Charts the strategic thinking behind the movements challenging neoliberal globalization.

A Movement of Movements charts the strategic thinking behind the mosaic of movements currently challenging neoliberal globalization. Leading theorists and activists—the Zapatistas’ Subcomandante Marcos, Chittaroopa Palit from the Indian Narmada Valley dam protests, Soweto anti-privatization campaigner Trevor Ngwane, Brazilian Sem Terra leader João Pedro Stedile, and many more—discuss their personal formation as radicals, the history of their movements, their analyses of globalization, and the nuts and bolts of mobilizing against a US-dominated world system.

Explaining how the Global South and the experience of indigenous peoples have provided such a dynamic and practical inspiration, the contributors describe the roles anarchism and direct democracy have played, the contributions and limitations of the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre as a coordinating focus, and the effects of and responses to the economic downturn, September 11, and Washington’s war on terror. Their statements, at once personal and visionary, offer a dazzling new insight into the political imagination of the global resistance movements.

Available here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/170-a-movement-of-movements

The post Book of the Day: A Movement of Movements appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Injecting Imagination into Degrowth

Labelled a ‘domestic extremist’ by the police and ‘a magician of rebellion’ by the press, John Jordan has spent the last 25 years merging art and activism.

He has worked in various settings, from Tate Modern to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals to climate camps, and co-founded Reclaim the Streets and the Clown Army, co-edited We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (Verso, 2004), and co-wrote the film/book Les Sentiers de l’Utopie (Editions Zones, 2012). He now co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) with Isabelle Fremeaux.

The Clandestine Insurgent Clown Army in action, G8 protest, Scotland 2005. (Image: CIRCA)

1. What is the key idea of artivism?

Artivism, merging the boundless imagination of art and the radical engagement of politics.

Artivism is not really a movement. It’s more an attitude, a practice which exists on the fertile edges between art and activism. It comes into being when creativity and resistance collapse into each other. It’s what happens when our political actions become as beautiful as poems and as effective as a perfectly designed tool. Artivism is the Clown Army kissing riot shields to push the police away; it’s the Yes Men secretly infiltrating the world’s media pretending to be corporate mouthpieces; it’s when flocks of flamenco dancers shut down banks promoting austerity in Spain; it’s when the Brandalism collective hacks hundreds of bus shelters in the midst of a state of emergency and replaces the adverts with radical messages. What it’s definitely not about is making political art, art about an issue, such as a performance about the refugee crisis, or a video about an uprising. It is not about showing new perceptions of the world, but about changing it. Refusing representation, artivism chooses direct action.

Proponents of direct action believe that to change things, it is best to act directly on the matter instead of asking others to do things for us. It is the opposite of lobbying and protest marches. Direct action is about transforming the world in the here and now, together. By breathing the spirit of art onto direct action, we can come up with irresistible forms of resistance. If you see a bulldozer cutting down a forest to build a new airport, you don’t write a song about it, you put your body in its way (maybe while singing!). The most beautiful thing, however, —the aesthetic goal— is winning: enabling the survival and continued abundance of the living forest and its ecosystems. With artivism, the beautiful and the useful overlap.

Artivism as an indiscipline

Some might prefer to call it ‘creative resistance’, and some ‘art activism’. Others, following the words of the German artist and co-founder of the Green Party Joseph Beuys, might call it ‘social sculpture’. The authors of Artivisme: Art, Action Politique et Résistance Culturelle (Lemoine & Ouardi 2010), however, simply say that artivism is an ‘indiscipline’, something with refusal rooted in its heart. In fact, it refuses to be contained by the problematic discipline of art or by the separate identities of ‘artist’ and ‘activist’ —labels that assume that artists have a monopoly on creativity and activists one on social change, suggesting that somehow other people are neither creative nor involved in changing the world!

Artivism treats social movements as a material. Their forms of action and alternatives are forms that our collective imagination can change and reinvent. In the same way that an artist might work with wood or paint, artivism might look at plans for direct action to shut down an open-cast coal mine and imagine how it could be made more powerful and theatrical. It might involve designing the layout of a climate camp so that it is more convivial and open as a place to welcome new people. It might involve inventing new ways of holding horizontal assemblies or designing a shared ritual for before going out to sabotage a military base with your affinity group. When, as Gerald Raunig writes, ‘art machines and revolutionary machines overlap’ (Raunig 2007), we get a moment of artivism.ç

2. Who is part of artivism, what do they do?

A rich, diverse and colourful movement, which can bring down empires in the most unexpected ways

The strategies employed by artivists depend on the political context of their work and are too numerous to fit here, but one brilliant handbook and website of tactics, theories and principles is Beautiful Trouble. One example from the book is how to create protests that do not look like protests as a key strategy for those working in repressive regimes or during states of emergency where public dissent is banned. The Orange Alternative did this wonderfully during martial law in Poland in the late 1980s. Despite protest bans, they called for a ‘Gnome’ gathering, to demand better ‘Gnomes’ rights’. When faced with thousands of young people wearing orange gnome hats, the regime’s soldiers did not know what to do, and the generals did not call the tanks in. For the first time since martial law was declared, a mass of people had taken public space back, had a great time doing it, and managed to spread a sense of confidence far and wide. Within a few years the whole of Eastern Europe was out in the streets. Some historians claim that the movements that brought down the Soviet Empire began with artists, guerrilla theatre and musicians opening up space for dissent (Horáková & Vuletic 2003). Humour has often been at the centre of artivist tactics.

