When insurrections die - Gilles Dauvé

Gilles Dauvé's pamphlet on the on the failures of the Russian, Spanish and German Revolutions, and the rise of fascism in Europe it becomes more and more important in our times where he fascists movements reappear all over Europe and the masses seems unable to overcome the smae old mistakes of the past.


Brest-Litovsk, 1917 and 1939

"If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."

Marx/Engels - Preface to the Russian edition of the manifesto, 1882. This perspective was not realized. The European industrial proletariat missed its rendez-vous with a revitalized Russian peasant commune.

Brest-Litovsk, Poland, December 1917: the Bolsheviks propose peace without annexations to a Germany intent on taking over a large swath of the old Tsarist empire, stretching from Finland to the Caucusus. But in February 1918, the German soldiers, "proletarians in uniform" though they were, obey their officers and resume the offensive against a Russia still ruled by soviets. No fraternization occurs, and the revolutionary war advocated by the Bolshevik left proves impossible. In March, Trotsky has to sign a peace treaty dictated by the Kaiser's generals. "We're trading space for time", as Lenin put it, and in fact, in November, the German defeat turns the treaty into a scrap of paper. Nevertheless, practical proof of the international link-up of the exploited had failed to materialize. A few months later, returning to civilian life with the war's end, these same proletarians confront the alliance of the official workers' movement and the Freikorps. Defeat follows defeat: in Berlin, Bavaria and then in Hungary in 1919; the Red Army of the Ruhr in 1920; the March Action in 1921...

September 1939. Hitler and Stalin have just carved up Poland. At the border bridge of Brest-Litovsk, several hundred members of the KPD, refugees in the USSR subsequently arrested as "counter-revolutionaries" or "fascists", are taken from Stalinist prisons and handed over to the Gestapo.

1917-1937, twenty years that shook the world. The succession of horrors represented by fascism, then by World War II and the subsequent upheavals, are the effect of a gigantic social crisis opening with the mutinies of 1917 and closed by the Spanish Civil War*.

*This is a shorter, entirely reconceived version of the preface to the collection Bilan/Contre-révolution en Espagne 1936-1939, Paris, 1979 (now out of print). A text in progress will deal further with the question of the development of fascism, and thus of anti-fascism, in our own epoch.

"Fascism and Big Capital" 

If it is precisely the case, to use the formulation made famous by Daniel Guerin, that fascism serves the interests of big capital, 99% of the people articulating this perfectly accurate thesis hasten to add that, in spite of everything, fascism could have been averted in 1922 or 1933 if the workers' movement and/or the democrats had mounted enough pressure to bar it from power. If only, in 1921, the Italian Socialist Party and the newly-founded Italian Communist Party had allied with republican forces to stop Mussolini; if only, at the beginning of the thirties, the KPD had not launched a fratricidal struggle against the SPD, Europe would have been spared one of the most ferocious dictatorships in history, a second world war, a Nazi empire of almost continental dimensions, the concentration camps, and the extermination of the Jews. Above and beyond its very true observations about classes, the state, and the ties between fascism and big industry, this vision fails to see that fascism arose out of a two-fold failure: the failure of the revolutionaries after World War I, crushed as they were by Social Democracy and parliamentary democracy, and then, in the course of the 1920's, the failure of the democrats and Social Democrats in managing capital. Without a grasp of the preceding period as well as of the earlier phase of class struggle and its limits, the coming to power and, still more, the nature of fascism remain incomprehensible. For the rest, it is no accident that Guerin misjudges both the Popular Front, in which he sees a "failed revolution", and the real significance of fascism .

What is the real thrust of fascism, if not the economic and political unification of capital, a tendency which has become general since 1914? Fascism was a particular way of bringing about that unity in countries--Italy and Germany-- where, even though the revolution had been snuffed out, the state was unable to impose order, including order in the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Mussolini was no Thiers, with a solid base of power, ordering regular armed forces to massacre the Communards. An essential aspect of fascism is its birth in the streets, its use of disorder to impose order, its mobilization of the old middle classes half-crazed by their own decline, and its regeneration, from without, of a state unable to deal with the crisis of capitalism . Fascism was an effort of the bourgeoisie to forcibly tame its own contradictions, to turn working-class methods of mass mobilization to its own advantage, and to deploy all the resources of the modern state, first against an internal enemy, then against an external one.

