Nonetheless, the symbolic positing of a form of coherent political actor vis-a-vis a global sovereign power, misconstrued the nature of the state and global decision-making that understandings of a networked, decentralised and capillary form of governance and the state reveal.

Moreover, the evocation of the movement as singular political actor coalescing at these points of protest, overstated the coherence of a movement that was actually more fragmented, often with different ‘wings’ of the movement occupying the same space around a summit but having little to do with one another organisationally. Even where successful cross-spectrum mobilisations occurred, the alliances could not always hold beyond the event and more energy went into organising these events than did into ongoing everyday social struggles.

Social forums were both events and processes. Since 2001, the annual World Social Forum has attracted hundreds of thousands of activists from across the world to sit together in assemblies and workshops figuring out the best way to organise collectively beyond the confines of a particular issue or tendency, in and of itself a political process producing new subjectivities, new alliances and new ideas. Many were emphatic that the forum should not be mistaken for the movement itself and that it should be used as an open space based upon a set of principles for the convergence of diversity and difference in a common strive for global justice (whatever that might mean in the particular). Thus, the outcomes would not necessarily be linear or even tangible, but complex, invisible, dispersed, and rightly so. Others lamented the lack of coherence and political programme as the forum’s impasse.

Shifting grounds, recomposed antagonisms

It would be an oversimplification to say that the movement reified the global and forgot about the local. Indeed, it is not easy to say anything too definite about ‘the’ movement given how many differences were deliberately encompassed. The imperative to ‘think global, act local’ was part of a ‘globalisation from below’, from the grassroots. However, the attention to global events and spaces and the development of a network of activists with the time and money to travel to all of these places and stay plugged in to the process, meant that there were many disconnections that led to an inability to really globalise. It remained difficult to think through the material particularities of our ‘local’ existences, subject positions and relationship with multiple ‘others’ in a way that could inform global action. For sure, we must continue to value diversity and multiplicity highly, but we must be more discerning of what that means for our political practices. The state and capital thrive upon pitting us against one another where we live, in our workplaces and across the globe. It is painful and it is hard to confront the material reality of that beyond ethico-political rules of how to behave in a meeting or the negotiation of a diversity of tactics within the context of a particular mobilisation. It did not take people very long after the recent unrest in the UK to notice how alienated we are from one another within our supposed ‘communities’. But there is more to this than simply getting along with those you happen to live in close proximity with. What we have seen playing itself out in the media and on the streets in recent weeks are the multiple lines of conflict that weave their way through society, pitting white against black, black against brown, the less poor against the more poor, the unemployed against the workers, the looting youth against the small business owners. To be relevant – to build a successful anti-capitalist movement – means confronting these material realities of class (de)composition in a global context, a context that is not out there, but right here.

Yet, this is not to suggest a retreat to a sphere of the local in response to a perceived overemphasis on the global. Nor are we suggesting that the eruptions of social conflict in various parts of the world are sufficient in their inspirational effects. The significant achievement of counterglobalisation movements was not only to draw attention to the nodes of power in the global management of neoliberal globalisation, but to solidify the feeling of being part of a global movement with the aspiration of intensifying these ‘connections from below’ through face to face and virtual exchanges. For a generation of political activists this was a clear manifestation of internationalism one more time, but one prefiguring horizontal radical democratic processes that sought to challenge and transcend the vertical stratification, local – national – international, and the forms of representative and institutionalised politics encompassed in them.

The Seattle moment ushered in internationalism with new understandings of global solidarity, new forms of organisation and a novel sense of being a global movement. Yet, nowadays we tell ourselves that social forums and summit protests are not as politically effective as they used to be. Everyone who has ever been to a social forum or a summit protest recognises that the success of these events lay partly in the strength and energy of the local social movements where the event was hosted. Also, they empowered local movements by making explicit how their everyday struggles formed part of a larger global movement, enabling unforeseen local as well as global political alliances. These are reasons why we should not simply abandon them.

The current protests and insurrections erupting in the wake of the crisis are – unlike the previous cycle of counterglobalisation struggles – much more explicitly directed to the politics of the local and everyday whilst recognising the connections across local and national boundaries. The great difficulty we face lies in addressing the opposition between the local and the global as spheres of organising. We often find ourselves working in a self-understanding of a local or a global space, even though in principle we are aware of how the local and the global cannot – and should not – be so easily separated. We know the two spheres are expressed in one another, nonetheless, we still need to ask, what it means to think this organisationally in ways that neither reproduces a global clique of transnational activists that easily creates its own vacuum, nor by rendering connectivity and networking ends in and of themselves. Of concern is how to connect the different struggles against austerity measures and cuts, debt, climate change, gentrification and housing, the crisis of care and social reproduction. The present so-called ‘Tahrir generation’ is no mere ‘youthful’ expression of temperament, nor is it going to disappear any time soon. It has clear demands, from real democracy to a decent future that the global political and economic system cannot adequately deal with. The debate is not whether they are political enough, but how we can learn from the experiences of previous rounds of internationalism to which the global movement of movements belonged, inventing forms of organisation and collective action that respond to the conditions of contemporary struggles.

Begüm Özden Firat is a political activist and associate professor in the Department of Sociology in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul.

Emma Dowling is a writer, researcher, political activist and lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London.

Editorial - Occupy and beyond…

Much has changed since 2008. The crisis of capital presents itself to us in multiple, shifting forms; sovereign debt, food, energy, housing and the environment are all in crisis, while the date for the ‘inevitable’ recovery of growth and the return of confidence in financial markets recedes ever further into the horizon. Plan A, that of austerity and the further implementation of market based solutions, has, as David Harvie points out in this issue, failed completely; and, meanwhile, calls for a return to a Keynesian plan B seem unconvincing.

Looking back on the last 18 months there has been an obvious increase in political activity against an increasingly de-legitimised political system and against economic austerity. The situation is vastly different to the depoliticised world many of us once organised in. History is once more up for grabs. Yet when faced with the vast scale of the assault on our lives and the potential for positive social change, our previous forms of activity have never looked more impotent. Spectacular activism and alienating, purist lifestyle politics are unlikely to be the forms appropriate for the task at hand.

Over the past 18 months we have witnessed the global explosion of rage we have been expecting and hoping for. Like the crisis itself this has taken many forms, from the return of strikes, to ‘commodity riots’; from the emergence of the graduate without a future to the rise of the global occupy movement which has inspired and frustrated in equal measure. These expressions of anger are shifting public discourses and, at times, winning material gains. But they are also increasingly hitting limits. These limits bound our activity in two dimensions: firstly, the political ideas we are using to express our understanding of the world and communicate our dreams of a better one are reaching the limits of their potential; and, equally, the forms that these ideas are physically taking, the organisational structures through which we move, are also reaching their boundaries. The theory and practice of emancipatory politics must be rethought in light of 2011.

In this issue we hope to return to the topic of organisation. In the first part of a SHIFT exclusive (of which the second will be published in Issue 15), Michael Hardt and John Holloway debate the merits of institutions and organisation. There is certainly tension between, on one hand, the open, networked forms of resistance which erupted in 2011 and which seemed to capture the hearts of a global media - which fell over itself to declare this “twitter revolution” the new zeitgeist - and, on the other hand, more long term, perhaps more rigid organisational structures. Learning to negotiate this tension may well be the key task of 2012. How can we move from resistance to the exercise of an emancipatory political power?

Of course this won’t be easy. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s transcribed talk from Auto Italia’s event “We Have Our Own Concept of Time and Motion” outlines some of the key features of the political terrain in 2012. Bifo argues that the social body has been fragmented so as to be compatible with new forms of work and discipline. Increasing precarity is making the act of solidarity, and political organising, harder than ever. SHIFT will be continuing the discussions surrounding precarity in an online series starting soon.

If the surprises and challenges that 2012 will surely bring are as yet unknown, we can be certain that a vital task up ahead is that of developing appropriate and effective forms of organisation.

Creating Common Wealth and Cracking Capitalism: A cross-reading (Part I)

Dear John,

One of the things I love about ‘Crack Capitalism’, which it shares with ‘Change the World Without Taking Power’, is that its argument traces the genealogy of revolt. In other words, you start with the indignation, rage, and anger that people feel but you don’t stop there. Your argument leads revolt toward both creative practice and theoretical investigation.

On the one hand, although refusal is essential, perhaps even primary in your argument, especially the break with or exodus from capitalist social forms, every destructive force has to be accompanied by a creative one, every effort to tear down the world around us has to be aimed also toward the creation of a new one. Moreover these two processes, the destructive and the constructive, are not separable but completely embedded or entwined with each other. That is why, as you say, it makes no sense to defer creating a new society until after the complete collapse or demolition of capitalist society. Instead we must struggle now to create a new society in the shell of the old or, rather, in its cracks, its interstices.

On the other hand, you demonstrate how revolt must lead not only to practical but also to theoretical innovation. Although your book starts with an affective state and instances of practical resistance, the central argument involves a conceptual investigation, most importantly, it seems to me, about the role and potential of our productive capacities in capitalist society. I don’t mean to pose a separation here between practice and theory. In fact, your argument requires that they too are completely embedded or entwined. In order to change the world we need not only to act differently but also to think differently, which requires that we work on concepts and sometimes invent new concepts.

The core argument of the book, which distinguishes doing from labor and identifies abstraction as a primary power of capitalist domination, seems to me profoundly Marxist. It might seem paradoxical to say that because you carefully contrast your argument to orthodox Marxist traditions, situating your point instead in relation to Marx’s own writings, sometimes elucidating what he actually says and demonstrating how it goes against the orthodox Marxist tradition and at other times going beyond Marx. Although your argument stands indeed against the orthodox Marxist tradition, reading Marx against Marxism in this way and going beyond Marx puts you solidly in line (or, perhaps better, in dialogue) with a strong current of what was once called heterodox Marxist traditions that have been active since the 1960s. This is clearly apparent, for instance, in the claim, central to your argument in this book, that the course of our project for freedom lies not in the liberation of work, as is championed by Marxist orthodoxies and Soviet ideology, but the liberation from work. I see this as an essential slogan or principle of this heterodox tradition.

One thing that occurs to me is that whereas in the 1970s orthodox Marxism was indeed dominant, bolstered by the ideologues of various official communist parties, today that line of interpretation is virtually completely discredited. Instead Marxist theory today is primary characterized, in my view, by what used to be the heterodox line, which you helped develop together with your colleagues in the Conference of Socialist Economists and in collaboration with similar tendencies in Italy, Germany, and France. That’s a good thing and makes Marxist theory today more interesting and relevant.

I don’t mean by this to rein you back in within Marxism. Like you, I care little about whether my work is called Marxist or not. I often find that Marxists accuse me of being not Marxist enough and non-Marxists fault me for being too Marxist. None of that matters to me. What is important, though, is how useful I find it to read Marx’s work and it strikes me how useful it is for you too in this book.

One profound and important resonance your argument in this book shares with Marx’s writings resides in the identification of labor (or human productive capacity) as the site of both our exploitation and our power. You designate this duality by distinguishing labor (which you identify as production within a regime of capitalist abstraction) from doing (which strikes me as very similar to Marx’s notion of ‘living labor’). On the one hand, capital needs our productive capacities and could not exist and reproduce without them. Capital, in other words, does not just oppress or dominate us but exploits us, meaning that it must constantly seek to domesticate and command our productive powers within the limited frame of its social system. In your argument this is accomplished primarily by processes of abstraction. On the other hand, our productive capacities always exceed and are potentially autonomous from capital. That dissymmetry is crucial: whereas capital cannot survive without our labor, our productive capacities can potentially exist and thrive without capitalist organization. Indeed, as you demonstrate, there are always already innumerable instances of our productive autonomy that exist within the cracks or interstices of capitalist society. These are extremely important but not enough. Your project is to create alternative social networks of autonomous productive cooperation that can, as I said earlier, build a society of freedom from within capitalist society.

As I read ‘Crack Capitalism’, then, it seems to me that, whereas ‘Change the World’ adopted and extended the project for the abolition of the state, even its abolition within our own minds and practices, this book works through the project of the refusal of work — with the understanding that every rebellion against the capitalist labor regime is also, necessarily, a development of our own autonomous capacities for doing, that the destruction of the work society is coupled with the creation of a new society based on an alternative notion of production and productivity.

That brings me to a first, initial question. We know that the capitalist labor regime has extraordinarily well developed systems of social organization and cooperation, which function through discipline and control. You analyze these primarily through the lens of abstraction. The mainstream workers movements and, primarily the industrial trade unions, have also developed forms of organization and discipline into a sort of counter-power, but, according to your analysis, this too, like the capitalist regime, is dedicated to the organization of abstract labor. I think I understand this critique and agree with it in large part, with the caveat, as you say, citing the excellent book by Karl Heinz Roth published in the 1970s, that there has always also been an ‘other’ workers movement. My question, then, how can our autonomous productive practices, our doing, be organized and sustained as alternative social forms? I think you would agree that the schemes of cooperation and coordination among our practices of doing are not spontaneous but need to be organized. I would add that we need to create institutions of social cooperation, and you might agree with this too as long as I explain that by institution here I do not mean a bureaucratic structure but rather, as anthropologists use the term, a repeated social practice, a habit, that structures social relations. What institutions do we already have that fulfill this role and what kinds can we develop? And, more specifically, what relation can this have to the syndicalist traditions? The point here, of course, is not to reject entirely the traditional organizations of workers movements but, in some respects, extend and transform them. Here I would want to explore the innovations within contemporary labor organizing that point in the direction of your argument. Can we imagine instead of a traditional labor movement an association or syndicate of doers or, better, a social institution of doing? What would be its mechanisms of social cooperation and structures of organization? I’m not sure you have the answers to these questions, and I don’t pretend to myself, but I think you have some ways of thinking about how we can develop the structures and institutions of a society of doing and that is where I would first like to direct our exchange.

Best, Michael

December 2010

Dear Michael,

Thank you very much for your comments and for their tone which seems to me just right: a strong sense of shared concern and direction and a desire to move forward through exploring our differences. This reflects very much what I felt while I was reading ‘Commonwealth’: a sense of the very close touching of your preoccupations with mine, a feeling of walking arm in arm, at times too close, at times tugging in different directions, producing a sequence of bumps of admiration, enthusiasm and exasperation.

The question you raise at the end of your letter is exactly right because it hits directly on one of my main concerns while reading ‘Commonwealth’: the issue of institutions, which you and Toni emphasise a lot and which you develop especially in the last part of the book.

Our preoccupation, I think, is the same, but the answer we give is rather different. Our shared concern is: how do we go on after the explosions of rage, the jacqueries as you call them? The argentinazo of almost ten years ago, when the people in the streets of Argentina toppled one president after another to the resounding cry of ‘que se vayan todos’ (out with the lot of them); the alterglobalisation movement and the great anti-summit protests in Seattle, Cancún, Genoa, Gleneagles, Rostock and so on; the explosions of rage in the last year in Greece, France, Italy, Britain, Ireland and now, as I write, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria. Great. We applaud, jump up and down with excitement. But then what? How do we go on? We both agree that rage is not enough, that there must be a positive moment. We both agree that the answer is not to build the party and win the next election or seize control of the state. But, if not that, then what? The answer you offer is ‘Insititutionalise. Create institutions to give duration to the achievements of the surge of revolt’. And I want to say ‘no, no, no, that is not the way to go, that is a dangerous proposal’.

Certainly I do not want to caricature what you are saying, for there is a great deal of care and subtlety in your argument. In your letter you say ‘I would add that we need to create institutions of social cooperation, and you might agree with this too as long as I explain that by institution here I do not mean a bureaucratic structure but rather, as anthropologists use the term, a repeated social practice, a habit, that structures social relations.’ But no, I do not agree with that, even taking into account your broad understanding of institutions.

Why do I not agree? Firstly, because although you argue for an extended understanding of institutionalisation, you open a door in which the distinction between the two meanings will become blurred. The repeated social practice slips easily into a bureaucratic structure and unless you create a very sharp distinction between the two (by using different words, for example), there is a danger that you legitimate this slippage. In the book, the distinction is clear at times, but at times it seems to evaporate, as in the surprising and perplexing suggestion on p.380 that UN agencies might provide a global guaranteed income (the mind boggles). Institutionalisation leads easily into a state-centred politics – how else could you even imagine achieving such a UN guarantee?

Secondly, I disagree because institutionalisation always means projecting the present on the future. Even in the soft sense of a repeated social practice, it creates an expectation that the young should behave as their parents (or older sisters and brothers) did. But no, they should not. ‘That’s not the way to do it, this is what you should do’, said the veterans of 1968 to the students in the great UNAM strike in 2000, but fortunately (or not) the students paid no attention. Institutionalisation is always a consecration of tradition, is it not? And what did Toni write years ago about tradition being the enemy of class struggle? I don’t remember exactly what or where, but I do remember thinking it was wonderful.

Thirdly, institutionalisation does not work, or not in the way that it is intended to. There is a flow of struggle, a social flow of rebellion (as my friend Sergio Tischler puts it) that cannot be controlled and that repeatedly sweeps aside institutions devised to channel it in a certain direction. My feeling is that you give too much weight to institutions in your understanding of society. Can love be institutionalised? I agree completely with your daring understanding of the revolutionary force of love, but then you must ask, can love be institutionalised? Surely not. Even if we say that we are not talking of a contract of marriage, but simply “a repeated social practice, a habit”, then probably the experience of all of us is that love constantly clashes with habit. Love may well survive in a context of repeated social practice, but only if it moves constantly in-against-and-beyond it.

Think of the World Social Forum, the prime institution to have emerged from the alterglobalisation movement. I am not particularly opposed to it and I think it can provide a useful and enjoyable meeting place, but, contrary to the intentions of most participants, it tends to promote a bureaucratization of the movement and it certainly is not the key to revolution.

Institutionalisation (broad or narrow) means trying to set life on railway tracks or highways, whereas rebellion is the constant attempt to break from that, to invent new ways of doing things. The proposal to create institutions, as I see it, says that the old roads to revolution no longer work and we must create new roads for those who follow us to walk along. But surely not: revolution is always a process of making our own paths. ‘Se hace el camino al andar’ (we make the road by walking - eds’ translation) is an integral part of the revolutionary process. I see the very idea of institutionalisation as an aspect of the organisation of human activity as abstract labour, just what we are fighting against.

‘Too easy’, you may say and of course you would be right. Does there not have to be some form of social organization? Certainly, but our forms of organisation, the forms of organisation that point towards a different society, cannot be thought of as being fixed. We have ideas and principles and experiences and directions that are more or less common to the movements against capitalism, but given that we ourselves, our practices and ideas are so marked by the society we are struggling against, the forms of organisation can only be experimental, a process of moving by trial and error and reflection.

But does there not have to be a coming together of the cracks? Yes, and I think this is an issue that is not sufficiently explored in my book. I would like to develop further at some point the question of the confluence of the cracks, both in terms of the inspirational lighting of prairie fires and the practical organisation of cooperation. But two things. I feel that institutional thinking is probably an obstacle to seeing the practice and potential of such confluence. And secondly it is important to think of the confluence as an always experimental moving from the particular, not a charting of the future that moves from the totality, as I think is the tendency in your book. We are in the cracks and pushing from there. Our problem is to break and move beyond, not to erect an alternative system of governance. We can try to follow the practices of existing movements, criticise them and see how the confluence is or is not being achieved, but we cannot establish a model for the future.

Dignity is a fleet-footed dance, I suggest in the book. But the doubt that arises is that perhaps we are not capable of such agility. Perhaps we are capable only of moving more slowly. Maybe we need institutions as crutches, so that we can consolidate each step we make. Conceivably so, but even then learning to walk is a throwing away of the crutches. We betray ourselves if we do not couple subversion with institutionalisation. If we must institutionalise, then we should subvert our own institutions in the same breath. This is akin to the question of identification. In ‘Change the World’, I accept that it may sometimes be important to affirm our identity, but only if we subvert it or go beyond it in the same breath, and what you and Toni say in your discussion of identity is similar. Institutionalise-and-subvert, then, is a formulation that I would find more attractive, but even then I do not like it. Institutionalisation may be inevitable at times, but in the tension between institutionalisation and subversion we have already taken sides. Thought is subversion. To think is to move beyond, as Ernst Bloch says – Ernst Bloch, whom you cite several times in the book, but whom Toni elsewhere unforgivably, unforgivenly characterises as a bourgeois philosopher (Antonio Negri, ‘Time for Revolution’, 2003, p. 109).

Publication, of course, is a form of institutionalisation and I do participate actively in this. In publishing my arguments, I give them a fixity. But perhaps this interchange of letters is an attempt by both of us to subvert that institutionality: the purpose is not to defend positions taken but to provoke each other to move beyond what we have already written.

And then an unavoidable theme if we are talking of institutions: what can I say of the title of your last chapter – ‘Governing the Revolution’? A horrifying oxymoron? A fiercely audacious provocation? Or is it a serious suggestion? To the extent that it seems to be a serious suggestion, it certainly provokes and horrifies me. What upsets me is that the phrase suggests a separation between governing and revolution whereas for me revolution is the abolition of this separation. Governing the revolution immediately makes me ask who, who is going to govern it? Just as your statement on p.377 that ‘humans are trainable’ also scares me, for who is to do the training? Who would govern your revolution, who would train the humans? If you say we are talking of self-governance, then fine, but why not talk then of the organisational forms of self-determination, understanding that self-determination means a process of self-education, self-transformation? But if we rephrase the question like that, then we immediately have to say that the organisational forms of self-determination are self-determining and therefore cannot be institutionalised.

Let me open a second front of concern. Democracy. You centre the discussion of revolution on the struggle for democracy. The abolition of capitalism takes a back seat, as it were, and that confuses me. You formulate the argument in chapter 5.3 in terms of a programme to save capital and then say that it is not that you are abandoning the idea of revolution, but just working with a different notion of transition. I am not clear what you mean by this different notion of transition. It sounds almost like a programme of transitional demands, a concept of achieving anti-capitalist revolution by fighting for a democracy that we know (but do not say openly) is incompatible with capitalism. The danger is that the more you talk about democracy and the less about capitalism, the more the whole question of revolution fades into the background. It seems to me much simpler to start the other way around, by saying: capitalism is a catastrophe, how do we get rid of it?

This letter is unreasonably long. Your fault, of course, for writing such a stimulating book. I look forward to your replies.

Best wishes,

John

"John Holloway is a professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla in Mexico.

Michael Hardt is professor of Literature at Duke University in the USA and has published several books, including ‘Empire’ and ‘Commonwealth’, with Antonio Negri."

From Plan A for Austerity to an Anti-Capitalist Plan C: An Interview with David Harvie

Shift Magazine: There has been much talk of finding an economic ‘plan B’ in the media recently, notably with the New Statesman publishing nine respected economists’ suggestions for George Osborne in October. Could you briefly outline what you see plan A as being and the politics of those calling for plan B?

David Harvie: Plan A means austerity. The Con-Dem government’s plan is to eliminate the UK’s structural fiscal deficit by 2014–15 – essentially the amount by which the government’s expenditure exceeds its income and hence the amount it must borrow each year. To eliminate this deficit the government plans to make public spending cuts of £130 billion over five years. We know what this means: cuts in child benefits; the closure of libraries, youth centres, swimming pools and the like; the abolition of the educational maintenance allowance (EMA); the tripling of university tuition fees; pay cuts and freezes, increased pension contributions and job losses for public-sector workers.

The government argues that this deficit reduction is necessary in order to reduce the money spent on ‘servicing’ Britain’s public or sovereign debt, i.e. making interest payments to creditors. The cost of servicing debt depends upon two variables: (1) the size of the total debt, and (2) the rate of interest, also known as the ‘cost of borrowing’. Osborne has argued his policies are vindicated by events in the so-called PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain – especially Greece. The ‘markets’ doubt the ability of those states to repay their sovereign debt and thus demand a much higher rate of interest as ‘reward’ for taking the risk of lending to them. In contrast, Britain, with its ‘credible’ deficit-reduction plan, can still borrow ‘cheaply’, which keeps down its debt-servicing costs.

But ‘cost of borrowing’ arguments aside, “plan A” for austerity isn’t working, even on its own terms. What’s perhaps surprising is how much of the criticism has come from quite respectable, mainstream or even neoliberal economists and commentators. David Blanchflower, for example, is a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee – he is, or was, a capitalist policy-maker. But he has written (just after the publication of Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review of October 2010) of the government’s cuts being ‘wildly unnecessary, misguided, doctrinaire and potentially dangerous’ and of ‘the Chancellor jump[ing] off the cliff’. More recently (in November 2011) he wrote:

“It is becoming increasingly apparent that Cameron is A) totally out of his depth when it comes to the economy; B) has no clue what to do to fix the problem; C) has little sympathy for those who are less fortunate than he is. He just doesn’t care. Cameron has failed to recognise that his government’s economic policies are in complete disarray, and all he can do is resort to spin and obfuscation. Austerity in the UK has failed.”

Even Financial Times journalist and arch-neoliberal Martin Wolf has described the government’s policies as ‘fiscal policy set on Kamikaze tightening’.

The problem is that, despite the spending cuts, the deficit isn’t falling as fast as it’s supposed to. This is pretty much for the reasons predicted by Blanchflower and other economists critical of the government. The economy is stagnant and has certainly not recovered in the way Osborne, Cameron, Clegg et al. had hoped. Worker-consumers are not earning and spending, businesses are not investing. So tax receipts (income for the government) are ‘thin’, while spending on out-of-work benefits remains higher than expected. Osborne has admitted that spending cuts will continue into the next parliament, i.e. beyond 2014–15.

But the government has consistently and stubbornly refused to alter its policy. At the end of 2010, the prime minister’s spokesperson argued: “It is quite normal for government officials to be thinking about alternative scenarios [but] ministers haven’t asked for advice on ‘plan B’ because they are very clear that the plan we have is the right plan.”

In the middle of 2011 Osborne boasted: “The rock upon which the stability of the British economy rests at the moment is our credible fiscal plan”, i.e. austerity. And at the end of 2011, Cameron was still sticking to the plan. In this environment, it’s not surprising that many critical voices are proposing alternatives to austerity, and nor is it a surprise they are dubbing them ‘plan B’. As you say, in October, the New Statesman invited nine ‘leading economists’ to write open letters to the chancellor, under the headline ‘This is plan B’. Also in October, the think-tank Compass published a report entitled Plan B: A Good Economy for a Good Society; the report’s launch was coordinated with a letter to The Observer signed by more than a hundred academics, and The Observer weighed in with its own sympathetic editorial.

But the policies proposed here are a mixed bag. There is no single ‘plan B’; rather there is loose set of various plan Bs. The authors of these plan Bs are equally heterogeneous, united only by the fact that they are critical of the government’s current policies. The Compass group is left-of-centre and the authors of its plan B report include a number of socialists; the list of signatories of The Observer letter included individuals that I would call comrades. Plan B advocates also include members of think-tanks such as the New Economics Foundation, which is best described as ‘progressive’. Towards the other end of the plan B spectrum are thoroughly mainstream economists, such as Blanchflower, the ex-MPC member; Christopher Pissarides, who received the Nobel prize in 2010 for his ‘analysis of markets with search frictions’; Jeffery Sachs, unrepentant architect of ‘shock therapy’ in Bolivia, Poland and Russia from the mid-1980s to the early ’90s; and George Magnus, an advisor to UBS Investment Bank.

SM: Do you see plan B as having the potential to resolve the current crisis? If so for whom?

DH: Well, as I’ve said, the various policies suggested under the plan B heading are a mixed bag. Those advocated in the Compass report are the most comprehensive and coherent. They propose a whole range of policies including: new investment in renewable energy and energy-efficiency; new investment in public transport; a new round of ‘quantitative easing’; increasing benefit levels; increasing the minimum wage; ‘tackling executive pay at the top’; ‘reforming the city and the banks’; reducing working time; more public provision of childcare; encouraging trade-union membership; encouraging employee-owned firms and cooperatives; requiring workers’ councils for large firms.

Many of these policies are very attractive: there’s nothing like three plus decades of neoliberalism to make you feel a certain nostalgia for social democracy! Certainly policies like this would go some way towards resolving what Ed Miliband has described as ‘a “quiet crisis” unfolding in British households squeezed and disoriented by stagnant incomes and inflation, leading to a steady decline in living standards’; and which is really a crisis of social reproduction, that is, a crisis in our ability to reproduce ourselves as 21st-century humans. But this plan, like the yearning for social democracy, is also utterly utopian. The models of political organisation that built and sustained social democratic institutions no longer exist. What makes Compass’s plan B quite unrealistic is the absence of any socio-political actor that could actually make it happen. The plan seems to be addressed to politicians and policy-makers. But in the absence of mass organisations of the working class and, more generally, mass struggles applying pressure from below, why on earth would they even attempt to implement a set of policies so clearly against the short-term interests of capital – certainly the sectors of capital most dominant in the UK? (Whether such a plan B might be in the longer-term interests of capital is a much more open question, but we know that capital is myopic.)

The policies advocated by the nine economists in the New Statesman are as partial – mostly just a couple of policy fillips – as they are heterogeneous. At one extreme, Ann Pettifor’s ‘launch a green new deal’ is, like Compass’s plan B, quite attractive but also rather utopian. At the other, Pissarides suggests that VAT should be cut from 20% to 17.5% and that the Chancellor ‘should start the spending cuts gradually and respond to the state of the economy. It should go deeper only when the recovery is more robust’. It’s possible the ‘more flexible approach’ Pissarides advocates might ‘work’, but it’s hard to see how any spending cuts can ever be in our interests.

SM: Can you see tensions and differences between the various visions of plan B? How might those of us on the Left intervene?

DH: Yes, there are many tensions and differences between the various visions of plan B. Perhaps one way of distinguishing them is between those that seem to be human-centred, i.e. focusing on human needs, and those that are economy-centred. This is why much of what Compass suggests is attractive. It seems to start from our needs and the economic implications follows. This is clear in its proposal to:

“train a vast carbon army to crawl over all the buildings in the UK making them energy efficient and fitting renewables such as solar photovoltaics. This will generate a huge range of jobs from engineers, energy accountants through to solar roof fitters, loft insulators and draught strippers.

But we should be suspicious of proposals that start off from the need for ‘employment generation’ in general. We have numerous needs (many of them not currently met), including warm and well-insulated buildings; and I think we have work – by which I mean purposeful human activity – to do to meet those needs. But saying we have work to do to fulfil our needs is very different from saying we need jobs!

Another way of thinking through the various plan Bs is to look at what they say on the questions of economic growth and debt. And I think we should understand these twin questions as fault-lines or even frontlines of struggle. Take Sachs’s open letter to Osborne, for example:

‘As you know, I supported your government’s call for getting the deficit under control and I like it that this coalition government is taking a five-year perspective and laying out a medium-term expenditure framework. It was and is important to get deficits under control…’

Once we accept proposals that aim to grow our way out of this crisis – ‘to keep the economy moving forward’ as Magnus writes in his letter – or proposals that accept the logic that some cuts are necessary to ‘control’ the deficit, then we are on enemy terrain.

If we on the Left are to intervene in debates around plan B – and I think we should – then our interventions should focus, firstly, on trying to open up these twin fault-lines around the questions of economic growth and debt and emphasising that human needs must be prioritised. Secondly, they must make the basic point that human beings make history: ‘class struggle is the motor of history’, as the old Marxist dictum has it. That is, we have to start where we are and we have to start from human beings’ concrete practices – regardless of whether we call these practices ‘struggle’ or not – rather than looking upwards to politicians and policy-makers. This is the real flaw in plan B – human agency is completely ignored.

SM: In the context of a deepening crisis and increasingly authoritarian ‘management’ by the state what might an anti-capitalist Plan C look like?

DH: Plan C follows from the above, but I don’t know exactly what it might look like. I don’t think there will be a single plan C, more likely a range of plan Cs. Or it might be better to think of plan C as a perspective. I don’t think it’s too glib to say that plan A for austerity prioritises markets, while plan B is much more state-orientated. Plan C then must take us beyond both states and markets; and so it can only be a movement and a perspective. Perhaps C stands for commons (or commoning), or communism (or communisation).

We have to start from where we are, from practices that people are already engaged in: this includes various struggles, such as the student movement, the occupy movement, struggles of public-sector workers and electricians. It might also include people’s attempts to meet their own human needs – i.e. manage their own social reproduction – outside of market relations. This is what people are doing when they occupy an abandoned bank, say, and create a library and a crèche and meeting space and so on: they are challenging private property and creating commons.

It’s also what people would be doing if they were to find some way of refusing to pay market prices for energy or transport. Such strategies of “self-reduction” were widespread in Italy in the 1970s. They have also been adopted in post-apartheid South Africa with ‘struggle electricians’ reconnecting neighbours’ cut-off power. And they are now emerging in parts of Greece as well. It’s what people would be doing if they were to repudiate debt – mortgage debt, student debt, credit card debt – and refuse to pay. Here we have the examples of the anti-poll tax movement in Britain in the late 1980s and early ’90s, and in the US there are thevery recent attempts both to launch a mass campaign of non-payment of student debt and to prevent foreclosures of homes and evictions.

I don’t think plan C should be about campaigns so much as about politicising existing practices, attempting to join dots, and this might include politicising the plan Bs, that is, highlighting the fault-lines on growth, debt and human needs.

To reiterate some of the above, plan A for austerity hardly qualifies as a plan at all: it’s simply more of the same, and more of the same isn’t even working on its own terms. There is no single plan B, more a broad set of plan Bs; but they mostly share the aspiration to be Plan-like, that is, Plan with a capital P, assuming the certainty, and with it the arrogance, of old Soviet Five Year Plans. ‘Plan C’ is more of a perspective, a perspective that can help guide our movement; it’s a way of trying to understand our world, a way of looking at what’s happening. If it’s a plan at all, then it’s a very open and flexible one. Perhaps it’s better to think of plan C as a compass – not to be confused with the Compass group discussed above. Like a compass, plan C is a guide to movement, an aid for navigating difficult terrain. But it’s not fool proof. A compass requires careful interpretation and certain ‘corrections’ must be made depending on your location. After all, whatever the attractions of magnetic communism, we’re seeking something truer!

"David Harvie is a member of the writing collective The Free Association (www.freelyassociating.org), whose book Moments of Excess is published by PM Press, and an editor of Turbulence: Ideas for Movement (www.turbulence.org.uk)."

Homeowners: the gravediggers of capital

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It seems a truism in radical politics that if The Guardian starts to like you then something’s gone wrong somewhere. When you’re a member of a housing co-operative that is itself a member of Radical Routes – a federation of other housing and workers co-ops across the UK – a favourable interest from the deputy-editor of the Guardian website’s money section, as happened last autumn, is an experience disquieting enough to put you off your lentils.

It is striking in the article that there seems little actually radical about Radical Routes. In the Guardian article, it is pointed out that member co-ops are expected to drive towards social change. Yet the co-op that serves as the subject of the article seems the embodiment of the sort of inoffensive tweeness that Islington Guardian-types soak up: ethical shopping, herb gardens, and even the ability to ‘treat minor illnesses’ are mentioned. Aspirations include going ‘off-grid’ and becoming, essentially, a self-sufficient smallholding. It is made clear that they are not just growing ‘a couple of lettuces to make us feel nice’, but it seems more accurate to say that they’re growing loads of lettuces so as to feel nice.

The Guardian may simply be misrepresenting the co-op in question. Even if they were they’ve highlighted the deeper truth of Radical Routes’, and with that the wider mutualist movement’s, rather incoherent politics. A few months before the article appeared, representatives of the various Radical Routes member co-ops met in one of the quarterly ‘gatherings’ – essentially democratic management meetings, whereby Radical Routes member co-ops decide on the policies, practices and principles of the organisation as a whole. Here, discussion was dominated by two things. Firstly, the objections of two member co-ops to a new co-op’s application to join. And secondly, the ensuing debate about what constituted the ‘radical social change’ commitment required of individual members of Radical Routes member coops, who under the current rules must spend fifteen hours a week engaged in (unpaid) activism.

The fundamental criteria for acceptance of a co-op applying to join Radical Routes is evidence put forward that demonstrates the commitment of that coop’s members to social change activism. As the website puts it, ‘You must be committed to positive social change and we will want to know what you do about it…each of your members actually has to spend a significant amount of time working towards a better world.’ The co-op whose application to join received objections had not appeared to outline any of the voluntary ‘radical social change’ work asked of for membership of Radical Routes. When asked to justify their practices that amounted to activism, they mentioned going on the March for the Alternative, being poets and in bands, using gas and electricity sustainably. They rolled out the buzzwords: ‘facilitate’, ‘network’, ‘share practice’, ‘volunteering’, and made it clear that they attempted to manage their consumerism.