This was indeed a crisis of the state, during the transition to the total domination of capital over society. First, worker organizations had been necessary to deal with the proletarian upsurge; then fascism was required to put an end to the ensuing disorder. This disorder was, of course, not revolutionary, but it was paralyzing, and stood in the way of solutions which, as a result, could only be violent. The crisis was only erratically overcome at the time; the fascist state was efficient only in appearance, because it forcibly integrated the wage-labor work force, and artificially buried conflicts by projecting them into militarist adventure. But the crisis was overcome, relatively, by the multi-tentacled democratic state established in 1945, which potentially appropriated all of fascism's methods, and added some of its own, since it neutralizes wage-worker organizations without destroying them. Parliaments have lost control over the executive. With welfare or with workfare, by modern techniques of surveillance or by state assistance extended to millions of individuals, in short by a system which makes everyone more and more dependent, social unification goes beyond anything achieved by fascist terror, but fascism as a specific movement has disappeared. It corresponded to the forced-march discipline of the bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the state, in the particular context of newly-created states hard-pressed to also constitute themselves as nations.

The bourgeoisie even took the word "fascism" from working-class organizations in Italy, which were often called fasci.. It is significant that fascism first defined itself as a form of organization and not as a program. Its only program is to organize everyone, to forcibly make the component parts of society converge. Dictatorship is not a weapon of capital (as if capital could replace it with other, less brutal weapons); dictatorship is one of its tendencies, a tendency realized whenever it is deemed necessary. A "return" to parliamentary democracy, as it occurred (for example) in Germany after 1945, indicates that dictatorship is useless for integrating the masses into the state (at least until the next time). The problem is therefore not the fact that democracy ensures a more pliant domination than dictatorship; anyone would prefer being exploited in the Swedish mode to being abducted by the henchmen of Pinochet. But does one have the CHOICE? Even the gentle democracy of Scandinavia would be transformed into dictatorship if circumstances demanded it. The state can only have one function, which it fulfills democratically or dictatorially. The fact that the former is less harsh does not mean that it is possible to reorient the state to dispense with the latter. Capitalism's forms depend no more on the preferences of wage workers than they do on the intentions of the bourgeoisie. Weimar capitulated to Hitler with open arms. Leon Blum's Popular Front did not "avoid fascism", because in 1936 France required neither an authoritarian unification of capital nor a shrinking of its middle classes.

There is no political "choice" to which proletarians could be enticed or which they could forcibly impose. Democracy is not dictatorship, but democracy does prepare dictatorship, and prepares itself for dictatorship.

The essence of anti-fascism consists in resisting fascism by defending democracy; it no longer struggles against capitalism but seeks to pressure capitalism into renouncing the totalitarian option. Since socialism is identified with total democracy, and capitalism with an accelerating tendency to fascism, the antagonisms between proletariat and capital, communism and wage labor, proletariat and state, are rejected for a counterposition of democracy and fascism presented as the quintessential revolutionary perspective. The official left and far-left tell us that a real change would be the realization, at last, of the ideals of 1789, endlessly betrayed by the bourgeoisie. The new world? Why, it is already here, to some extent, in embryos to be preserved, in little buds to be tended: already-existing democratic rights must be pushed further and further within an infinitely perfectible society, with ever-greater daily doses of democracy, until the achievement of complete democracy, or socialism.

Thus reduced to anti-fascist resistance, social critique is enlisted in dithyrambs to everthing it once denounced, and gives up nothing less than that shop-worn affair, revolution, for gradualism, a variant on the "peaceful transition to socialism" once advocated by the Communist Parties, and derided, before 1968, by anyone serious about changing the world. The retrogression is palpable.

We won't invite ridicule by accusing the left and the far left of having discarded a communist perspective which they knew in reality only when opposing it. It is all too obvious that anti-fascism renounces revolution. But anti-fascism fails exactly where its "realism" claims to be effective: in preventing a possible dictatorial mutation of society.

Bourgeois democracy is a phase in capital's seizure of power, and its extension in the twentieth century completes capital's domination by intensifying the isolation of individuals. Proposed as a remedy for the separation between men and community, between human activity and society, and between classes, democracy will never be able to solve the problem of the most separated society in history. As a form forever incapable of modifying its content, democracy is only a part of the problem to which it claims to be the solution. Each time it claims to strengthen the "social bond", democracy contributes to its dissolution. Each time it papers over the contradictions of the commodity, it does so by tightening the hold of the "safety net" which the state has placed under social relations. Even in their own desperately resigned terms, the antifascists, to be credible, have to explain to us how local democracy is compatible with the colonization of the commodity which empties out public space and fills up the shopping malls. They have to explain how an omnipresent state to which people constantly turn for protection and help, this veritable machine for producing social "good", will not commit "evil" when explosive contradictions require it to restore order. Fascism is the adulation of the statist monster, while anti-fascism is its more subtle apology. The fight for a democratic state is inevitably a fight to consolidate the state, and far from crippling totalitarianism, such a fight increases totalitarianism's stranglehold on society.