The prospective co-op also wanted to keep and slaughter animals on the premises for commercial reasons, and this was a particularly contentious issue. If this had not been mentioned on the application, would they have been allowed to join? It seems possible that they would have, or at least would have caused less controversy. Simply put, the rest of their ethos was not that far removed from that of the co-op interviewed in the Guardian (the co-op in question is in fact an associate member, rather than a full member, of the network; it has therefore not undergone full scrutiny under the Radical Routes application process – the ed.). They mentioned projects centred around art, voluntary work and consumerism, ably adopting the language of activism. And if that is what they think activism is about, it is because those things are all activists have been doing and saying for decades. Any slightly edgy behaviour, any ‘liberatory’ art project (no matter how shit), any tedious whinge or baseless complaint trotted out in a meeting ruled by consensus, any slug-sodden, exotically named root vegetable dredged from the weekly veg-box, and any effort to ‘reduce’ just about anything, has become the iconography of large stretches of the libertarian left. For decades now, activists have gone to every effort to present themselves as living aesthetics of perfunctory, perfectly acceptable, easily commodified deviancy. As a result, the movement has become an ethical rather than political one.

This is a shame, because it means activists and outsiders miss the original point of the politics of everyday life, of which co-operatives are a cornerstone: finding a way of coping with social relations within capital. For centuries, people have developed strategies, ranging from theft and more organised appropriation to forming friendly societies, sickness and funeral clubs, to co-operatives of consumers, workers or home-owners, and of course unions. All have fundamentally been means by which individuals, through mutual aid and collective action, have managed to make their lives better and easier. They are not inherently antagonistic toward capital, and do not intend to be so, but in fact all are strategies for the immediate or long-term alleviation of some of the problems that arise throughout our lives, such as wage labour, consumption and the commodification of housing. They are a means of having a better life within the social relations we find ourselves in.

In E.P. Thompson’s phrase, workers have ‘warrened capitalism from end to end’ since the industrial revolution. Yet the fetish of (for example) the co-operative as one of the tools of the ‘radical’ lifestyle activist is a complete perversion of this warrening. During one discussion at the Radical Routes gathering last summer, some advocated co-operatives as revolutionary in themselves, revealing how completely smitten with the idea of living our principles rather than organising according to our principles some of us have become. Co-op members are not capitalists in the sense that they are profit-seekers, but nevertheless they are still tightly bound within the relations of private property. It makes no difference if we are talking about loanstock on a hill on the Welsh border with army surplus booted, dreadlocked hippies and anarchists: we’re still talking about loanstock. There is nothing fundamentally radical or progressive about co-operatives: their supporters include, after all, Norman Tebbit. This is not to say that mutualism possesses guilt by association with the establishment, but rather that we need to be honest about what it’s for: slightly changing the rules of the game for our benefit, not forming an insular cult.

This is not a problem solely with the culture surrounding co-operatives. They are merely representative of a wider problem within today’s activist ‘scene’. In this, it is more important not to buy things than it is to organise in the workplace. Work itself is no longer seen as the source of all wealth, as it was in class-based politics for the best part of two centuries, but seen instead as boring and to be avoided. The Radical Routes rule that legislates 15-hours of social change activism a week was put in place to ensure that co-ops remained politically active, but also in an attempt to prevent full-time work and therefore consumption. In this the organisation followed the detachment of the left in the 1990s from not only the actual problems of workers and their organisation, but their entire culture and everyday life. With direct action (and largely environmental) activism, the trend was reinforced, and, a solipsistic and reclusive counter-culture was fostered. In part this was due to the need for those engaged in direct action to maintain high degrees of secrecy and security, meaning that such actions were never mass actions. At the same time, once an action was started it needed maximum publicity, meaning that activists presented themselves as a very small group of martyrs, protesting on everyone else’s behalf. That culture now seems a serious problem, and the inability of Radical Routes to decide what ‘radical social change’ actually means reflects the fracturing of the left caused by post-Millbank, post-austerity politics. What we now need is not monasticism and seclusion, but a relevant, united mass-movement that can respond to the current crisis. We need to clearly say that we are for the working class, and clearly outline what the working class now looks like, so that we can all agree that there is a mass engaged in, and losing, a class war. This cannot be done if we isolate ourselves. The activist can no longer be a secluded martyr, but should strive instead to be both everyone at once and no-one in particular.

In a slow, bureaucratic process, the rules around hours spent on social change work are being transitioned out of the Radical Routes constitution, in favour of a more decentralised agreement that allows individual co-ops to decide their own definition of social change. But this process, and the debate surrounding it, reveals a specific problem with co-operatives (that is itself tied to a general problem with lifestyle activism). By their nature, co-ops tend to focus political problems into a quotidian politics. However, this is not a quotidian politics based around actual everyday problems (‘what am I going to feed the family this week? Can we afford the bills anymore? I need to sit here all day and find a job’), for which ‘warrening’ provides a response. Instead, what we seem to have developed is a politics that decides that changing quotidian lifestyle choices is actually a radical act (‘Do I consume too much? Should I buy an organic vegbox? Am I over-privileged?’). The danger with this is that we end not so much Radical as Christian, directing politics inward at problems of the soul rather than outward at problems of social relations.

Similarly, an obsession with ethical consumerism and lifestylism leads to a contradiction difficult to deal with. In 1838, a Chartist defined the movement by telling a protesting crowd that it meant ‘plenty of roast beef, plum pudding, and strong beer by working three hours a day’. Chartism was a movement of millions who demanded more luxury and less austerity. Over the last two decades, a movement of a few thousand has demanded more austerity and less luxury, with the direct result being that the post-Millbank generation are confronted by a left that has neither an intellectual or organisational tradition able to respond to the current austerity drive. A schism is shaping between an ethical, inwardly directed movement of knitters and vegetable-botherers on one side, and those for whom austerity is a threatening imposition, not a welcomed privilege, on the other. We should be struggling to unlock the benefits of production for all people and the planet they live on, not denying it in order to remain an ethically pure elite.

Co-operatives are only one part of this wide-ranging conflict, but how they respond to it is intriguing. Should the principle behind them be the maintenance of an aristocracy of activists? Or would it be wiser instead to respond to rent hikes, home repossessions and job-losses by presenting the co-operative as a more humane way of dealing with the ravages of capital and private property? The question of homeownership, and the relations that swirl around it, is becoming politicised (witness, for instance, the occupation of repossessed homes under the Occupy banner in the US). Co-operatives could easily be one base through which activists re-engage with the everyday lives of those they claim to be struggling for, but only if they are not viewed as laboratories for eccentrics but rather warrens that allow us to cope with life under capital. Mutualism is not enough to deal with capitalism, a system that ultimately needs nothing short of abolishing. Nevertheless, it could be one element in the wholesale rejuvenation that the left sorely needs. In short, we need to think of ourselves not as trying to create a scene, but trying to join a mass-movement.

Tom Fox is a member of a Radical Routes housing co-op. He is a labour historian and involved in radical media.

Republished from Shift magazine

In defence of lifestyle politics - Matt Wilson

Ignoring Structure.

Contrary to the claims of many opposed to it, lifestyle politics are developed alongside a radical and engaged analysis of the world and its many problems; it by no means lets ‘the structural factors off the hook’, as Wroe and Hooker’s article suggests, but directly responds to them and is an attempt to ultimately destroy them. The fact that it does so by side-stepping them is due to the anarchistic vision of creating another world in the shell of the old, rather than taking state power directly. So yes, it ignores state and capitalism, but only in the sense of refusing to allow them to tell us how to live; it does not ignore their impact and the barriers they place in our way when we try to live differently. In fact, in attempting to live in accordance with our values, these barriers are made even more obvious. Furthermore, as I explain in greater detail below, lifestyle is an explicit response to the inter-related nature of our lives under capitalism, and a recognition that what we do has an impact on other people.

Privilege.

It is commonly claimed that lifestyle is the preserve of the privileged. But this is only true if we see lifestyle as a consumerist greening of capitalism. In fact, lifestyle is about radically changing the way we live, and that includes not simply ethical consumerism, but ethical consumption, which must mostly be understood as consuming less, and consuming (or using) without buying; by re-using, recycling, borrowing, creating and, again, simply using less. Often, then, lifestyle activism is cheaper than other lives. It’s also an attempt to escape the allure of endless capitalist products that we are all so easily sucked into. Paying that little bit more to support a local shop may mean not updating our phone, spending fewer nights in the pub, or whatever; but those are choices we need to make. And this encourages us to think critically about what it means to be able to afford something, and what the real costs of things are. When we say organic food is too expensive, what we’re really saying is it seems expensive compared to products made in ways which we entirely disapprove of; when we say we can’t afford it, we (often) mean we’ve chosen to spend our money on other things: we need to reconfigure our relationships here, and to think of what we want to support, rather than simply what we can afford in economic terms.

And is it wrong that people who can do something do it, even if others can’t? Is there any form of activism that doesn’t exclude some people? Of course, it’s absolutely wrong if people condemn people for not doing things that they genuinely can’t do, due to their personal circumstances, but this is a critique of the way some people behave, not of the tactic of lifestyle per se. Yes, lifestyle forces us to consider our own responsibility, and that might lead to disagreements and even condemnation, but if we want to live in a world where we create our own values, then isn’t this always a possibility? Perhaps we should embrace the fact that we’re engaging in ethics rather than leaving capitalism and the state to decide what we can and can’t do. It’s also worth considering how this accusation of lifestyle as privilege ends up itself being a defence of western consumer lifestyles (pretty much all of which are privileged from a global perspective); working class people in the UK, so this argument goes, must be left to do whatever they want with their money; but what about the impact their choices have on much poorer people across the globe? This isn’t about moral puritanism or vanguardism, but it is about acknowledging that the way we live has an impact on everyone and everything around us, and that we often do have some scope (even if it’s limited) to act differently.

Lifestyle is Moral Puritanism.

But what if people want to update their iPhone? Isn’t lifestyle a form of ethical vanguardism, dictating how people should live their lives? Well, no. And, yes. It isn’t, in the sense that while many lifestylers follow certain ethical norms (such as veganism) this is due to particular cultural trends, but it in no ways exhausts the possibilities of the tactic of lifestyle activism. Simon Fairlie, editor of The Land, offers what I’d say is a fine example of lifestyle politics, but, as a result of his critical enquiry into the way he wants to live, he supports small-scale animal farming. Lifestyle forces us to consider the ethics of what we do, and I see that as a good thing. The reason many people see this differently is, I’d suggest, a result of following a liberal logic which divides the public and the private. Following this line of reasoning, veganism is a private, ethical issue, which we shouldn’t insist people follow, but anti-capitalism, say, is a public, political issue which we’re free to shout about. But that makes no sense. We all want to see a world that supports certain values and not others; if we think we don’t, that’s because we see our values as somehow obvious, natural, or undeniably right (as liberals do). Ultimately, there’s no difference in arguing for a vegan world than arguing for an anti-capitalist world – they’re both just expressions of our values, but we often fail to recognise this. For example, an anti-capitalists may feel comfortable in denying the legitimacy of sexist behaviour, because they see this as universally wrong; but they see vegan values explicitly as personal values and argue that therefore they should be kept private. Again, this is what the liberal state does.

Ultimately, then, we do need to address the question of what sort of world we want to live in, and recognise that there are limits to diversity and limits to what we can do if we take our values into account. Lots of people want to fly to Spain every year for their holiday. OK, but that means many more people will suffer somewhere else on the planet. Lots of people want cheap electronics. OK, but this means that economic slaves have to make them. Ironically, the failure to recognise this is a result of what lifestylers are so often accused of – namely, failing to recognise the ‘social [and, we might add, environmental] dimensions of capitalism’ (’Give up lifestylism!’ Issue 13, SHIFT). Vegan cyclists are accused of pushing their ethics onto others, yet this is only true in a discursive sense (at most), but we must all live with the consequences of people eating meat, driving cars, etc.. Again, the invisibility of this is precisely what liberal capitalism is all about, and why those who oppose lifestyle are in fact the ones who appear to fail to see the inter-related dimensions of global state-capitalism.

Aren’t lifestyle choices just about better capitalism?

Of course, we live in a capitalist world, and it’s hard to escape that, but many lifestyle choices are about working outside this logic. So, for example, we might set up a tool club where a community has access to a library of things they need from time to time but don’t want or need to own. This is a small but powerful step towards communalising the things we need to live and thus side-stepping the capitalist model of private ownership. And we can take it further, as workers’ co-ops do, and begin to communalise the ownership of the means of production. Some argue that workers’ co-ops are capitalist enterprises, but this is untrue and conflates markets with capitalism. Workers’ co-ops are run by their members, but no one owns the machinery, buildings etc – they are effectively collectivised. And they explicitly reject profit and growth, using surplus income to either improve their products or make them cheaper. Some argue co-ops have to grow like any other capitalist business; again, this is untrue. Many survive sticking firmly to their principles. Of course, many struggle because they are up against capitalist companies that produce stuff with economic slaves and with no consideration of the environment; but a lot more co-ops would survive if more people who care about the values they defend supported them – in other words, if more people followed a lifestyle politics…

Lifestyle is Individualised Action.

…which is why lifestyle is definitely not about individualising the fight against capitalism. Living differently necessitates and promotes supporting others who are doing likewise (supporting workers’ co-ops for example). As such, lifestylers develop the sorts of communities that many others simply bemoan the lack of. Getting to know local shop-keepers by shopping in small shops, not soul-less supermarkets, and so on.

Conclusions: if not now, when?

When well understood, lifestyle is very much a response to the realities of state-capitalism, and very much about creating networks of resistance and new ways of doing and being that help us escape the cultural, ethical and structural parameters that dominate our world. Of course, it presents certain challenges – but what form of activism is easy? And some who engage in it may feel and act morally superior, condemning others who fail to meet their ethical standards, but many non-lifestyle activists do so too. We shouldn’t conflate the actions of certain people with the tactics they use.

It seems to me that lifestyle is absolutely necessary, not only as a way of breaking state-capitalism, but also as a way of ensuring that, if we succeed in doing so, we will be prepared to create not simply another world, but also a better one. Lifestyle allows us to experiment with new ways of organising, to critically explore our own values and priorities. State-capitalism has robbed us of responsibility, and has replaced it with promises of material wealth which we have come to see as our right; if we don’t start to live and think differently, then, if we ever did crush the state, through some epic battle, say, then we’d simply recreate the old hierarchies and ways of doing.

If we’re happy to live lives fed by unsustainable practices and slave labour now, why wouldn’t we be at any other time? Capitalism offers us these things, but why do we not refuse? At what stage should we take responsibility for the way we live?

Lifestyle both prepares us for and helps us move towards a world where we, not state-capitalism, control our lives. From insurrectionary acts to on-line petitions, many other tactics will be needed to change the world, but for the world to really change, we surely need to change ourselves as well.

"Matt Wilson is an activist involved in Bicycology and Radical Routes, an independent writer, and a worker with Bartleby’s, a worker owned micro-brewery."

Scandalous Bodies in Occupied London - Saul Newman

The Occupy movement spreads like a virus throughout the nerve centres of the capitalist empire, symptomatic of the terminal crisis of this global regime. This is not only an economic crisis, but a legitimation crisis. Never has the predatory nature of financial capitalism, and the gap between people and the political elites who supposedly govern in their name, been so stark. Our political regimes no longer even pretend to seek democratic legitimacy and the consent of the governed, as we have seen recently with the technocratic governments imposed on Greece and Italy – important laboratories for the forms of financial dictatorship yet to come. It is as if a veil has been torn away, revealing the workings of a politico-economic oligarchy whose only ethos was cynical self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement. This oligarchy represents the interests of an economic system which has no future, and yet which continues to operate as if everything can simply carry on as normal. And to think that they call us utopians!

Well, the detritus spat out by this economic machine – the hordes of people whose lives it has devastated – has returned to haunt it. These people have nothing left but their bodies, their ‘bare life’, which they wedge between the cogs of the machine. In their encampments they lay siege, quietly yet determinately, to its glittering towers and citadels. In their vulnerability and nakedness the Occupiers confront the powerful, exposing their ultimate powerlessness and imposture. And our political and economic masters are worried. You can see it in the incoherence and uncertainty of their reactions, which oscillate from entreaties and denunciations to violent repression.

What is so disturbing to the dominant order about the disorderly appearance of bodies, the claiming of space, and the simple refusal to move on? Our biopolitical society operates through the control and surveillance of bodies, gestures and spaces. We move through predetermined spaces in predetermined ways, adopt normalised practices and patterns of behaviour, typically based around consumption and ‘communication’. Even our deviations – depression, illness and other afflictions – themselves follow an established course and are treated in the accepted, medicalised way. Bodies and subjectivities are assigned to different spaces at different times; when they move and communicate, they do so through the usual channels and conduits. Bodies must be on display, and everything must be offered up for inspection. Paradoxically, then, there is no such thing as public space, if by public space we mean spaces that are free from private and commercial interests on the one hand, and state policing and surveillance on the other. Free spaces, in other words. Try standing still for a period of time in the middle of a street, assuming you are not looking through a shop window or participating in some other form of sanctioned behaviour, and you will soon find yourself the subject of suspicion.

When bodies appear where they are not supposed to, and when they act in an unexpected and surprising manner, they are reclaiming a public space – or, rather, reconfiguring a space as public in a genuine sense. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that the space becomes – even if temporarily – part of the commons.

What appears with the Occupation movement is a new kind of political space which is autonomous from the state, which refuses the normal channels of political representation and communication, and for which there is no vanguard or leadership structure. The cry of the indignados in Spain was ‘You do not represent us!’ This has two interconnected meanings: one as a cry of protest against the lack of adequate representation; the other a refusal of representation altogether. You do not represent us, and you cannot represent us! Instead, we find a daily experimentation with new forms of politics in the form of horizontal relations, consensus decision-making and direct action. Critics complain that these movements lack a coherent agenda, leadership structures and a clear set of demands – demands that should be articulated through established political channels. But this tired old refrain simply misses the point and fails to recognise the genuine novelty of these movements: the opening up of an alternative, collective space for autonomous politics.

The Occupy movement thus reinvents the idea of a public life – albeit not in the conventional sense. Indeed, we are reminded here of the figure of Diogenes the Cynic, who lived his life openly and publicly in the agora, sleeping naked in streets and marketplaces of ancient Athens. The scandal of his existence was to collapse the distinction between life and politics, between the private hearth and the public square. Michel Foucault, in his final lectures at the College de France in 1984, reflected on Diogenes as an example of the genuine philosophical life, in which the courage of truth and the ethics of existence was embodied in every gesture and act, in one’s daily life and activities. The ethical life was necessarily a scandalous life and an ascetic life, a life lived in public in the full scorn of society – the life of a dog who sleeps in the streets. The ethical life was also a militant life in the sense that it pitted itself against the norms, mores and institutions of existing society and sought to break radically with them. Foucault shows how the revolutionary politics of the nineteenth century, in particular anarchism, invoked this idea of the other life in its absolute rejection of the prevailing values, conventions and habits.

It seems to me that today we need to invent this idea of the other life again. The coming insurrection involves not simply the toppling of power, but, more importantly, the active experimentation with different relationships, subjectivities, ethical modes and ways of life, in which our own attachment to power is interrogated. As the revolutionary syndicalist, Georges Sorel put it, we must learn new ‘habits of liberty’.

To do politics differently we must learn to live differently, and embody politics in life and life in politics. This is what Foucault was perhaps getting at with the notion of bios philosophikos: ‘The bios philosophikos as straight life is the human being’s animality taken up as a challenge, practiced as an exercise, and thrown in the face of others as a scandal’ (Michel Foucault, ‘The Courage of Truth: the Government of the Self and Others II. Lectures at the College de France, 1983-1984’). Can we see in the movements of Occupation, in the encampments outside St Pauls and in other cities around the world, a glimpse of a new kind of political and philosophical life? The beautiful, simple gesture of sleeping and living on the streets without shame or fear, signifies, like the setting up of the revolutionary barricades of the nineteenth century, a real moment of rupture in our world.

"Saul Newman is Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work includes anarchist theory reconceptualised through a post-structuralist lense, for which he has coined the term ‘post-anarchism’."

Semio-capital and the problem of solidarity - Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

I beg your pardon for the frantic way of my exposition, but the problem is that the object of my reflections is frantic. We are doing so many things without really understanding what is the framework of our actions. I do not pretend to clarify this framework or our understanding of it; I don’t even pretend to come to some conclusions in this short time. But I will try to say something about the coming problem; the coming collapse; the coming insurrection.

I Semio-capital

I propose the concept of semio-capital in order to describe a form of social production which is essentially focused on the production of signs, of ‘semio’. I don’t mean that all forms of social production are semiotic. I know that shoes and cars and houses are produced too. But everything is more and more translated into signs. Everything is more and more replaced, on the economic level, by a semiotic form of production.

So I define semio-capital as the sphere of the increasing replacement of production by a financial - and financial means de-territorialised - and fractal-recombinant form of production. I use the expression fractal in Mandelbrot’s sense [Benoit Mandelbrot was a French-American mathematician - ed.]. A fractal is a geometrical object which is fractured, broken into fragments, which are not simply fragments but recombinable fragments. So if you look at the financial game you see that the real world is simultaneously broken up into infinite fragments and continuously recombined into a new form, a new gestalt, or figure.

So I use the terms fractal and recombinant to describe the financial production of semio-capital. But what about the social forms, the social forces, the social classes - if we can use the term classes? The bourgeoisie was easy to define. The old bourgeoisie was a territorialised class, a class of the ‘bourg’, of the city, of the place. It was a class defined by an affection to a territory, to a community - the bourgeoisie needed people to buy goods, physical goods. The bourgeoisie was a class of physical property - property was made of physical things, buildings, machines, territory or persons. You could personalise the bourgeoisie, the boss, the proprietor, the enemy if you like. The enemy was there - it was a person.

II De-territorialised classes

What about the present social class of capitalism, the present dominant, proprietary, exploitative class? Well, it’s quite difficult to define. Take Warren Buffett, the most capitalist of capitalists, writing a letter saying ‘tax me a little bit more because I’m human not only a capitalist’. Well he is not the enemy. The enemy exists no more, because the enemy is ‘here’. The enemy is me, for instance.

I mean that I am part of the fractalised-recombinant form of financial capitalism, because, for example, I am waiting for my pension. I am part of a group of people who have an interest in the financial success of capitalism because my pension depends on the functioning of capital. What I want to say is that the figure - the image - of the financial class, is predatory, but it is essentially de-territorialised: its ends are internalised at the same time by all of society.

III Work

My third point: what about work? What has work become? We talk of precarious work, precarity, precarisation. But the word precarity does not perfectly define the figure or the notion of fragments of time, of life, that are available for the process of de-territorialised recombination. Your time can be called for on the phone and for one day, one week, two hours; you will be recombined inside the ever changing process of exploitation.

So, work becomes de-territorialised and just as fractal and recombinant as financial capital. But at the same time the social body is pulverised and is deprived of the very bodily existence of the body itself; a disembodied body in a sense, dissolved in the process of work.

IV Solidarity

So this is the problem of solidarity, which is always the central problem of class struggle, of self-organisation, of the process of liberation, of insurrection, revolution and change. Solidarity becomes impossible. Why? Because solidarity is based on a territorial, physical relationship between workers, between people. You cannot have solidarity between fragments of time: you need people, you need bodies, you need what has been dissolved.

Solidarity has nothing to do with altruistic self-denial. Materialist solidarity is not about you. It is about me. Like love, it is never about altruism. It is always about me: myself in your eyes. This is love, this is solidarity: the ability to enjoy myself thanks to you, thanks to your presence, thanks to your eyes.

How can I create solidarity in the conditions of precariousness? This is our main problem, I think, the main problem of the process of subjectivation.

V Intellectuals

So, the last point is about intellectuals. Intellectuals, as you know, no longer exist. Think about what’s happened in France, the country of intellectuals. Intellectuals are dead and tired, and now we have Glucksman, Bernard Levy (These are members of the French New Philosophers movement- the ed) and these kinds of cynical idiots, these kinds of former-Stalinists-turned-neoliberals, those kinds of ‘journalists’ - if I can use this noble word as an insult.

Why are intellectuals disappearing and why do we need intellectuals? We need intellectuals because the real problem nowadays is the bodily re-composition of cognitarian labour. I think that the solution for everything, the solution to our problem of impossible solidarity is in the self-organisation of the general intellect as a body.

The general intellect is looking for a body. This is the crucial thing of the coming insurrection. When you say ‘the riots are dangerous’ [the August 2011 riots - the ed.] - the riots are not riots of solidarity: solidarity is not there; instead, I see fragments fighting each other.

I think that the next insurrection, the insurrection that we will be living through in the next three months, six months, ten years - that is, the European insurrection which has already begun in the streets of London - this European insurrection will not be an insurrection of solidarity, it will be an insurrection in the search of our own body - as a social body, as an erotic body, as a body of solidarity. And this is the main problem of the cognitariat nowadays; that the general intellect is looking for its body.

"Franco Berardi Bifo is an Italian writer and activist from Bologna. In the 1970s he was involved in the Autonomia movement, founding the magazine A/traverso and working for Radio Alice, the first free pirate radio station in Italy. Later, he worked with Felix Guattari in the field of schizoanalysis and contributed to a number of radical magazines. He is the co-founder of the e-zine rekombinant.org and his latest book has been published by AK Press as ‘After the Future’."

Editorial - Remember, Remember: Shift Magazine

Shift’s semi-regular ‘Remember, Remem­ber’ feature was conceived as a chance for reappraisals of past political events, proj­ects and social movements. In our last is­sue we want to use this space to take a look back at our own project, evaluate our own successes and failures and ex­plain some of the reasoning behind our decision to end the project for now.

Shift was started as an attempt to inter­vene into the movements we found our­selves a part of, from the inside and in a comradely way. This intervention was al­ways envisaged at two levels. Firstly, we wanted to create a space for individuals and groups to explore or critique specific analyses, ideas, practices or strategies relevant to our movements, especially those that we as editors felt were particu­larly exciting or problematic. Secondly, in a political scene lacking somewhat in the mechanisms for developing shared analy­ses and perspectives, we saw Shift’s aim of encouraging a climate of debate and reflection among radicals as an interven­tion in itself. The motivation behind the project has always been to contribute to the on-going development of a socially relevant and politically vibrant anti-capi­talist movement committed to challeng­ing both the state and capital, while also refusing to promote non-emancipatory politics. For us, a space for asking diffi­cult political questions and for exploring new ideas or finding new relevance in old ones has a crucial role to play in this pro­cess. And so Shift, with its emphasis on publishing accessible yet challenging and rigorous yet engaging material, was born.

Over 5 years and 15 issues we’ve featured material based around many different groups, events and debates within the movement. Many of our early contribu­tions were levelled at forms of anti-capi­talism that failed to recognise the social nature of capital or which, implicitly or otherwise, were supportive of national borders, population control or austerity-based politics (before austerity became the touchstone of a new political pro­gramme of the state!) We also advocated for a shared politics between what some argued were antithetical manifestations of radical left activity, by highlighting the common anti-capitalist and anti-statist foundations of the No Borders and Cli­mate Camp movements. Where relevant, we published material from prominent movement-oriented theorists such as John Holloway, Werner Bonefeld, Mi­chael Hardt and Alberto Toscano; and from the radical left in other parts of the world - for example, a number of transla­tions from the German non-dogmatic left (including the one in this issue on the M31 and Blockupy mobilisations and the former’s ‘international anti-national’ ori­entation). We also engaged with the edu­cation struggles of 2010-2011, the poten­tials and aftermath of M26 (the TUC ‘March for the Alternative’ held on 26th March 2011), and the riots of August 2011. Our recent series on lifestyle poli­tics has received attention in different parts of the movement, in particular with­in the Radical Routes housing co-operative network and has inspired a series of dis­cussions in Bristol. And Inga Scathach’s piece on Popular Education remains an important and relevant intervention to­day.

Our articles have been reprinted in mobil­ising magazines, books and translated into several languages including German, Latvian and Finnish. The editorial team have presented and hosted discussions and interventions at Climate Camps, No Border camps, independent cinemas, uni­versities and anarchist bookfairs. As we come to the end of our project, demand for our printed magazine is still rising and our website is receiving more visits than ever. We feel proud of creating a space for critical reflection on current practice and arguing for the contribution that an anti-authoritarian, Marxian-inspired politics can make in a period characterised by po­litical stagnation within the Left in gener­al, the increased marginality of radical politics and a resultant retreat into sub-cultural activity and uncritical action-ism. Despite, or more accurately because of, the recent upsurge in political struggle across the globe, we feel that continued commitment to the on-going revitalisa­tion of the anti-authoritarian left is as vi­tal as ever.

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The motivations that have animated Shift throughout its life remain important to us as editors. Much as we’ve always been ex­cited by the conversations that readers have struck up with us at bookfairs and social centres over the years, we were touched to read the many messages of support that we received at the news of the project’s closure (and tickled pink by the trolls on Indymedia). They’ve been a great reward for our hard work and an affirmation that the debates Shift has had the privilege of hosting must continue. Despite all this, Shift is coming to an end in the current moment for a variety of rea­sons. Some of these reasons are personal, our life situations have changed and run­ning a print and online magazine with a small team and an even smaller budget is a taxing and challenging endeavour at the best of times. Whilst maintaining a print presence in an increasingly digital world certainly has its place, it also has draw­backs: it is intensive in time, makes it dif­ficult to be responsive and relevant, and, for the size of audience for which we are publishing, far from financially sustain­able. Meanwhile, just as the political land­scape has changed significantly since we began this project, so too have our politi­cal perspectives shifted. Whilst at times divergence among the editorial group has led to a creative tension within the proj­ect, it has also led in other moments to inconsistency in editorial choices. We leave Shift to dedicate our time to a vari­ety of projects, some theoretical in orien­tation and others based on organising. Although Shift may return at some point in the future, either in the same format or as something different, we are hoping to take the politics and spirit of the project into our new endeavours in the near fu­ture.

As our project comes to an end we have had some time to reflect on our experience of running a UK-based, movement-orient­ed publication. The years of Shift’s life-time have largely corresponded with a low period for the Left, including the radical left, in the UK. With the dwindling of the anti-globalisation movement and no re­verse in the decomposition of the organ­ised working class, for example, during this period the Camp for Climate Action and the No Borders network were two of the few spaces for sustained and vibrant anti-capitalist organising within the UK. These were therefore a strong focus of our project. Of course, many other groups were active in this period, as a glance over the various newsletters and action bulle­tins of the period will confirm. However, the relative fragmentation of these groups - both internally and vis-a-vis one another - along with a general tendency towards actionism over strategy and movement-building meant that they were not gener­ating the sorts of debates that Shift was most interested in hosting. Indeed, at times it was difficult to find content that fitted our criteria of being analytical, eval­uative, polemical or theoretically informed and of contributing to the development of a socially relevant and politically vibrant anti-capitalist movement committed to challenging both the state and capital, while also refusing to promote non-eman­cipatory politics.

These challenges were compounded by (and in no doubt resulted from) a reluc­tance from some parts of the anarchist and activist world to engage in public de­bate and disagreement and the difficulty of finding writers on certain topics (we often mused that a writing group might have been more appropriate a project). These factors led us at times down more obscure angles and away from the con­cerns and experiences of large parts of the audience we were meant to be writing for. This didn’t help claims against us as a group of aloof pseudo-academics that were not ‘real activists’. Alongside charges of being unengaged outsiders, many of our articles were not accepted in the com­radely spirit of critique in which they were written. We made enemies and lost poten­tial political allies through the publication of some of our articles on topics such as climate change, Palestine and Indymedia.

This said, we are willing to admit that de­spite these aims, at times our material has been overly polemical. What is more, in some cases we have also slipped, unwit­tingly or too quickly, into glib or cynical criticism. The latter denigrates the worth of the sort of constructive critique and questioning, aimed at challenging our­selves to do better, that is so vital to healthy, ambitious and vibrant political movements. Undoubtedly there’s been an element here of overcompensation for an exaggerated lack of critique in the move­ment. Perhaps also our insistence on chal­lenging sloppiness and resignation have, ironically, played into exactly the defeatist tendencies that they were intended to confront (tendencies that, after all, are the product of the historic crisis of the left); and, despite ourselves, had a dispiriting rather than a rallying effect. Shift’s en­gagement with the Occupy movement, for example, could have fallen prey to this shortcoming. On one hand, our challenge to Occupy’s accommodation of conspiracy theory-based politics remains an impor­tant intervention. On the other hand, we were slow to balance this with discussion of the movement’s achievements and in­novations, and to recognise that, emerg­ing as they do from contradictory social relations, radical movements will always carry such contradictions with them.

Nonetheless, the strong hostility that Shift has sometimes experienced has amounted in some cases to a damaging anti-intellectualism: whereby political in­terventions are not seen as legitimate parts of movement but rather as external, less legitimate forms of political activity. On this point, we agree wholeheartedly with Tabitha and Hannah Bast-McClure when, in their article in this issue of Shift, they point out that intellectual activity has somehow – and so very mistakenly – become branded a tool of oppression rath­er than a weapon of emancipatory politics. As well as working on Shift all of our edi­tors have been involved in other capacities with many of the groups, initiatives and areas of organisation that we have pub­lished about. However, we feel that dem­onstrating ‘activist credentials’ should not be a necessity for arguments to be taken seriously.

Another question that has surfaced peren­nially when making editorial decisions has been that of who exactly we are addressing through the project. What exactly is the movement in which we have sought to in­tervene? Whilst inspired by Marxian poli­tics our work was not aimed at existing socialist groups but rather at groups from the anarchist and ‘activist’, direct-action tradition. At times of high creativity and traction, the movement came to resemble exactly that, a movement (or at least the fuzziness of its boundaries became less problematic, and more of a creative ten­sion of movement); but in periods of stag­nation or lesser coherence, the question of who we were addressing – and with what purpose – became more problematic. Par­ticularly during such periods, we’ve won­dered, variously, whether an anarchist movement even existed, whether we were writing for an imagined audience, or whether we’d slipped into addressing a constituency inspired by different politi­cal traditions and aims (and with different historical baggage) than our own. Again, in times of stagnation, we found it partic­ularly difficult to navigate the delicate bal­ance between addressing the questions al­ready circulating within ‘the movement’, and challenging the latter to look beyond itself for inspiration (with the latter some­times being conservatively conceived, by ourselves as much as others, as an exter­nal imposition or as intellectual vanguard­ism). Facing thorny issues such as these should by no means be reason to give up on projects with similar aims as Shift. They merely highlight some of the chal­lenges that movement-oriented maga­zines inevitably encounter.

Finally, as with other projects with which we’re involved and those we see around us, Shift has also felt the humbling and disorienting effect wrought by a changed political landscape in the wake of the up­surge in struggle, nationally and globally, since 2010-11. As with the other projects with which we’re involved, Shift has had its assumptions and ambitions starkly challenged. We’ve witnessed the birth of a new chapter of struggle. And with this new chapter has come new political actors, new political forms and new infrastruc­tures. When the student movement kicked off, for example, its debates found expression not in the pages of Shift or other vet­erans of the anarchist publishing scene, but instead in an explosion of new plat­forms and voices, some appropriately ephemeral, others more lasting. Faced with this new terrain, Shift has made some first steps to adapt, to make our­selves relevant, to reach new audiences. Increasingly though we’ve felt that our continued engagement with the politics we’ve sought to promote via Shift might be better channelled through different ve­hicles. It’s not that a project like Shift is not capable of adapting (and of becoming stronger for it), simply that Shift’s current editors are ready to move on and to allow new projects to flourish. These consider­ations surely chime strongly with John Holloway and Michael Hardt’s discussion, featured in this issue, of the respective roles of habit and institution-building ver­sus invention and subversion. The ‘Experi­ments in regroupment’ series featured in this issue, in which we interview some of the new groupings that have emerged since the dust has settled on 2010-11, is evidence that these questions of regroupment and continuity are being taken up by the movement.

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Ultimately, we are proud of what we have achieved with Shift and pleased to be quit­ting while we’re ahead. We believe we’ve instigated some important debates, sug­gested interesting new avenues for others and, perhaps, helped steer still others away from dodgy terrain. We hope we’ve been a strong advocate for an anti-author­itarian, Marxian-inspired politics and a reasonable and principled voice in several of the debates we’ve seen in our corner of the left over the past few years. Above all, we’ve enjoyed it, good, bad and ugly. We’d like to thank all our writers, artists, dis­tributors, supporters, readers and even our trolls - it’s been a blast!

The Shift Editors

We haven’t even started yet! On the state of anti-capitalist protest in Germany in the summer of 2012

The following article is a translation of a German text written as an evaluation of the recent M31 and ‘Blockupy’ mobilisations in Germany in spring 2012. Its author, the …ums Ganze! alliance, was one of the key organisers of the M31 initiative, which is an attempt – via an initial international day of action on 31st March – at co-ordinating action against capitalism across Europe. The M31 network includes the …ums Ganze! alliance and the anarcho-syndicalist FAU (Free Workers’ Union) from Germany, anti-fascist groups in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands and groups from the Ukraine and Russia. The day of action was also supported by organisations such as the Spanish CNT and the Solidarity Federation in Britain who picketed businesses profiting from the British governments Workfare scheme on the same day.

Shift decided to translate and publish this article to help continue the discussions which the M31 initiative has begun, further discussions around the opportunities and difficulties of international organising and bring out some of the differences between the M31 day of action and Blockupy. In particular, we wanted to highlight the authors’ vision for the emergence, on a European-wide scale, of an anti-capitalist movement based on a radical ‘international antinational’ perspective of the crisis: that is, a perspective critical of nationalist or social democratic responses to the crisis (for an important theoretical contribution to the development of such a perspective, see Shift’s translation of the text ‘International Antinationalism!’, authored by the ‘Just Do It!’ working group of AntiFa AK Cologne, available at: http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=603). We believe that such an orientation could significantly strengthen the UK anti-austerity movement. With its strong focus on public sector cuts and reforms - and with internationalist gestures largely remaining limited to statements or acts of solidarity with movements elsewhere - the latter’s ‘official’ (TUC-led) face, at the very least, has so far lacked such an outward orientation grounded in a joined up analysis of global crisis.

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Until spring, everything seemed to be just the way it has always been. While thousands of people in Spain and Greece took to the streets to protest the biggest austerity program since World War II, the German Bild Zeitung [a populist, conservative German tabloid - the translator] unabashedly agitated against the ‘bankrupt Greeks’. Moreover, the German chancellor, Merkel, even demanded the right to intervene in matters of fiscal policy of states that receive EU aid, while the foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, implored the Greek government to ‘do their homework’.

This newly instigated German chauvinism has been shored up by the domestic pact between labour and capital, led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who supported authoritarian austerity measures against the ‘southern European good-for-nothings’, along with the unions, whose outreach of solidarity usually ends at the German border. However, the pan-European day of action ‘M31’ in late March and the ‘Blockupy’ protests in May boldly opposed this development with heavy protest. Both M31 and Blockupy strongly criticized the German handling of the crisis in the Eurozone. Further, they emphasized that neither financial crises nor authoritarian austerity measures are inevitable natural phenomena; rather, they have much more to do with the capitalist excess that has historically been a permanent crisis for the largest part of the world population. With this critique, a couple of thousand people went out on M31 and during Blockupy to protest for a better, more solidary society beyond capitalism. Despite the different results of both events, they might mark the beginning of a new, more political and critical perception of the crisis for many people, entailing a challenge to the dominant discourse of Germany being the ‘winner’ of the crisis, and its justification for inaction.

Clearly, we are, as of yet, far from establishing an intelligent anti-capitalist counter hegemony. Much too often, coarse criticism is directed towards the greedy bankers and fat cats and not against structural problems of capitalism. Against this background, M31 and Blockupy offered different answers: that is, for emancipatory perspectives beyond state, nation, and capital. M31 was conceived as a pan-European, locally organised day of action with a clear anti-capitalist agenda. In Frankfurt, M31 peaked in a demonstration [Frankfurt is Germany’s main financial hub and thus a symbolic place for anti-capitalist protest – the translator]. We, as the …ums Ganze! alliance, made up of over 10 groups from across Germany, tried to scandalise both the German doctrine of austerity-based policies and neoliberal concepts of economic order. Our most important goals as organizers were to have …ums Ganze!’s anti-capitalist and anti-national position publicly discussed in the context of the Eurocrisis; and to demonstrate solidarity with the Greek people who have been affected by the austerity measures. It worked. In preparation for the day of action, we agreed on five common goals with the Krisenbuendnis Frankfurt (Crisis Alliance Frankfurt) and the FAU (Free Workers’ Union), both of whom were signatories to the initiative. Firstly, the protests were to have an anti-capitalist, anti-national, anti-statist, self-organised, and inclusive character. Our second demand was to transcend the national limitation of crisis protest. The latter will be a political process in the proper sense. But it is also one that calls for new structures and forms of actions. By establishing a network together with activists from other countries with whom we share strategic goals and a strategic repertoire, the recent protests were a first step in this direction. What these agreed goals meant in practice was a strong rejection of both the German government – in its self-appointed role as European taskmaster – and the European Central Bank (ECB), with its technocratic project to raise the competitiveness of European capitalism at the expense of the working and the unemployed alike.

It was important for us to present a perspective for a better life beyond state, nation and capital. What we did not expect, however, was the positive reaction across Europe around the day of action. In Germany, many groups, from Flensburg to Munich, followed our lead and called for protest. Further, people in more than 30 cities all over Europe participated in rallies and demonstrations: for example, in Athens, Milan, Kiev, Utrecht, Zagreb, and Vienna, in many Spanish cities and even in New York and Mexico City. Some of these events just had symbolic character, but still, the M31 actions succeeded in establishing a tangible political reference point for the crisis. For us, this response indicates that, after two decades of neoliberal redistribution, there is a widespread desire to express general criticism against capitalism beyond the established forms of representation. For this reason as well, we would evaluate M31 as success that did not need to be assessed by the number of smashed windows, but rather by its role in promoting a rebirth of popular anti-capitalist protest in Germany. Still, the media reports were largely negative, portraying the demonstration as a largely Black Block protest. Given this context, the behaviour of the media and the political establishment towards M31 was, even by their bourgeois standards, dishonest and cynical: while the effects of German-European crisis politics is social devastation in southern Europe, while people in Spain and Greece die because neither they nor the state can afford public healthcare, M31 was depicted as violent rioting just because some symbolic windows were broken – at a Jobcentre, an employment agency, a government immigration unit, a police station, and a bridal shop. Indeed, as the Blockupy days of action approached, the state and the media sensationalised about an unpredictable political threat in Frankfurt.

In contrast to M31, Blockupy was not an overtly anti-capitalist form of protest. The Blockupy alliance, especially the Interventionist Left [a coalition of groups from across Germany, most famous for its efforts to create a pluralistic yet radical mobilising platform as part of the 2007 G8 summit protests in Heiligendamm. For more, read Red Pepper’s excellent feature: www.redpepper.org.uk/moving-against/ – the ed.], was aimed at all those who wanted to protest against the policy of the German federal government and of the Troika. Additionally, Blockupy made use of mass mobilisation and openly cooperated with unions and parties from the left. We, as the …ums Ganze! alliance, again participated in the protest, this time with a designated anti-capitalist space, featuring newspapers, flyers, and workshops about ‘social-chauvinism’ [see Endnotes below for an explanation of this term – the ed.], ‘international anti-nationalism’ [see Shift’s translation of Antifa AK Cologne’s recent text for more on this concept – the ed.] and the wretched hopelessness of left reformism. Due to repressive police action, we were only able to carry out about half of this programme, but we are still quite satisfied with the results.

Blockupy was intended to become a kind of anti-capitalist Wendland – the long-time heartland of Germany’s strong, non-violent direct action anti-nuclear movement – in Frankfurt. However, the German government’s reaction was unprecedented. In May, the city authorities of Frankfurt and the state government of Hesse, the state in which Frankfurt is situated, decided to ban all planned public events that were to be held as part of Blockupy. Several thousand police officers were brought into the city, all protest was criminalised, usually justified in the media by referring to the M31 ‘riots’. Thus, Blockupy revealed the fragility of liberal commitments to civil liberties when faced with meaningful popular protest: several courts legitimated the ban on protest in the city, arguing that protest might infringe upon the basic right of private property, especially for the inner-city bankers and traders who might be affected by the urban blockade.

As the actual blockade approached, the reactions of media and the political establishment towards the perceived threat became more and more ridiculous. Still, they revealed that Blockupy, just like M31 before it, has touched a nerve. The city government of Frankfurt did not hesitate one second to sacrifice its liberal ambition in favour of a police-state like reaction. Though absolutely scandalous, this is not too surprising. Law and order at any price, without regard for basic civil liberties, has always been a part of authoritarian politics. And it has now arrived in Germany too. Given this, describing the political reaction to Blockupy as ‘exaggerated’ falls a bit short of the problem. Liberalism has always had the full force of the state to back up its strategic assets – and Frankfurt this May was no exception. From this perspective, it would seem that the political elites used Blockupy as a preparation for more aggressive crisis protests, as an adaption to the state of emergency. What Blockupy successfully revealed, therefore, is the concrete line of conflict between those who hold on to the current capitalist system and those who desire something better.

From a position of ideological critique, the reactions of the German administration in Frankfurt are very interesting. In a situation that was, compared with Greek or Spanish conditions, a fairly low level threat, the administration responded in what can only be considered a paranoid manner: 500 people were denied access to the city and another 1,500 were detained prior to the days of action and only released afterwards. Furthermore, it is remarkable that the Hessian political elites did not only try to ban the Saturday demonstration, but also that the courts, which in Germany are usually fairly liberal, legitimated this anti-liberal approach, referring to the danger the demonstration posed to private property. The political establishment, the courts, the banks and the retail industry alike feared limitations to the conduct of business in Frankfurt. Anticipating violence, the banks gave some of their employees time off and relocated certain operations to the suburbs. With the media gladly picking up on this fear, anti-capitalist activists were quickly rendered as violent mobsters that would hunt down white-collar professionals if they were let loose in the city.

Consistently, the police turned Frankfurt into a fortress. Although the courts later ruled that all detentions and denials of access to the city were issued illegally, the repressive behaviour of the police remained in force throughout the days of action and they continued to detain activists. Despite this, and thanks to the defiance of hundreds of people, many smaller protests occurred throughout the city. Several days of protest, along with the massive police presence, also polarised the population of Frankfurt. The liberal newspaper the Frankfurter Rundschau, for example, changed its coverage of the event entirely: it began in support of the government reaction but gradually shifted to a more bourgeois criticism of the police strategy. Despite all of this, the critical mass needed for a blockade of the ECB was not reached as too few people turned up. Meanwhile, at least the police themselves shut down Frankfurt’s main financial and commercial area as an effect of their strategy.

With more than 30,000 participants, the Saturday demonstration was one of the largest in some time. Alongside the left reformist reductions of speakers from Attac, the unions and the Left party, much criticism was directed against individuals (greedy bankers etc.). Some anti-Semitic morons even wrote calls to boycott Israel on their bellies. Another problem was the focus on the administrative response to Blockupy. Some organisers and protesters seemed to be content merely that the demonstration was, eventually, allowed to take place. But these problematic positions did not dominate the protest march. Rather, criticism of the German, neoliberal-styled handling of the crisis in the Eurozone stood in the center of the protest and most demonstrators showed solidarity with those affected by the German-imposed austerity programmes.

More than 5,000 people also demonstrated in an explicitly anti-capitalist bloc: organised by the Interventionist Left and …ums Ganze!, this bloc borrowed from the strategic repertoire and outward appearance associated with the black bloc, yet was inclusive, colourful and vibrant. Participants of this bloc countered the police’s aggressive tactics with good humour, which we consider to be a positive sign for future projects together. In sum, both M31 and Blockupy put the political aspect of the crisis back onto the agenda. This is an achievement we must seek to replicate in our future actions.

What is required in the current stage of the crisis is bottom-up, cross-border networking between protest movements. We need to recognise and confront the small-scale and fragmented nature of our movements head on. Here, in the Federal Republic of Germany, we want to embrace the dialogue that has been opened between us and the those groups who supported the M31 and Blockupy protests and with all those interested in a radical criticism of capitalism. M31 has proved that we can forge complex alliances within a short period. In the near future, we want to strengthen interregional networks with a variety of political groups in order to quickly coordinate activities on an international scale. We would be delighted to participate in shared international projects and we are always interested in discussions, no matter where. Our collective goal should be the delegitimisation of the current crisis politics and crisis analysis and the development of a social and intellectual counter-hegemony made up of all those affected by it on an international level. We are not megalomaniac: the scale of our ambition is determined by the almost permanent nature of capitalism itself. Our critique of current conditions, which refuses to be directed at anything less than the whole system […ums Ganze! loosely translates to ‘All of it!’ – the translator], will need to prove itself in the future. Clearly, there are as of yet few tangible alternatives to capitalism. But they do not just pop out of thin air, they are made in the political process.

…ums Ganze!, August 2012

Endnotes:

Social chauvinism is a term used on the German anti-authoritarian left. The definition provided here is a loose translation of the one given in a recent pamphlet on social chauvinism, produced by the ‘Alliance against Racism and Social Chauvinism’ (of which TOP, another of the groups in …ums Ganze!, is part): ‘social chauvinism’ is the ideology of capitalist crisis. It promotes enmity against all those who do not fit the ideal type of an efficient, driven and motivated individual competing in the capitalist rat race. Its proponents stigmatise and exclude others as ‘unproductive’, ‘lazy’ or ‘benefit cheats’ in an attempt to cement their own utility for capital. ‘Social chauvinism’ denies the social origins and structural causes of poverty, presenting instead an image of social exclusion as resulting from a lack of individual aspiration. Its logic forecloses the thinking of alternatives to (national) economic competition and to the cult of business performance. Aggressive forms of ‘social chauvinism’ are (a populist) manifest across party lines.

Creating commonwealth and cracking capitalism: a cross-reading (Part II) - John Holloway, Michael Hardt.

June 2011

Dear John,

I think you’re right that walking so closely together can sometime make us trip and stumble when reading each other. A kind of irritation arises when, after having agreed so much with the other’s argument, we come across a point or argument that sticks out and that we can’t accept. Part of our task here is to clear up the seeming conflicts that are merely due to misunderstandings or terminological differences (no small task) and clarify the important points on which we disagree.

I appreciate how much the term institution sits poorly with you and thus I am grateful that you work through it so tenaciously in your letter until you finally arrive on a formulation where we do, in fact, agree. You can accept a mandate to institutionalise if that is always accompanied with a simultaneous process of subversion. Yes, institutionalise and subvert – a good motto we can share.

But, of course, our views of this do differ so let me return to them a bit more. As you note, Toni and I come to the discussion of institution from our preoccupation with the need for organisation. Revolt comes first but spontaneity is not enough. Rebellion must be organised in a revolutionary process. On these basic points I think we differ little. The contrast comes, as you say, in where the accent falls and, in particular, the extent to which the stability of organisation is emphasised.

On the molecular level I’m not convinced that our difference in emphasis is very significant. I understand that notions of habit, custom, and repeated practices seem restrictive to you and you fear they can blunt innovation. I insist, however, that forms-of-life only exist through structures of repetition. Our lives and bonds to each other are supported by innumerable habits and repeated practices, many of which we are not aware. This is not only a matter of the time we have dinner each night and when we go for a walk on Sundays, but also how we relate to each other and maintain both intimate and social bonds (Marcel Proust’s novel seems to me the classic investigation of how a life is constituted by complex webs of habits and repeated practices). Such institutions do, as you suggest, link the present to the future but not necessarily in the way you fear. You worry that social habits restrict us to repeating the social and organisational forms of previous generations. I am more oriented toward what Spinoza calls prudence: regarding the future as if it were present and acting on that basis. This is not only how we act today against the industries and practices that will create by 2050 catastrophic CO2 levels but also the way we constantly create a perspective of duration in our relations with each other. This is also true with regard to love. Love is not only an event of rupture, shattering, and transformation but also a bond. I continually return to those I love. That does not mean that love is a static, fixed relationship. Love is innovation, you rightly say, going beyond. Yes, but there is also a ritual to love, returning to the beloved and repeating our shared practices. In the context of those rituals the innovations of love emerge. Institutionalise and subvert, as you say, or repetition with difference. In any case, at this molecular level I understand that you and I approach the question of institution from different perspectives but I don’t see great consequence to our differences.

At the molar level, in contrast, I think our differences are more significant. Toni and I put the emphasis on institution or, really, on creating new institutional forms in order to develop an alternative governance. I think you can accept and even be comfortable with some version of this project. Some of the greatest successes of the EZLN in Chiapas, for example, have been their creation of institutions of an alternative governance. Caracoles, Juntas de buen gobierno, and the myriad norms and procedures that govern Zapatista communities are excellent examples of the kind of experimentation with new, democratic institutional forms that we are advocating. My sense is that you are generally supportive of this level of Zapatista institutional practice. Here too the slogan institutionalise and subvert works well: all practices should be submitted to a constant force of critique, walk forward questioning (this is a translation of a phrase popularised by the Zapatistas. The Spanish is: ‘preguntando caminamos’ - the ed.).

Our differences come out more clearly with regard to established institutions of which we are critical. Like you, Toni and I are critical of the official trade unions and their traditions but for us that does not position us in complete opposition to the entire union movement. Small segments of the union movement continually try to move out of the tradition and in new directions: for periods (sometimes brief) portions (often small minorities) of the FIOM in Italy, SUD in France, and the SEIU in the United States, for example, have sought to chart new directions. Our inclination is to enter into dialogue with these syndicalist elements while at the same time subverting their traditional logics, both inside and outside their institutional structures. Does institutionalise and subvert make sense to you also in this context? Or, rather, here is another way of approaching the same question in terms of your book: can and should “doing” be organised and, if so, what relation would these organisations bear to the history of organised labour? How would you characterse the syndicalist practices of doing? I’m attracted to the idea of constructing “soviets of doing” but I fear that idea would horrify you.

Our differences are probably most pronounced with regard to the so-called progressive governments in power today, especially those in Latin America. As you know, Toni and I, like you, are critical of all of these Leftist parties and governments, from Argentina and Brazil to Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. And like for you too our hopes and inspirations are linked primarily not to the governments but the powerful social movements that created the possibility of their electoral victories. But we do not regard these governments solely as antagonists. Here too I like the dual stance of your slogan, institutionalise and subvert. I would say, in other words, that the advent of these governments creates a new (and in some respects better) terrain of struggle in which the movements need to continue the struggles against neoliberal practices, economic paradigms based on extraction (including reliance on oil, gas, soy monoculture, and the like), racial hierarchies, and many others. I sense that the kind of critical engagement with which Toni and I feel comfortable seems alien and even dangerous to you. This is probably a real difference between us and I’m not sure there is much to say about it.
(One small clarification: You are perplexed by a passage in our book in which Toni and I seem to be proposing that the UN institute a global guaranteed income. Your instincts are right that we are not proposing this. The passage comes in a paradoxical section of our book in which we attempt a thought experiment about how capital would reform if it were able to act rationally in its self-interest. We try to follow through the logic of capitalist reform, we say, all the while knowing that such reforms are impossible and the logic will eventually collapse.)

This might be the right time to bring up another question I had reading ‘Crack Capitalism’, which is probably related to the issue of institutions but in different frame. A primary antagonist in your argument is abstract labour and, if I understand correctly, the conceptual processes of abstraction more generally. I don’t think I share your opposition to abstraction. Let’s start with abstract labour in Marx by way of exchange value. In my reading of the opening pages of ‘Capital’ in which Marx details how the exchange value of a commodity obscures and takes precedence over its use value, just as abstract labour takes precedence over concrete labour, this does not imply a symmetrical anti-capitalist project pointing in the opposite direction. In other words, a political project to affirm use value over exchange value sounds to me like a nostalgic effort to recapture a precapitalist social order. Marx’s project instead, as I see it, pushes through capitalist society to come out the other side. In the same way I don’t see abstract labour as the antagonist. It’s a simplification (but an important one, I think) to say that without abstract labour there would be no proletariat. If the labour of the bricklayer, the joiner, the weaver, the agricultural worker, and the autoworker were each to remain concrete and incommensurable, we would have no concept of labour in general (labour without regard to its form of expenditure, as Marx says), which potentially links them together as a class. I know this must sound to you like I’m turning around and affirming the tradition of working class organisations now, but I’m not or, at least, not uncritically. In fact, abstraction is necessary for us to argue against the corporatist structures that have plagued that tradition. Such abstraction too is what made possible the domestic labour debates in social feminist circles in the US and the UK in the 1970s and 80s, recognising as work the unwaged domestic activities and practices of care that continue to characterise the sexual division of labour. Abstract labour, then, as I understand it, is not a thing but an analytic, a way of grasping the continuities across the worlds of labour.

In part I think what I just wrote might obscure the issue because you and I are using the terms differently. My guess is that you are using abstraction (and abstract labour) to name the processes and structures of exploitation by which capital measures and expropriates the value produced by our labour and exerts command over our lives. And, in contrast, “doing” serves for you as the self-organised, autonomous labour that we could create a space for in the cracks of the capitalist order. Ok, that can work for me. In fact, your argument in this regard corresponds well with and complements our argument in Chapter 3 of ‘Commonwealth’ about what we call the crisis of capitalist biopolitical production, the emerging composition of labour, and the new possibilities for autonomy from capital.

But, I suppose that even though I was trying to move away from the question of institution it sneaks back in here again. Yes, I want to appreciate each doing in its singularity but I also want to grasp what is common to the myriad doings across society (is this a logic of abstract doing?) I want organisation. Try to wash out of your mouth the bad taste of my proposition earlier for creating soviets of doing. How are doings organised and what is the form of their organisation?
It’s not so easy to move away from the question of organisation and institution. It keeps coming back. I guess that’s an area where we still have work to do to understand our differences.

Best, Michael

October 2011

Dear Michael,

Lots and lots of stimulus here, agreement and disagreement, lovely.

Let me go straight to a sentence that slips unobtrusively into your argument but that I suspect is an important key to our differences. You say, in the context of the discussion of abstract labour: “Marx’s project instead, as I see it, pushes through capitalist society to come out the other side”. But I do not want to push through capitalism to come out the other side: I want us to get out now, while there is still time, if there is still time. There must be some kind of way out of here (as Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix put it) – though of course there may not.

This is Benjamin’s emergency brake (Walter Benjamin’s comment that: “Marx called Revolutions the locomotives of world history. But perhaps it is totally different: perhaps it is the people in these trains reaching for the emergency brake.” - the ed.) We are on a train heading for disaster, rushing toward the total annihilation of humanity. It no longer makes sense, if it ever did, to think of coming out the other side. We need to pull the emergency brake, stop the train (or, jumping metaphors, capitalism is an over-ripe, rotting apple, or a zombie, already dead but marching on, destroying all). Not progress, then, but rupture. Here, now.

I suspect that much of your argument in your and Toni’s trilogy rests on the view that pushing through capitalist society will take us to the other side. Certainly you say that capital is on a path of destruction (p.306), but that is not quite the same as saying that capital is a path to destruction, as I would. Your formulation suggests that its course can be altered, whereas my feeling is that breaking with capital is a necessary precondition for stopping the rush to destruction. You follow your statement about capital being on the path of destruction by proposing a reformist programme for capital as a way of moving towards a transition to a different society, whereas I see capitalism as being already in an advanced stage of decomposition, with all sorts of projects for alternative societies overflowing its banks, and suggest that we should throw all our energies into those overflowings or cracks.

This helps to situate our differences on institutionalisation. We meet happily on the ground of institutionalise-and-subvert, but I feel that within this tension we lean in different directions. You put your emphasis on the importance of institutionalisation, whereas I want us to throw our weight on the side of subversion, of constantly moving against-and-beyond. Institutionalise-and-subvert is not, for me, “repetition with difference”, as you suggest, but a repeated process of rupture, of breaking, negating.

Of course it is not just a question of breaking. Revolt is not enough – that is the shared starting point of our exploration. What then? Communise. This is the word that I am drawn to more and more. Break and weave social relations on a different basis. Obviously it comes close to your Common Wealth, but I feel it’s important to think in terms of verbs rather than nouns, in terms of our doings. The problem, as always, is the material production of life. If we scream against capital but are not able to live in a way that breaks with capital, then we won’t get very far with our revolt. In order to break capitalist social relations we need the support of new productive forces, not in the old orthodox-Marxist sense of technology but rather in the sense of a new weaving of human activity. So absolutely YES to your soviets of doing, which you think will horrify me. Doing-against-labour means for me a collective or communising movement of self-determination which has at its centre a self-determination of our own activity – our own productive force. Perhaps the movement creates new institutions, but only as the water in a stream rests for a moment in pools and then flows on. I think that would be my answer to your final question, “How are doings organised and what is the form of their organisation?” If we think of doing as a movement of communising self-determination, then we can hardly lay down what form it should take. At best, we can look at past and present experiences and draw suggestions from them.

We differ on the issue of abstract labour. I understand abstract labour as the substance of the social bond that is money. In other words, the fact that we exchange our products as commodities abstracts from us, takes away from us, control over our own activities. Abstract labour (and therefore money) is the core of the negation of social self-determination, and therefore any struggle for social self-determination must be a struggle against abstract labour (and money). To say, as you do, that there would be no proletariat without abstract labour is true, but who needs a proletariat? I imagine you agree that the proletariat’s existence is the struggle against its own existence as proletariat. To say that “a political project to affirm use value over exchange value sounds to me like a nostalgic effort to recapture a precapitalist social order” seems to me completely wrong. It could well be so, but for me it is the essence of the struggle to create a communist or anti-capitalist society. If you do not see the struggle as being to create a different sort of creative activity (a doing liberated from abstract labour) and therefore a different sort of product (a use value liberated from value), does this not bring you very close to Leninism, which, of course, was blind to the distinction between abstract and concrete labour, with disastrous results?

There’s much more to be said. On the progressive governments, for example: it is not that I regard them solely as antagonists. It is rather that the organisational form which they have adopted (the state) integrates them into the generality of capitalist social relations and turns them, tendentially at least, against movements that are directed against capitalism. Look at Bolivia in the last couple of months.

But rather than go on and on, I want to end with a quandary. A dilemma perhaps for both of us, but I suspect we lean different ways. You say near the beginning of your letter “Revolt comes first but spontaneity is not enough. Rebellion must be organised in a revolutionary process.” I’m fine with the first sentence, it’s the second that makes me pause, wonder, feel shocked, wonder again. Rebellion for me is a massive and explosive confluence of discontents and other-doings, the dramatic coming together of so many puncturings of capitalist social relations. In order to avoid being swamped by a re-surging of capital, there must be a communising (or a confluence of cracks) so strong that the social nexus of money is shattered or rendered irrelevant. If you like, the rebellion must organise itself in such a way as to gather sufficient momentum to break capitalism completely. Organisation is crucial, but not an organisation: it has to be an organising that comes from below, a communising. Is that what you mean when you say “Rebellion must be organised in a revolutionary process”? I wonder.

A pleasure.

John

October 2011

Dear John,
Some misunderstandings persist. It’s clear, for example, that we understand abstraction and abstract labour in very different ways. And the paradoxical passage in Commonwealth in which we conduct a thought experiment about capitalist reform to demonstrate its impossibility comes up again in this letter and leads you again to think that such reform is our programme. But really such misunderstandings are minor and I suspect that even when they loom large in our eyes they matter little to our readers.

What strikes me most strongly reading over our correspondence, though, is the common theoretical and political terrain we share. We meet happily, as you say, on the terrain of “institutionalise and subvert” – as well as “subvert and institutionalise” (since the process certainly works both ways). But then, you add, we move in different directions or, at least, put the accent on different sides of the equation. This difference comes out most clearly, I think, when we express apprehensions about the formulations of the other. I am often on guard against placing too much faith in spontaneous revolt because on its own it fails to create lasting alternatives, and thus I insist on constituent processes. You instead fear more the fixity of repeated practices and institutional structures, and thus you privilege rupture and movement. I found particularly interesting in this regard the apprehensions expressed in our brief exchange about love. But even such differences of emphasis should not be exaggerated since we clearly share each other’s preoccupations to a large degree.

I’m happy, then, to leave off our correspondence here, with the hope that we can take it up again when the movements, and we too, have taken a few more steps forward.

All the best, Michael

John Holloway is a Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla in Mexico.

Michael Hardt is professor of Literature at Duke University in the USA and has published several books, including ‘Empire’ and ‘Commonwealth’, with Antonio Negri.

Regroupment Interview 1: Collective Action

Why has your organisation formed?

As we state on the ‘About Us’ section of our website the Collective Action project aims to re-visit our anarchist communist political tradition and re-group and re-kindle our political action in relation to the challenges of the 21st century in a country located at the centre of the system of global capitalist hegemony. We also state that this focus on re-groupment is complemented with the aim of practicing and developing the approaches we advocate through our conduct as both militants and members of Collective Action. In other words, while critically assessing the historical experience of anarchist communism we look to further enrich our revolutionary theory through an ongoing involvement in the living struggle of classes. Moreover, future dialogue and interaction with like-minded groups and individuals from around the world will, over time, naturally inform and influence our international perspectives.

What are you hoping to organise around and how?

Launched on 1st May this year, Collective Action is a new association and, as yet, is relatively small in numbers. However, as we reject the concept of political vanguardism in favour of one of a leadership of ideas, by way of social insertion we seek to develop a strategy and tactics capable of building a strong, effective base for our anarchist communist ethos within the wider working class. In practical terms this will involve principled co-operation with diverse anti-authoritarian militants in conflicts as they ensue. Anarchists often speak of the need to nurture a new society of freedom within the shell of the old. For this vision to become reality a consistently pro-active approach to revolutionary struggle is imperative. We refer to this required process as building counter-power.

What are the differences between CA and Afed and Solfed? Does the UK need another anarchist membership organisation?

Simply put, Collective Action is a current within the anarchist communist movement seeking re-groupment. The Solidarity Federation, by contrast, is an anarcho-syndicalist union and, as such, has very little to do with our perspective. Acknowledgment of this fact, of course, implies no disrespect to SolFed whatsoever. CA emerged from the Anarchist Federation largely as a response to the latter’s penchant for propagandism and apathetic attitude towards coherent organisation. In contradistinction to this our association has identified with Especifismo; the need for specifically anarchist organisation built around a unity of ideas and praxis. In order to carry our project forward a membership structure is essential.

Especifismo or “Specifism” refers to a organisationalist current within the anarchist tradition which is principally elaborated by the FARJ (Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janiero) but has its roots in the writings of Bakunin, Makhno and Malatesta (among others).

Specifists argue that a lot of the mistakes of activists result from a confusion of the social and political level. The social levels are those struggles that exist within the material and ideological framework of capitalism (bread-and-butter issues in layman terms). These are heavily determined by a wider cultural, economic and political framework that will cause them to ebb-and-flow, one example being the way that the ongoing financial crisis has provoked an acceleration of working class resistance in certain sectors and geographical areas. Anarchists need to find a way of engaging with these struggles in a way that relates directly to their existing composition and level of class consciousness. However anarchists also need to maintain their own coherent vision of an alternative society - anarchist communism. This is the political level. Strategically what results from this understanding of the political and social levels is a practice of “organisational dualism” where specifically anarchist groups (hence the term “specifism”) with well defined positions of principle and operating under conditions of political unity at the political level intervene, participate within or seek to build popular movements at the social level. The objective of this intervention is not to “capture” or establish anarchist fronts but to create the correct conditions, by arguing for anarchist methods and ideas, for the flourishing of working class autonomy. This autonomy is the basis for working class counter-power and revolutionary change.

Specifism is a praxis that seeks to strike the balance between a healthy relationship of influence within the class and an ideologically coherent communist organisation, while rejecting the vanguardist approaches of Leninist groups. Many people associate these ideas solely with Makhno’s “Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists” but they actually date from one of the first organisational documents of social anarchism - Bakunin’s programme for the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy.

There has been debate in certain sections of the anarchist movement around the reasons why many of your members left the Anarchist Federation to found Collective Action. Could you explain some of the thinking behind this?

We felt that there was no longer a space within the Anarchist Federation for the kind of fundamental reorientation that we were arguing for. Unfortunately many anarchists have been too long entrenched in this cycle of political activism to look beyond this as the only means of building anarchist communism. CA, in many ways, was a search for a new critical space in which developing ideas could breathe.

Following our formation there has been a great deal of hostility to the internal composition of our organisation which runs closely to the FARJ’s model of “concentric circles,” as well as our idea of an explicitly organisationalist approach. Both of these, wrongly we believe, were accused of being “vangaurdist” or “hierarchical”. Our response, as indicated above, is to argue that these ideas have a long tradition within anarchism and are fully compatible with its principles.

Even with its existing Aims and Principles there are many areas of the Anarchist Federation’s activity that are very loose or ill-defined. We’ve pointed out before, for example, their propagation of the “workplace resistance group” without any following strategy for putting these into practice (or any analysis of how these relate to the existing composition of the class). The AFed’s central idea of creating a “culture of resistance” also, we believe, confuses the social and political level and gives no clear guidance on practice at both a local or national level. It was this desire for coherence, as well as theoretical re-assessments that motivated us towards the formation of CA.

Many of the recent struggles that have emerged have not consciously identified with existing left wing traditions such as anarchism and socialism, do you think there is a future for an explicitly anarchist politics? In particular the anarchist movement which exists in the present.

We are neither on the left nor of it. Anarchist communism advocates the abolition of the state and capitalism in favour of common ownership of the means of life with production and consumption based on the principle, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” For such a society to succeed it must be based on the norms of direct democracy and horizontalidad, thus enabling personal autonomy to flourish within a framework of social equality. None of this bears any resemblance to the machinations of the left wing of capitalist management which strives only to replace one state apparatus with another. We forget our history at our peril. The tragic outcome of both the Russian and Spanish revolutions must constantly be borne in mind. The prevailing anarchist milieu continues to be a tremendous engine of ideas, but in many ways it is badly organised. Its future development and success, therefore, rests on redressing this imbalance as a matter of urgency.

The only way there can be a future for anarchist politics is in making anarchist ideas and methods a practical and coherent tool for organising workplaces, intervening in social struggles and empowering working class communities. Anarchism needs to recapture its traditional terrain of organising, what Bakunin referred to as, the “popular classes” and abandon the dead-end of activism. This means a fundamental re-assessment of what we do and what we hope to achieve. It also means returning, as Vaneigem would call it, to the politics of “everyday life”. To put it bluntly, if your politics cannot relate and potentially organise around the problems and struggles of the twenty or so people you routinely meet through your day (and we don’t mean “activist” friends and circles here, the people you ride the bus with, work with, live next to etc.) then you have no theory of social change. And to clarify, by this we do not mean watering down your politics or dissolving yourself into “community projects”, rather it’s about finding ways to radicalise those connections you have with existing communities to a point where they take on a specific political content - anti-capitalism. It is us, after all, who produce the wealth of this world and any social conflict needs to be waged on the basis of this fact and the need for re-appropriation of the collective product of our labour. Now this is, of course, incredibly difficult. But we’d argue that even minimal progress in this area would be a leap forward compared to even twenty of the best attended A-B marches or “spectacles”. The tasks as we see it now, as Collective Action, is both to be making this argument to the wider movement, re-establishing our understanding and relationship to the wider class, as well as furnishing ourselves with an organisational theory and praxis suited to this task.

You can contact Collective Action on collectiveaction@mail.com and their website is http://www.anarchistcommunist.org/

Regroupment Interview 2: Platypus Affiliated Society

What’s the idea behind the Platypus project?

At present the Marxist Left stands in ruins. Platypus is a project for the self-criticism, self-education, and, ultimately, the practical reconstitution of a Marxian Left.

Platypus contends the Left suffers, as a result of the accumulated wreckage of intervening defeats and failures, from a very partial and distorted memory of its own history; and that at crucial moments the best work on the Left is its own critique, motivated by the attempt to escape this history and its outcomes. The Left is in such a grave state of decomposition that it has become exceedingly difficult to draft coherently programmatic social-political demands. At certain times, the most necessary contribution one can make is to declare that the Left is dead.

Hence, Platypus makes the proclamation, for our time: “The Left is dead! — Long live the Left!” — We say this so that the future possibility of the Left might live.

We take our namesake from the platypus, which suffered at its moment of zoological discovery from its unclassifiability according to prevailing science. We think that an authentic emancipatory Left today would suffer from a similar problem of (mis)recognition, in part because the tasks and project of social emancipation have disintegrated and so exist for us only in fragments.

We have organized our critical investigation of the history of the Left in order to help discern emancipatory social possibilities in the present, a present that has been determined by the history of defeat and failure on the Left. As seekers after a highly problematic legacy from which we are separated by a definite historical distance, we are dedicated to approaching the history of thought and action on the Left from which we must learn in a deliberately non-dogmatic manner, taking nothing as given.

How does the international aspect of Platypus influence your project? What challenges and possibilities does it open up?

We take the question of internationalism seriously and we do so through hosting the conversation at different cities, such as in Greece, Germany, Canada, US and UK. Through our reading group and public fora we try to raise the same issues in numerous contexts and thus build a continuous conversation through multiple locations. The similarities of the problems at an international scale faced by the Left are greater than what we might have expected. By our efforts to educate ourselves on the question of an international Left (and capitalism), through posing it in different concrete circumstances, we hope to provide a space for renewed debate and unexpected agreements. We try to clarify problems not only in specific locations but to understand what internationalism and solidarity could mean today. We hope to provide the Left with a platform on which it can clarify and transform itself. Platypus as a project, though it started in the US, was able to grapple with a problem that is: understanding the global defeat of the Left and the possibility for global human emancipation.

Whilst attending a talk hosted by Platypus in Berlin we heard the project described as a “pre-political” one. At what point might Platypus move to a more overtly political project?

The importance of hosting the conversation, as opposed to organizing debates or varying forms of activism, is due to platypus’s self conception as a pre-political project. We don’t seek to host debates but instead “curate conversations” in which the differences among various tendencies on the “Left” can be manifested and worked through. We hope to clarify the problems these differences raise, or at least identify unexpected agreements. The choice of a pre-political project is not merely a choice to abstain from politics, but rather, it is informed by what we recognize as a greater absence of politics, that is, the absence of radical democratic social transformation in our moment.

It has become clear that previous and current far Left political models are inadequate to the task at hand. What is required is hosting the conversation about what it means to be political in order to create the possibility for new political forms to emerge that are capable of posing the question of human emancipation. Platypus would dissolve itself once the possibility of more overtly political organization emerges. In the future, either Marxism will be forgotten or a political form will emerge that allows Platypus to dissolve itself.