"Discussion paper for a new Breakout into the Frosts of Freedom" by Reformgroup

breakout print – PDF

breakout read – PDF

This text was written as a discussion text for the Autonomous Congress in Hamburg in October 2009, the first in 15 years. ..
[http://autonomerkongress.blogsport.de]

 The time to always assure ourselves of our own certainties has to come to an end 

 To some our words might sound harsh. This happens easily if it´s the people you love that are at stake, those with whom we have discovered many liberating thoughts in the past, those with whom we have tried out ways of changing both ourselves and the world. Shared attempts, that, as small as they may have been, we still hold more than close to our hearts. If one or the other critique hits you, try to keep this in mind and don´t immediately jump into a defensive position. We want to keep going together, otherwise this text would not exist.

We want to take the effort to overcome our differences and join forces. We want to have a collective debate at the beginning of the meeting to find out what ideas, critiques and proposals there are concerning the question of »What’s Next?«, and how we can practically tie them together in a discussion. If some of the positions really are mutually exclusive, we should state this and draw conclusions from it: this could also mean splitting from each other. There might be a point when our common ground falls through our fingers like sand or when common discussion leads nowhere anymore except to the same sad desert. The comrades who prepared the congress made it clear that they don´t want only experts meeting in circles on certain issues, and no panels. We would like to add, above all, no putting next to each other all the little inconsequential contradictions in some unrelated fashion, only to discover them again and again. Nearly 20 years after the text »3:1 – class contradiction, racism, sexism« introduced the problem of triple oppression to our circles, we can no longer rest in constantly describing anew that there is no single contradiction that determines every other contradiction. That knowledge alone is not enough. The problem stems partly from the splitting into single-issue politics and the development of specialization that stems from it, as well as from not piecing these jigsaw pieces back together again to form an overall picture. But somehow that still isn´t everything.

 We will only manage to scratch the surface of a few difficulties here. Also, we are too few to do even that in a comprehensive way. At the congress in Hamburg there will be more of us and if things go well we could in some moments develop something like a collective intelligence. Only in this way can it function to include all the many different experiences and perspectives. But a weekend is too short to really sort out a comprehensive strategy. What is a critique that keeps up with the time? How do some of us fool ourselves by simply stating »Destroy everything!«, ignoring the fact that state and capital do not want to abolish sociability as such, but wish to smash all uncontrolled collectivity into little pieces so that the fragments can be reconfigured afterwards by the logic of capital and the state. Transformation. How do others of us, in no less one-sided manner, fool ourselves with ever more elaborate and overly-complicated decodings of these processes, yet avoid to act according to our own findings?

The aim of the congress could be to agree on two or three questions that we will all discuss in the coming year. Linked to that, to develop a concrete structure for this discussion that would lead to a proposal for organizing ourselves: local and supra-regional meetings, loads of discussion circles, critical feedback of the discussion of our actions, agreement on a channel for the debate. How do we generalize the discussion? How do we spread our ideas and the texts we find important: to come to a common basis, to collectivize our knowledge, to make it possible to discuss about the same topic in the first place? Our idea is, for example, to regularly publish texts and discussion papers coming from these circles – and other circles as well – in our own media. We are of the opinion anyway, that we should invest more time and energy into creating our own ways and means of expression, instead of becoming chummy with the coverage of the bourgeois news.

Such a proposal to organize also includes thinking about potential comrades. There are various people we meet in the streets, but whom we do not find in our structures. They do not relate to them. Our self-organized structures are often closed and appear to be elitist. One has to have »proper knowledge« about a lot of things, know the codes and adhere to them, to be accepted. Also, we assume that there are people we would like to have in our discussions that do not feel attracted to the term “autonomen”. We are swayed back and forth as well: the autonomen are characterized by a far-reaching removal from society into our own bubble – yet at the same time, paradoxically, the autonomen are characterized by lively contacts to the Green Party and the Left Party, by press conferences and being entangled with the NGO-government complex. On the other hand, the autonomen still stand for a certain determination and irreconcilability against the state and capital, for confrontation in the streets, visible to anyone as part of the black bloc or invisible during the night. They stand for strategies of provocation and a perspective of bringing the social reality to a head – and yet they are always on the search for the entirely different entirety, too. For the creation and combative re-appropriation of relationships, free spaces and structures, that defy state control as much as possible, with the perspective of building from these threads a different social fabric. If it is still these things that people link to the term “autonomen”, then we like it.

Video Channel from insurrected Turkey. Spread the News / Never Trust Mass Media!

This is a youtube channel with videos from revolted Turkey
Download them, share them, see them before the censorship delete them from internet!

The social uprising in Turkey continues and our friends and comrades in Turkey need the help from all of us.
Share the authentic news from underground media sources, express your solidarity with all possible ways,
help the message of revolted Turkish people to travel as further as possible    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGjPubr5L5c&list=PLtMSwy96r2CaQstcSN2eJl13w9mnR3aTE
suggested videos: 5 7 14 18 25 27 31*

Global Insurrection is our only possible FUTURE

"Exhaustion and Senile Utopia of the Coming European Insurrection" by Franco Berardi Bifo

Figures such as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, among many others, have stressed in the past that we need to create institutions for unified political decisions at the level of the European Union. In the aftermath of the Greek debt crisis, it seems that the Europhile intellectuals have gotten what they asked for. The EU entity has been subjected to a sort of political directorate that has unfortunately only served to reveal that financial interests lie at the heart of the Union’s priorities. The early stage of the European tragedy has manifested itself as a political enforcement of the financial domination of European society.
The institutions of the welfare state have been under attack for thirty years: full employment, labor rights, social security, retirement, public schools, public transportation—all of these areas have been weakened, neglected, or destroyed. After thirty years of neoliberal obsession, we arrive at a collapse. What comes next? The ruling class answers coarsely: more of the same. Further reduction of public sector salaries, further raising of the age of retirement. No respect for society’s needs and the rights of workers.
Thatcher said thirty years ago that there is no such thing as society, and today this statement comes across as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Society is in fact dissolving, leaving space to a jungle where everyone fights against one another. Following the Greek crisis, the monetarist dogma has been strongly reinforced, as if more poison could act as an antidote. Reducing demand will lead to recession, and the only result will be to further concentrate capital in the hands of the financial class and further impoverish the working class.
Following the Greek financial crisis, emergency law was declared: a self-proclaimed Merkel-Sarkozy-Trichet directorate imposed a deflationary policy to be forced on the various national governments of European countries. In order to rescue the financial system, this self-proclaimed directorate diverts resources from society to the banks. And in order to revive the failed philosophy of neoliberalism, social spending is cut, salaries are lowered, the retirement age is raised, and the younger working generation is precarized. Those who do not acknowledge the great necessities of competition and growth will be cut out. Those who choose to play the game will have to accept any punishment, any renunciation, any suffering demanded by the great necessity. But who said that we must absolutely be part of this?
So far, the result of the collapse of neoliberal politics has been its confirmation and consolidation. When the American financial system collapsed, there was a general expectation that capital concentration would be abandoned or at least diminished, as a redistribution of wealth seemed necessary to rescue the economy. This has not taken place. The Keynesian way has not even been explored, and Paul Krugman has been left to repeat a series of perfectly reasonable options that no one is willing to consider.
Thanks to the crisis, American society has been robbed by big finance, and now Europe is following with its own mathematical ferocity. Is there any chance of stopping this insane race? A social explosion is possible, as it is apparent that living conditions will soon become unbearable. But precarious labor and the decomposition of social solidarity may open the way to a frightening outcome: ethnic civil war on continental scale, and the dismantling of the Union, which would unleash the worst instincts of nations.
In Paris, London, Barcelona, Rome, and Athens, massive demonstrations have erupted to protest the restrictive measures, but this movement is not going to stop the catastrophic aggression against social life, because the European Union is not a democracy, but a financial dictatorship whose politics are the result of unquestioned decision-making processes.
Peaceful demonstrations will not suffice to change the course of things and violent explosions will be too easily exploited by racists and criminals. A deep change in social perception and social lifestyle will compel a growing part of society to withdraw from the economic field, from the game of work and consumption. These people will abandon individual consumption to create new, enhanced forms of co-habitation, a village economy within the metropolis.
Unless one is seized by avarice or psychotic obsession, all a human being wants is a pleasant, possibly long life, to consume what is necessary to keep fit and make love. “Civilization” is the pompous name given to all the political or moral values that make the pursuit of this lifestyle possible. Meanwhile, the financial dogma states that if we want to be part of the game played in banks and markets, we must give up a pleasant, quiet life. We must give up civilization.
But why should we accept this exchange? Europe’s wealth does not come from the stability of the Euro or international markets, or the managers’ ability to monitor their profits. Europe is wealthy because it has millions of intellectuals, scientists, technicians, doctors, and poets. It has millions of workers who have augmented their technical knowledge for centuries. Europe is wealthy because it has historically managed to valorize competence, and not just competition, to welcome and integrate other cultures. And, it must be said, it is also wealthy because for four centuries it has ferociously exploited the physical and human resources of other continents.
We must give something up, but what exactly? Certainly we must give up the hyper-consumption imposed on us by large corporations, but not the tradition of humanism, enlightenment, and socialism—not freedom, rights, and welfare. And this is not because we are attached to old principles of the past, but because it is these principles that make it possible to live decently.
The prospect of a revolution is not open to us. The concept of revolution no longer corresponds to anything, because it entails an exaggerated notion of the political will over the complexity of contemporary society. Our main prospect is to shift to a new paradigm not centered on product growth, profit, and accumulation, but on the full unfolding of the power of collective intelligence.