What do you think the future of the Left here in the UK looks like?

We are an internationalist project, we contend the future of the British Left is dependent upon the future of an international emancipatory Left.

Regroupment Interview 3: Climate Justice Collective

CJC was formed during the closure of the Climate Camp. Could you explain the reasons behind this move? How have your experiences with Climate Camp influenced CJC?

In 2011 Climate Camp held a week long gathering called ‘Space for Change’ to resolve ongoing discussions around the camp’s political identity, its forms of action and methods of organising. At the gathering, following a great deal of discussion, a decision was made not to organise as Climate Camp in 2011. The gathering released a statement, entitled ‘Metamorphosis’ (http://climatecamp.org.uk/2011-statement), in order to explain the reasoning behind the decision. It says: ‘This closure is intended to allow new tactics, organising methods and processes to emerge … With the skills, networks and trust we have built we will launch new radical experiments to tackle the intertwined ecological, social and economic crises we face.’

The Climate Justice Collective (CJC) was one of the groups that emerged. Of course people involved in Climate Camp also moved on to all sorts of other groups and movements including Frack Off, UK UNCUT, Green and Black Cross, UK Tar Sands Network, the student protests, Occupy, Traveller Solidarity Network and many more.

The discussions around climate camp centered on a number of themes, including ‘anti-capitalism’, ‘radical lobbying’, and how climate activism related to other movements, particularly those focussed on social justice. But there were also issues that anyone involved in non-hierarchical organising will be familiar with, those of power relationships and hidden hierarchies, openness and accountability, some of which were described back in 1970 in the ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness’ (which was met with it’s own critique, ‘The Tyranny of Tyranny’). In forming CJC we aimed to try and learn from the lessons of organising Climate Camp, keeping the good bits and trying not to repeat the mistakes (and in case you are wondering, we are anti-capitalist!).

What are you currently organising around and what is your long term strategy?

CJC is committed to taking action against the root causes of climate change and building towards new models of political and economic organisation, based on sustainability, participatory democracy and social justice. We see ourselves as part of the wider movements for social and ecological justice, and aim to build toward a common future free from exploitation, oppression or environmental devastation.

That may all sound very high-falutin, but we have been experimenting with how to carry this out on a practical level. Some of what we are currently up to was mentioned in a reply to Shift’s write up of the Big Six Bash (Ed note. Article written by Henry Davis, not Shift editorial team); a mass action we organised early in the year targeting the the big 6 UK energy companies (British Gas, EDF, E.ON, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE).

For example, just over a year ago, ‘Fuel Poverty Action’ formed as a campaign within CJC that is devoting much time to building links with tenants’ and residents’ associations and the communities affected by rising energy prices. Fuel Poverty Action’s ‘Winter Warm-ups’ in January mobilised pensioners, students, anti-cuts groups and environmental campaigners in ten boroughs and cities across the country to take a variety of different forms of action from street theatre, to public flyering, to town hall demonstrations, to energy company occupations.

We are also trying to make links between anti-austerity, climate justice and other ecological movements. Linking different energy struggles together, both in terms of how it is produced and accessed, referred to by some as Energy Justice, is an important area for future work. At the moment we are discussing how we might try and organise a way of creating links between climate justice and austerity on the 20th October when the TUC are planning a march in London.

Does climate change politics still have an important part to play in the anti-capitalist movement? Can it be relevant in a period of austerity?

There is no doubt that the economic crisis and ensuing austerity has drawn a lot of political energy away from climate change and other ecological issues. It’s also true that there are difficulties around linking climate change and anti-austerity, especially when the growth mantra dominates discussion around the response to the economic crisis. But ever increasing economic growth, market economics and neoliberalism are not just a threat to the environment, they also cause great social harm and are behind the current economic crisis.

In a world with ever more extreme weather events, rapidly diminishing arctic ice [NASA recently published a study linking climate change to extreme weather and Arctic sea ice reduction] and worsening climatic feedback loops, ignoring climate change or any of the other global ecological crises, such as biodiversity or the nitrogen cycle [see stockholmresilience.org], simply isn’t an option. If we are to meaningfully address the root causes of all our current crises, ecological and social justice must be seen as complementary and not in competition. Sure it’s not easy, but if it was easy it wouldn’t be a struggle!

If you’re interested in getting involved, or want to chat to us about anything drop us a line [climatejusticecollective@gmail.com]

Regroupment Interview 4: The Anti-Capitalist Initiative

1) What is the idea behind your project and what are it’s political influences?

The Anticapitalist Initiative (ACI) is an attempt to bring together the new political activists who have been inspired by the Occupy movement, the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, anti-austerity campaigns and the fractured groupings of the revolutionary left. We are making a conscious effort to take time to debate and discuss what politics we collectively wish to pursue. Instead of declaring a platform decided on by the initial supporters, we want to draw in a diverse range of views from across the movement. The Initiative currently has supporters who consider themselves communists, many from a Trotskyist tradition, as well as more libertarian traditions including anarchists and those who draw on Autonomism as a guide to action. Many in the movement will see the ACI as an attempt to set up a UK franchise of the French Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, but this isn’t accurate. We have much to learn from similar processes but we ideally want to circumvent the damaging dissolution of previous projects by not repeating the same mistakes. That means taking our time to consider where our movement is and through common work and discussion attempt to articulate a credible anticapitalist alternative.

2) Does the UK need another anti-capitalist initiative? What makes yours different?

We have had several anticapitalist initiatives in the UK in the last two decades; the larger projects were crushed by bureaucratic control of this or that group. For example, the Socialist Labour Party drew in many militants from the Great Miners Strike and the anti-Poll Tax movement, yet under Arthur Scargill and his supporters the possibility of a significant left force emerging in opposition to the Labour Party was lost. The almost inevitable collapse of attempts to unite the left demands that we need to begin at the beginning. From the very start of previous initiatives a bureaucratic and sectarian tumour slowly but surely killed those projects. We want to go a different way: the ACI is not the plaything of this or that Trotskyist grouping but an open space for all of us in the movement to create a new left. We are not urging the left to repeat previous initiatives with a few democratic tweaks; we are asking the left to question the basis of its politics, activities and ultimately its existence.

What makes the ACI stand out from previous initiatives is that we have prescribed no set outcome on where we will end up. The debate over what kind of organisation we need so that we can participate in struggles in a useful fashion is completely open. Some of us would like to see a new party emerge, others a network or a united front organisation. We hope to avoid making decisions too quickly with too little variety of opinion. Where previous initiatives were rashly defined, often by confused reformist politics, the ACI is more concerned with listening and learning first.

3) What are you hoping to organise around and how are you hoping to move beyond the current limitations of the Left?

The Initiative wants to organise spaces for those of us coming from the Marxist left to learn from the new movements, libertarian activists and from our shared experiences of struggles. Our current goals are to organise in campaigns to strengthen them but also to break down the barriers of mistrust of decades of factional separation and fighting. We will also be organising forums to debate the immediate problems the movement faces but also its strategic and political problems. The left has been stuck at a dead end for over 80 years by generalising the strategies and politics from an era of political retreat when the revolutionary processes unleashed by the the October Revolution were reversed. The best way to consider the Initiative is as a reboot for the revolutionary movement, not just a democratic upgrade.

The poverty of privilege politics

Privilege. Now there’s a word we are hearing a lot. The concept and finger-pointing of privilege is coming to increasingly concern us as a problem and a poor semblance within the alternative left. We feel not only embarrassed by the simplicity of this undisclosed and undefined overarching theory but concerned that it further leads a stagnant movement down more dire dead ends. And yet our disquiet is not because we believe interpersonal politics are less worthy of our attention, nor because we are without awareness and rage about the oppressive power structures within our lives and political milieus. We do not believe that these are minor details that can wait til after the revolution. Whilst we are currently organising what is suspiciously like a women’s consciousness raising group, we dismiss those laughable and cringeworthy lists that have gone viral in the social networking world. These might appear as conflicting positions, but as we hope to explain, we do not find them so.

As mentioned, we are confronted with endless lists asking us to ‘Check our Privilege.’ We have encountered the ‘heterosexual privilege checklist” the “cis privilege checklist” and the “able bodied checklist.” (examples of these checklists are included at the end of the article- the Eds.) We think you get the picture? Soon we will be carrying around score cards wishing to be the most victimised person in the world. This sort of privilege scorekeeping is tallied in our everyday encounters but most often called out in a certain political context, such as a political meeting, discussion or lecture. We now are presented with the ‘manarchist’ who uses his male privilege taking up space in meetings. Taking up space is not seen as only about the amount a person of privilege speaks but often the language used. We see a growth in these subcultural movements in the UK of an adherence to a new political language and analysis with a centrality of privilege as an overarching ideology. We find an anti-intellectualism where both theorising and militancy are seen as a privilege in and of themselves, as if acting on the front line as WELL as analysis are only weapons of the oppressive rather than weapons of the oppressed. We find this dangerous because it evokes that the most ‘oppressed’ are helpless and weak, encourages a lack of activity and analysis away from ‘make do and mend’ circles, and further rarefies the notion of resistance.

Another vagary is the self-flagellating groups emerging that prop up a culture of shame. For example, recent workshops have emerged under the theme of ‘Men dealing with their patriarchal shit.’ Whilst we want individuals to examine, analyse and challenge their own behaviour in political terms these punkier than thou equal ops sessions reinforce the holier than thou attitude of the attendees….and the ones who could do with it rammed down their hairy throats wouldn’t dream of attending. These examples of new emerging themes demonstrate that on one side of the coin you have a points based oppression outlook (we’ve made the complexities of power into a handy ticklist for you!) and on the other you have individualised guilt and self- victimisation (which is another way of re-focusing on the ‘more privileged’ ironically). This focus on the individual and self as the problem is a product of privilege leading us nowhere. It’s a dead end. We feel a political lens of privilege is divisive and unhelpful when we are part and parcel of a system that already thrives on the division of the working classes, through gender, class and sexual oppression.

So how then do we divide these concepts so we neither become a self parodying shell of victim politics nor replicate the power structures we seek to destroy? How does this differ from an analysis of power? Does it permit spaces for movement and resistance? Or does it revert back to the activist quagmire of guilt, shame and stagnation? These are questions that should be discussed within our wider political groups.

We recognise the well meaningness of checking your privilege. We too understand that people are silenced not just as individuals but due to identities. However, we perceive wrong footed attempts to right this balance. In meetings we witness call outs where someone will announce that six men have spoken and no women. This is an attempt to expose the hidden subtleties of patriarchy and male dominance, and to empower women. We have never seen this work to readdress power relations. This call of male privilege may serve to quieten the six men who have spoken, but it does not give more voice to the silenced. More awkwardly, it is often uncomfortable for the women in the group who may feel, as we do in this scenario, an obligation to speak, but with it comes an unnatural sense of representation. The opposite usually takes place; a silencing of people rather than the growth of new conversations. One that is forced, fake and full of disdain. Whilst the next person, woman, is to speak but feels an artificial pressure of representation that we are supposed to be speaking on behalf of all women, from an identity as ‘woman’, and only as ‘woman’. And when we, or she, speaks, it is of course as a woman within patriarchy and to a room where she is being observed and judged by the six men who have spoken, under a political male gaze. Because of these things, and more, we do not see these clumsy attempts moving any steps toward challenging sexist oppression. To do that we need first to acknowledge intersectionality of power, history and privilege. With a singular identification of privilege we reduce the myriad of power relations within the group to a straightforward visible one. We don’t want a politics that reduces and simplifies power into an ideology of privilege. Intersectionalities of power, oppression and privilege need to be examined mixed with relations of capital. Analysing and pinpointing privilege to an obsessive extent in political circles can be demobilising as well as futile. But most damaging of all, these performances of privilege call out, mislead us into believing that challenging patriarchy within our interpersonal relations occurs within the formalities of a meeting and it is who speaks rather than what they say.

Because ultimately, it is not woman’s voice we should be seeking but feminist voice. A feminist voice is not one based on identity but rather on a shared transformative politics. A feminist voice is a stance rather than a given. As bell hooks reminds us; feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. We suggest this will often be best realised through those most facing sexist oppression but also we are vigilant to note that not all oppressed are resisting, subverting or fighting this oppression, nor are those who seem to benefit in ways from it always or automatically in alignment with the oppressive forces. So where does that leave identity and privilege in the struggle for freedoms? Understanding politics through the lens of privilege is intrinsically entangled with identity politics. And, for reasons stated, we find identity politics a monolithic and restrictive way to understand the world. We are our identities but we are never just one identity, we are a complexity of them. And identities do not line up in a straightforward ABC of oppression, no matter how much the privilegists want them to. This just falls into binaries that we are attempting to escape from, or creates more. The queer movement challenges the notions of “men” and “women” yet seems to be opting instead for “cis” or “trans” giving new permanence and boundaries to our gender. This is not to downplay the struggles but we believe that these fixed linear positions are not just unhelpful but often false. Cis gender may not seem intrinsically a privilege to the women killed by domestic violence or childbirth. Nor male privilege to a gay Ugandan. The relationality of power has to be optimistically understood if we are to move beyond an idle determinism and singular identity code. But, also, to resist we must understand our power; the strength in our collective power rather than this frugal analysis of power where privilege divides us into mundane categories of oppression. We need to galvanise on our power as a class, as this class being fucked over by capital within all it’s facets of everyday life. Rather than creating new prisons and new boxes to further tear ourselves to pieces within, we need to analyse and act with fluidity and creativity in terms of our intersectional identities in the kitchens, the bedrooms, the meeting spaces, the pubs and in the streets we demand to occupy.

Privilege Checklists:

http://queersunited.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/heterosexual-privilege-checkl...

http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/

http://manchesterafed.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/how-not-to-be-a-manarchis...

Tabitha Bast and Hannah McClure are engaged in the following crimes of passion; mostly together, but some as singular adventures – the Space Project (a radical education Space), as writers (latest article in “Occupy Everything: Reflections on Why its Kicking Off Everywhere), New Weapons Reading Group, various Queer ventures, Plan C, Footprint Worker’s Co-operative, working with domestic violence perpetrators, parenting, and general Leeds/Redhills based agitation.

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" - Junge Linke

leaders_1617267c.jpg

… “Oh yes ”, said Ford with a shrug, “of course”. “But”, said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard, ” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”1

1. The modern democratic state2 exercises considerable power over its subjects. There is hardly any aspect of life for which no law exists. There are laws regarding the length of the working day; the number of breaks during that day; mandatory school education; how much time a pub must grant a patron for finishing her drink after the bar has closed; how a landlord has to keep and secure his tenant’s deposit; what happens if someone accidentally gets injured during a football game; when a newspaper can be banned from printing a story; what may or may not be said in public; whether sex shops may put their goods on display; the illegality of dying in the Houses of Parliament; how much toxic waste is tolerable and how much punishment will be meted out if one should break its law. This state demands to decide on matters of life and death of its citizens – the latter mainly in times of war. In all this, the state allows no other power over its subjects, it insists on having the monopoly on violence. In short, this state leaves almost nothing unregulated and considers almost nothing outside of its responsibility; it demands control. It demands to be the ultimate force in society.

2. This demand stands in stark contrast to the mantra of modern democracies that ‘the people’ have sovereignty.3 It is indeed true that every three to five years the state asks its subjects to cast a vote. In particular, the state asks its subjects, collectivised as ‘the people’, which representatives should be given the power to pass laws. Indirectly, the state – directed by the government – even asks who should form the next government. It is worth appreciating for a moment that this vote does not stop at some meagre local council or other lower ranks of the state. Instead, this vote in all seriousness, actuality and full colour does decide who sits in parliament4 and ultimately who will form the government. The majority of voters – restricted by some regulations 5 – decide whowill sit in that parliament which decides how long they have to finish their beer after closing and do choose who will form that very government which decides over life and death. This decision, the people make.

3. However, taking a closer look at such an election, it becomes apparent that the voting regime or decision-making process does not grant voters all that much power at all.

• Political parties6 present their political programmes to the voters. It is not the other way around7 , where for instance people might tell the parties what they are most concerned about in everyday life and these parties could then propose their fixes to these issues.
• All party programmes are always complete packages of policies. A voter cannot cherry pick certain issues, goals, demands and vote for those only.
• There is no way on the ballot to tell a party why one voted for it; which points matter, which do not and which ones the voter disagrees with.
• Neither is there a way of giving only conditional support.
• After the election, MPs are not even liable for following their own programmes and promises, let alone the wishes of those who elected them.
• Fundamental conditions of life such as the economic or political system8 are not balloted at all.

The act of election is a rather restricted act where no substantial content is actually decided. Understanding this, alleging that voters yield real souvereignty (meaning that they are in control) is plainly wrong. Instead, it makes sense to say that through the act of election parliament and government become sovereign, their power is legitimised. On the one hand, they are not bound to any mandate by the voters. On the other hand, they can and do refer to the voters’ will while pursuing their agenda. If protest and unrest spreads against their policies they do not have to bow to the pressure from the streets. Instead they can point to the fact that they were elected by ‘the people’. A democratic election legitimises the power of the government.

4. The outcome of an election is a powerful government, measured by all the things it can decide. However, its time in office is potentially ended by the next election. The institution of regular elections expresses and institutionalises a certain mistrust in the government. It expresses a certain lack of confidence that a government once in power will actually pursue the general public interest instead of mainly its own private interests. But what does general public interest mean in a society based on competition? It can hardly mean the fulfilment of individual interests of every citizen since these interests are usually in opposition. A tenant wants to live cheaply, a landlord wants high rent; a toothbrush factory wants cheap labour and cheap energy, workers want ‘fair wages’ and the electricity supplier ‘cost-covering prices’. The only thing all competitors, in their role as competitors, share is their interest in being able to take part in competition itself; economically they want to compete, because they have to. The state makes sure of this through its guarantee of private property. First of all, everyone is excluded from the things they need. On the other hand, since all material wealth, including that stuff others need, is in the hands of private owners; one’s own property becomes the means to get access to someone else’s property; that is, through the act of exchange. Thus, private property is both the exclusion from material wealth and the only means to overcome this exclusion, making everybody dependent on it. This founds an interest in the conditions of competition, the only means available to the subjects.

In the name of this general public interest all private interests must be restricted. This applies to politicians as well. A corrupt politician is elected despite him being corrupt, not because of it. Being crooked is an obstacle in the proper carrying out of a job which is about the facilitation of the general public interest. The ideal politician is one who does not think about himself9 , his friends or colleagues. The ideal politician is of an exemplary moral character. It is a rather frightening idea in the heads of bourgeois subjects that their immediate competitor might one day seize state power and use this power to further his own private agenda.

Correspondingly, all big parties express their will to further the general public interest and stress that in their respective programmes. No successful party in the UK only caters to the special interests of a particular social group. The times of a workers’ party are over. New Labour’s victory in 1997 was an expression of this opening and now the Conservatives are aiming for the same broad appeal. Even fringe left-wing parties like Respect dow to the dictates of ‘realism’ and respect private property through their demands of “taxation on the big corporations and the wealthy to fund public services ”10 – a demand which requires big corporations to make the kind of profits which can then be taxed. A taxation that was too aggressive would threaten the government’s revenue and thus its means to fund the NHS, pensions and decent housing.

The common feature of all these political parties is their affirmation of the basic principles of the capitalist economy11 . All democratic parties want the democratic state which uses and fosters the accumulation of capital as the basis of its power. They even seek to steer it.

5. It is a prerequisite for the legitimacy of any government that both the voters and defeated parties accept its victory after the election. This might seem self-evident at first and thus this fact is only recognised when it is violated. For example, the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s first term in office was somewhat tattered after a series of re-countings and bans of re-countings of votes in the state of Florida. For another more severe example we can turn to Iran where the opposition claims to have won the election despite the official announcement to the contrary. These disagreements can mark the transition into civil war.

On the other hand, a successful election draws the people and the state together. This is necessary because during session the opposition between citizens and the government is plainly visible and reinforced: The government’s job is to restrict or negate the interests of its citizens in the general public interest. The pledge of allegiance to the state enacted by voting maintains and makes feasible the contradiction between compulsion and consent12 . Through the choice of the personnel of domination, domination itself does not appear as such but instead is recognised as a service provided to the voters.

6. A successful election accomplishes more than a formal consent to domination. It is important for the overall working of the state that the ideology of the voters matches the programmes of the government to some extent. A fundamental opposition between citizenry and state could undermine the governments power to implement its schemes and programmes, it could threaten the basis on which both the legitimacy and the power of the government is built.

This reinforcement of ideology is partly accomplished by the political education provided during election campaigns. Running up to an election the voters are asked to leave their personal perspective behind and instead take on a bird’s eye view. While most consumers of newspapers do this on a regular basis, during the election campaigns everybody is encouraged to take on this perspective even more. The voter is introduced to and presented with the necessities of the state. Political parties present ‘inherent necessities’ not as their own deed but as a ‘reality’ which confronts themselves just as well: in times of crisis banks must be stabilised, growth must be restarted, the deficit may not grow ‘too large’, the health care system must be reformed etc. Anyone from welfare recipient to banker is encouraged to not worry about the next paycheck for a while. But instead everybody is encouraged to ponder how to decrease the deficit and other such things. Of course, it is relatively unlikely that any creative idea from the minds of an ordinary voter would ever be implemented, but a likely outcome is at least an agreement on what the pressing issues are.

Indeed, a managing of these necessities is a prerequisite for everyone beling able to realise their own private interests such as receiving the next paycheck. Since there are many mutually exclusive interests, each voter is encouraged to consider ‘fair’ solutions to these problems. A good politician – one of the kind voters put in office – has to continously balance interests and carefully restrict private interests in the name of the general public interest.

7. Even for the disgruntled there are political parties available to vote for: the oppositon.

On the one hand, they blame the government for not exercising its control properly. They deny the expertise of the current government to tackle the issues facing the nation. Usually, this remains somewhat vague in order to attract diffuse discontent. The Tories follow this strategy at the moment.
On the other hand, the criticise the government for its policies and claims that with their own alternative programmes the problems they have identified would not occur. Left-wing parties for instance claim that mass poverty was unnecessary and within capitalism the problem could be solved quickly once they were in power and could tax the rich appropriately. Thus poverty was not a necessity of the mode of production which the state fosters for its own sake. Instead poverty was an unnecessary result of the wrong people in management.

Democratic opposition directs critique to its decent content. That is, a content which is supportive of the state. It is an invitation to the voter to solve her problem with politics by replacing the politicians. The common anti-critical statement ‘if you do not vote you cannot complain’ expresses this demand for subordination rather clearly. According to this it is beyond consideration that the election itself might be subject to critique.

8. A successful election, both with respect to its formal act and its political content, requires voters who worry about such things. A person who considers an election to be an adequate expression of his political actions wants a strong government which is capable of acting, regardless of how it is composed and what it does. That person considers the existence of a government as a prerequisite for carrying out his own interests. That voter accepts the outcome of an election, even if it does not correspond to his choice. He would accept David Cameron as ‘our prime minister’ even if he did not vote for him. Such persons more often than not accept austerity measures imposed by a government even though it worsens their livelihood.

This ideology which wants ‘effective governance’ meets its adequate match in the public obsession with the character of politicians. If no question of substance is actually left to the voter, when all she can choose is a candidate who is not liable, when someone is to be elected to facilitate the general public interest in a society based on competition, when the outcome of this election must be a strong government, then the question of what kind of person gets elected does indeed become relevant. Thus, the outcry about the apolitical voters who care more about gossip than proper politics is unfounded. This interest in politics is the kind of interest this political system asks from its subjects.

Originally published at www.junge-linke.org

• 1. Douglas Adams. So long, and thanks for all the fish. Chapter 36. 1984
• 2. Arguing about democratic elections and illustrating these arguments with a country which is quite explicit about not being a genuine democracy is a bit difficult. For clarity of presentation, we will develop the main arguments with respect to straight-forward democracies in the main text and discuss differences in the UK in footnotes. Also, the constitution in the UK is uncodified which complicates the presentation to some extent. The resulting differences are not that fundamental in practice, but are noteworthy when talking about the legal ideal.
• 3. In the UK the Queen or King – not ‘the people’ – has sovereignty.
• 4. Only the House of Commons in the UK. The House of Lords is appointed.
• 5. County borders, electoral systems, minimum percentage hurdles …
• 6. Some countries have political systems which put more emphasis on political parties while others put more emphasis on the individual candidates. In Germany political parties are provided with special care and protection. For example, only the Supreme Court can ban a party. It did exercise this right twice. First, by banning a party for continuation of the nation-socialist NSDAP and second in 1956 when the Communist Party was banned. This ban in principle includes all communist parties founded afterwards. However, since the 1970s communist parties were allowed to exist again in order to improve relations with the East.
• 7. To avoid a misunderstanding: pointing out how something would be the other way around does not imply partiality.
• 8. The absoluteness of the political system is expressed in the statement that “no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change” (http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/sovereignty.cfm). Certainly, any law which would strip the right from the parliament to make such laws on behalf of ‘the people’ would violate this statement. Democracy itself is not decided on by a ballot.
• 9. The outrage about a bunch of MPs claiming expenses on second and third homes is a good illustration of this ideal. For the budget these claims do not matter much, what caused the outrage was the lack of standards and ‘character’ exercised by these ‘role models’.
• 10. Respect Manifesto (http://www.therespectparty.net/manifesto.php)
• 11. The Socialist Party of Great Britian is a notable exception to this rule. The SPGB “claims that there can be no state in a socialist society” and “that socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless, worldwide society of common (not state) ownership”. The SPGB “seeks election to facilitate the elimination of capitalism by the -1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
  Keep-Ali to govern capitalism.” (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/differences.html) Leaving aside for the moment of whether this is a good strategy or not, it is clear from their party programme that the SPGB does not affirm the basic principles of the capitalist economy.
• 12. “When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It’s a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Ch. 12, p. 330

Against Kamikaze Capitalism: Oil, Climate Change and the French refinery blockades

On Saturday, 16th October 2010, some 500 activists gathered at convergence points across London, knowing only that they were about to embark on a direct action called Crude Awakening, aimed against the ecological devastation of the global oil industry, but with no clear idea of what they were about to do. The plan was quite a clever one. Organizers had dropped hints they were intending to hit targets in London itself, but instead, participants—who had been told only to bring full-charged metro cards, lunch, and outdoor clothing—were led in brigades to a commuter train for Essex. At one stop, bags full of white chemical jumpsuits marked with skeletons and dollars, gear, and lock-boxes mysteriously appeared; shortly thereafter, hastily appointed spokespeople in each carriage received word of the day’s real plan: to blockade the access road to the giant Coryton refinery near Stanford-le-Hope – the road over which 80% of all oil consumed in London flows. An affinity group of about a dozen women were already locked down to vans near the refinery’s gate and had turned back several tankers; we were going to make it impossible for the police to overwhelm and arrest them.

It was an ingenious feint, and brilliantly effective. Before long we were streaming across fields carrying thirteen giant bamboo tripods, confused metropolitan police in tow. Hastily assembled squads of local cops first seemed intent on provoking a violent confrontation—seizing one of our tripods, attempting to break our lines when we began to set them up on the highway—but the moment it became clear that we were not going to yield, and batons would have to be employed, someone must have given an order to pull back. We can only speculate about what mysterious algorithm the higher-ups apply in such situations like that —our numbers, their numbers, the danger of embarrassing publicity, the larger political climate—but the result was to hand us the field; our tripods stood, a relief party backed up the original lockdown; and no further tankers moved over the access road—a road that on an average day carries some seven hundred tankers, hauling 375,000 gallons of oil—for the next five hours. Instead, the access road became a party: with music, clowns, footballs, local kids on bicycles, a chorus line of Victorian zombie stilt-dancers, yarn webs, chalk poems, periodic little spokescouncils—mainly, to decide at exactly what point we would declare victory and leave.

It was nice to win one for a change. Facing a world where security forces—from Minneapolis to Strasbourg—seem to have settled on an intentional strategy of trying to ensure, as a matter of principle, that no activist should ever leave the field of a major confrontation with a sense of elation or accomplishment (and often, that as many as possible should leave profoundly traumatized), a clear tactical victory is nothing to sneeze at. But at the same time, there was a certain ominous feel to the whole affair: one which made the overall aesthetic, with its mad scientist frocks and animated corpses, oddly appropriate.

The Coryton blockade was inspired by a call from indigenous groups in South America, tied to the Climate Justice Action network, a new global network created in the lead-up to the actions in Copenhagen in December 2009—for a kind of anti-Columbus day, in honor and defense of the earth. Yet it was carried out in the shadow of a much-anticipated announcement, on the 20th, four days later, of savage Tory cuts to the tattered remains of the British welfare state, from benefits to education, threatening to throw hundreds of thousands into unemployment, and thousands already unemployed into destitution—the largest such cuts since before the Great Depression. The great question on everyone’s mind was, would there be a cataclysmic reaction? Even worse, was there any possibility there might not be? In France it had already begun. French Climate Camp had long been planning a similar blockade at the Total refinery across the channel in Le Havre; when they arrived on the 16th, they discovered the refinery already occupied by its workers as part of a nationwide pension dispute that had already shut down 16 of Frances 17 oil refineries. The police reaction was revealing. As soon as the environmental activists appeared, the police leapt into action, forcing the strikers back into the refinery and establishing a cordon in an effort to ensure that under no conditions should the activists be able to break through and speak with the petroleum workers (after hours of efforts, a few, on bicycles, did eventually manage to break through.)

“Environmental justice won’t happen without social justice,” remarked one of the French Climate Campers afterwards. “Those who exploit workers, threaten their rights, and those who are destroying the planet, are the same people.” True enough. “We need to move towards a society and energy transition and to do it cooperatively with the workers of this sector. The workers that are currently blockading their plants have a crucial power into their hands; every litre of oil that is left in the ground thanks to them helps saving human lives by preventing climate catastrophes.”

On the surface this might seem strikingly naive. Do we really expect workers in the petroleum industry to join us in a struggle to eliminate the petroleum industry? To strike for their right not to be petroleum workers? But in reality, it’s not naive at all. In fact that’s precisely what they were striking for. They were mobilizing against reforms aimed to move up their retirement age from 60 to 62—that is, for their right not to have to be petroleum workers one day longer than they had to.

Unemployment is not always a bad thing. It’s something to remember when we ponder how to avoid falling into the same old reactive trap we always do when mobilizing around jobs and industry—and thus, find ourselves attempting to save the very global work machine that’s threatening to destroy the planet. There’s a reason the police were so determined to prevent any conversation between environmentalists and strikers. As French workers have shown us repeatedly in recent years, we have allies where we might not suspect we have them.

One of the great ironies of the twentieth century is that everywhere, a politically mobilized working class—whenever they did win a modicum of political power—did so under the leadership of a bureaucratic class dedicating to a productivist ethos that most of them did not share. Back in, say, 1880, or even 1925, the chief distinction between anarchist and socialist unions was that the latter were always demanding higher wages, the former, less hours of work. The socialist leadership embraced the ideal of infinite growth and consumer utopia offered by their bourgeois enemies; they simply wished “the workers” to manage it themselves; anarchists, in contrast, wanted time in which to live, to pursue forms of value capitalists could not even dream of. Yet where did anti-capitalist revolutions happen? As we all know from the great Marx-Bakunin controversy, it was the anarchist constituencies that actually rose up: whether in Spain, Russia, China, Nicaragua, or Mozambique. Yet every time they did so, they ended up under the administration of socialist bureaucrats who embraced that ethos of productivism, that utopia of over-burdened shelves and consumer plenty, even though this was the last thing they would ever have been able to provide. The irony became that the social benefits the Soviet Union and similar regimes actually were able to provide—more time, since work discipline becomes a completely different thing when one effectively cannot be fired from one’s job—were precisely the ones they couldn’t acknowledge; it has to be referred to as “the problem of absenteeism”, standing in the way of an impossible future full of shoes and consumer electronics. But if you think about it, even here, it’s not entirely different. Trade unionists feel obliged to adopt bourgeois terms—in which productivity and labor discipline are absolute values—and act as if the freedom to lounge about on a construction sites is not a hard-won right but actually a problem. Granted, it would be much better to simply work four hours a day than do four hours worth of work in eight (and better still to strive to dissolve the distinction between work and play entirely), but surely this is better than nothing. The world needs less work.

All this is not to say that there are not plenty of working class people who are justly proud of what they make and do, just that it is the perversity of capitalism (state capitalism included) that this very desire is used against us, and we know it. As a result, the great paradox of working class life is that while working class people and working class sensibilities are responsible for almost everything of redeeming value in modern life—from shish kebab to rock’n’roll to public libraries (and honestly, do the administrative, “middle” classes ever really create anything?) they are creative precisely when they are not working—that is, in that domain of which cultural theorists so obnoxiously refer to as “consumption.” Which of course makes it possible for the administrative classes (amongst whom I count capitalists) to simultaneously dismiss their creativity, steal it, and sell it back to them.

The question is how to break the assumption that engaging in hard work—and by extension, dutifully obeying orders—is somehow an intrinsically moral enterprise. This is an idea that, admittedly, has even affected large sections of the working class. For anyone truly interested in human liberation, this is the most pernicious question. In public debate, one of the few things everyone seems to have to agree with is that only those willing to work—or even more, only those willing to submit themselves to well-nigh insane degrees of labor discipline—could possibly be morally deserving of anything—that not just work, work of the sort considered valuable by financial markets—is the only legitimate moral justification for rewards of any sort. This is not an economic argument. It’s a moral one. It’s pretty obvious that there are many circumstances where, even from the economists’ perspective, too much work and too much labor discipline is entirely counterproductive. Yet every time there is a crisis, the answer on all sides is always the same: people need to work more! There’s someone out there working less than they could be—handicapped people who are not quite as handicapped as they’re making themselves out to be, French oil workers who get to retire before their souls and bodies are entirely destroyed, art students, lazy porters, benefit cheats—and somehow, this must be what’s ruining things for everyone.

I might add that this moralistic obsession with work is very much in keeping with the spirit of neoliberalism itself, increasingly revealed, in these its latter days, as very much a moral enterprise. Or I think at this point we can even be a bit more specific. Neoliberalism has always been a form of capitalism that places political considerations ahead of economic ones. How else can we understand the fact that Neoliberals have managed to convince everyone in the world that economic growth and material prosperity are the only thing that mattered, even as, under its aegis real global growth rates collapsed, sinking to perhaps a third of what they had been under earlier, state-driven, social-welfare oriented forms of development, and huge proportions of the world’s population sank into poverty. Or that financial elites were the only people capable of measuring the value of anything, even as it propagated an economic culture so irresponsible that it allowed those elites to bring the entire financial architecture of the global economy tumbling on top of them because of their utter inability to assess the value of anything—even their own financial instruments. Once one cottons onto it, the pattern becomes unmistakable. Whenever there is a choice between the political goal of undercutting social movements—especially, by convincing everyone there is no viable alternative to the capitalist order–and actually running a viable capitalist order, neoliberalism means always choosing the first. Precarity is not really an especially effective way of organizing labor. It’s a stunningly effective way of demobilizing labor. Constantly increasing the total amount of time people are working is not very economically efficient either (even if we don’t consider the long-term ecological effects); but there’s no better way to ensure people are not thinking about alternative ways to organize society, or fighting to bring them about, than to keep them working all the time. As a result, we are left in the bizarre situation where almost no one believes that capitalism is really a viable system any more, but neither can they even begin to imagine a different one. The war against the imagination is the only one the capitalists seem to have definitively won.

It only makes sense, then, that the first reaction to the crash of 2008, which revealed the financiers so recently held up as the most brilliant economic minds in history to be utterly, disastrously inept at the one thing they were supposed to be best at— calculating value–was not, as most activists (myself included) had predicted, a rush towards Green Capitalism—that is, an economic response—but a political one. This is the real meaning of the budget cuts. Any competent economist knows what happens when you slash the budget in the middle of downturn. It can only make things worse. Such a policy only makes sense as a violent attack on anything that even looks like it might possibly provide an alternative way to think about value, from public welfare to the contemplation of art or philosophy (or at least, the contemplation of art or philosophy for any reason other than making money). For the moment, at least, most capitalists are no longer even thinking about capitalism’s long-term viability.

It is terrifying, to be sure, to understand that one is facing a potentially suicidal enemy. But at least it clarifies the situation. And yes, it is quite possible that in time, the capitalists will pick themselves up, gather their wits, stop bickering and begin to do what they always do: begin pilfering the most useful ideas from the social movements ranged against them (mutual aid, decentralization, sustainability) so as to turn them into something exploitative and horrible. In the long term, if there is to be a long term anyway, they’re pretty much going to have to. But in the meantime, we really are facing a kind of kamikaze capitalism—a capitalist order that will not hesitate to destroy itself if that’s what it takes to destroy its enemies (us). If nothing else it does help us understand what we’re fighting for: at this moment, absolutely everything.