The European tragedy has been founded on a false representation of social reality, based on some assumptions that contradict daily experience, but are nevertheless delivered as absolute truth, as unquestionable dogma.
Platitude 1: Public spending must be drastically cut if European budgets are to be balanced. In fact, European states have been cutting their budgets over the last thirty years, and are now diverting financial resources from social infrastructure towards banks and corporations. This diversion has already produced extensive damage, and will produce more.
Platitude 2: The European economy must compete with the emerging economies of developing countries, and this can happen only by reducing labor costs. This means that in order to become competitive, in a strictly economical sense, European life should be impoverished. And this is what is happening: unemployment is rising, education is being privatized, and racism is spreading. Nobody has ever explained why the only criterion for evaluating wealth must be financial in nature.
Platitude 3: The European worker’s productivity must be increased while salaries must be reduced. This produces an effect of low demand, deflation, and depression, but also overproduction. 40 percent of cars produced in Europe will not find buyers (thank God). So why should carmakers seek to increase the productivity of their already hyper-exploited workers? Consumption declines because salaries shrink, but also because Europeans simply do not need any more cars.
Platitude 4: The age of retirement must be raised, as there will be too many young people and too few old people in the future. The retirement age has already been raised in every European country, and now in France as well. But the rationale does not make sense. The productivity of the average European worker has increased fivefold over the past fifty years, so when the time comes, fewer young people actually will be able to feed more old people. But in reality, raising the retirement age has nothing to do with any social concern whatsoever. Rather, it is a trick for reducing labor costs. Capitalists would much rather pay a poor, old worker a salary than a deserved pension, and leave the young to find their own way, accepting any kind of occupation, whether precarious or simply underpaid.
No European politician dares to question these fundamental platitudes. And those who protest against these devastating measures are accused of being unable to comprehend the task at hand: to advance the deregulation that produced the present collapse. The late-neoliberal ruling class states that if deregulation produced the systemic collapse, we need more deregulation. If lower taxation on high incomes led to a fall in demand, let’s lower high-income taxation. If hyper-exploitation resulted in the production of unsold and useless cars, let’s intensify car production. Are these people crazy? Perhaps they are panicking, in fear of their own impotence.

Aesthetics of Europe

The aesthetics of the European Union is cold by definition. The European Union was born in the aftermath of World War II with the goal of overcoming old nationalist and ideological passions, and here lies its progressive and pragmatic nature. Lately, however, this founding anti-mythological myth seems to have been blurred, confused, forgotten. In the words of Ève Charrin:

Europe is peace, Europe is prosperity … Granite, glass and concrete: depressing architectural neutrality … This modesty without grace is a way of pretending that we are not political (rather, we are only managing).¹