This makes it all the more critical to figure out a way to snap the productivist bargain, if we might call it that—that it is both an ecological and a political imperative to bring about that meeting that the police in Le Havre were so determined to prevent. There are a lot of threads to be untangled here, and any number of pernicious illusions that need to be exposed. I will end with only one. What is the real relation between all that money that’s supposedly in such short supply, necessitating the slashing of budgets and abrogation of pension agreements, and the ecological devastation of our petroleum-based energy system? Aside from the obvious one: that debt is the main means of driving the global work machine, which requires the endless escalation of energy consumption in the first place. In fact, it’s quite simple. We are looking at a kind of conceptual back-flip. Oil, after all, is a limited resource. There is only so much of it. Money is not. A coin or bill is really nothing but an IOU, a promise; the only limit to how much we can produce is how much we are willing to promise one another. Yet under contemporary capitalism, we act as if it’s just the opposite. Money is treated as if it were oil, a limited resource, there’s only so much of it; the result is to give central bankers the power to enforce economic policies that demand ever more work, ever increasing production, in such a way that we end up treating oil as if it were money: as an unlimited resource, something that can be freely spent to power economic expansion, at roughly 3-5% a year, forever. The moment we come to terms with the reality, that we are not dealing with absolute constraints but merely promises, we can no longer say “but there just isn’t any money”—the real question is who owes what to whom, what sort of promises are worth keeping, which are absolute—a government’s promise to repay its creditors at a predetermined rate of interest, or the promise that it’s workers can stop working at a certain age, or our promise to future generations to leave them with a planet capable of human habitation. Suddenly the morality seems very different; and, like the French environmentalists, we discover ourselves with friends we didn’t know we had.

Blue Labour – “faith, family and dog-whistle politics.” An interview with political theorist Ed Rooksby

miliband-thesun.jpg

Republished from Shift Magazine.

We don’t usually cover party-political issues in Shift Magazine, but in the context of growing working class struggle under the Tory austerity drive we are interested in the latest move by the Labour Party to reconnect with working class and community concerns. Only that this move comes under the heading ‘Blue Labour’. Could you briefly tell us what Blue Labour is, where the idea has come from and what impact it is having?

Blue Labour is an increasingly influential faction within the Labour Party which is seeking to reorient and rearticulate the party’s ideological political position - to provide a cohesive, vote-winning ‘big idea’ for the party under Ed Miliband. It’s an attempt to reshape the post-New Labour ideological landscape of labourism in such a way that, the Blue Labour faction hope, will help the party reconnect with the large swathes of the working class electorate which have steadily drifted away from Labour.

When I say ‘faction’, however, it’s important to note that - as yet - Blue Labour seems to have very little grassroots support amongst the party’s membership - it’s very much an elite movement of Labour-affiliated academics (who should know better) and a few figures from the party hierarchy such as James Purnell and John Cruddas. There’s some irony here in that one of Blue Labour’s claims is that Labour should move away from the centralised top-down model of party organisation associated with post-war Social Democracy and become much more bottom up - and yet this is very much an elite driven attempt to reshape the party’s narrative and positioning.

The doctrine’s main driver is the academic, Maurice Glasman – now Lord Glasman. He’s a close friend and advisor to the Labour Party leader and indeed it was Ed Miliband who offered him his peerage. So Blue Labour really does have the ear of the leadership right now.

So is it a return to more traditional Labour values?

The Blue Labour approach is founded on a simple historical narrative from which its prescriptions flow. The basic story is that important strands of thinking and forms of political organisation that used to animate the British labour movement were lost after 1945 and need to be rediscovered. In a sense the party needs to go back to its historical roots. Blue Labour want the party to return to 19th century traditions of bottom-up, pluralist and democratic working class based community organising – mutuals, co-ops, friendly societies and so on. These traditions, it claims, were lost as the post-war party turned increasingly to centralised, bureaucratic, paternalist and statist methods – the policies and practices we associate with post-war social democracy. They argue that Labour also needs to reconnect with what it claims are traditional labour movement values – community, solidarity and reciprocity for example.

Few on the left would have much of a problem with those values. But Blue Labour figures also argue that the working class is fundamentally conservative. This is where the problems begin. They argue that for a fundamentally conservative working class an ethics of community and solidarity implies a defence of traditional institutions and identities such as the family, patriotism and the nation, faith and the work ethic. The Blue Labour approach is often summarised with the slogan; ‘faith, family and flag’. They also argue – and this is where it gets ugly – that defence of traditional working class community values and identities specifically implies by definition a defence of British ‘white working class’ traditions and identities. They argue that ‘mass immigration’ and ‘multiculturalism’ has been hugely destructive in terms of community cohesion and so must be resisted.

This, I think, is a very dangerous message – and it’s very troubling that this sort of thinking is, apparently, so influential within the party at the moment. We could, quite legitimately it seems to me, reword the Blue Labour slogan as ‘faith, family and dog-whistle politics’.

Then can we understand the Blue Labour programme as an attempt to shed New Labour’s neoliberal image?

This is quite an interesting question. It’s pretty clear that Blue Labour is, in many ways, an explicit rejection of New Labour and of neo-liberalism. Glasman is very critical of New Labour and its embrace of free market fundamentalism. He even criticises capitalism itself from time to time.

However, as Steve Akehurst [on compassonline.org.uk] recently argued, we should be rather sceptical about the intensity of Blue Labour’s ostensible hostility to neoliberalism. You just have to note the presence for example of the arch-Blairite James Purnell amongst the Blue Labour movers and shakers. He’s not exactly known as an ‘Old-Labour’ socialist. Indeed, one of the things that is probably very attractive to Blairites about the Blue Labour message is its anti-state message. This message can be understood and articulated in several different ways. You could understand it – and this is the way it’s being pushed by Glasman – in broadly left-wing terms. Of course, there’s always been a very strong tradition of anti-statism on the left amongst anarchists, revolutionary socialists, Marxists and so on. But these clearly aren’t the sort of political traditions in which Blue Labour is seeking to orient the party!

We have to see the message that Blue Labour is pushing in the context of the social democratic tradition which has always been best understood as a tradition which seeks to manage capitalism rather than challenge it. In this context I think it’s very difficult to see anything particularly positive in Blue Labour’s anti-statist noises. This anti-statism on the part of Blue Labour in the context of managing capitalism on capital’s terms (how does social democracy do anything else?) would, in my view, entail, in practice, the rolling back of welfare. We have to see all of this too in the context of economic crisis and austerity politics – the Blue Labour doctrine provides great ideological cover for an assault on public spending and welfare in the guise of a return to ‘authentic socialist values’. This has to be one of the reasons why Blairites like Purnell are so interested in it.

This doesn’t sound all too different from the Conservative’s Big Society idea. Are Labour picking up on this?

Yes, absolutely. I think it’s pretty clear that the people behind Blue Labour see the Tories as having stolen a march on them with the Big Society idea. One of the major proponents of Blue Labour, for example, Dr Marc Stears, has been quite clear that he sees the Big Society doctrine as a ’spur to action’ for Labour and that, in his opinion, the left have ‘a lot to learn’ from it. So, in fact, one way of trying to grasp what Blue Labour is doing is to see them as trying to seize for the Labour party the ideological ground currently occupied by ‘Red Tories’ and other major proponents of the Big Society. One very interesting aspect of this is that Stears seems to see the ideas bound up with the Big Society - community engagement, voluntary and charitable provision of certain services, scepticism towards the ‘big state’ and so on - as ‘transcending’ the left/right divide.

This is a trope of centre-left thought that keeps cropping up again and again - the idea that the left/right division is, in some ways at least, old hat, outdated or irrelevant. This was one of the major ideas that animated ‘the Third Way’, of course, which was the ideological narrative developed by theorists (most notably Anthony Giddens) in the mid to late 1990s to help steer the Labour party towards what became known later as Blairism. But you can also see this sort of idea in what centre-left intellectuals like Tony Crosland were arguing in the 1950s and 60s, too. It keeps re-emerging. It can be explained partly in terms of the party’s obsession with occupying the (fabled) ‘centre-ground’ - ‘triangulation’ and ‘big tent’ politics and so on. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy on which social democratic thought is pretty much founded - the idea that it’s impossible and politically suicidal to attempt to reshape the ideological terrain radically or to drag the locus of the political ‘centre’ very far to the left.

It is almost as if Labour lacks the courage to confront the typical tabloid views of the ‘white working class’.

The political theorist Colin Hay makes a very useful differentiation between what he calls ‘preference accommodation strategies’ (shaping your policies to appeal to apparently pre-existing beliefs and prejudices on the part of the electorate) and ‘preference shaping strategies’ (seeking to intervene in political discourse in such a way that alters the ideological landscape). Hay applied this to New Labour, arguing that they almost unfailingly chose the former strategy. Blue Labour are, if anything, (for all their talk about ‘radicalism’) even more committed to a ‘preference accommodation strategy’ than Blair was. The thing is, though, that I think the constituency whose pre-formed preferences they are seeking to accommodate - the ‘Blue working class’ - is very largely a myth.

Blue Labourites talk a lot about how politics has been far too dominated by a ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ (an idea and a terminology plucked straight out of a Richard Littlejohn column by the way) and how it has lost touch with ordinary working people. But their view of ‘ordinary working people’ is, in my view, pretty far off the mark in many respects. Indeed, if there’s an out of touch ‘metropolitan elite’ anywhere here it’s probably the Blue Labour clique themselves peddling a rather fantastical view of a ‘conservative working class’ playing happy families, going to church on Sundays, saluting the flag and getting all teary-eyed about the royal wedding. It’s as if their view of the working class is based on what they’ve watched in a 1950s Ealing comedy.

Blue Labour supporters have asked “Where is Labour in the fight for an England which belongs to the English just as they belong to the land?” (Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford). Maurice Glasman even argued that Labour should “involve those people who support the EDL within the party”. This sounds much more like some see it as a matter of ‘if we can’t beat the BNP, let’s become the BNP’?

Yes, this is the really ugly part of the Blue Labour approach. The ‘preference accommodation strategy’ they employ isn’t just restricted to a process of accommodation to conservative ideas and policies - it’s also quite prepared to flirt with racism and far-right politics. I never really expect to be much impressed by centre-left thinking - but this is really shocking stuff. It’s particularly disappointing to see someone like John Cruddas (who has an admirable record of anti-fascism) promoting this sort of stuff. Let’s be clear what Blue Labour are saying. They are claiming that the working class is somehow naturally and inevitably anti-immigration and pre-disposed towards far-right views. This is what they are seeking to accommodate. Their way of fighting the BNP and the EDL is not to take their views head on and to argue the case for leftist, anti-fascist and anti-racist ideas. It’s not to stand up for and to defend immigrant and ethnic minority communities. It’s to make major concessions to racist prejudice and suspicion. This is a real betrayal of labour movement traditions - for all Blue Labour’s talk of being true to fundamental labour movement values. It’s very dangerous. Even as a miserable strategy of seeking to undercut support for the BNP and the EDL by dressing up in some of their clothes it’s one that won’t succeed. It will only help to further legitimise the views of organisations such as the EDL and it risks creating the political conditions in which far-right groups enter into the political mainstream. If ideas associated with the far right are brought into mainstream political discourse and articulated by mainstream political parties, what’s to stop far right groups themselves capitalising on this?

In Shift Magazine we have featured several articles that have warned of a simplistic opposition to finance capitalism, especially in counter-globalisation movements. Now in the Blue Labour rhetoric we also find a strong attack on finance. It is somehow assumed that the finance sector should serve the ‘real’, productive national economy. While this distinction between speculation and production is characteristic of the far right, could this serve for Labour as a nationalistic ‘Third Position’?

I’d say it was characteristic of right wing populism rather than of the far right as such. Furthermore it’s not a position that is held exclusively by the right either. I’d be highly uncomfortable with any argument that implies that Blue Labour is a far right movement, or even a potentially far right movement - it isn’t. It’s important to say that I certainly don’t think that anyone involved in the Blue Labour faction is racist and it would be a massive mistake to dismiss them as ‘proto-fascist’ or something. For one thing this would just be a bad move tactically - because any critic of Blue Labour advancing that argument is likely to be written off as someone making wild or ‘hysterical’ accusations. The danger is not that the Labour Party might morph into a quasi far-right party under the influence of Blue Labour, but that the Blue Labour narrative will poison mainstream political discourse (more than it is already) and help to create the sort of conditions in which very right wing parties and movements can flourish.

It’s true, however, that focusing on ‘finance capital’ as something meaningfully distinct from productive or industrial capital is a mistake, both empirically and also in political-strategic terms. There is no hard and fast distinction anymore between industrial and finance capital (most major industrial capitals for example are also big financial players) and while it’s true that the City of London is massively powerful and that this has, historically, entailed major problems for the UK economy in terms of manufacturing productivity and ‘competitiveness’ and so on one has to regard the economy as, in a sense, an organic whole in which capitals and state institutions are closely intertwined rather than as a series of distinct sectors.

To single out finance capital as the villain as Blue Labour do - and it’s really noticeable that in almost all Blue Labourite criticism of ‘marketisation’ and ‘commodification’ it’s finance and the City that’s the culprit rather than the logic of capital accumulation more broadly - is to let capitalism itself off the hook. So what Blue Labour are doing is making some apparently radical sounding noises about ‘commodification’ and so on, but channelling this criticism into an approach that is, in the end, decidedly unradical. They’re attacking a bogeyman figure and, in so doing, diverting people’s attention away from the real source of ‘commodification’ which is capitalism itself. The narrative seems to suggest that there’s a nice and caring kind of capitalism - based on manufacturing presumably - which is what we need to get back to, somehow, to relieve the various market based pressures and hardships suffered by working class people (longer working hours, indebtedness, rising unemployment and so on). And, yes, this could be a very nationalistic strategy.

Would you say that this nod to nationalism is a departure from social democratic ideals?

In a sense, social democracy has always been about the incorporation of the working class into national strategies of capital accumulation. There’s always been a nationalist, flag-waving and even jingoistic facet to it - or to a significant proportion of it anyway. But what’s different about Blue Labour is the sheer brazenness of the nationalism - the appeals to patriotism and the flag are right at the core of it - and also the racialised aspect to it, reflected in the invocation of the ‘white working class’.

The other major difference about Blue Labour is the rejection of ‘the big state’ which, as I mentioned above, has to be seen in the context of the economic crisis and the austerity drive across the world. In my view, Blue Labour should be seen as a symptom of the ongoing (and sharpening) crisis of social democracy and labourism which has been rumbling on since the end of the post-war long boom sometime in the early 1970s. When the post-war social democratic Keynesian consensus fell apart parties like Labour found themselves totally disorientated as they realised that this consensus (which they had wrongly regarded as a more or less permanent settlement) had been completely dependent on peculiar and temporary post-war structural conditions of international capitalism.

A lot of people on the left of Labour seem to believe that the party’s slow drift to the right was a wholly contingent process determined by the particular ideological views of various leaders which might, in principle, be reversed if only a left wing leader were to get his or her hands on the levers of power. What this overlooks, however, are the major structural blockages in the way of any return to full blooded social democracy presented by intense international capitalist competition today.

In the long term, the sort of measures of amelioration that traditional social democrats advocate are simply incompatible with the logic of capital accumulation. We can’t just go back to the economic conditions of the 1950s and 1960s. They have gone forever. New Labour represented an enthusiastic embrace of these new conditions. Blue Labour, in a sense, takes this process of disillusioned adaptation further - it’s willing effectively to jettison the party’s commitment to the welfare state and to embrace a highly nationalistic strategy of capital accumulation. This is not to say that something like the Blue Labour approach is inevitable - it has to be resisted. But it is getting clearer and clearer that any serious struggle for the defence (let alone the extension) of social justice and humane economic conditions will run up against the structural limits of capitalism itself. This is something, unfortunately, that the Labour party is constitutionally incapable of doing.

Ed Rooksby teaches politics at the University of Southampton

Greece: "We are drowning, let's sink the rotten boat"

One month after the 48-hour general strike in Greece, with the austerity package passed, and after the extreme police terrorism unleashed on protesters (involving 2860 teargas canisters thrown indiscriminately even at first-aid centres, inside the metro station, and into cafes 1.5km away from the demonstration; beatings of everyone including men and women of old age; extensive rock-throwing at protesters; invasion of pedestrianised areas by riot police bikers; and the chasing and beating of demonstrators all the way into private houses where they ran to hide) much of the mainstream press presented this as a great ‘victory’ for the Greek government who managed to obtain the ‘rescue package’ from the ‘northern European taxpayer’ and avoid default. A few weeks later, the government ‘achieved’ a ‘partial default’ which would extend the terms of their loans and give lenders a ‘haircut’ in exchange for several guarantees in the form of state assets. On 30th July, with the squares movement somewhat deflated, the mayor of Athens managed to evacuate the square. People returned the same night and held the biggest assembly of that month. But even now, after British press coverage started to become a bit more sympathetic, many still haven’t understood why ‘the Greeks’ protested so vehemently. Did they want to default? Surely that couldn’t be a good solution (and yet a ‘partial default’ is somehow sold as precisely that now!). ‘Why don’t Greeks get down to work to develop their economy and learn to pay taxes instead of complaining?’ outraged northern Europeans have been asking.

To get an idea of the roots of the anger in the Greek streets, consider this: since May 2010, when the first bailout was agreed with the IMF-ECB-EU troika, unemployment has shot up to 20%, and youth unemployment to over 36% (but also consider that official statistics always underestimate this); small businesses have closed down one after another emptying out town centres; workers have gone unpaid for months and are easily dismissed with new legislation that abolishes collective contracts and encourages employer bullying; wages have fallen by 30% and to a new minimum of €560 per month and €476 for those under 25; homelessness has rapidly increased because of repossessions; pensions have been cut; public transport prices and street tolls have increased exponentially; a myriad new regressive taxes have been invented and VAT has risen to 23%; the suicide rate has increased by 40%. We are talking about rapid impoverishment, proletarianisation and despair and this is only a snapshot of the situation.

As for the purported ‘Swedish welfare’ Greeks have been enjoying, well, this never existed. Benefits are meagre. A very large proportion of pensioners only receive €400 per month, many queuing in soup kitchens to survive. Single mothers have to work. The dole – now only available for four months in four years – is impossible to survive on if you also pay rent. National insurance contributions are essential to get it, excluding a vast number of people under 30 who are exploited in unreported jobs. Such contributions are also essential for access to the health service. Amid steadily increasing unemployment the new mid-term austerity programme will reduce these benefits, reduce pensions and wages even more, lay off tens of thousands of public sector workers, further loosen labour legislation, increase taxes on the lowest incomes, as well as sell off the totality of public assets. This is widely seen as a plan to turn Greece into a pool of cheap labour and a cut-price investment opportunity, before it inevitably defaults. But this is not simply anger towards foreign bankers, the EU and the IMF, not just anger towards the government. It is anger towards the entire political system of parliamentary democracy and all the political parties. It is a true crisis of representation.

It is no wonder people have been protesting daily outside the parliament shouting ‘crooks!’.There is a Greek joke of the father with three sons who says one should join the conservatives (New Democracy); one the socialists (PASOK) and one the communists (KKE), just in case. What the state has had to offer, jobs or infrastructure, has been distributed for at least the last 30 years through political parties, with some jobs as sinecures. This clientelism has played a part in the build-up of state debt. But this does not mean that all Greeks benefitted, neither does it mean that the benefits received were particularly generous – they were jobs, licenses, subsidies, even places in universities – not the kind of thing that you should have to sell your vote to gain access to. Sadly, in Greece, desperation or complacency led many to play by the rules of the game. On the other hand, massive high-level corruption from dodgy planning permissions upwards at the top-end of the political-media class, has generated far larger amounts of debt, the most obvious in defence contracts, which for a country of its size have been enormous, the highest spending per head of population anywhere. The vainglorious Olympic Games, costing some $25billion benefitted only some contractors and security firms. Most Greeks did not receive any trickle-down of state largesse, and those who did not receive are now paying for it.

Focusing on corruption, however, like much of the mainstream media has done recently, constructing the stereotype of ‘lazy, corrupt Greeks’, misses out an important part of the story: the relation within the EU between central, exporter, lender states and peripheral, importer, debtor states. Predominantly French and German banks have been lending money to Greece so that it can buy exorbitant German military equipment and French industrial and consumer products. Not out of any particular spite as some Greek nationalists present it. This is simply how the system works. But it was not going to work forever. Greece finally reached a point when, after having bailed out its own banks that were hit by the crisis, its debt became unmanageable.

After one year of the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme, the Greek state is now, unsurprisingly, more indebted than ever before. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that the conditions imposed would shrink the economy, and thus reduce the tax base. With a debt rollover deemed impossible by rating agencies who see such a move as a de facto default, and to avoid a ‘disorderly’ default that would send shockwaves across the banking system, the troika forced a new bailout loan down Greece’s throat in return for a 4-year programme of austerity and a wholesale privatisation of public assets, whose budget doesn’t even predict a significant reduction of the debt up to 2015.

Despite the summer lull, there is still a sense that the situation now is explosive. Across the political spectrum, anger is widespread. Those on the left denounce the attack on the working class. Those on the nationalist right talk of ‘traitors’ who have ‘sold off the country to foreign interests’ by signing the bailout agreement which gives creditors the right to confiscate the assets of the Greek state. Everyone can plainly see that the bailout directly benefits the banks who will get their interest payments while the Greek state, blackmailed by the troika, is attempting to get blood from a stone. That Greece will default at some point is taken as a given. The fight is over who will pay for it. And much of the Greek public has figured that the longer that takes, the more they’ll have to pay with their lives. In fact, they will pay with their lives anyway, as the debt is used as an excuse to impose measures hitherto inconceivable. Meanwhile, far-right extremism has increased, as hordes of new immigrants from Asia and Africa are trapped in Greece, mostly Athens, prevented from entering northern Europe in line with the Schengen treaty. There are racist attacks by small groups of self-described ‘indignant citizens’ (who are mostly members of fascist organisations such as the Golden Dawn) on a daily basis in Athens neighbourhoods: stabbings, beatings, burning of homes, hostels and mosques which commonly escape prosecution. Besides, it is widely known that the Greek police has close informal ties with the Golden Dawn.

This is why, when on May 25 tens of thousands of people flooded Syntagma square in front of the parliament and squares across the country under the name ‘indignant citizens’, it did look confusing. Many – if not the majority – of the demonstrators waved Greek flags and shouted nationalist slogans. A protest march by the electricity workers’ union was booed out. The Greek media were celebrating the ‘apolitical’, ‘humorous’ and ‘unpatronised’ quality of the demonstration. But late at night, after the big crowd left and those remaining sat down to have their first ‘democratic assembly’ a different image emerged. Mostly young people, hungry to express their anger at the government, the political system and all political parties, talked about their shoddy life experiences and of their desire to create something new. They occupied the square and Syntagma was packed with demonstrators on a daily basis for the next month and counting. The a daily assembly grew, and diverged from the Spanish model, developing its own ideas: direct democracy and rejection of all political representatives; refusal of all state and personal debt, asking for its write-off; counterposing a new social organisation, involving popular control of the economy; cooperation with labour unions while pressurising their sold-out leaderships to call a long-term general strike; rejection of racism and solidarity with immigrants, in favour of open borders; conflictual struggle, blockades, occupations and self-defence instead of unqualified pacifism; the desire to create assemblies in every neighbourhood and workplace. The assembly participants daily develop and refine the processes of collective decision-making and self-organisation. Similar to the Spanish squares, they have open thematic assemblies and working groups which are developing structures of mutual support and sharing resources, particularly with those most in need, while the general assembly has the ultimate power to propose and make decisions. These ideas and practices are not ex nihilio. They follow on both from the neighbourhood assemblies created after the December 2008 uprising and from the recent practices of popular movements, such as ‘I Don’t Pay’ that blockades highway toll booths and sabotages public transport ticket validation machines, and the militant resistance in Keratea against the creation of a landfill site.

Assemblies did spread in several Athens neighbourhoods and across Greece, and the older local assemblies have expressed solidarity with the new movement. Many of those assemblies have been organising actions against privatisations of local public space and assets, and some are more active in promoting the idea of non-payment campaigns and anti-repossession actions that have not yet taken off. Also the oldest local assemblies, especially those linked with anarchist collectives, have been instrumental in establishing free language schools for migrants and anti-racist actions, as well as appropriating public space and turning it into ‘self-managed people’s gardens’, most notably in Exarchia. Now there are also ideas for setting up free support lessons for kids who have missed school because of homelessness or destitution.

While not entirely adopting the language of the anti-capitalist left, the assembly has adopted many of its ideas. This is partly related to the ‘incognito’ presence of leftist party members in the square pushing their views through working groups, but there is also resistance to those who try to turn the assembly into a distributor of social-democratic manifestos. The anarchist contingent also has a significant influence, meaning that many of the dominant views in Syntagma are more radical than those of the mainstream left which is not finding it easy to keep up with events. Not that the fascist threat is gone for good however. Small far right groups have been present in the square, mostly away from the area of the assembly and working group stalls, waving flags, shouting nationalist and racist slogans, and even attacking immigrants. Those organising in Syntagma have had to confront them, particularly when they even had the audacity to store crowbars in one of the tents, from which they launched their racist assaults. After the 29th however, with videos of police thuggery and collaboration with fascists flooding not only the web but also mainstream TV news, Greek nationalism has received a backlash.

With the mid-term programme passed, the occupied squares have been working on their next course of action. They have been talking about actively preventing the programme’s implementation, building alliances with students and workers, and organising non-payment strikes on taxes, loans and bills. They have also been discussing student resistance to the new education bill, which is a major move towards privatising and commodifying the higher education system, and will be probably put to the vote over the summer. A similar bill was dropped in 2007 after over a year of student occupations and protests.

After the evacuation of Syntagma, many returned to the square after weeks of absence, bringing renewed energy for occupying local buildings and organising resistance to repossessions. The first time such a ‘return’ happened, it was surprising to some that Syntagma did not disband after their defeat on the midterm and after savage police repression; that they stayed true to their pledge to continue the fight regardless. Police violence did not scare them, instead it caused enough outrage that many pacifists began to justify those who had engaged in street war. The thousands who have participated for over a month in the squares, against various attempts at co-optation, have experienced a different form of politics, a different way of relating to each other. They have protected their space and each other from fierce assaults by police and fascists, have fended off undercover agents, have withstood impossible amounts of teargas, stun grenades, beatings and street battles. Now, there is a wider sense that even if this movement doesn’t grow momentum in August, September will definitely be a very intense time, when the relative euphoria of summer is over, and the new measures really start to bite…

Demetra Kotouza is a PhD student and contributing editor at Mute magazine. John Barker writes fiction and non-fiction for 3am.com, Mute and Variant magazines.

Increasing the uncertainty: beyond activism as usual

As we edge closer to the TUC demonstration this Saturday the internet, airwaves and blogosphere are becoming increasingly excited about what might happen. However, as is to be expected, much of this is already focusing on the usual themes of police fairness/repression, the likelihood of violence etc. This article seeks to reaffirm the real successes of the previous few months – an openness to change, a new found humility and greater social resonance – by calling for an intervention which focuses on moving towards uncertainty rather than falling back on tired, clichéd direct action strategies.

It will come as little surprise to many that the TUC will not be endorsing the various feeder marches which will be happening in London, or that their position on a diversity of tactics is fairly non-existent. As many commentators have already highlighted this is integral to the form of politics which the TUC is pursuing. The TUC 'game plan' for Saturday consists of turning the thousands of people which will attend into passive spectators whose only political impact is to provide a boost to the negotiating position of the TUC. What is interesting however is that many of the people on this demonstration, perhaps radicalised by impending cuts or this winter's demonstrations, will be unlikely to want to slip into this role. The political terrain has well and truly shifted.

For those of us wishing to move beyond this script we must be careful not to slip into a familiar oppositional role whose possibilities are already mapped out and which appears unlikely to actively engage and empower many more people than the TUC approach. Small groups of activists with specialist equipment taking direct action against specific targets are also likely to fail to directly engage with anything other than a minority of the people out on the streets and in front of TV screen this coming Saturday. But between the rock of the TUC's 'inclusive' demonstration and the hard place of the elitist 'direct action' of militant activists what kind of course of action can we pursue? Of course the answer is unknown, this is a problematic the answer to which might only emerge through discussion and trial and error; this article will make some suggestions as to what could be tried on Saturday's demonstration but before that it might be worth briefly discussing what we are trying to do on Saturday.

(Re/De)centering the Political

For many attending the demonstration tomorrow and certainly those organising the TUC aspect, the focus for Saturday is clear. The task for Saturday the 26th is to assemble as large a support as possible to support the TUC and increase its bargaining power vis-a-vis the government. Anything which breaks out of this polite, disciplined framework will not be tolerated. Indeed, in many ways, come Saturday the work of the TUC will have been done. All that remains is crowd control and to pack the hundreds of thousands of protestors safely back onto buses at the end of the day. From a refusal to support the feeder marches to police trained stewards expected to be the first line of policing in the event of disorder on the march (from sit-down protests onwards) it is clear that the TUC exists in a political framework of respectable negotiation and institutional politics which sees those attending the demonstration as supporters not participants. Indeed it is the formalisation of union politics which has seen its decline in both absolute numbers and political efficacy over the past decades.

But politics doesn’t just happen in the institutions of power, in boardrooms and council focus sessions. The world of institutional politics is just one dynamic, albeit a powerful one, which helps to shape the social relationships which make up our society. For those of us seeking to dismantle the state and move beyond the Capital relation we cannot afford to become fixated on the state form of politics, of representation, ‘sensible’ consensus, the role of the expert and the necessities of the economy. Of course victories in the formal political sphere are possible and indeed desirable but these will occur without us having to focus on them. Cameron's rhetorical shift from condemning a violent minority at this winter's demonstrations to recognising the more generalised confrontational nature of the movement is one recent example of this. The sphere of institutional politics will always seek to translate our challenges into the language of governance.

However, politics is also expressed in the ways we work, play and love, ultimately in the ways in which we interact with each other day to day, hour to hour. If we de-centre the formal sphere of politics and recognise politics as the process of challenging and changing social relationships then the horizons of our politics, the nature of our 'targets' changes. Beyond the set piece spectacle of direct action activism as has been practiced by many in the radical scene in the recent decades and the dull lobbying of the TUC demo a new target, our social relationships, might be seen lurking in the distance. Rather than focusing on building up a lobbying power to influence government, we should focus on helping shape the way in which those of us that attend the demonstration, and onlookers, experience it. By opening up new avenues of political experience, replete with all the uncertainty this entails, we help take a step away from those forms of doing politics which are clearly obsolete and possess little traction on the world. When the first students entered 30 Millbank it is unlikely they were aware of the consequences of such an action. This Saturday we should be prepared to continue the political experimentation which many of us have already found so exciting and refreshing. Rather than closing down political possibilities we should be aiming to increase these possibilities.

So, what might this look like on Saturday?

• A refusal to be disciplined and ordered, be it by the police or the TUC. Both of these forces will seek to order our protests to make them legible, to articulate demands and isolate those that slip outside of this 'protest consensus' as troublemakers – as those not worthy of a political voice. With so many events happening all day, the possibilities for escaping the already constructed narratives already exist. The 'anything but a kettle' mentality has implications beyond our physical constraint.
• A commitment to moving beyond the active(ist)/passive binary. Come prepared, but come prepared to share. Be it masks and other goodies or even just some new chants or a route proposal. We must seek to move outside of our comfortable friendship groups and forge new political affinities on the day.
• An openness to connectivity, experimentation and the unknown. Who knows what will happen on the day, but we should be prepared to actively increase the uncertainty and therefore the range of possible outcomes of the day.
• A critical, perhaps even subversive, engagement with the unions. The TUC demonstration shouldn't be shunned but engaged with, perhaps even subverted. The unions will be a key vehicle through which struggles will take place in the short term, but this does not mean we have to fall in line behind them. A critical engagement with the unions is necessary. If half of the TUC demonstration were to suddenly leave half way through the rally....well....

These principles seem simple enough but if we attempt to build upon them and make them a reality who knows what kind of effects this Saturday's demonstration might have for now and in the wider future. Seeking to emulate previous, tired forms of politics (be that isolated direct action or trade union marches) is a certain failure, new forms of doing – those which escape our current understanding or familiarity – might be the key to gaining traction in the here and now. The old doesn't work and so we shouldn't be afraid to move towards new forms of politics, however uncertain their effects may be.

Ben Lear is a member of the editorial collective of Shift Magazine.

International antinationalism!

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Introduction

The following article was written in the context of the mobilisation for the international project “M31”, a European day of action against capitalism and the crisis. It is a first attempt to describe our approach of “antinational communism”*. Antinationalism is a fairly new, German-specific perspective on left-wing radical politics. It came about in the early 90s in Germany as a reaction to the reunification of a new, greater Germany and the occurrences of racism/fascism by a reactionary civil society. What is its central tenet? Nationalism or – to be more precise – the idea of the nation itself is seen as the central ideology, the all-time dominant, undeniable category in the global, oppressing power relation of capitalism and the capitalist state, which we want to see abolished. From our point of view, an antinational perspective goes beyond traditional left-wing approaches (classical anti-imperialism). And yet, we do not like to focus on Germany and its specifics alone and instead pick up a certain idea of international networking. We want to free this approach from its Germany-focussed isolation and – especially now at a time of crisis, when we can develop transnational reference points – start discussions with comrades in other European countries. Hence we decided to call this approach “international antinationalism”. This is also one of the main motivations for us and our antinational, German-wide network “…ums Ganze!” to engage in the project “M31”, which was largely initiated out of Germany.

*For us, communism has so far never existed. Communism is “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things” (Marx), i.e. the total negation of the present, capitalist world order for an emancipated, liberated society. The Soviet Union and “real-existing socialism” never was able to get rid of certain basic-capitalist categories, like value or wage labour. Thus, our use of the term communism distances itself from historic attempts at “Real Socialism”.

See more:

www.no-racism.de

www.umsganze.org

http://march31.net

International Antinationalism!

Five years after the start of the financial crisis, after the insurrections in the Arab region, after intense protests against worsening living and working conditions – after all these developments, finally the German Left is having discussions about the crisis. It seems to become obvious that partial struggles within and against the spheres of production and reproduction are not able to resist against the austerity measures of the Troika (European Union, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund). This experience has led to different movements and different struggles emerging in these last years, which are looking for common reference points. These transnational movements – whether we think of “Occupy” or the “Arab spring” – are proof that actions which relate to each other are capable of creating new dynamics and of disrupting – at least on the level of ideas traditional conceptions of political terrain (thinking and acting within one’s “own” national territory; the nation as a firm category).

Still, all these new movements share the same problem: when it comes to the point of articulating critique and demands, we find only vague abstractions rather than specifics. At the same time, they do retain a certain intuitiveness about the capacity of collective action. This idea of revolt is opposed – from within the “European Left” – by the supporters of a state idealism in two related, yet polarised, ways: the first way claims that social movements can manage to become relevant forces in politics only by relying on a “moral basis”. This perspective agitates for the “Idea of Europe” as a common denominator for the different movements and encourages it against the current EUROpe of austerity measures. The second way advocates a politics, which has allegedly been robbed of its true power by “the evil incarnate” (the banksters). This perspective views the aim of struggle as the establishment of a sovereign authority, which would set the framework for the possibility of social reforms. In what follows, we are going to criticise both ways in order to show their reactionary role in the current discussions, and to illustrate our programme for a social offensive. Furthermore, we are going to suggest a different approach for social revolt, derived from our critique of state and capital. We shall call this approach “international antinationalism”.

The “Idea of Europe” vs. EUROpe

Whether in school, in university or in leftist feature pages – the “Idea of Europe” is a sacred cow. Especially in times of crisis and wars, it is beyond any criticism. In the midst of World War I, the German philosopher Georg Simmel understood exactly what the “Idea of Europe” is about and what it opposes: “The belief and spirit of internationalism [...] is an altogether secondary phenomenon [...] and an enemy of one’s own rooted national character. Europeanism, on the other hand, is an idea, an altogether primary phenomenon not attainable by accumulation or abstraction – however late its appearance as a historical force. It does not exist in between individual nations, it exists beyond them, and is thus perfectly compatible with an individual national life.”

Beyond the speculative search for difference and commonality of national identities – so typical for nationalists – Simmel recognizes within the “Idea of Europe” the benefit to one’s own nation of guarding the latter against the “virus” of the worker’s movement’s all-pervasive internationalism. Still today, the “Idea of Europe” serves this function. Furthermore, the value of the “Idea of Europe”, in its “idealism”, lies in its perspective on ideological crisis management. The Prussian state-political philosopher Hegel wrote: “It is often said, for the sake of edification, that war makes short work of the vanity of temporal things. It is the element by which the idealization of what is particular receives its right and becomes an actuality.” “Idealisation”, the value of Europe, is not just some philosophical chit-chat outside of world affairs; it is a matter of great priority for European states that their citizens accept the “Idea of Europe” as an “ideal” and that they renounce the “vanity of temporal things”.