Charrin expresses the aesthetic predicament of the European Union over the past decades, but such an apathetic way of being together was only possible under prosperous conditions. Insofar as a growing level of consumption could be guaranteed within the EU, monetarist rule could favor economic growth, and the EU could exist as an entity. It is a fiction of democracy governed by an autocratic organism, the European Central Bank. While the US Federal Reserve was established to stabilize the value of currency and maximize employment, the primary goal of the ECB charter is to fight inflation. Now this goal has become irrational, as deflation is the overwhelming trend.
Citizens can do nothing to influence the politics of the ECB, as the Bank does not respond to political authority, and this is why European citizens have been conscious of the vacuity of European elections. In the future, these citizens will come to view the EU as their enemy.
Social movements should focus on a founding myth of European history: the myth of energy. Modern culture and political imagination have emphasized the virtues of youth, of passion and energy, aggressiveness and growth. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of physical energy, and semiocapitalism has subjugated the nervous energy of society to the point of collapse. The notion of exhaustion has always been anathema to the discourse of modernity, of romantic Sturm und Drang, of the Faustian drive to immortality, the endless thirst for economic growth and profit, the denial of organic limits.
The romantic cult of youth is the cultural source of nationalism. In the colonial era, British and French nationalism was the cultural condition of colonial expansion, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, nationalism resurfaced to express the self-affirmation of young countries (Italy, Japan, and Germany), while the old empires (Russia, Austria, and the Ottomans) headed towards collapse. Nationalism also affirms the role of the young generation at the cultural and economic level. Old-fashioned styles are devalued, old people and women are despised for their weakness. Fascism always depicts itself as the young nation.
In late modernity, this depiction became an essential feature of advertising. But contrary to Fascist discourse, late modern advertising did not abuse old age, but denied it, claiming that every old person could be young if he or she would simply accept to partake in the consumerist feast. As Norman Spinrad showed in his novel Bug Jack Barron (1967), the denial of age and time marks the ultimate delirium of the global class.
The Fascism that triumphed in Italy after 1922 can be seen as the energolatreia (worshipping of energy) of the young. Now, Berlusconi re-stages the same arrogance, but the actors of the present comedy are old men who require make up and Viagra to inhabit an image of energy and potency. Like the heroic mythology of Fascism, as well as the mythology of advertising embodied by Berlusconi’s subculture, the myth is based on a delirium of power. Where the former was based on the youthful virtues of strength, energy, and pride, the latter employs the mature virtues of technique, deception, and finance. And while the nemesis that followed the youthful violence of Fascism in Italy was World War II and its unthinkable mass of destruction and death, one must ask what nemesis will be brought about by the present energolatreia of the old people?
With very few exceptions, literature and cinema have scarcely dealt with the subject of love between the elderly. It is a subject we know very little about, simply because old people have never really existed. Until some decades ago, it was rare to find a person older than sixty, and while many that were would be surrounded by an aura of respect and veneration, many others were banished to the border of society, where they would find themselves alone, deprived of the means of survival, and unable to form a community. We know very little about growing old, and we know nothing about the emotions of the elderly and their ability of social organization, solidarity, and political force. We don’t know because we have not experienced it. But that experience is now beginning.
The destiny of Europe will be played out in the biopolitical sphere, at the border between consumerism, techno-sanitarian youth-styled aggressiveness, and possible collective consciousness of the limits of the biological (sensitive) organism. The age of senilization is here, and Europe is the place where this experience will first find its voice.

A Therapeutic Paradox

Exhaustion has no place in Western culture, and this has become a problem, for exhaustion now needs to be understood and accepted as a new paradigm for social life. Its cultural and psychic articulation will open the door to a new conception of prosperity and happiness. The coming European insurrection will not be driven by energy, but by slowness, withdrawal, and exhaustion. It will be the autonomization of the collective body and soul from exploitation by means of speed and competition.
Western people were first advised of exhaustion in 1972, when the Club of Rome commissioned the book The Limits to Growth.² For the first time, we became aware that the physical resources of the planet are not boundless. Some months after the publication of the report, the Western world experienced the first oil shortage following the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Since then, we are expected to be conscious of the fact that energy is leaving the physical body of the Earth. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the collapse of the dot-com economy led to the pauperization and precarization of cognitive workers, while the financial meltdown of September 2008 initiated a process of pauperization and precarization of overall society. Western culture is unprepared to deal with the patterns exposed by these crises, because it is a culture based on the identification of energy and good, of expansion and social well-being.
At the moment the change in perception towards exhaustion seems rather dark and depressing, because the game is played following the rules of modern energolatria: growth. In the coming years one third of the European population—the generation born after World War II, when the fulfillment of the modern promise of peace, democracy, and well-being was apparently at hand—will reach old age. The new generation now entering the labor market does not possess the memory of this past civilization, nor the political force to defend their existence from the predatory economy. The age of senility is here, and it may introduce a generalized form of dementia senilis: fear of the unknown, xenophobia, loss of historical memory. But in a different scenario—one that we should anticipate at the cultural level—the process of senilization may open the way to a cultural revolution based on the force of exhaustion, of facing the inevitable with grace, discovering the sensuous slowness of those who do not expect any more from life than wisdom—the wisdom of those who have seen a great deal without forgetting, who look at each thing as if for the first time.
This is the lesson that Europe may learn if it can come out from the capitalist obsession with accumulation, property, and greed. In a reversal of the energetic subjectivation that animated the revolutionary theories of the twentieth century, radicalism should abandon the mode of activism, and adopt a passive mode. A radical passivity would dispel the ethos of relentless productivity that neoliberal politics has imposed. The mother of all the bubbles, the bubble of work, would finally deflate. We have been working too much over the past three or four centuries, and outrageously too much over the last thirty years. If a creative consciousness of exhaustion could arise, the current depression may mark the beginning of a massive abandonment of competition, consumerist drive, and dependence on work.
Anthropologist Gregory Bateson would define the European malaise in terms of a double bind, or contradictory injunction, with a paradoxical solution that could be this: don’t be afraid of decline. Decline and de-growth imply a divestment in the midst of frenzied competition, and this is the paradox that may bring us out of the neoliberal double bind.