But what exactly is the “Idea of Europe” anyway? A lot of pens have been put to paper to answer this question and a great deal of nonsense has been the result. The most honest answer, however, was given by the outgoing president of the European Central Bank – Jean Claude Trichet – with the following description: “Our model was the united American Market. If we wanted peace and prosperity, it was said at the time, we needed to benefit from the same economies of scale, from the same free markets as did the United States. This was the vision of the founding fathers of Europe. If that was true back then, it is even more so today”. Nowadays it is widely known that it was primarily Germany who benefited from these free markets and whose export surplus ruined other national economies in Europe, such as that of Greece. In order to keep the “Idea of Europe” going, they now “speak German” in Europe, by which we mean the impoverishment of the masses to enable the realisation of capital valorisation.

L’Etat pour moi

In times of crisis, it is not only bankrupt car manufacturers or banks in need of a bailout that are calling for the strong state. The Left, too, sees itself vindicated once more. Financial capital, helped by ruthless parliamentarians, has sold “politics” down the river, it claims. Enchanted by the benevolence of “financial markets”, nation-states were no longer able to carry out their true function of pleasing their people’s needs, it alleges.

Alongside such rather simplistic approaches, there are also many academic versions of the same. What they have in common is a glorified image of the “golden age of capitalism” (Eric Hobsbawm). According to such claims, the intervention of the state – including its ideological support in mid-20th century, Keynesianism – was not a result of tendencies of monopolisation (imperialism), problems in the production of surplus value (Paul Mattik) and the struggles of rebellious workers (Beverly Silver); rather it is supposed to represent a dubious “class compromise”, which pointed at an advantageous “power balance” for the working classes. This reading does not only deny the inner historicity of capital, but it focuses the struggle for a liberated society on the state, the territory of its defeat. Accordingly, the “capitalist state” (Friedrich Engels uses the term “ideeller Gesamtkapitalist” which translates roughly as the “ideal personification of the total national capital”) had the obscure, a-historical potential to ban forever, by sovereign dictum, all tendencies for crisis and to guarantee the permanent valorisation of value.

And hence, the global accumulation of capital needs nothing more than to create a “true demand” in the market as well as new “leading technologies” by means of a “green capitalism”, all for the achievement of new profits. Alone the fact that the elites and bosses do not show any interest in any such pragmatic proposals to extend exploitation and oppression hints at the fading sovereignty of state authority. It is this “left-wing faith” in the power of the state that gave impetus to the Greek Stalinists (KKE) sending its gangs of “thugs” to protect the parliament in Athens from other protesters during the election of a new austerity package. He who seeks the power of the state has to prevent its dissolution by dissolving the revolt.

What to do? - Determining our position

In recent years, some antinational projects have tried to make international connections. Although a lack of capacity meant that larger initiatives were not possible, such efforts did maintain a common theoretical frame: a clear dissociation from those on the Left that support the state, as well as the rejection of the idea of “national solidarity” (“Solidarität der Völker”). In order to strengthen the idea of a “revolutionary defeatism” (a concept Lenin opposed to “social patriotism” – the ed.) we took action – locally and further afield – against global companies with headquarters in Germany or against German and European institutions. Our activities sought to criticise the nation-state as the unquestioned centre of all politics and to symbolically deny that a whole country could benefit from the business carried out by individual companies. Beyond that, we tried to open communication channels with those people that had already taken to revolt, with limited success.

In this context, we supported two Germany-wide days of actions called for by the campaign “Antifa Tehran”. These actions expressed solidarity with the insurrection against the Islamist regime of Iran in 2009 and publicly outed German companies involved in dirty business with the Iranian government. Critical research showed that German businesses supported the IRI regime, which was sanctioned by the state. Crucially for this campaign, the most direct and widespread signal of solidarity that we could send to the Iranian protesters at the time was a blockade of the Iranian consulate in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, it was hard to receive wider, left-wing support for this, because the traditional Left’s reception of the political case of Iran and its limited competence to adequately respond to the events of 2009 proved to be an insurmountable stumbling block.

We made very different experiences as part of our participation in the global “day of action against Eurest” (Eurest is a catering and canteen multinational – the ed.), organised by our comrades from the Industrial Workers of the World; the employees of the Ford-canteen in Cologne experienced direct solidarity by other Eurest-workers worldwide, be they in New York or Frankfurt, who supported the Ford-workers in their struggle against Eurest and the Ford management. Maybe this was a small sign that in times of national competition for jobs, a competition perpetuated even by trade unions, parts of the working class are still aware of the importance of solidarity. Our aim, however, remains to broach the issue of international networking of wage-labourers reflecting transnational chains of capital valorisation in order to revive the question of “workplace bargaining power” (Silver) in the “hidden abode of production” (Marx).

In 2011, an unpredictable wave of practical solidarity reached a new peak in Germany: the eviction of the squat “Liebig 14” led to a permanent status of alert for several police units in the whole of Germany. Indeed, Berlin and other cities in Germany saw massive, spontaneous clashes. This must be understood as a reaction to the state fantasising about more evictions, for example that of the notorious squat “Rote Flora” in Hamburg.

These chain reactions of solidarity reminded us of the international response to the 2008 December riots in Greece. The occupation of the Greek embassy in Berlin on 8 December 2008, which was covered widely by the Greek media, not to forget a large number of demonstrations and actions all over the world, “motivated” our comrades in Greece not to give up their struggle.

Yes! Antinational Solidarity!

All these cases have one thing in common: they focus on solidarity. But what does solidarity mean, anyway? Today, it turns out to be a largely empty notion with hugely differing meanings; its definition from a left-wing and radical perspective is problematic due to its colloquial, predominant meaning. Bourgeois society understands the principle of solidarity as the selfless duty to serve the “common good”, along the lines of “One for all, and all for one”. Whether it concerns the shift of the costs of social reproduction back upon the workers via the medium of national insurance, or whether it is about the German government’s “Agenda 2010″ or other austerity measures – you can hear the call for “solidarity” play to the tune of national responsibility for state and capital.

Our understanding of “antinational solidarity” is diametrically opposed to this call of duty for the nation. We agree with the concept of solidarity as formulated by the First International: Marx and Engels had derived the basic principle of solidarity from the necessity of the international character of the social revolution. At that time it appeared obvious that only the intention to smash the whole system would enable a general uprising in the spirit of solidarity. We agree and say with Marx: “The revolution must be carried out with solidarity.”

Thus, we need to (re)occupy the principle of solidarity and fill it with left-wing and radical content. Solidarity has to be freed from the isolation of single issue campaigns; it has to be revived and updated by purging it of its reactionary and especially if its national blinkers.

We do not want to appear as naïve and overly optimistic in relation to the current struggles. Still, we do find in these time and time again possibilities for theoretical and political radicalisation. However, the struggle for a better life can only succeed if it comes in the form of a social revolution. Until then we see it as our task to disseminate the idea of antinational solidarity beyond the boundaries of Germany and Europe and to continue to criticise and to act against the correlation of state, nation and capital – free from the illusions of the reformist and traditional Left.

For an international antinational movement!

Written by Working Group “Just Do It!” of Antifa AK Cologne, first published in German in February 2012. Republished from Shift magazine

Islamism – Consequence of, heir to and rival of frustrated Arab nationalism

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1. Islam has a bad press in the free West: followers of Islam still live in the Middle Ages, one hears, and Islamic clerics may conduct procedures their Christian colleagues have only been allowed to dream of for 150 years – to veil women, stone sinners, and burn heretics to death. Some even consider the Koran an early version of ‘Mein Kampf’ – what a fitting anti-Fascist armament for the ‘clash of cultures’ of which the ‘free West’ is still not sure if it wants, and if so, to what extent.

2. Within Islam there have always been revival movements – just like in every other religion. A world in which people seek comfort in religion is not a pleasant place. If it was, people would not have to seek comfort. The kind of comfort religion conveys is paid for with humility and sacrifice and hence religion is far from a contribution to changing the world for the better. Consequently, time and again people have tried to receive more encouragement, more help from above by a yet “more correct” belief. That way Islam has undergone a split (Shiites of Shia Islam and Sunnis of Sunni Islam), there have been a couple of smaller secessions (Ismailis, Alevi, Druze) or new religions have emerged from Islam (Sikhs, Bahá’i). While some stay within the framework of the Islamic religion (though worshippers of the traditional belief might sometimes disagree), there are and have been transitions to a quite different manner of praying to Allah and his mates. It has less to do with good arguments and convincing dogmas that such religious revival movements – or rather: religion in general – were and are able to spread and prevail. Rather, it is closely connected to two questions: whether political authorities attend to a particular deism and assert it by force and if classes or other social groups consider this kind of communication with the higher powers as a spiritual weapon for their other concerns.

3. There are also fundamentalists in Islam – just like in every other religion. Those are people who preach a “return” to the true belief, and whose aim is, for fairly current reasons, to “restore” the moral rules of their ancestors. These have never existed as such, but always amount to the same thing: sacrifice, oppression of deviant positions, submission to the “right” authority and readiness to fight for this nasty programme. Far from being satisfied with there existence as merely a blinkered private opinion, such a programme becomes a political movement to oblige the state to “re”-raise all morality. With regard to Islam this is called Islamism. Such movements seem to astonish and worry people in Europe, of all places, where almost every country has a large Christian-Democratic party.

4. Initially, Islamism appeared as the pan-Islamic revival movement in the beginning of the 20th century. The various tendencies within the pan-Islamic movement aimed to restore the Umma, i.e. all worshippers of Islam united under one single political authority. Between 1815 and 1914 France, Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia and Italy had absorbed Islamic countries – from Morocco to Indonesia – taking possession of them as colonies, had turned them into ‘protectorates’ and blown the Ottoman Empire, which continuously weakened, into separate spheres of interest. The anti-colonial struggles aimed to reverse this development.

5. The pan-Islamists were particularly popular in the Arabic-speaking countries (1), because the Ottoman Empire’s answer to the decline of its power was an intensified politics of homogenisation. After the ‘Young Turks’ had taken over in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1908, they tried to turn the sultan’s subjects into modern citizens of a Turkish-dominated nation state. However, the ‘Ottoman Porte’ did not endear itself to its Arabic subjects with this politics of ‘turkification’, besides, this way they became aware of their ‘Arabic-ness’. Hence, the same happened as in the British, French and Italian colonies: the interaction of national demands and racial exclusion created a diverging, in this case, Arabic nationalism. Under the prophet’s banner the aim was to gather either all Arabs or all Muslims (a clear distinction between the two was not always of concern). The alleged truth that the Arabic language alone, the language of the Koran, allows access to the divine truth emphasised the identity of Islamic revival and Arabic ‘re’emergence according to Islamic insurgents. The British and French supported, armed and used such movements against the Ottoman Empire in World War I (that’s the plot of “Lawrence of Arabia”), while German foreign politics also concentrated on the ‘Mohammedans’, without much success though. Instead of gaining independence as promised, France and Great Britain after 1919 took on the heavy burden of mandates by the League of Nations and created Syria, Iraq, the Lebanon, Palestine and Yemen as dependent quasi-colonies, and moreover, they granted the foundation of Saudi Arabia.

6. The answer of the “Arabic movement” to the “Turks” and Christian “crusaders” (that’s what the colonialists were called in remembrance of other hard times) and later the Zionist movement was the dream of the “re-erection” of an Arabic and/or Islamic Empire of apparently ancient beauty and greatness. But in the 1920s this pan-Islamism paled into insignificance beside the rise of the new nationalistic movements that struggled for “independence” within the boundaries drawn by the colonial powers and which aimed at the foundation of modern nation states such as Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan etc.

7. This did not mean, however, that those national liberation movements would have relinquished the cultural distinction of ‘Islam’ toward the Christian colonialists. The statesmen-to-be indeed appreciated the belief in Allah as far as it was an integral part of the Arabic folk culture as well as a moral resource. However, as religion they did not want to take it too seriously. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that there still were many different Islamic sects as well as strong Christian minorities that ought to participate in the national projects; on the other hand Islam was often used to cement traditional feudal dependencies and thus was regarded as hindering modernisation by the nationalists.

8. After World War II, when the Arabic states had achieved their ideal of sovereignty – insofar as the world order allowed it that is – the various countries and movements all continued to praise the ideal of pan-Arabism. This implies they accepted the contradiction that their nationalism and national politics actually served to achieve the formation of an even higher Arabic unity. Nevertheless, they continuously frustrated those ideas with their politics as illustrated by the short life spans of the various “United” Arab Republics that were founded. The rivalry between Arabic states was constantly exercised by one’s own declaration of belief in the Arabic matter, the complaint about the lack of unity of the Arabic world, and the accusation of others to be solely interested in narrow-minded nationalism. Beyond all vicissitudes the mutual enmity towards Israel, which was blamed for Arabic weakness, stayed on. But even the mutual hatred of the “Jewish State” has never led the Arabic “sister states” to even implicitly support the fight of the PLO (2). Not to mention a good treatment of those who were jammed into refugee camps to await their future use as material for the Palestinian state.

9. Those countries where political authority – mainly royal dynasties like Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, and Iraq until 1958 – laid down a Western course in politics, appreciated Islam as a means to resist ideas of democratisation as well as to neutralise activities of a Socialist and Communist nature. This also held true for the Non-Arabic states Afghanistan and Pakistan, whereas the Shah’s regime in Persia (now Iran), until 1979, considered the Islamic clergy and population as nothing but a hindrance to modernisation. And even the Kemalist military in Turkey appreciated Islam as moral resource for the state. The idea of the religion being of service to the state was regarded as convenient by all of them, yet, not in terms of making the state’s programme subservient to Islam.

10. Even the “Arab Socialist countries” did not avoid using Islam (Nasser: “Mohammed was an imam of socialism”, Baathists etc.), although ’socialism’, like in many other Asian and African states, did not involve much more than stating “the economic wealth belongs to the nation” (art. 26 Baath Party’s constitution). The anti-capitalism of those countries always had an anti-materialist approach preaching national dedication and sacrifice to the people; capitalism was tantamount to egoism and an overemphasis on material interests instead of fighting for the “eternal mission of the Arabic nation” (third principle of the Baath Party). If Marxism-Leninism was an inspiration at all, it was Stalin’s dictum that enemies of the people had to be smashed and Mao’s appreciation of revolutionary heroism. Other than that the class struggle was opposed to ‘reactionary elements’ and directed against those people who were not willing to give away their wealth as well as against minorities that seemed to disturb the nation’s homogeneity with their own ’special’ collective practices and identities. Furthermore, it obviously was directed against Israel, the “bridgehead of imperialism”, whose Jewish residents, by means of persistent propaganda for the last 40 years, had become the personification of Western greed. When the Eastern bloc had ceased to exist, movements that earlier had explicitly disapproved of Islam (PKK, PLO etc.) now regarded it as a revolutionary power.

11. Islamism, which until late in the 1970s played a marginal role, today is a widely spread ideology – from Turkey to Sudan, from Morocco to Indonesia. This has happened however, without its followers agreeing on who belongs to the Umma or how it should be comprised, whether Sunnis or Shiites should lead, which Islamic school and interpretation of Sharia is the correct one and whether it is about the whole of Islam or particularly the unity of all Arabs. Islamism is a nationalistic globalisation critique that rejects the nation state since it is unable to achieve pan-Arabic and pan-Islamic aims. In the fashion of almost every “pan”-movement, dissatisfied nationalism serves as starting point. The only way to rescue the fatherland is to transcend and substitute it with a higher and more powerful unit; yet certainly not without abandoning the chance of getting one’s hands on one’s own nation, adjusting the nation’s politics to the new goal and imposing a moral revival programme on the respective national society.

12. There is no lack of dissatisfied nationalism in Arabic and other Islamic countries. Since the 1980s nearly all of these states had to grapple with matching their own “mixed economy” of state isolation and certain guarantees for the population’s survival with requirements by the IMF in order to stay credit worthy. Since the Eastern bloc’s downfall, the global market as well as the competitiveness of their own production has become the determining political standards in all countries worldwide. The “programmes of structural adjustment” by the IMF imply new hardships to those masses who are not blessed with wealth anyway, with respect to food (bread subsidies), health care, education, etc. Islamism is growing not only because the Muslim Brotherhood establishes alternative networks (schools, Islamic hospitals, soup kitchens for the poor) but because the Islamist explanations for the new situation and their proposed solutions match the existing wide-spread servile cast of mind and the regimes’ official propaganda well. After all, Islamism is – from Morocco to Malaysia – accompanied by anti-Semitism. This has nothing to do with Israeli politics but is closely connected to nationalistic anti-capitalism: against greed, enrichment and materialism the anti-materialist virtues of Islam is set and an economy according to Islamic principles of fair sharing and prohibition of interest is promoted. Even those who apparently fight Islamism – Egypt, Turkey, some former Soviet republics with Islamic majorities – attempt to assert Islamic moral rules in society, thus, laying the ground for Islamism.

13. The new Islamism is therefore consequence, heir of and revival to Arab nationalism. Islamic fundamentalism results from a state of dissatisfaction with the outcomes of these politics. At the same time it inherits the nationalistic critique of capitalism which was popularised by Arab socialists. At the same time Islamism fights the remaining nationalists and Arab socialists as godless people and Western collaborators. Particularly in regard to women – emancipated by Arab socialists as a corollary to modernisation – modern Islamists hold out an ideal of moral renewal where morality and sexuality are the main topics. Three fears seem to be important: first, the idea that Allah is not on one’s side in case one lacks proper moral, second, the idea that sexuality weakens male power to fight in the jihad, and, third, the apprehension that fulfilled sexuality and love, would generally result in rejecting jihad and thus may get in the way of politics. How exactly the interaction between these thoughts works is a subject for a further study.

Just like every other religious fundamentalism seeking national renewal, the transition from Islamism to Fascism is fluent. This has nothing to do with the Koran, but it has everything to do with the disappointed idealism of Arab and Non-Arab Nationalists.

- - -

(1) For those who don’t know: Islam is anything but equivalent to Arabic. Turkish is a completely different language, as is the language spoken in Iran; Bangladesh and Indonesia speak entirely different languages yet again. The fact that these languages use/used Arabic script does not change the fact that they are all different.
(2) See the massacre of Palestinians by Jordanian security forces in the so-called “Black September” in 1970, which gave name to the group that attacked the Israeli team during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.
—
The Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London are the editors of Kittens, the English speaking journal of Junge Linke. Originally published in Shift Magazine.

Legal activism: the spatial politics of squatting in the UK

SQUASH

The people working with Squash are under no illusions about the Government’s ‘consultation’ procedure for introducing new legislation. It is clear from the Ministry of Justice’s Green Paper 'Options for Dealing with Squatters' and its accompanying questionnaire that the Government has already decided the outcome. Despite this, SQUASH is working to highlight some of the inaccuracies and wider implications of the government’s proposals, and network with affected groups to respond to the consultation and build opposition. This isn’t going to gloriously ‘save squatting’, but the more people that get involved, make their own fuss, and take action alongside and beyond Squash, the greater the possibility that we can begin to change the public discourse around squatting.

This document addresses the following questions. Firstly, why bother at all? Why is it important that squatting isn’t criminalized? And secondly, why bother meeting the government on its own terms? Is engagement not contradictory when we’re aiming to build real alternatives to the current system?

Why stop the criminalisation of squatting?

Would it not be better to force the battle – to allow squatting to be criminalised– so that we might see the lines in the sand between those who own, and those who do not?

Such arguments display a certain insularity, and are not uncommon among the autonomous and anti-authoritarian left. It may sound strange, but many people are not comfortable with breaking the law – they are not in a position to take the risks involved, and would simply end up with fewer rights and fewer options. The existing system excludes, weakens, and denies people access to the resources and communities we need and deserve. Here squatting is an opportunity, and for many one of the few remaining options, for building a life despite the damage caused by our Government.

Of course, as well as being a very direct solution to the problem of housing oneself, squatting presents radical solutions that go further. It enables us to use our time and skills in a manner less defined by the pressures of wage-labour. This allows the development of options for living and working that splinter from the definitions of these terms offered by the state. Squatting can therefore be a process that politicises people, but it is dangerous to assume that a ‘radicalisation’ would happen with criminalisation: we are more likely to simply see people being pushed into further destitution and invisibility.

The defence of legally enforced tenancy rights or of rights against forcible entry may be viewed by some as pro-state, in the same sense as the defence of welfarist provisions. In both cases, the criticism is mistaken, because our schools and our rights are not gifts graciously awarded by a benevolent or manipulative state, but are rather our own collective possessions that those who came before us have wrested from the hands of the owners. We have a responsibility to defend what they fought for, and to gain more ground. Furthermore it is crucial to be drawing the dots between the Government’s agenda to criminalise certain sections of society, and the ideological motivations behind this agenda. We are all, in different ways, fighting the same battles.

Why engage with the state on the level of legislation?

Such are some of the justifications for defending squatting, but what many on the anti-authoritarian left are more likely to object to are the means by which groups such as Squash are choosing to fight the potential legislation. Doesn’t engagement with political process confirm and legitimize the Government’s systems of control and order? Is our complicity further concretizing the systems we are apparently trying to fight, whilst pushing the realisation of real social change further and further away? The contradiction is rooted in fighting to protect the rights we have within the current system, whilst at the same time fighting for change beyond the current system.

This is a dilemma not only for those involved with Squash, but for anyone who seeks change in the present without wanting to stifle further (more radical) change in the future. It is important to start by recognising that none of us are so one-dimensional that we cannot work both within and without structures that we oppose; that we can have a set of short-term aims with a certain hat on, which doesn’t need to dilute the other visions that we hold dearer.

Furthermore, we believe that using the sanctioned channels of communication and working within a legally legitimate framework is crucial if we want to build networks with groups of people who are not comfortable with working outside of those parameters. Part of the challenge (beyond but not completely outside of this campaign) is to encourage people to see that it is possible to ourselves decide what may be legitimate or illegitimate; and that we do not need to rely on the abstract authority of the State to determine whether something is right or wrong. However, terms such as illegality and criminality are loaded, and the ideas they carry are potent. This is a language that power exploits very effectively: we cannot ignore or expect to brush away what ‘legality’ distinguishes, unless we want to exclude a significant proportion of people from our campaign.

We have focused here on the general rather than the particular in terms of the contradictions of engaging with the state at a legislative level, but it is how we proceed within this framework that is perhaps the more challenging task.

Engaging directly with the blunt instruments for dialogue offered by the state can of course be dangerous for squatters. Like many other things that fall outside the officially recognised structures, the Government has practically no evidence or data on squatting, no accurate definition of squatting, no real understanding of the boundaries between homelessness, squatting, and occupation. Providing the Government with information that would contribute to the construction of legal definitions of these terms would work against us all, as it would only assist in their campaign to divide and limit us by legal definition. This is an issue that has framed much of SQUASH’s approach to research. It is these questions – about how we navigate in-between these different realms, ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’, visible and invisible, that are crucial. The implications are very real, and potentially harmful; but also potentially the most exciting, where surprising affinities can form and where new possibilities can take root.

Pragmatism is a fundamental necessity in an imperfect world. Preventing the criminalisation of squatting is vital to our defence against neo-liberal economic violence. Engagement with political process and mainstream media are tactical decisions that we have made in the achievement of this immediate goal. We hope that you can see the logic of our position. Now that the ‘open’ part of the consultation has closed we call on you to use occupation as a tactic in whatever struggles you are engaged in – in your libraries, your universities, your workplaces, and the public spaces that are being sold off to private companies – because these things belong to us, and without space we cannot begin to build our alternatives.

Victoria Blitz and Rueben Taylor are both involved with SQUASH. Their views here are written in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent those of ‘SQUASH’.

Legal activism: the spatial politics of squatting in the UK

by Alex Vasudevan

On the 13 of July 2011, the UK Ministry of Justice published a consultation document entitled “Options for dealing with squatters.” The document set in motion a period of consultation which came to an end on the 5th of October and which was, in turn, aimed at “anyone who has been the victim of squatting; and anyone who has experience (positive or negative) of using the current law or procedures to get squatters evicted.” As Crispin Blunt (MP), the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State, points out in his foreword to the consultation, “the Government has become increasingly concerned about the distress and misery that squatters can cause.” He goes on to argue that “the Government does not accept the claim that is sometimes made that squatting is a reasonable recourse of the homeless resulting from social deprivation. There are avenues open to those who are genuinely destitute and who need shelter which do not involve occupying somebody else’s property without authority. No matter how compelling or difficult the squatter’s own circumstances, it is wrong that legitimate occupants should be deprived of the use of their property.” “The consultation,” Blunt concludes, “seeks evidence on the scale of the problem caused by squatters and invites views on a range of options for tackling it, including strengthening the criminal law or working within existing legislation to improve enforcement.”

If the recent consultation represents an attempt by the UK state to tighten the law on squatting, it should come as no surprise. Squatting has always had a close relationship to the law. Legally defined as an act of trespass, squatting is a criminal offence in Scotland (as set out in the Trespass Act of 1865) while it has largely remained a civil matter in the rest of the UK. Squatting is therefore unlawful in England and Wales but not illegal. 1 For many squatters, access to certain customary ‘rights’ was also seen as a source of protection from forcible eviction. This was supported by the Forcible Entry Acts of 1381 which proscribed against forcible entry onto any land or property.2

Over the past forty years, this legal position has come under increasing attack. A major wave of squatting in the late 1960s and early 1970s initiated a new era of legal ‘revanchism’ which challenged the limited protection afforded to squatters in the civil courts. In 1972, this was extended to criminal law as the Law Commission began to reconsider the statutes on trespass. The Commission published its preliminary findings in June 1974 and recommended the repeal of the Forcible Entry Acts and the criminalization of all forms of trespass. In the wake of intense criticism, a watered-down Final Report was published in March 1976. The report formed the basis for the Criminal Law Act of 1977 which represented, as David Watkinson has argued, an “extension of the criminal law in the area of trespass.“ 3 While new offences came into force and were punishable through prison sentences, neither squatting nor trespass was, as such, made illegal. Further changes in the law were proposed in 1991 as the Government set out a series of additional clauses to the Criminal Law Act as part of a consultation on squatting. These changes were tantamount to further criminalization and were challenged by a host of housing organizations and charities as well as SQUASH (Squatters Action for Secure Homes). In the end, the Government was forced to climb down and settle for less draconian measures (see clauses 72-76 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994).

The launch of a new consultation on squatting in July represents, in this way, just the latest episode in a complex legal genealogy that shows the law to be unstable and exclusionary. As the anthropologist James Holston reminds us, it is imperative that we reject an essentialist and functionalist view of the law and focus instead on law as a “system of power.”4 A close reading of the consultation document should therefore attend to the very interests that are behind it and the wider net of social relations that inform its construction. By doing so, it becomes clear that the planned legislation is, ultimately, ideologically-driven and, as such, dependent on shoring up a commitment to the untouchable rightfulness of private property. By defending the interests of “hard-working homeowners” against squatters, the consultation mobilizes the law as a ‘tool’ or ‘weapon’ which only serves to perpetuate domination and accentuate inequality.

In June of this year I posted a piece on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site which explored the coalition government’s plans to criminalize squatting in the lead up to the launch of the consultation. The main thrust of my argument then was twofold:

1) That plans to criminalize squatting would simply serve to exacerbate a growing housing crisis in the UK and that, if anything, squatting should be seen as a necessary coping strategy in the face of an highly uneven and exploitative housing market.5

2) That any new law on squatting betrays, in turn, a more sinister logic that seeks to legislate against various struggles for social justice in our cities and that the impact of a ban on the use of ‘occupation’ as a legitimate tactic of protest must be considered.

The decision by SQUASH – reformed in May 2011 - to participate in the consultation must be seen in this context. It would admittedly be easy to question their decision to engage with a state whose very use of the law is constitutively coercive and violent. This is, of course, hardly a new problem for an autonomous anti-authoritarian left. And yet, it is important to question whether it is in fact possible to campaign within such a legal framework. Does this simply legitimize the role and status of the state? Do such legal mobilizations perpetuate the misrule of law and the inviolability of property ownership? And is it really possible to work with this contradiction?

It would be easy to critique the inconsistencies and injustices of the law and to document the different ways in which it has been used to defend the parlous state of housing in the UK. In the Global South, residential illegality and squatting has often generated an “insurgence of political and civil rights among the urban poor, who learn to use law to legitimate their land claims and who thereby compete in legal arenas from which they have been excluded.” 6 For such residents, participation and inclusion within the law has become a central means by which new forms of citizenship are enacted and consolidated. Conflicts over the law are thus transformed into political practices that secure social and legal legitimacy. To the extent that these struggles speak to the rights-based arguments of recent urban social movements, they also provide resources for contesting the increasingly iniquitous geographies of contemporary urbanization. In the words of the Holston, “[this] is an insurgence that begins with the struggle for rights to have a daily life in the city worthy of a citizen’s dignity.”7

The recent campaign by SQUASH should, in contrast, be set against a different set of logics. It would be misleading, it seems to me, to situate the campaign within a strict discourse of political recognition, participation, and inclusion. I do not mean to diminish the central role that the experience of precarity and marginality has come to play for many squatters whose conditions of living have been reduced to the bare minimum. Indeed as Judith Butler has recently argued, “[any] different social ontology would have to start from the presumption that there is a shared condition of precarity that situates our political lives.”8 But I also believe that the campaign is perhaps best understood as both a form of resistance and as an act of reclamation. At stake here, following Henri Lefebvre, is a right to the city that reconciles material access to urban space and infrastructure with a “renewed right to urban life.” 9

The radical politics of housing articulated by SQUASH should not, in this way, be seen as an end in itself. As occupations spring up across the UK, it is becoming increasingly clear that a new countergeography of protest is emerging that seeks to reclaim and recast public space for a different politics. This may result, in the first instance, in an uneasy if tactical trade-off with the state, but it also offers a real opportunity for the constitution of a radical urban commons. It would therefore be a mistake to concede full legal agency to a state whose interests are sutured to a politics of dispossession and displacement, order and security. That there may, in the end, be no direct line of flight to the promised land of autonomous politics should not detract from the struggle for more just and equal spaces in our cities. The kind of activism undertaken by the SQUASH campaign is just one reminder of what can be accomplished and what still needs to be done.

Alex Vasudevan is a Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on radical politics in Germany and the wider geographies of neo-liberal globalisation. Alex is currently working on a book project that explores the historical and political geographies of the squatter movement in Berlin.

1. David Watkinson, “The Erosion of Squatters Rights,” in Nick Wates and Christian Wolmar (eds.), Squatting: The Real Story (London: Bay Leaf Books, 1980), pp. 158-163, p. 158.
2. Watkinson, “The Erosion of Squatters Rights,” p. 159; see also Colin Ward, Cotters and Squatters: Housing’s Hidden History (Nottingham: Five Leaves, 202), p. 161.
3. Watkinson, “The Erosion of Squatters Rights,” p. 161.
4. James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 206.
5. See Stuart Hodkinson, “Revenge of the Repossessed,” http://www.redpepper.org.uk/revenge-of-the-repossessed/ (last accessed October 20, 2011). For a recent exploration of the relationship between squatting and homelessness see Kesia Reeves, “Squatting: A Homelessness Issue,” An Evidence Review for the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Crisis_SquattingReport_... (last accessed October 20, 2011).
6. Holston, Insurgent Citizenship, p. 204. See also Arjun Appadurai, “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics,” Public Culture 14, 1 (2002), pp. 21-47; Richard Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
7. Holston, Insurgent Citizenship, p. 313.
8. Judith Butler, “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street,” http://eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en (last accessed October 24, 2011).
9. Henri Lefebvre, “Right to the City,” in Writing on Cities, ed. and trans. by Elenore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), pp. 61-181, p. 158.

Occupied London: revolt and crisis in Greece

“We feel that what is being played out in Greece poses some enormous questions that reaches far beyond the place itself, or the people that live there.”

Many of us have been swept away by the struggles currently happening in Greece over the latest loan package to stave off the likely Greek default. The news channels loop familiar images of stone throwing protesters and violent police chasing each other through ubiquitous clouds of tear gas, whilst social media networks hum with the excitement of some of the largest social struggles in recent years. For many of us involved in anti-capitalist politics Greece serves as a suitable repository for the frustrations we feel with the political realities of our current homes.

It is then a timely moment for the editors of the Occupied London project, Antonis Vradas and Dimitris Dalakoglou, to release their first book. ‘Revolt and Crisis’ focuses on the month long Greek uprising of 2008 following the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, its historical precedents as well as the new political terrains that it has opened up in conjunction with the global financial crash of 2008. Through its nineteen chapters the book seeks to dispel the myth of Greece as some exotic Other and explore the linkages between capitalist crisis, social antagonism (or social war) and urban politics. ‘Revolt and Crisis in Greece’ provides us with a window into the Greek political landscape, helping to situate and de-fetishise the 2008 revolt. As the editors are keen to point out “There are no palm trees in Athens”, a reference to the failed planting of palm trees by the Greek state for the Olympics in 2004; Greece shares many of the problems facing the rest of Europe. We need to dig beyond the spectacular images presented to us in order to begin to trace the real dynamics running through contemporary Greek politics. This book provides many useful avenues for doing just this as well as leaving the reader with enough difficult questions and political provocations to mull over. It deserves to be widely read by those encountering the limits of contemporary forms of anti-capitalism and seeking ways to move beyond them.

The book begins with a context-setting section whose chapters cover the history of the Greek ‘metapolitefsi’, the political system post-dictatorship which began in 1974, and its relationship to Athenian politics. As well as serving as a scene-setter these three chapters bring up interesting discussions regarding how the spatiality of a city can influence both positively and negatively the likelihood of social unrest. Athens did not have a Baron Von Haussman, the infamous civic planner responsible for re-designing Paris to assist social control, it marries the highest population density of a European capital with narrow streets and large numbers of intersections which (so argue the authors) facilitate social unrest. This is followed by a fascinating, if brief, dissection of the geography of recent notable urban uprisings in cities such as Paris and Buenos Aires. Further developing a familiar theme of the Occupied London project, ‘The Politics of Urban Space’, is a chapter discussing the nature and implications of two re-appropriations of urban space post-uprising, one explicitly anarchist, the other fascist.

The second section can be considered the core of the book. This section, entitled “The Event: December”, seeks to illuminate December 2008 from a variety of different perspectives and with a variety of different aims. There are discussions on counter-informational strategies, the return of armed vanguardist groups, experiments with popular assemblies and much more. Many of these chapters revolve around Marxist philosopher Alain Badiou’s (of Communist Hypothesis fame) notion of the Event. For Badiou an Event is a rupture with the present which produces hitherto unforeseen after-effects and possibilities. The scale and intensity of the December uprising was unpredicted and the channels of its generalisation can, in many ways, only be guessed at. Perhaps the key political question emerging from this event is whether social movements in Greece, both those that were formed in December 2008 and those that preceded it, can retain fidelity to these newly produced possibilities. Can these movements, to paraphrase an argument of Alex Trocchi’s chapter, not only intensify resistance but generalise its spread. It is clear that those movements that cease to move lose their purchase on the world. The danger of retreating behind safely delineated borders into a familiar political scene or sub-culture must be actively challenged through thoughtful political practice.

These issues are mulled over by several authors in both section two and the last section entitled “The Crisis”. Questions are asked of the anarchist identity by Christos Boukalas who reminds us in his chapter title that ‘no one is revolutionary until the revolution’. The argument is made that some strands of the anarchist scene in Greece have adopted a fetishised understanding of what it means to be a political militant or indeed a revolutionary and that this has led to an understanding of the activist as somehow outside of ‘normal’ society. This misunderstanding of revolutionary politics was highlighted tragically by the death of three bank workers during the huge demonstration of May 5th 2010. This critical analysis of the social antagonist movement in Greece is complemented by Alex Trocchi who places anarchist politics within its broader post ‘68 and anti-global trajectory, a trajectory which Trocchi suggests must be ruptured and superseded if we wish to gain more political purchase post-2008. These political questions are complemented by a thorough analysis of the political economy of Greece, which is similar in many ways to most European states, by Communist group TPTG and David Graeber who takes a historical approach to the topic of debt. This section serves to deal with the legacy of the 2008 uprising by exploring the terrain these movements find themselves on and beginning to deal with some of the political limits stopping these movements continuing to move and gain political traction.

Ultimately the broad range of perspectives contained in this book help to illuminate December 2008, recognising and broadening its complexities as well as, hopefully, generalising these issues to those of us beyond the Greek context. Although there are a (thankfully) few overly academic chapters which say little of interest in a fairly inaccessible way (even for someone with a post-grad degree) this book must be commended for contributing to an emerging problematisation of the ways in which we have done politics in the past decades. It is clear that December 2008 was an event whose importance is certainly not just in its origins or the timeline of conflicts which occurred, but also in the new possibilities it has unleashed. ‘Revolt and Crisis’ succeeds in chipping away at the romantic image of Greek anarchism and the December uprising; beyond the spectacular footage of masked anarchists, “carpets of glass” and Molotov cocktails, many of the questions are the same. How do we move beyond the limits of our current forms of struggle and political identification? How can we find political traction in a rapidly changing, fluid situation? How will the state respond to increasing social unrest as austerity politics are implemented? Ultimately, the question this book asks is can we move beyond our own limits? Just as parts of the anarchist movement in Greece are struggling to move beyond the limits of its current form, so are parts of the anti-capitalist movement here in the U.K.