originaly published in Dec. 2010 in e-flux:
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/191

Platitudes

The Libyan People's Committees should be the foundation of a new life, not just an interim measure

The struggle of the Libyan people, as part of the wave of popular rebellions spreading like fire in all of the Arab world, is taking a really dramatic turn, with the people advancing their struggle against a regime bent on staying in power by whatever means necessary.

Gadaffi, in spite of his past as a thorn in the side of the US, had became a key ally in their War on Terror, as was proved by the late and clumsy reaction of the US to the events unfolding in Libya and the late suspension by the EU of their considerable trade in weapons with the Libyan regime. While the US and the Western powers re-discover, for public image purposes, that they really did not like Gadaffi after all (after a decade of friendly relations), talks have started about a possible intervention and US carriers have moved into waters close to the Libyan shores. The result of such a prospect would be terrible to say the least. In the meantime, the US and their Western allied are exploring the way to make sure that the revolt of the Libyan and the Arab masses does not settle down in revolutionary terms, as well as making sure that their economic and strategic interests are served in the best possible way in the post-Gadaffi scenario.

To understand better what is going on there, we held another dialogue on February 27th with our friend and comrade, the Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalmaz, who works on the revolutionary blog http://www.ahewar.org/m.asp?i=1385

José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
March 3rd, 2011

What is actually happening in Libya and the rest of the Arab world?

It is a revolution . After 42 years of being governed by the Qaddafi regime, the masses took out to the streets. The bad thing here is that because of the brutal repression of the regime, the revolution was successful only in the eastern part, which also consists of different tribes from the western and middle parts of Libya. Soon the forces of the regime overcame the surprise factor and put down the revolt in Tripoli, the capital, and the rest of Libya by extreme and brutal force. The masses tried to go out again last Friday, which was really a day of outraged protests in a lot of Arab countries and cities, but they couldn't overcome the forces of the regime. Now there is a status quo between the two powers, that of the people and that of the regime, although both are trying to gather momentum again.

Beside Libya, Yemen is on fire for weeks now. In this country there are lots of tribes and sectarian minorities, beside the conflict between the governing north and the marginalized south that demands autonomy. University and High school students could manage, with their full devotion for freedom for all and their willingness to sacrifice for that cause, to gather all of the factions of the nation around the objective of removing the dictatorship there.

Last Friday was very hot also in Iraq, where thousands of Iraqi youth, from both Sunni and Shiia' background -that were on the verge of civil war few years back-, took to the streets protesting against the corrupt pro–American government. Policemen used the same repressive measures as happened elsewhere, which caused the death of some of the protesters.

The Sultanate of Oman just joined the rest of revolting countries now, the youth there took to the street chanting, as everywhere else, for jobs, more freedom and decent life conditions.

Many still see Gadaffi as a socialist and an anti-imperialist... is this true?

This is a very misleading and deluded statement, created by the authoritarian left before and still alive now. And this is due, partly, to the revival of this authoritarian left by figures like Chávez.

We have to keep in mind that Qaddafi's regime relations with the main Western powers improved significantly after 2003 and after the Libyan dictator gave up his nuclear programme, the then US secretary Condolezza Rice declared steps as a model of restoring normal relations between US and the Third World states, including those labelled as rogue by the US. This paved the way for Berlusconi, Blair and Sarkozy to visit Libya, to sign multi - billion contracts, including arms trade, with Western companies. This led Qaddafi to attend a G8 summit where he met Obama. Like Ben Ali and Mubarak, the big capitalist powers simply ignored human rights violations of the Qaddafi regime against his own people. Even when Qaddafi was declaring himself an anti - imperialist, long ago, it was just a lip service while he engaged, as an authoritarian, in trivial terrorist acts that never meant to support the libertarian objectives of the victims of imperialism.