Given its exciting, inspiring subject matter this book could easily have become an anti-capitalist mirror of the liberal ‘coffee table book’ interpretation of the revolts already popular in Greece. However, the editors have chosen a harder path to pursue and have given us a book full of insights into the Greek context and packed with broader questions, challenges and provocations for those of us frustrated with the limits of current anti-capitalist praxis and for this it should be commended.

Occupied with conspiracies? The occupy movement, populist anti-elitism, and the conspiracy theorists

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All progressive social movements have dark sides, but some are more prone to them than others. Occupy Wall Street and its spin-offs, with their populist, anti-elitist discourse (“We Are the 99%”) and focus on finance capital, have already attracted all kinds of unsavory friends: antisemites, David Duke and White Nationalists, Oath Keepers, Tea Partiers, and followers of David Icke, Lyndon Larouche, and the Zeitgeist movement (see glossary below).

On one hand, there is nothing particularly new about this. The anti-globalization movement was plagued with these problems as well.(1) This was sometimes confusing to radicals who saw that movement as essentially Left-wing and anti-capitalist; when the radicals said “globalization,” they really meant something like the “highest stage of capitalism,” and so from their perspective, by opposing one they were opposing the other. The radicals often saw the progressives in the movement as sharing this same vision, only in an “incomplete way”­—and that they only needed a little push (usually by a cop’s baton) to see that capitalism could not be reformed, and instead had to be abolished.

But for numerous others, “globalization” did not mean capitalism. Just as for the radicals, it functioned as a codeword: for some it meant finance capital (as opposed to industrial capital), while for others it meant the regime of a global elite constructing their “New World Order.” And either or both might also have meant the traditional Jewish conspiracy’s supposed global domination and control of the banking system. Whether they realized it or not, the many anti-authoritarians who praised this “movement of movements” as being based solely on organizational structure, with no litmus test for political inclusion, put out a big welcome sign for these dodgy folks. And in that door came all kinds of things, from Pat Buchanan to Troy Southgate.

But still, the anti-globalization movement in the United States was initiated by an anarchist / progressive coalition that in many ways controlled the content and discourse of it, giving it a classic Popular Front feel—the same way the old Communist Parties controlled large progressive coalitions for many decades. In contrast to this, Occupy Wall Street immediately took on a purely populist approach.

There are different ways to understand and oppose capitalism. There is a structural critique, usually associated with Marxism but often shared by anarchism, which seeks to understand the internal dynamics of capital and sees it as a system, beyond the control of any particular person or group. There is also an ethical critique, popular among religious groups and pacifists, which focuses less on the “whys” of capital and instead concentrates on its effects, looking at how it produces vast differences in wealth while creating misery, scarcity, and unemployment for most of the world. Last, there is a populist vision, which can transcend Left and Right. Populists have a narrative in which the “elites” are opposed to the “people.”

On one hand, this can be seem as a vague kind of socialism which counterposes the everyday worker against the truly rich. But it also lacks any kind of specific analysis of class or other social differences—the 99% are treated as one homogenous body. Usually the “people” are seen as the “nation,” and these 1% elites are perceived to be acting against the nation’s interests. From a radical, anti-capitalist viewpoint, this narrative may be wrong and “incomplete,” but by itself is not dangerous. In fact, many progressive and even socialist political movements have been based on it.

But the populist narrative is also an integral part of the political views of conspiracy theorists, far Right activists, and antisemites. For antisemites, the elites are the Jews; for David Icke, the elites are the reptilians; for nationalists, they are members of minority ethnic, racial, or religious groups; for others, they are the “globalists,” the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, the Federal Reserve, etc. All of these various conspiracy theories also tend to blend in and borrow from each other. Additionally, the focus on “Wall Street” also has specific appeal to those who see the elite as represented by finance capital, a particular obsession of the antisemites, Larouchites, followers of David Icke, etc. “The Rothschilds” are the favorite stand-in codeword of choice to refer to the supposed Jewish control of the banking system.

Much has already been said about the Occupy movement’s refusal to elucidate its demands. On one hand, this has been useful in mobilizing a diverse group of people who can project what they want to see in this movement—anarchists, Marxists, liberals, Greens, progressive religious practitioners, etc. On the other hand, this has been useful in mobilizing a diverse group of people who can project what they want to see in this movement—Ron Paulists, libertarians, antisemites, followers of David Icke, Zeitgeist movement folks, Larouchites, Tea Partiers, White Nationalists, and others. The discourse about the “99%” (after all, these Right-wingers and conspiracy mongers are probably a far greater proportion of the actual 99% than are anarchists and Marxists), along with the Occupy movement’s refusal to set itself on a firm political footing and correspondingly to place limitations on involvement by certain political actors, has created a welcoming situation for these noxious political elements to join.

So far, the overwhelmingly progressive nature of many of these Occupations has kept this element at bay. But it is only the weight of the numbers of the progressive participants that has done this. There are neither organizational structures within the Occupy movement, nor are there conceptual approaches that it is based on, that act to ensure this remains the case. So it is not unreasonable to expect that, especially as participation declines, some of the Occupations will be taken over by folks from these far Right and conspiratorial perspectives. All participants might rightly see themselves as part of the 99%. The real divisive question will then be, who do they think the 1% are?

Notes

(1) At least one Left group had quit the anti-globalization movement in 1998 because of antisemitism and far Right affiliations; a prominent deep-pocketed funder had close links to a neo-fascist think tank; and neo-Nazi figures both praised the Seattle demonstrations and attempted to glean off the anti-globalization movement after words. Things got so out of hand that a whole new brand of decentralized crypto-fascism crystallized and attempted an entryist maneuver. See my “Re-branding Fascism: National-Anarchism” for more background on this.

Spencer Sunshine is researcher, journalist, and activist who lives in Brooklyn, New York. His writings on the far Right include “Re-branding Fascism: National-Anarchists”. He is currently writing a book about the theoretical implications of the transition from classical to contemporary anarchism.

POLITICAL GLOSSARY:

Buchanan, Pat (US): Paleconservative politician who has run several high-profile campaigns for President. A Christian nationalist, he opposes globalization and relies on racist, antisemitic, and homophobic worldviews.

Duke, David (US): Media-savvy founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives as a Republican in 1990 but lost his bid for US Congress. Duke stresses antisemitic theories about Jewish control of the Federal Reserve and the banking system, and has endorsed the Occupy movement.

finance capital vs industrial capital: Populism often depends on the producerist narrative, which pits “unproductive capital” against “productive” capital. Unproductive capital refers to industries which are based on the manipulation of abstractions (banking), versus the production of physical objects (factory work). The Nazis relied on this distinction for their “National Socialism.”

Icke, David (UK): A former Green Party-leader-turned-conspiracy theorist who blends numerous different conspiratorial ideas together, including antisemitic ideas. He claims that world leaders are Reptilian aliens who appear to be humans, and feed off negative human energy. He has followers on both the Left and Right.

Larouche, Lyndon (US): A former Trotskyist who founded a Left-wing cult around himself and then quickly transformed it into a far Right political organization with a focus on intelligence gathering. He is an antisemitic nationalist who attacks finance capital and globalization.

Oath Keepers (US): Right-wing organization of current and former military and law enforcement members. Descended from the Militia movement, they pledge to disobey certain federal orders that are perceived to violate the Constitution.

Paul, Ron (US): Republican Congressman from Texas who is currently seeking to be his party’s 2012 presidential candidate. He has libertarian economics and isolationist politics; he opposed the US invasion of Iraq but also wants to withdraw from the UN. Favors drug legalization and dismantling the Federal Reserve. Has support from some White Nationalists as well as some progressives.

Southgate, Troy (UK): Former National Front activist who founded National-Anarchism, a form of decentralized crypto-fascism which attempted to infiltrate the anti-globalization movement.

Tea Party (US): A Right-wing populist movement that has affected the US political landscape. It has no clear focus but a mass base and deep funding from wealthy Rightists. Islamophobes, ‘Birthers’ (who claim that President Obama was born in Kenya and is a secret Muslim), and White Nationalists can be found in these circles.

White Nationalists: A catch-all term for various far Right politics whose central concern is the “preservation” of people of European descent (excluding Jews), who are seen as comprising a “nation.” This includes white supremacists, white separatists, and those who work inside parliamentary systems but advocate for “white rights.”

Zeitgeist movement: Technocratic movement which also transcends the traditional Left / Right divide. Founded by Peter Joseph, it originates in a series of movies which blended various conspiracy theories together. Chapters exist around the world.

Originally published in Shift Magazine

Precarious life?

Precarity is a term which entered the language of European social movements from the 1980s. The concept gained particular prominence within the Euro Mayday demonstrations which saw San Precario - patron saint of precarious workers paraded through the streets of many European cities. Precarity is a concept which attempts to grapple with the fundamental changes to the relationship between capital and class we have seen since the early 1970s. These changes were precipitated by the collapse of the post-war consensus between labour and capital which saw the allocation of rising wages and improving lifestyles for many in exchange for increasing productivity and profitability in the factories of the Global North. In response to growing working class counter-power expressed through youth uprisings, the black liberation movement and struggles over the rate of exploitation within the factories we witnessed a capitalist backlash. A collection of national and international policies, changes in production technology and the dominant forms of capital accumulation and, at times, naked violence succeeded, for the most part, in re-imposing the authority of capital. These processes and policies succeeded in converting the unruly working class of the factory and university occupation into the hyper-connected, over-stressed and self-entrepreneurial subject demanded by new forms of capital accumulation. The horizons of politics has irrevocably altered, we can’t return to the forms of struggle and the demands of decades long gone. As attractive as the 1960s appears now, mired deep in the crisis of late capitalism, we can't return to this period.

Today's global political economy is characterised by hyper-exploitation for some and enforced idleness for the rest. A full employment economy has slowly slipped out of electoral manifestos and been replaced with a suite of policies to promote flexibility, profitability and a skills-based economy. Piecework and the rhythm of the factory with its routine, gruelling hours has been replaced by zero hour contracts and the faceless demands of our own smart phones. For most of us work is insecure, unrewarding and under-paid. Those few of us that remain in unions do so fully aware of the cynical nature of the bureaucracy and the inadequate tools at their disposal for protecting what remains of secure employment. Whilst a small class of freelance creatives, media moguls and financial executives have been lifted on the rising tide of this new economy, the rest of us exist in a state of work related hyper-tension. Stressed in work and stressed out of it. The collapse of all sense of a work/leisure distinction and the spectre of unemployment stalk those of us lucky enough to inhabit the offices and call centres of what remains of the European economy. For those unlucky enough to find themselves amongst the ranks of the structurally unemployed, job seeking has become a job in itself, one policed by the pressures of self-development and the discipline of the job centre. As unemployment rates rise ‘employabilty’ services continue to be a growth sector.

Precarity is a term to describe the subjective, personal experience of late capitalism. It is one perspective with which to grasp the disorientating medley of hyper-exploitation, the technology-enabled mobilisation of our emotions and desires, ever more ingenious forms of discipline and de-territorialised financial flows which define late capitalism. However we don't just experience the logic of late capitalism in our places of work, or non-work. As we are keen to stress in Shift, capitalism is a social relation which we encounter throughout our everyday lives. The neoliberal regime is based on expanding the rule of value into areas outside of commodity production alone. We can see the rhythm of capital now at work in fields as diverse as health and social care, education and environmental protection, all spheres once the preserve of the ‘social’. The processes and functions needed to reproduce populations with all the skills and amenities expected of 2012 are increasingly subordinated to the logic of capital.

The crisis of 2008 has made the impact of these, now accelerating, developments more keenly felt. As the recently unemployed are churned through privatised ‘employability’ programmes, students see their EMA (Education Maintenance allowance) cut, university fees rise and transport and housing costs increase. The two central planks of the Tories’ Plan A for austerity are budget deficit strategies working hand-in-hand with the politics of the ‘Big Society’ - a set of policies to replace slashed social services with community entrepreneurialism. Whether employed or not the services which allow us to function within this society are becoming increasingly uncertain. With the wholesale assault on the social wage many of us once enjoyed - pensions, education, welfare etc - we experience increased precarity in every aspect of our daily lives. As the crisis of capital deepens and the gap between the richest strata of society and the rest of us widens, conflicts over social reproduction will expand. Struggles over the NHS, EMA, University fees and internet piracy are all examples of the importance of reproductive struggles and areas of vibrancy and political experimentation can be seen.

We hope this series will provide a space for organisers to continue exploring how precarity affects our political practice. How does it effect our ability to organise and communicate? Is it an issue we can mobilise around or a perspective we need to adopt? Can more traditional forms of labour and community organising be rethought for the current period? We are critical of those that call for a return to the Fordist period. We believe we can’t go back. Even if we wanted a full employment society, changes in production and technology, the organisation and function of the state and the labour movement as well as environmental devastation are unlikely to permit it. If we can’t go back then we need to be developing new concepts and new demands. This perspective will put us into conflict with all those arguing for the continuation of a society built on labour and debt but may also open up exciting new spaces and alliances.

Shift are excited to announce the beginning of this new series on precarity. This is a new area of discussion for Shift and we hope to use it to build links between various parts of the anti-capitalist movement here in the UK. There is an obvious disconnect between activist scenes, single issue campaigns, labour orientated organisers and those of us struggling to devise forms of political action suitable for the present outside of existing political vehichles. It is our hope that the articles, interviews and reviews published in this series can start bringing together these various perspectives in a productive manner. The articles already commissioned for this series are, we hope, just the start and we encourage submissions of article proposals to continue and develop these conversations...

Ben Lear is an editor of Shift Magazine and contributing author to 'Occupy Everything! Reflections on why it’s kicking off everywhere' published this year by Minor Composition. His tweets can be found at @Ben_In_Manc

Precarity and the workplace: an account of organising at an FE College

This is a personal account of an anti casualisation struggle where I work. Frustratingly, we are right in the middle of our struggle and bogged down in the bureaucratic mud at the moment, so I won’t be able to tell you if we won or not!

I work in an FE college in London. Approximately 70 of us are hourly paid lecturers (HPLs), which means we are on zero hour contracts. This means we get 65% of the pay that we would get if we were permanent and we don’t have any guaranteed minimum number of hours. It also means we don’t need to be formally made redundant, which is what we are fighting about now.

Last year my department fought a battle against redundancies to the permanent staff, which included direct action and strike threats. When they announced that we had won no compulsory redundancies (a few days before our planned strike) we asked the union about the hourly paid staff, and were told that management said they didn’t foresee any redundancies of HPLs and that there was an agreement not to reduce our hours by more than 50%. Just a few days after this conversation we got told that actually there probably would be job losses, we would find out our position when term started, but not to expect much work. The union brought up the 50% agreement and management said that no such agreement existed. It turned out nothing was in writing. We were now in a much weaker position as we had no live ballot for strike action, and everyone was going away for the summer holiday.

When we started back in September, after a summer of total uncertainty, some teachers were not offered anything. Some, including me, had cuts in hours up to ninety per cent, and some were only given work to the end of October. We called an emergency union meeting of the whole teaching staff, which was very well attended, and got, amazingly, a hundred per cent vote for action up to and including strike action in defence of the HPLs. However the branch secretary, who hadn’t attended the meeting, delayed putting this motion to management as he didn’t agree with it, because it was “too confrontational”. We had another emergency meeting, voted again one hundred per cent to declare a dispute if our concerns were not answered, and started asking the UCU regional for a ballot. This went on and on, until the end of October came, the people concerned lost their jobs, and we were unable to do anything at all as we were still waiting for our ballot.

The HPL campaign is very different from the struggle against redundancies last year in my department. For a start, in our department we are a compact group of people, who work in three adjacent staff rooms and who all know each other well. As HLPs however we are scattered all over the college. People who don’t have enough hours (the majority) do other jobs and rush in, teach and rush out. Some people don’t plan on staying long or are working freelance in another career. However a lot of people stay working on the HPL contract for years, hoping to get made permanent. Black and female teachers are more likely to end up in this position. So although we are a distinct group of staff with a specific common problem, we are very dispersed and it has always been very difficult to bring the hourly paid workforce together to discuss our situation.

We have an elected hourly paid rep now and recently one of the other union reps began pushing the issue of the HPL contract at negotiation meetings. When the issue of redundancies came up this rep had already gathered a lot of evidence that the contract as it stood was illegal and that management were abusing the contract. This was very useful and put them on the defensive. However, the struggle relies heavily on the work of this shop steward who is not an HPL. She is very committed to trying to improve the conditions of the HPLs, but this does mean that we don’t always know what is happening or what is being negotiated. We have tried various ways of communicating as HPLs, but the basic problem is that everything is difficult and time consuming due to people being so dispersed and not knowing each other. For example, I only work on main site two days a week, and I never see my rep as we don’t have compatible timetables.

Subjectively, sometimes I don’t want to work on the campaign, even though it is actually fighting to improve my own conditions, as I’m tired and annoyed and don’t want to go to the college on my day off. Sometimes I also feel angry with the permanent staff or the other HPLs. With the permanent staff because they make comments to me like “but that’s what the hourly paids are for” (when people who had worked in the college for twelve years lost their jobs) or “but you knew it wasn’t a permanent contract” (when I lost ninety per cent of my hours overnight). With the hourly paid teachers because so many of them cross the picket line when we’re on strike. I do find a little bit of emotional energy left over to get angry with the management as well.

Last term many things helped our struggle succeed. Being in a tight knit team, knowing and trusting my workmates, having that emotional connection and seeing each other all the time. We made decisions collectively, at one point having weekly meetings. With the scattered HPLs we just don’t have that. We have also run up against familiar problems with trying to call official action. We had to battle to get our vote for a strike last term, and we only got it as we already had a live ballot. Later, people lost their jobs while we were helplessly waiting for a ballot. The problem is not only the anti union laws. Some people in the union have viewed the casualised teachers as a buffer, who can be put on short time or laid off easily, which protects the jobs of the “core membership”: the permanent teachers. It is only very recently that the issue of redundancies and bad treatment of the HPLs has been considered a union issue at all. We have managed to get two unanimous votes for strike action, from the union branch which is mainly permanent staff, to support the casualised staff who are mainly non unionised, which is an excellent result. However, many weaknesses of our position are apparent. We haven’t actually been on strike, because we are not fully in control of the strike process. Too much control resides in the regional, because they can give or withhold the ballot, and they think defending HPLs is more trouble than it’s worth. Beyond that, the college management may make some concessions if they see we are serious, but they see this as a threat to their right to manage, and are being very hardline at the moment. The dispersal and high turnover of HPLs means we don’t have an easy way to talk to each other or to plan action. The lack of involvement historically by HPLs in the union means that we are starting from a very unorganised position and are having to build up from scratch.

At the moment we are still waiting for our ballot, so that hopefully we can be ready to strike if they announce new redundancies. We are going to fight for our contract to be changed. We are going to meet with other colleges who have fought successful battles for better contracts. And me, well, seeing as I lost ninety per cent of my hours this year, tomorrow I’m going to sign on.

Siobhan is from north London and has worked in many jobs from cleaning printing presses to making balloon animals. She is now an FE teacher after going to university through an Access course and is a member of UCU and Solfed.

The Manchester protest against Aaron Porter was not anti-Semitic!

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Many people reading the news coverage of the TUC, UCU and NUS-organised demonstration in Manchester on 29 January must have felt disgusted with the student movement in this country. First students desecrated the Cenotaph in London last December (sic), and now they have apparently shouted vile racist abuse at NUS president Aaron Porter. The ‘story’ seems to have begun with an article on Daily Mail online, which refers briefly to a photographer, who apparently overheard a chant of ‘Tory Jew’ directed at the student leader. From that they constructed a headline reading ‘student leader faces barrage of anti-Jewish abuse at rally’. Then a story on the Telegraph website mentions unnamed ‘witnesses’ who heard the same ‘anti-Semitic insults’, and they add that other protesters responded with ‘no to racism, no to racism’. From there it goes viral with several online media outlets ‘reporting’ chants of ‘Tory Jew scum’ and ‘vile racist abuse’.

We were close to Porter at all times during the incident. It started off with just a handful of students asking him about his lack of support for their actions, and then when he started walking off, a large group (probably around a third of those assembled at the time) followed him all the way to Manchester Metropolitan University where he took refuge behind police lines. There were chants of scum, ‘Tory too’, Porter out etc. but we heard no anti-Semitic abuse, and no chants of ‘no to racism’, either.

Could this all be a fabrication based on that one photographer’s mishearing of ‘too’ for ‘Jew’, in the chant ‘Aaron Porter, we know you – you’re a fucking Tory too’? It seems likely.

Apart from the unnamed photographer cited by the Daily Mail, and the unnamed witnesses mentioned by the Telegraph (could that just be the same photographer?), we have only found one reference to anti-Semitic abuse by an eye-witness. On the blog ‘Harry’s Place’, a commenter writes:

‘I was at this protest today and I heard 2, yes, two people chanting this. And, guess what, the two men chanting this were of Asian descent, they were not white. Also what the article fails to mention is that about 20 or so people started chanting “no, no, no to racists” at these men.’

It is of course possible that a couple of chants of ‘Tory Jew’ were made in the noisy crowd that we did not hear (nor did any of our 20-30 friends in the group hear anything like this). But we do think it almost entirely impossible that none of us, or anybody else we know, would have missed chants of ‘no to racists’ by a group of 20 people. (None of the youtube clips we looked at made us think differently either, but if evidence did emerge of anti-Semitism we’d be the first to condemn this, though we would not see this as anything else but an isolated detail).

We certainly don’t think that anti-Semitic sentiments are impossible in the student movement. There were more than enough incidents, chants and political expressions during the university occupations in solidarity with Gaza during the first months of 2009, and in condemnation of Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ that we were deeply unhappy with. And of course we are reminded of ULU president Clare Solomon’s remarks last year that were highlighted by activists from the Alliance for Worker’s Liberty, and that seemed to belittle the historical persecution of Jews (though she subsequently retracted her statements and we don’t really want to comment on what might just be some point-scoring exercise between the AWL and Solomon’s organisation Counterfire).

Yet, the frustrating thing about the news coverage of the Aaron Porter incident is not the cheap (and often hypocritical) attempt at branding a group of several hundred left-wing and anarchist students ‘racists’. The real frustration arises out of the real story this coverage has stifled: the fact that Porter’s inability of partaking in the Manchester demonstration is actually symbolic of a significant escalation of the gulf between the NUS leadership and a majority of those students who have been attending the demonstrations in November and December last year, and this latest one in January.

Grassroots students accuse Porter of branding the attempted mass occupation of the Tory HQ in Millbank Tower ‘absolutely despicable’ and calling the students present an ‘utter disgrace’ in the national press after the 10/11/10 ‘Demolition’ protest. They are offended by the NUS’s cautiousness when it came to organising more demonstrations, the lack of support for those who engaged in low-scale confrontation with the police in Parliament Square, and suspect a careerist motivation behind Porter’s condemnation of student militancy. 8 student unions across the country are not affiliated to the NUS, motions of no confidence in Porter have been passed by three student unions (including Birbeck College and SOAS), and Bristol University union are due to decide on a no confidence motion at their AGM on 10 February. On top of that, an elected officer of Manchester Metropolitan University union complained after the Manchester demonstration of a NUS’s ‘lack of engagement’ with local activists who were not invited to speak at the Platt Fields rally yesterday. Quoted in the local newspaper Manchester Mule, he stated that ‘our students’ union should not be used as a headquarters for the NUS’, and that ‘there was no engagement with Man Met Union at all, and no opportunity for student reps from Manchester to talk.’

An unbridgeable gap?

The successful exclusion of Aaron Porter from his ‘own’ demonstration was actually a mixture of careful strategising amongst Manchester students and spontaneous crowd reaction. It would have been all too easy for a small group of student anarchists in black hoodies and facemasks to throw a couple of eggs during Porter’s speech, had it taken place. Similarly, the small gaggle of the seemingly-resurrected Clown Army could have focused its antics on the NUS president. But after Porter had written in the Guardian, just a day before the demonstration, that the NUS has been ‘leading the movement’ and that its left-wing critics ‘represent few people other than themselves’, such vanguardist actions would have only played into his hands. Instead, a seemingly less militant, but certainly more effective, course of action was to heckle Porter during his speech at Platt Fields Park.

It never came to that of course. Hundreds of flyers were handed out to students at the assembly point of the demonstration, inciting them to ‘Heckle the President’. The overwhelmingly positive responsive to the flyers quickly changed the pre-march atmosphere. Porter was spotted nearby, with only a couple of stewards (a handful of them were from a private security firm working for MMU union, as the TUC had apparently not found enough volunteers) there to protect him. More and more students started to move towards him, and finally a few attempted to engage him in a discussion. But Porter wasn’t in the mood for talking and instead was escorted away by the stewards, with a crowd of now some 300 people (our figure compares to 150 cited in mainstream media reports, and 500 in the AWL write-up) following him, heckling him, all the way to his chosen refuge in Manchester Metropolitan University, some 500 metres up the road. It was an overwhelming sign of ‘no confidence’, if not by the mass of the student body, then certainly by those students that had come to attend the demonstration.

The anti-NUS sentiments were also voiced on the rather uneventful march down Oxford Road to Platt Fields Park, with a number of banners and placards declaring ‘Aaron Porter does not represent me’. And it became more obvious during the TUC-organised rally.

The political gap between the speakers from various trade union bodies and campaigns, and probably about half of the 2-3,000 strong crowd was remarkable. There was occasional heckling of the speakers all the way through, and during one speech, a group of protesters even turned on their biketrailer-mounted soundsystem and started dancing. All talks were repetitive, social-democratic, and attempting to gain support for a neo-Keynesian model of welfare state and full employment. They were answered with occasional shouts of ‘we know’ and ‘you’re all saying the same’. The only noticeable resonance with the majority of the listeners came when a speaker was announced to have taken part in the Edinburgh University occupation.

And it seemed like a large section of the crowed only endured the speeches in order to get the chance to heckle Aaron Porter again. ‘Porter, Porter – show your face’, they chanted. Somebody handed out eggs and rotten tomatoes, and it must have been several dozen people, mainly students and ex-students, who were eager to take them. Had Porter appeared on stage, he would have been absolutely pelted! (what a difference this made to the situation at London’s Embankment on the day of the tuition fees vote, where Porter’s speech at his glowstick vigil was interrupted only by a few, but loud, shouts of ‘traitor, traitor’) Instead it was NUS vice president for further education Shane Chowen (while trying to defend the NUS position) and Manchester Central MP Tony Lloyd (‘he’s Labour and voted for the war – let’s get him’) who had to cut their speeches short after eggs were thrown in their direction. And when it become clear that Porter would no longer make an appearance, a few activists behind a reinforced banner (‘you have the scissors, we have the rocks’) led a mass exodus of some 1,000 people (almost half the crowd on the field) back onto the streets of Manchester, halfway through a trade union rep’s speech.

While the union reps in Platt Field’s Park were given a tough time, our engagement within union structures should not be underestimated. We were glad that the crowd stayed with the rally as long as it did, and shouted back at the speakers. We wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few of them rethinking their relationship with the rank-and-file and grassroots activists. When one group of protesters began chants of ‘Strike, Strike, Strike!’ during the speech of what might have been the GMB or NUT representative (sorry, we didn’t pay too much attention at that point), she answered back, slightly embarrassed, with ‘yes, we will discuss this, we are with you’. For Aaron Porter to regain the trust of the student demonstrations, however, the time has passed.

From Shift magazine

Welcome to the occupation

What are the meanings of ‘occupation’ today? How might the word’s different uses relate to each other, specifically in the context of the UK’s current political situation?

The message from the Coalition is that protest against its programme of spending cuts and privatisation will only be tolerated as long as it falls within the boundaries set by the authorities and doesn’t inconvenience anyone, as long as it follows the approved route and steps aside politely once it’s had its moment in the spotlight (as illustrated in the unwittingly Warholian manner of a government minister who suggested fifteen minute stoppages in lieu of one-day strikes). There is never any justification for obstructing the flow of capital and labour. Only a placatory re-channelling is acceptable, a sort of Glastonburyised leisure activism which, far from threatening ruling interests, ends up reinforcing them, as opposing views are perfunctorily taken into account and people allowed to ‘have their say’ while the measures are pushed through regardless. Protests which outstay their welcome by occupying territory earmarked for use by capital – whether potential advertising space in the media consciousness or an actual patch of land – are ridiculed as extremist and often brutally repressed.

The same theme occurs in the post-Fordist employment marketplace: you can be as ‘alternative’ as you like in your tastes or beliefs as long as this does not impinge on the work you are summoned to do, the products you are required to sell, the targets you have to meet. Any questioning of this apparent freedom is forbidden. In this sense, people are arguably more tightly restricted and deeply subsumed by capital than ever before. We’re flexible, say the bosses, so we expect you to be too; if you don’t like it, go somewhere else; a judgement delivered with a cynical flourish as unemployment levels rise. At Jobcentre level, the prospect of refusing work on ethical grounds is almost unthinkable.

This emptying out of the substance of work has been achieved to a great extent through capitalism’s use of precarious employment practices to drive down labour costs while convincing people that they have been freed from the chains of industry and that their destiny is now entirely in their own hands. In the words of countless aspirational television shows, if you have ‘passion’ and ‘drive’ and ‘self-belief’ you will succeed; and if you fail, it is your own fault; success and failure here of course being entirely framed by the interests of capital.

Through the spread of short-term insecure work the traditional category of ‘occupation’, signifying what one does for a living and connoting usefulness and belonging, has given way to an endless entrepreneurial career narrative propelled by generic terms such as ‘flexibility’ and ‘transferrable skills’. The individual is expected to surf between temporary assignments and market oneself as a multi-purpose commodity.

Now that practically all jobs are at risk, precarity has become paradoxically institutionalised. Workplaces become zones of permanent transition and deteriorating conditions go unchallenged as people are always just passing through, reluctant to jeopardise their prospects and always eager to move on before they are dropped. Such restless mobility brings on a spatial disorientation, and also a temporal blurring. Whereas the term occupation traditionally refers to the job a person is doing now, the discourse of careers and employability is all about what you aspire to do, where you hope/believe you will be in the future, and how you intend to get there ahead of, rather than alongside, your peers. To adapt Paul Mason’s phrase, today’s disaffected graduate (or school leaver, or middle-aged redundancy victim for that matter) is not only someone with no future, but also someone with no present. The routine question ‘what do you do?’ can provoke existential uncertainty, if not misery.

In order to assuage this anxiety and ensure effective functioning under the rule of precarity, the vacancy left by the absence of occupation is filled with the job of ‘jobseeking’. Whether or not one is technically employed, jobseeking becomes the supreme vocation, much more so than any actual work. Its duties of searching, updating and networking constitute an ongoing regime of self-care.

Similarly the function of labour (or welfare) is increasingly described not in the vulgar terms of getting money to live on, but as offering the speculative currency of opportunity, a foot in the door rather than food on the table. Internships are sold in this way as empowering, sought-after experiences. They are pastiches of paid work, while at the other end of the spectrum mandatory workfare schemes are cruel parodies, quasi-rehabilitative exercises designed to teach the unemployee a lesson while supplying the corporate client with free labour.

The process of dispersing occupation into the circuit of careers and jobseeking reaches its limit in the realisation that there is nothing behind the rhetoric. The promised future will never arrive; and furthermore, when the aspirational music stops it becomes clear that disorientation and instability do not obscure the real shape of the present; they define it.

In order to re-imagine the future this lost present must first of all be reinstated, and this requires a radical re-orientation of work and a re-occupation of the space of employment.
Another interpretation: by a reverse effect, the refugee aesthetic of the various anti-capitalist occupations highlights the real

occupation which is happening all around them, and from which they are improvised escape attempts: that is, the private corporate takeover of public services, public space and public thought. The occupying force is a wealthy elite which has bought the favours of self-serving politicians and is now siphoning resources away from welfare, health and education. Social institutions are being turned into lucrative business ventures.

As banal as this genre of oppression might seem in comparison with those in other parts of the world, nevertheless for certain sectors of the population – people with disabilities undergoing persecutory ‘assessments’, for instance, or those being pushed into workfare or caught in the downward spiral of debt and temporary work - everyday existence starts to resemble life under occupation. Interchangeable political parties offer non-existent choices; continual crisis and police brutality are combined with a synthetic antidepressant positivity. In workplaces and job interviews people seem to be performing roles and reciting approved scripts, as if for some unseen observer. Beneath this veneer a constant background of fear and stress is taken for granted.

A crucial task for the protest-occupations is therefore to connect with those who would not necessarily identify themselves as part of a politicised ‘precariat’ or union group, but who are nevertheless being held hostage by global capital. For many in precarious work the protests and strikes are likely to be experienced almost entirely as media spectacle, something remote to their own situations. This spectacular remoteness must be transformed into a closeness which provides practical support and theoretical ammunition. So after realising protest, the next step is to bring the principles of this real protest – which, as stated earlier, must cause inconvenience and outstay its welcome - to bear on workplaces which have been virtualised, where resistance has been inverted into competitive eagerness or turned inwards into apathy and self-blame.

Of course it is in the interests of the occupying powers to portray the various demonstrations as eccentric niche events and thereby make them easily containable. It is precisely the prospect of alliances across groups – between freelancers and agency temps, immaterial and manual labourers, employed and unemployed, old and young - which is most feared by the authorities. By recognising that this epidemic of insecurity is not a natural phenomenon or something brought upon oneself, but rather a technology which has been deliberately installed and maintained across all these different areas, people might begin to externalise their frustrations. Precarity might then be wrested away from those executives who administer and perpetuate it and made into a unifying, catalysing force for those on the receiving end.

The transient non-places which reproduce the culture of low-paid precarious labour - the recruitment agencies, warehouses and call centres, restaurants and shopping concourses – need to be re-occupied, re-placed. Staff need to be encouraged to immobilise themselves, to be inflexible and reject the worthless ‘opportunities’ offered to them. Unwanted ‘work experience’ must be avoided, Jobcentres returned to the status of welfare offices rather than disciplinary facilities. Last-minute calls from temp agencies should be left unanswered, admin tasks not completed outside working hours, performance targets ignored, competition with fellow workers resisted. A culture of collective hostility and negativity should be cultivated.

Finally, we need to occupy ourselves. We should evict the language of aspiration and customer service and re-occupy our minds and bodies. Knowledge and desire must be liberated from the clutches of employability. Somehow we must find a way to discredit the words put into our mouths by ventriloquist bosses even as we are forced to speak them, and learn again how to speak up for ourselves and each other. Then we might at last start to recover those occupations we have lost, and invent new ones.

Ivor Southwood blogs at http://screened-out.blogspot.com/ and tweets from @screenedout. His book "Non-Stop Inertia" deals with precarious labour and was published by Zero Books.

Why it’s kicking off everywhere - Tom Fox

Of all the events of 2011, the least predictable may well be the adoption of the economics editor of Newsnight as an avuncular figure for the left’s new generation. But Paul Mason’s gift for being in the right place at the right time, and reporting from there with enthusiasm, vitality and sympathy has made him stand out from the crowd, not only amongst mainstream journalists but also intellectuals, who tend to have neither his wit or reach.

Why it’s Kicking Off Everywhere is an analysis of last year that firmly makes a case for it as part of the pantheon of radical history, standing alongside 1968, 1917, 1871 and 1848. But instead of a dry, Trot-lite chronicle of another year of revolutions, it is an engaging cultural, political and economic history that draws from the flashpoints of the present crisis in an attempt to understand not only its pedigree but also its novelty. From kids with smartphones to the credit bubble to the tent cities of the US, Mason seeks to tie together numerous threads of the last decade of capitalism to understand just why, exactly, it is kicking off everywhere.

As reportage, this collection of stories from a journalist who seems to have actually been ‘everywhere’ is engaging. Stories on the nuts and bolts organising of the Egyptian revolution are eye-opening; occupations and marches in London bring up vivid memories, sometimes happy and sometimes despairing; the chapter on the new American dispossessed, trapped in a desert barracks run by evangelical Christians, seems far too Ballardian to be real. The four rough themes that run throughout the book – technology, catastrophe, poverty, and alienated youth – are shown to be woven so tightly that almost everywhere in the world, and in almost every sphere of our lives, crisis has spread, while opportunity nonetheless beckons. The book is at its best when it can take the testimony of the dispossessed and those in revolt, and set it against a background of extensive structural change.

What this change is producing becomes a centrepiece of his thought. At times, Mason contorts himself into a futurologist, and here he seems at his weakest. He clearly believes that there’s a coming catastrophe, and the spectres of 1914 and 1939 evidently haunt his thoughts. National entrenchment, the rise of the far-right, and trade wars are all on the cards, and maybe worse. But ultimately, predicting the path down which we’re headed seems unnecessary for a book that’s title is firmly in the present tense. And it’s in the analysis of the present that he becomes less grim and speculative, and more thought-provoking.

In a discussion of Marx and the new wave of protesting youth, he raises a question worth considering: ‘what if, instead of waiting for the collapse of capitalism, the emancipated human being were beginning to emerge spontaneously from within this breakdown of the old order?’ A generation fed Foucault and Deleuze are finding a space for themselves, with the help of their laptops and smartphones, not precisely within capitalism but not transcending it, either. The result is an intensely antagonistic counter-culture, a sort of Foucauldian public sphere, where everyone’s engaged not in rational debate but occupations, marches and vociferous argument.

The idea is enticing, but nonetheless one of a Radical-Liberal utopia, where everything changes, but not too much. The inchoate nature of the ‘horizontalist’ organising of this generation is clearly greatly admired by Mason, who sits in on student occupations like someone’s dad watching them play a computer game, thoroughly wishing they had them when he was young. But, in this enthusiasm he also misses some of the big problems with the current waves of protest and organisation.

Notably, the students he discusses (the ‘graduate without a future’) are assumed to be middle-class (and are from thoroughly middle-class universities, like UCL and Goldsmiths). But what really marked the later student protests, in London and the provinces, were the huge amounts of inner-city kids in their mid-teens, angry over the withdrawal of EMA and the sudden pulling from under them of a university education. These kids were also tech-savvy, but they were angry and radical in a way more visceral than the older, richer kids around them, and also far more dedicated to the cause, intensifying their involvement just as others were dropping off. Why the August riots – foreshadowed by the EMA kids this time last year – are discussed so little is interesting. Was it simply because he wasn’t there? Or was it because it doesn’t fit into his model of middle-class revolt?

Inevitably, the problem with both the movement and austerity is one of class. We have a class war, but no class-based left to fight it, and the sort of nuance with which Mason studied the class coalitions that fought together in Tahrir Square isn’t applied to the kids in the UK. Instead, he presents a tech-driven progressivism, in which we’re all finding our individuality within a substantial, and constantly growing, social network. Mason may seem endearingly amazed by what seems to many of us boringly familiar, but he is often insightful about phones and computers: they really are immense tools of revolt, confusing the gerontocracy from Cairo to London. But while he is right to point out that a lot of things are changing, and that the transformative nature of technology should not be dismissed by old-school leftists, he also tends to overstate what these changes mean for the left (if, indeed, these ‘non-ideological’ kids with their phones can even be called leftist).

For instance, after discussing the work of communist historian of the Haitian Revolution CLR James, he claims that ‘today the left is no longer the gatekeeper to subversive knowledge’, citing the ability of anyone these days to pull information from the internet and use it to learn. In this, Mason is massively overstating the actual quality of what people both find and write on the internet, and, perhaps, revealing that his familiarity with internet culture is limited to contact with people who are actually interesting and intelligent, and not the army of people who are completely insane. A notable example is the Occupy Movement, which is tinged with conspiracy theorists, as any scan of their Facebook pages will illustrate.

If we go back to the early 19th century, any idiot could use a printing press, but it took real skill as a writer and business owner to produce interesting, entertaining, informed and well-distributed works. Similarly, and as he should know, it takes real skill for a historian to dig through (still mainly material) archives, and real skill for a journalist to assemble facts through documents and interviews. The internet does create the social network he discusses, and it does make publication and communication not only substantially easier, but completely different in many ways than what came before. But it doesn’t lend creativity, ingenuity, or good organising skills where it didn’t exist before. No matter what the invention – the press, the railway, the telephone – it still needs people of intellect and dedication to do something remarkable with it, and his over-enthusiasm unfortunately brings to mind a quote from Alan Partridge’s recent autobiography: ‘Wikipedia has made university education all but pointless’.

Later, in a fascinating chapter entitled ‘1848 redux’, he talks variously about class, syndicalism and cultural conflict, comparing the present crisis to 1848 and the Great Unrest just prior to the First World War. But despite talking throughout the book about the slum-dwelling poor, the collapse of the organised working class, and the precarious position of the middle-class, he comes to an odd conclusion: ‘The incoherence of the left has emboldened the liberals, the Facebook youth, the urban poor, and so on, to speak of social justice and to fight for it, secure in the knowledge that they cannot be accused of being communists.’ More Germany 1849 than France 1848, he says. Bizarrely, the current uprisings are a Liberal counter-revolution against nothing, and by virtue of that a confident and progressive uprising.

But there seems another explanation, and one that Mason’s own studies support: we are undergoing a quite colossal re-organisation of both labour and capital, and we have no idea where it’s going. But, clearly, it involves not only the exploitation of the urban poor, but the re-consolidation of the middle-class. The lower middle-class of skilled workers are getting pushed back into precarious, temporary and unskilled work, and their children getting faced with huge bills for the university education that may, or just as likely may not, be the only route of escape. And it’s here that the ‘graduate without a future’, where the student of 1848, angry with the regime of Louis-Philippe, serves as the analogue for the student of 2011, falls down. It’s not the professional middle-class who are revolting (although they are stirring). Just look at who’s on strike: teachers, academics, social workers, electricians…
Two centuries ago, artisans and peasants were proletarianised, and once again the same demographic range of workers are being pressed into the precariat. Is it kicking off because we are, in fact, seeing the growing pains and anxious howl of a working-class for the new century, and a whole new family and industry of technologies? What we may well need is far more than islands within capitalism (as useful and refreshing as they are), but, in fact, a coherent left that wants to transcend it. Our present may be more comparable to the 1830s than 1848: the recently birthed working-class is only just coming to realise what it is. And who knows what will come of that; to paraphrase Lenin, maybe hipsters plus soviets will equal communism.

Mason’s work is not bad, or wrong, for not asking this question; his scepticism of the doctrinaire left is hardly undeserved. But to borrow a phrase from him, ‘merely to pose the question is exhilarating’, and in his enthusiasm he invites the reader to ask such questions, and many more. With both his understanding of the possibilities of revolt and his sympathy for human misery, he offers a straightforward but expansive account of what is happening. In taking technology seriously as both an organising tool and means of disseminating and democratising ideas, he is opening up a substantial field of debate for the left. In treating the uprisings as a Radical conflict rather than a class one, he is laying down the gauntlet for the newest generation of Marxists: come up with a better framework, but one that can still express the current crisis’s novelty. It is a book worthy of discussion, and let’s hope there are many more to come.

Tom Fox is a labour historian and an editor of The Mule.

‘Bout to explode: a day in the life of a precarious worker

Day-Laborers.jpg

“Damn it, where’s this pinche thing?”

Sometimes when I get real frustrated, a few Spanish curse words enter my vocabulary. My mom would probably be both amused and disappointed.

“Jesus Christ, there ain’t nowhere in here for anything to get lost!”

It’s 4:30 AM, and I’m frantically looking for both my house keys and bus pass. It was another all-nighter. I’ve been up for almost 2 days now. Think I inherited these sleeping problems from my dad, if that’s possible.

Insomnia pushes your tolerance for minor annoyances a lot lower. Normally, such things like not being able to find something wouldn’t bother me, much less cause swearing in two different languages. The mental disconnect that comes with lack of sleep almost turns you into a flustered child who can’t understand why he can’t do simple tasks.

“Ah hah!”

I finally find both my keys and bus pass hidden behind my suitcases, which I’ve been living out of for about a year now. See, since December 2010, this guy has lived in 3 states, 4 cities, and 11different apartments or buildings. It’s hard to explain the disorientation this causes. Imagine having jet lag for months. Waking up confused as to where you’re at. Is this Madison? Davenport? Sometimes I see a portion of Minneapolis that I think is another city and have to remind myself that it isn’t.

This early in the morning is no time for a human being to be searching for a bus pass, but when you’re virtually unemployed, you’ve got to get on your grind. This morning, ‘grind’ means walking down to a temporary day labor agency down the street. It’s one of those set-ups where you gotta show up when they open at 5 AM, so you can ’sign-in’ and wait until they send you out to a job. A job inevitably paying the $7.25 federal minimum wage. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent around 30 hours at that place and never been sent out. That’s around 4 hours each time.

I think about this fact real briefly, then try to shove it out of my mind. It’s hard though. Precarious employment seems like a given, just a part of life. But it isn’t for everyone. Just a couple weeks ago, a drunk Wobbly1 crashed on my couch. Telling her about the day labor experience made her cry. Granted, she was intoxicated, but seeing those tears felt like a punch to the kidneys. This isn’t what life is supposed to be like. Thinking about her tears this morning is almost making me choke up myself. Only thing preventing this are some shreds of machismo and pride that seem required to hold it together and maintain. Whether this is bullshit or not is a separate issue.

Pretty awake now. Scrambling around and downing 3 cups of coffee will do that to you. Also force fed myself some oatmeal. Don’t have any milk or butter, so it tasted like Depression-era slop. Whatever.

I walk out the door and then down the street to the day labor place. Either the last of the night’s drunks or the first of the morning’s crackheads are arising out of the alleys. Like zombies, I approach them cautiously. You can’t trust anyone awake at this time in the morning. Reach the day labor place and see almost 20 people outside smoking cigarettes already. Walk in and sign my name. The guy at the counter somehow remembers my name and says he tried to call me for a snow shoveling job. I don’t tell him that I can’t afford to keep my phone on, but instead explain that my battery is wrecked and my cellular company is in Iowa. Can’t present myself as too poor.

After about 10 minutes of sitting on a cold, nearly broken metal chair the guy calls me back up to the counter. Not a moment too soon, if you ask me. The place is just packed and seating options are limited. It was getting harder to ignore the guy to the left of me loudly talking about the time his baby mama stabbed him mid-conversation. Way too early to be that loud.

Looks like I’m actually getting sent out to a job. Not prepared for this. Thought I would just wait around for a while, as usual, read a book, bullshit a little and then go back home and to sleep. Instead it looks like me and 3 others are getting sent off to a food packaging plant. Didn’t even bring a lunch, been up for too long and only have a couple halves of cigarettes to last me the day. Oh well.

II

We all cram into some tiny Japanese car and head to the southeast side of town. Pretty quickly, I realise the driver has some serious issues going on. Something is really off about him. Can’t understand his mumbling and he can’t stop swerving down the interstate. Wonder if worker’s comp2 covers the ride to work?

We’re soon there and it all looks so familiar. Like most factories, it is very familiar. Same large, pothole filled parking lot. Same unforgiving gray concrete. Same “No Firearms Allowed On Property” sign on the employee entrance. Walking inside, there are about 60-70 people in the breakroom. Confused, I try to find a recognisable face to get the low down on what to do. Apparently, we wait until the head floor supervisor comes in and reads off a sheet of papers that assigns us to the various production lines. It takes a while for this to happen, but I get assigned to a line and follow everyone out of the door. Not knowing exactly where to go, I wander until a blue shirted floor supervisor yells at me and points to a line. With all the machines running, forklifts rolling past and foam earplugs in my ears, he might as well be whispering, but I get the point.

The line leader instructs me to cut open boxes from 4 different pallets of 4 different dried fruits or nuts. Then I place a certain amount of them on a scissor lift conveyor belt that will be lifted up to a platform and dumped into a large mixing container.

It doesn’t take long for this work to get old and tedious. My thoughts start to drift away. Not a good thing. When you’re caffeinated and exhausted, it’s hard to think about anything but major worries in your life. In some ways, its one of the few things that helps you keep going in shit jobs like this. The faster and harder you work, the easier it is to block out such thoughts and get yourself recognised as someone worth keeping on. No such luck this time. Outside of the perpetual financial crisis that is my condition, my personal life is beginning to be affected, and become deeply troubling. I’ve started to withdraw from my social circle. Even the people in the same apartment. One of my roommates even tried to check on me last week. It was implicit that what she was saying was that she was worried I might have killed myself. I don’t tell her that I know that’s what she was thinking…or that the thought has crossed my mind.

Additionally, the few times I have gone out, the combination of lack of sleep and over-the-top drinking is starting to lead to me blacking out. When it gets this bad, sometimes I turn into a different person. Sort of a regression to what I call “my old self”. This “old self” is filled with all kinds of undesirable poor Latino/white traits and characteristics, so you can imagine there are instances where I wake up in fear of things said or done.

Try to concentrate on my work. While cutting open the boxes, there are little pieces of cardboard falling into the dried cranberries. One of the older women on the line notices this and yells something. Can’t bring myself to care.

Scanning the shopfloor, there’s around 90-100 people. There’s probably some logic to the way the lines are set-up, but it’s incomprehensible right now. It’s just a flurry of chaotic movement. Random floor supervisors scrambling from one line to the next. People with pallet jacks moving product around. Young white guys on forklifts whipping around, blasting their horns.

III

The break alarm bell sounds off. About a quarter of us rush to the breakroom or outside for a cigarette. It’s a long walk to the designated smoking area. Something about FDA rules or something like that.

While power puffing a menthol, a Somali guy is talking about how he just lost a $15 an hour job, being a personal assistant to an elderly, wealthy man. The man died, throwing him into unemployment. The specialised agency he worked through basically told him he’s done when someone dies, as other people have priority over him for the next position. It could take an entire year to be matched up with someone else. He half-joked that when finding the old man dead, he shook him and yelled “No, mothafucka, you can’t die now! I got bills to pay!” Everyone on the smoke break erupts into laughter, agreeing we would do the same.

Behind me, a black woman tells us she also did the personal assistant gig, but was fired because the old rich white woman she worked for accused her of stealing a can of coke (drinking without permission). But the real reason was the old woman’s dislike for black folk and a reluctance to have someone who was black assist her in her day-to-day affairs. The more rural type white co-workers shift around uneasily. Discussions about race and racism are still polarising in 2012…

The break is over and we’re back to work. Apparently, my refusal to avoid getting little pieces of cardboard mixed into the product has led to a multi-line shutdown. I just committed sabotage without even thinking about it. It takes a lot of self-discipline not to smile and laugh about this. If my phone worked, texts to some comrades would be in order.

While amusing, this is worrisome. The majority of people here are through day labor or temp agencies. These types of jobs always involve lightning quick responses and judgment calls on workers who mess up or can’t do the work right. In this economy, they can afford to be like this. There are literally hundreds of people ready to replace you, if needed. Luckily, it doesn’t look like they’re going to send me home. Instead they throw me on another line. This time I’m grabbing boxes from a conveyor belt and stacking them onto a pallet.

IV

My mind quickly goes blank and time flies by. All of the sudden it’s lunch time. The notorious caffeine crash is beginning to happen to me. Also, my 1 month contact lenses I’ve been wearing for 13 months are starting to become blurry and bother my eyes. Heading to the break room, I sit at a table by myself with no lunch and drink a cup of coffee that taste like vinegar and chalk. Start staring into space. How long is this lunch break? Why are people staring at me? Are they actually staring at me or am I imagining it?

End up getting up and walking outside and realise my earplugs are still in, which probably looked weird and was the reason folks were looking at me weird. In the smoking area, a Latina is talking about a bad experience at a pay day loan establishment and how they treat her like a child. I feel that. Being poor invites numerous different types of condescending attitudes from people. Whether its social workers, police, employers, pay day loan places, or even your own friends and comrades. From those who aren’t sharing your experience of extreme precarity and devastating poverty, these attitudes are somewhat in stages.

At first, there are expressions of sympathy. Whether sincere or not, this can be summed up by “I understand this is happening to people. I’m sorry this is happening to you.” If your situation drags on, sympathy turns into a form of pity. Pity in itself isn’t necessarily bad and can be tied to forms of solidarity such as making sure you’re not homeless, that you get some food, are included in social outings that cost money, etc. Being on the receiving end of this can make you appreciate these people in your life. But if it drags out it can be humiliating and destructive to your pride as an individual. The embarrassment of not being able to provide for yourself, of feeling like a ‘mooch’, can bring up a sentiment of resentment. This resentment, while really directed at your general situation, can easily be misdirected at people instead, which can confuse them and make you feel shame.

Sometimes from pity, which in itself is a feeling of superiority, a greater sense of superiority can happen. It can be explicit or not, it doesn’t matter. You can feel and read the faces of judgment. Things like “You’re just not trying hard enough”, “What is wrong with you?”, and “Your standards are too high” begin to be said (not always in those words). You can feel the change in how people talk to you. Their tone changes. It’s the tone of talking down to someone. Jokes about your situation that are deeply hurtful are said with barely an afterthought.

It’s worth mentioning that along with friends and family, this is a pretty accurate description of how relationships develop in workplaces where there are both temps and ‘regular’ employees. What the actual difference is when it comes to wages, benefits or even decision making power are often irrelevant in the face of perceived increased stability.

This is all a lot to think about during a lunch break.

V

The rest of the day goes by fairly quickly. I start to become too tired to even think in complete sentences and my body is full of aches and pains. When the day ends for us, and the shift changes, it’s almost a stampede, as hundreds of workers squeeze through a narrow hallway. The crazy guy who gave me a ride leaves without me. Luckily, the day labor place sent out vans to pick people up. 2 Latinos in the back are talking to each other in Spanish and the driver yells that he doesn’t want to hear anything he can’t understand. Not sure if this was a racist comment or a warning to talk more quietly. Either way, my face probably shows pure hatred towards him.

When we arrive back at the agency someone reminds me that I can get an advance. At the counter, after filling out an advance request, I find out this will equal around $25. A pitiful $25. Yet, I’m happy because this allows me to do laundry, buy a pack of cigarettes and afford bus fare. But I’m angry that I’m happy. What kind of life is this to lead? I’m not even the one most hurting out here right now.

It’s weird thinking that living paycheck to paycheck would be a step-up from where us day laborers are at right now. Bizarre thinking that the time when you could quit one mind-numbing factory job and get hired at another one the next day were the ‘good ole days’. There is a tension you can feel on the streets right now. I can feel it in the day labor agency and in the bodega down my block. How much can we take? How long will we put up with this until something snaps?

It has been said by others that in the U.S., precarity isn’t new. That the transition has been more drastic in places like Europe with had more visible social democratic set-ups than we have ever had. That could be true. Regardless of the larger question of whether this model of precarity in capitalism is ‘new’ or just a throwback to the pre-WW2 days, it’s eating me alive.

Whatever the case, and recognising my perspective is colored by the drastic situation I find myself in, we need to hasten the building of the new world in the shell of the old…before some of us decide to just burn down the old world with no regard of what emerges in its place.

Juan Conatz lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He is also one of the editors of ‘Recomposition: Notes for a New Workerism’ a blog that mostly revolves around writings and stories of workplace organizing and on-the-job accounts.

Originally posted: March 12, 2012 at Shift Magazine

• 1. Member of the Industrial Workers of the World
• 2. Workers compensation is “a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee’s right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers’_compensation

“Occupy! Manchester is based on this desire to rediscover 'direct action' as a popular political form”: An interview with an organiser of Occupy Manchester

Who are you and what are you planning to do?

The Occupy! Manchester organising group emerged with the specific aim of mobilising against the Conservative Party Conference, due to be held in Manchester in early October. It is made up of individuals from various groups in Manchester, and formed in response to a call to mobilise for a mass protest that would aim to involve people who may not otherwise have joined together in protest on the day.

I'll say a bit more about how the group formed, because it's important for what we're trying to do. After the student protests of last winter and the TUC national demonstration on 26th March, it was clear to many in Manchester that the Tory Conference would be the next major event for the anti-cuts movement (broadly defined) and that we should step up and make it one to remember! But there was also a strong feeling that the Tory Party mobilisation should be a progression from 26th March, where the various wings of the movement had acted in almost total isolation from one another (with the UK Uncut action being the only potential point of convergence between those involved in official protest and direct action). As such, neither the march called by the TUC to coincide with the Conference, nor affinity group or black bloc-style actions would be enough on their own, as these tend to reproduce the divides into which we as protesters so often allow ourselves to fall: activists and ordinary people, students and workers, public and private sector workers, benefits claimants and taxpayers, socialists and anarchists, peaceful and violent campaigners. It was from this climate that the idea for an alternative organising platform that could bridge these divides emerged.

It's important to explain at this point that the feeling described above was one that was shared, to various degrees, across the left spectrum. It was a small group from the autonomous/anarchist tradition that called the first meeting for what would become Occupy! That group (of which I was part) was inspired by the wave of student protests that kicked off with Millbank, but also frustrated by the failure to maintain momentum following the student fee decision of 9th December, and by the narrow political vision displayed by all wings of the movement on 26th March. Meanwhile though, it was clear from one particularly well-attended and rowdy 'open planning meeting' for the TUC-called march of 2nd October that many union organisers were just as frustrated – they had great admiration for the militancy of the student protests and were keen to encourage more dynamic and militant action from within their ranks. From all corners, there was a recognition that only by pooling our mobilising capacities did we have any chance of organising a demonstration with the potential to start overcoming some of these issues. In response, then, a group formed, which today is made of individuals from various groups from Manchester who share this spirit of mobilising for a unified and militant protest. And eventually, after much discussion (and some compromises!), we decided that an occupation of Albert Square would be a good way to achieve the aims we'd set out for ourselves. As an extension of the commitment to a broad-based and non-sectarian mobilisation, we've also been encouraging groups representing a range of political persuasions, sectors etc to sign up publicly in support of the action and promote it among their members or networks. Hence the “diverse” list of supporters!

As for what we plan to do, we're calling for an assembly of protest on the doorstep of the Conference, as a symbol of the mass and deeply-felt opposition to the coalition government's austerity measures and the belief in better alternative futures. The choice of location was a very important one. Albert Square is very close to the ring of steel surrounding the conference centre. It therefore offers a chance not only for people to talk together politically, which is of course the connotation of 'assembly' and an important political principle for one of the exciting political developments of the past year: the Real Democracy movement (whose Manchester incarnation – Real Democracy Manchester – has been a key supporter of Occupy!). Rather, it was also important to us that the occupation was a place of protest. Close proximity to the conference centre is important in that respect and offers opportunities for disruptive actions to happen.

Albert Square also houses Manchester Town Hall, seat of Manchester's Labour-led council. That's significant politically as well, as it'll be a reminder to everybody that this protest isn't just about the Conservatives. This is particularly important in Manchester, which is obviously a long-time Labour stronghold, where opposition to the Conservatives is all too easily recuperated. The Occupy! organising group doesn't have a shared political position as such (due to its broad nature, we've tended to concentrate on letting the form of protest itself do the talking politically). However, one important bottom-line for the group has always been a rejection of all the mainstream political parties. The more successful Occupy! is in bringing large numbers of people from diverse backgrounds together on the day, the more important it will be that we make this rejection heard on the day – something that the radical, autonomous left should be well placed to do.

Aside from all this, we don't want to circumscribe what will happen on the day. We're asking people to come prepared to make the occupation their own – things will be guided by those participating and the atmosphere on the day. That said, as the day approaches Occupy! will be making announcements about the timings of some specific activities that are planned to take place in or around the occupation – that way those from outside of Manchester or who can't stay indefinitely (and we're aware that, lamentably, the timing of the plans means that the employed among us might have to head off early) can plan a bit better. Assemblies and noise demos throughout the night (the Midlands Hotel, where many top Conference delegates will be staying, is a stone's throw away from Albert Square: as a slogan from the Spanish occupations goes, 'if they won't let us dream, we won't let them sleep!') are ideas that are being floated at present. As I write we've had a group of lecturers approach us about doing a “teach out”. There'll also be sound systems to keep us going throughout the night.

What is the relationship between Occupy! and the TUC demonstration in Manchester on the same day?

Although as individuals the Occupy! group has mixed opinions on official marches as a form of protest, as a group we have always recognised the importance of marching, on its own terms at least: the TUC national march on 26th March, for example, was successful insofar as it brought massive numbers out onto the street (its role in the ongoing disputes over pensions, meanwhile, is less clear cut). As I’ve said above, we’ve wanted to avoid the divisive narratives of good protester/bad protester (and the rest!), so we’ve made efforts to coordinate with the organisers of the main demo, to emphasise our intention to supplement rather than conflict with the main march, and to avoid, as far as is feasible, plans that will be perceived as separatist. We’re inviting marchers to join us whenever they’re ready, whether that be after the main demo or not. In this same spirit, we're hoping that those who are interested in the march and subsequent rally recognise that not everybody feels the same!

The media and politicians will obviously have their own version of events though, so how successful we are in presenting a united front will obviously rely in large part on the solidarity we show to one another on the day. Not surprisingly, we haven’t been able to rely on the union leadership for support in this respect. On the other hand, the occupation has generally been really well received among grassroots and more radical union organisers. And it’s these grassroots, rank and file members who are frustrated with the unwieldy and compromised union bureaucracy that we expect and hope to see with us at Albert Square on 2nd October.

An interesting development here has been the announcements last week from the major public sector unions that they will be fighting 'long and hard and dirty' over the pension issue, starting with planned strike action for 30th November. For me, the strike action of 30th November is really important; but again (as demonstrated on 30th June), the union bureaucracy, for all its increasingly (or rather apparently) radical rhetoric, cannot be relied upon to fight this issue in the radical terms required if it is to really contribute to building a mass movement against austerity – because, quite aside from the unions’ inherently reformist nature, that would require more than merely tokenistic solidarity with the struggles of a largely non-unionised, precaritised labour force. Indeed, despite all that I’ve said here, the very idea for Occupy! came out of a recognition of the limitations of the TUC and the unions more generally: at the level of movement building, their limited capacity to mobilise beyond their traditional constituencies and to meet the growing desire for more militant and imaginative forms of protest; at the level of organising and expressing class struggle, their failure to have adapted to post-Fordist labour relations and their impetus towards the containment of working class interests. For me then, one of the motivations for Occupy! was always to provide an opportunity not necessarily provided by the traditional march format for overcoming the disconnect between the major public sector unions and the rest of us; for building direct solidarities – born from acting together in protest – between those who have a decent standard of social security to protect, and those who don’t, unionised and precarious workers, the employed and the unemployed, public and private sector workers etc. With the students preceding the strike action of 30th November with plans for major national protests on 9th November and increasing efforts to coordinate movements Europe-wide and internationally (I’m thinking of the recent Wall Street occupation and 15th October for World (R)evolution) in what looks set to be an autumn/winter of discontent, these solidarities and moves towards shared political subjectivities are all the more crucial.

There is, of course, a real danger with the announcements about 30th November that members “close ranks” behind their unions’ long-overdue action, with people consequently less inclined to get behind those alternative forms of politics that have inspired Occupy! We as the autonomous/anarchist left should stand beside grassroots union members in agitating for more from the unions – denouncing their failure to allocate adequate resources to mobilising for the 2nd October, calling for longer and deeper strikes etc; just as they should stand with us in seeking new forms of organising struggle that overcome the limitations of both traditional trade unionism and direct action as practiced by the movements of the 1990s and 2000s.

On that note, I’ll finish with an anecdote. In the early days of testing the waters among local socialist groups, particularly those involved in organising the main march, a local trade union organiser picked me up on the language used in the call-out we'd been circulating (a criticism that, as I write now, I realise I've still yet to fully take on board): we spoke of traditional avenues of protest not being enough, referring not only to the limitations of strike action for a largely precarious workforce, but also to marching. His point was not to defend official marches and the way these circumscribe the way anger is expressed, channelling it into official, state-sanctioned forms. Rather, his argument was that this ignored a long tradition of mass, working class direct action – the example he used being the widespread and sustained factory occupations that were sweeping Manchester, Salford and the North West when he first moved to the city (in the 1970s I think it was). And I think he's absolutely right; and what, albeit in different terms, had in fact shaped the original idea for Occupy! Direct action in the UK has become synonymous with 'affinity group' actions, often directed at corporate targets, involving small numbers of people and secretive planning. Some actions, such as those associated with the later years of the Climate Camp, of course involved – indeed depended upon – much larger numbers; however, they remained orchestrated set-pieces with a narrow social base. For me, Occupy! Manchester is based on this desire to rediscover “direct action” as a popular political form. In this respect, I hope the 2nd October pick up where the students left off last year and spark another autumn of popular resistance.

Jay Hooper is a member of Occupy! Manchester. These views do not necessarily reflect the diverse political perspectives of the organising group as a whole.

“Real Democracy”: an interview with Michael Hardt

In the latest print issue of Shift Magazine [issue 13], John Holloway argues that “real democracy is and must be a frontal assault on the power of money”. He implies that the demand ‘real democracy now’ is not enough in itself, but must be connected to a movement against the rule of money-capital-state-abstract labour. He insinuates a difference here to your own perspective, writing that “people who prefer to talk just of democracy (Hardt and Negri, for example) … prefer to let the movement itself discover that money stands in the way of real democracy”. How have you experienced the recent global democracy movements? Do you think the assemblies in Sol, Syntagma or Wall Street already carry an inherent potential to constitute an affront to capital?

I think that John's perspective and mine overlap much more than is implied by that quotation. There is a long tradition in Marxist and communist thought, you know, that poses a separation between economic struggles and political struggles - in fact, in many cases the division would be posed as "merely" economic struggles and "properly" political ones. In the context of the 3rd International, for example, this division corresponded to the work of the trade unions, on one hand, and that of the party, on the other. Well, I think it is clear that today this division between economic and political struggles no longer holds, and that the economic and political protests and demands of movements are inextricably mixed. John and I certainly agree on that. In fact, I would say that part of the work done by a concept like "biopolitical struggles," which Toni Negri and I, as well as many others, use, is to bring into focus together questions of life, economics, and politics.

In any case, I certainly agree with John’s point, which you quote, that a project of real democracy must also challenge capitalist rule, which in the current era predominantly relies on the power of money and finance.

I do see in this regard at least one real difference of approach in our most recent books -- John's ‘Crack Capitalism’ and our ‘Commonwealth’. My book with Toni tries to base the critique of capital and the proposal for democracy on a challenge to the rule of property, the rule of private property most urgently and also the rule of public property, meaning the rule of the state. John instead anchors his critique of capital on his analysis of money and abstract labor. We then both, of course, pursue these lines in terms of the transformations of labor in the current period and both share what might be called in shorthand a refusal of work perspective on this. These different approaches are in many ways compatible, of course, and one might even see them as complimentary, but this is where I would search for a difference if pressed to do so.

All that said, I do believe that the current cycle of struggles poses a new and more directly political character with respect to previous ones. The cycle of struggles from Seattle 1999 to Genoa 2001 put the accent firmly on the critique of neoliberalism and sought to reveal the undemocratic structures of the emerging global system of rule. The protests were mobile and nomadic, moving from one summit to the next and at each stop shining light on another aspect of the global neoliberal ruling structure: the IMF, the World Bank, the G8, the WTO, and so forth. In contrast, the cycle of struggles forming this year, including the encampments in Tahrir, Syntagma, Sol, Madison Wisconsin, and Wall Street, has a less mobile and more rooted territorial structure. The practice of encampment is an important novelty along with their assembly structures that manage to bring together a variety of economic and social issues. Democracy is practiced and experimented on the small scale - often in the organization of one square.

This cycle of struggles too is, of course, aimed at neoliberalism and the crisis, but I am particularly fascinated by the way that the aspiration toward democracy has become more prominent. Think of two of the central slogans in the Spanish encampments of 15M: "you don't represent us" and "real democracy now." The former certainly echoes the call from Argentina a decade earlier: "que se vayan todos" against not only one corrupt party or politician but against the entire political class. But it adds the critique of representation that touches at the heart of the republican constitutions. "You don't represent us" doesn't mean I want to get rid of this leader so that I can be represented by new leaders. It means I refuse to be represented and, moreover, when combined with the latter slogan, this so-called democracy you have given us is a shame. Instead we want to construct a real democracy. This seemingly naive idea to bring democracy back to the center of the discussion in this way, which probably entered this cycle of struggles from the aspirations in North Africa, seems to me extraordinarily powerful.

Occupy Wall Street was originally proposed by the anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, calling for “20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, and set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades”, representing the 99%. But such protests come with their own problems. Supposedly, opposition to ‘corporate greed’ and ‘political corruption’ can unite all Americans beyond their political or social differences against the 1% of bankers, CEOs and politicians. Isn’t such populism incredibly simplistic? The term (direct) democracy is sometimes so broad that it can attract anyone from right-wing conspiracy theorists to La Rouchians. There seems to be a lack of political content.

It seems to me too early to evaluate in this way Occupy Wall Street and the other, spreading US developments. It is not the kind of movement that appears fully formed with a program. Instead it will take form as it develops, which, I hope, will continue for several weeks and months.

My view, which I think aligns with the sentiment of your question, is that these US movements should develop into a constituent process. This, in fact, is how they would most explicitly take up some of the challenges posed by 15M, which I mentioned before: the critique of representation and the aspiration to constitute a new democracy. In this way, the US movements would certainly carry further the cycle of struggles that has developed throughout the year.

How could we imagine this developing into more constituent forms of democracy? Do we need to go beyond the assemblies that are currently at the heart of the protests?

Yes, eventually one would have to go beyond the assemblies as they are practiced in occupied squares – even though, as I said, all these democratic experiments in organizing are themselves very important.

Opening a constituent process in this context has at least two sides to it. First of all, it is a recognition that the Constitution (and indeed all of the supposedly democratic constitutions) is not a sufficient basis for a really democratic society. As I said earlier, the critique and refusal of the representational structure is a powerful lever that could have profound effects. Call this first moment, perhaps, a “deconstituent” or, better, a “destituent” process. Second, and perhaps more importantly, a constituent process has to create a new set of social relations and, in this sense, a new foundation for democracy. This is a revolutionary process that creates new structures and institutions, as well as new political habits and affects. One cannot foresee now exactly what such a process would look like. The kinds of questions and aspirations that are becoming generalized today, however, do indicate that such a process is appearing somewhere on our horizon.

Finally, do you think there is a true global character to this movement? The square occupations in, say, Athens, Cairo, Tel Aviv and New York have come about in very different political contexts, with participants that wouldn't necessarily have regarded themselves as political allies.

The different movements that have emerged in this cycle certainly do, as you say, come about in very different social and political conditions. But they also do share some interesting aspects. I have been emphasizing the shared aspiration toward democracy, even when it is not completely clear yet what a real democracy would be. They also share the multitude form of organizing, characterized by a refusal of leaders, network organization structures, horizontal practices of decision-making, and so forth.
But even these shared aspirations and practices, as you say, do not guarantee agreement or unanimity. Isn’t it fascinating, then, how a cycle of struggle like this forms? How is it that people are inspired by revolts conducted elsewhere and translate them into their own local conditions in order to construct their own rebellion? How do they connect together in a chain this way in situations that are so different?
I would say that the struggles themselves, by this very act of linking together, are teaching us how the global level can be constructed – not through homogeneity but rather by posing relations among differences. That seems to me one among many things we have to learn from these movements.

“Unite march to parliament whereas the rank and file plan to meet up with the education march” - Interview with a spark

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A number of major UK building contractors have issued their electricians with new contracts. What’s wrong with the new ones? What are the main changes suggested in them?

The main reason for the new contracts is to save money on labour costs, as this is the only expense that companies can control. They see 75% of the work currently undertaken by their highly trained employees as semi-skilled and they do not like the fact that they have to pay skilled workers to carry it out. So they are introducing an ‘Installer NVQ2’ Grade to carry out the 75%. Therefore reducing our workload by three quarters and passing it on to semi-skilled, cheap labour. Would you be happy with your electrics being installed by a non-qualified person?

Another main area being attacked is apprenticeships. There will be no more electrical and plumbing apprenticeships offered by these companies as they want to build a work force of multi-skilled workers, trained in a little bit of everything but specialising in nothing.

Other areas also being attacked are overtime rates, independent grading of tradesmen, redundancy rules, unfair dismissal, trade status and travel pay just to name a few.

Which unions are electricians represented in? Are there negotiations ongoing?

Unite the Union represent the Electricians, Plumbers and Fitters affected by the current dispute. Unite withdrew from talks with the companies earlier in the year due to the companies stance that the installer grade was non-negotiable. Unite want a progressive path in the industry; the opportunity to go to college and gain qualifications to advance in your chosen trade. The companies want ‘Installers’ to be just installers, to never progress and forever be stuck at NVQ2 level.

What has happened so far to fight the new contract agreement? There have been picket lines at a number of building sites; have they been successful?

There have been protests/pickets outside building sites and power stations up and down the country in nearly every major city since 24th August. There have been numerous unofficial walk-outs involving thousands, flying pickets, occupations and mass civil disobedience.

As a direct result of the protests one of the original break away companies (MJN Colston) decided to stay with the existing agreements due to pressure from one of their major clients, Marks and Spencer’s. This week it emerged that because of the Manchester protests, Balfour Beatty have lost a contract at Carrington Paper Mill and are having payments withheld at Sellafield Power Station. There are also rumours that many other big clients are also putting pressure on the companies to resolve the industrial unrest before it escalates to strike action or face losing even more contracts.

On November 9th, Unite have called for a national rally at the Shard and march to parliament. But the rank and file will be out much earlier in the morning?

From the beginning of this dispute, the protests have been led by the rank and file. So it was decided that we would continue our weekly early protest and combine it with the Unite backed day of action. We have been outside building sites at 6:30am for the last 11 weeks and see no reason to alter our plans.

The march will go past Blackfriars towards parliament. Will there be a chance for it to meet the education march?

The official Unite march heads to Parliament from Blackfriars whereas the Rank and File plan is to meet up with the Education march at 12:30 at ULU. The general consensus is that talking to the MPs will not achieve a thing as they are doing exactly the same thing to their own employees in the public sector.

What are the next steps in the dispute? Are further protests and actions planned?

Unite are going to be balloting Balfour Beatty employees for strike action this month as they are seen as the main instigators in the whole affair. There will be protests every week across the United Kingdom until we get the companies to back down and stop bullying their employees.

JIB Electrician is the pseudonym of the author of the Electricians Against The World blog. Republished from Shift magazine