We have to differentiate between being anti–American, anti–capitalist and being a real socialist, as there are lot of anti–Americans who are as authoritarian and repressive as the system of global corporate fascism or the pro–American regimes. Here we have to keep Stalinism in mind. Qaddafi himself came to power when Arab nationalism was on its peak, that was anti–imperialist in rhetoric only, while it led Arab countries from one defeat to another in all its confrontations against imperialism and its most important local agent, Israel. The last one was in 2003 in Iraq. After the June 1967 defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan by Israel, many leftists came to the conclusion that the regimes' repression and its exploitative nature were responsible for that defeat. Next year, the Egyptian youth and students started their demonstrations against the Nasser regime, which had libertarian character. The fact is that Egypt under Nasser, Iraq under Saddam and Syria under Assad, all were mere examples of bureaucratic state capitalism, namely, regimes that repress and exploit their own people.

What has been the role of the US and of the EU in this crisis? It is known that Gadaffi has been in very good terms with them for the last while...

In the Cold War both repressive superpowers, the US and the USSR, practiced a double play: they were repressing people in their dominant sphere and “supporting” the peoples' struggle for freedom in the sphere dominated by the opponent. Thus, the Soviet Union supported the Vietnamese people struggle against American intervention and the Cuban revolution, as well as other rebellions in South America and places which were under US packed dictatorships. On the other hand, the US and the capitalist bloc supported the wave of revolts in Eastern Europe, etc. This double game is still played until now. The US is ready and wiling to support such rebellions in Iran for example, but never, never in Saudi Arabia for example. In Iraq, the Bush administration helped Saddam to regain power in Iraq after his defeat in the first Gulf War 1991, while he was facing a massive popular revolution and only a small part of Iraq was under his power. They wanted to overthrow him when it looked easier, and when doing so did not compromise its regional dominance.

But things are happening all the time, sometimes against the will of the US, as it happened in Egypt and Tunisia. Despite all of its best efforts to maintain Ben Ali and Mubarak in power, the masses there created a new reality, and the US is trying to adapt to it. In Libya it looks somewhat different. The US is now like a predator, as Qaddafi' regime looks very weak and so much hated by his own people, and above all, because the Libyan territory is full of oil, it looks a very easy and big target. Besides that, this can help the main supporter of dictatorships in our region, the US, to look like a freedom fighter liberating a helpless nation from its bloody dictator, one they regarded until recently as a new friend. The bad thing about being a predator is that it cannot resist easy targets, despite all past and painful experiences. One very important thing about this possible US plan is that no one in Libya today, nor the revolting masses, nor even the Libyan opposition that resides in the West, accepts any foreign military intervention.

Of course, this would be a blow for the whole struggle of the Libyan nation, not only it would damage its independent fight for its freedom, but it would also threaten its future. The Libyans are near to overthrow the regime and regain possession of their oil and their life, I don't think they, at least most of them, are ready to sacrifice what they gained up to now for the sake of an easy victory that isn't their victory.

What’s the nature of the civilian-military government declared today in Benghazi?

Still there are no clear State institutions as such in the liberated areas. There are some trying to install their elite leadership, but until this very moment, not successfully yet.

Just recently, American and pro-American Arab press started talking about an interim council in Benghazi headed by an ex-minister of Qaddafi’s cabinet, just to highlight their welcoming position of a possible US intervention. Aside for this so called interim council, no other force or group in the liberated areas accepts or calls for such an intervention.

What’s the role of the Libyan People’s Committees? Are the masses creating their own means for direct democracy?

In fact, these committees became part of every revolution everywhere in the Arab world. I accept that these are good examples of direct democracy, the whole liberated areas are run in this way now, as was the situation after the fall of Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and after Mubarak ordered his security forces to pave the way for thugs to practice looting everywhere to intimidate the revolting masses. What is needed now is to make this a way of life, not just an interim measure: this must be our message to the masses.

Flags of the monarchy had been raised... Do you see the spectre of a comeback of the old regime of Idris?

To tell the truth, anything can happen. I think that the revolting Libyans themselves don't have clear idea about who will and how to run their country after they manage to overthrow Qaddafi. They have to learn their way. What I feel is that this is difficult to happen, that they will never submit easily to any new regime. They got to know their strength and this is not easy to be taken away from them again .

What´s the immediate prospect for this revolt?

It depends. Still the battle against the dictatorship isn't over, not yet won . But we have to realize the high potential that there is. The victory of the revolution will make a big difference in the region. We have to keep in mind that the new world order was declared and implemented here for the first time during the 1990–1991 Gulf crisis. This region, since then, replaced Southern America for Washington's backyard. Added to what already has happened in Tunisia and Egypt, the changes will be deep and lasting. There are two main possibilities as ever, either to install a new elite regime, or that the masses could make their way to a really free society, organised on the model of these popular committees that the people themselves have created in the heat of the struggle.