Orange Alternative grafitti remains forty years later on the walls of Krakow. (Image: pnapora)

Another common tactic is reverse-engineering, which asks the hacker question: ‘What can this thing do?’. This involves hacking a daily object and turning it into a machine of resistance. You can reverse-engineer anything, including laws: Students at the University of Texas fought back against the new campus carry gun law by strapping on dildos! The organisers of Cocks Not Glocks explained that, although it is illegal to openly carry dildos on campus, they are ‘just about as effective as [guns in] protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play’. This also illustrates the principle of ‘put your target in a dilemma position’, which means that you put your opponent in a situation where they are forced to respond to your action. But whatever they do, they lose, by appearing either ridiculous or violent.

Those involved in artivism are as diverse as their tactics, some went to art school, others to theatre academies, some simply managed to avoid having their creativity sapped from them at school and want to apply it to political action. Artivism’s greatest strategies are perhaps innovation and confusion , as repeating the same tactics —the A to B march, the picket, the internet meme, the blockade, the protest camp, the riot— can quickly lose its impact. The most successful actions are often those where new forms are invented that manage to take the authorities by surprise. That is why movements need to constantly innovate their tactics faster than the authorities are able to respond to them; including, of course, tactics to protect protesters from police violence. In the last decade we have seen a range of creative shields, from the book-block shields made from giant books covers (the image of a cop beating George Orwell’s 1984 is unforgettable), to the Climate Camp’s shields with beautiful photographic portraits of those affected by the climate breakdown pushing through police lines to shut down the builders of a new runway.

Many popular tactics were originally invented by artivists, including Denial-of-Service (Dos) attacks for blocking the websites of opponents, now infamously used by Anonymous.

Creativity and crafting new forms needs time and attention, but given the urgency and speed of activism this is never easy. The spirit of art thus also brings a different rhythm to activism, one that is much more in keeping with the aims of degrowth; a de-accelerated, slower, more considered approach, but no less passionate.

Shields with portraits and tents hidden inside, Climate Camp, Heathrow, London 2007 (Image: Kristian Buus /Labofii)

3. How do you see the relationship between artivism and degrowth?

Opening up the space to dream: nurturing collective creative thinking and the spirit of play within the degrowth movement

At the moment, it feels as though artivists have made fewer connections with the degrowth movement than with other movements such as refugee support, climate breakdown, anti-austerity, alter-globalisation, etc. Why this is the case is hard to fathom.

Climate and the concept of the Anthropocene are huge themes in the art world at the moment. However, much of it is sadly part of a corporate elite using culture as a cheap research and development tool and an effective public relations exercise to promote green capitalism. Volkswagen consultants working with artists and ecologists during the Über Lebenskunst project at Berlin’s art centre Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2010-2012) to look at the future of transport is just one of many examples. At the recent COP21 (2015) in Paris, many big name artists played the role of ‘artwashers’ by creating work for a corporate greenwash event, Solutions COP21, which brought together some of the world’s biggest polluters, from fossil fuel corporations to car manufacturers, from industrial agriculture giants to builders of airports and motorways, for a fair to demonstrate that they had the real solutions to the crisis.

Human Cost, Unsanctioned performance by Liberate Tate in Tate Britain, London 2011 (Image: Liberate Tate)

Participatory pedagogy

The fact that the degrowth conferences of 2014 included an art thread together with scientific, economic and social threads is encouraging. More of these initiatives should be developed so as to break the ‘academic’ conference mould and include more creative forms of knowledge sharing as well as a more holistic approach. Artivists’ teaching practices tend to be more horizontal and based on participatory popular education models that seek to develop the shared critical knowledge already present, rather than a ‘top down’ knowledge transfer (via PowerPoint or a conference) from the knower to the students. Artivists tend to go beyond mere talking and listening —working and playing with the body and materials; engaging head, heart and hand equally. This should be a key pedagogic strategy —perhaps a return to the pedagogic idea of the ‘polytechnic’, where learning philosophy was no different from learning how to make a chair.

The process of making things together can be a good mobilising tool for developing strong affinity groups and bringing people into movements for the first time. After all, it may be a lot less frightening for first-time activists to attend a workshop to learn —as in the case of Tools For Action — how to make giant inflatable silver cobblestones for an action, rather than taking part in a big assembly discussing a campaign against a new fracking license.

Setting up transdisciplinary solutions workshops/laboratories around particular topics, where artists/designers would be brought in not as the ‘aesthetic communicators’ of the ideas, but as creative participants trying to find solutions in collaboration with other disciplines, would be an important step towards merging the degrowth movement with the spirit of artivism.

Creating spaces that nurture such creative thinking and playing as part and parcel of a movement process is key. The degrowth movement, despite its at times overly academic tone, could have the capacity and sensibility to embody this spirit, because at its heart are notions of a change in our culture towards qualitative rather than quantitative ways of being. Degrowth has been called ‘an example of an activist-led science‘. Perhaps one day we will be able to say that it was an activist-led art as well.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Making degrowth irresistible: the role of desire and fantasy in creating a new culture

I write as someone living in a wood-heated yurt in a small commune on an organic farm in France, where degrowth is at the centre of our collective’s values. For us, degrowth is coupled with good living. As the French slogan goes: Moins De Biens, Plus de Liens —Fewer Things, More Relationships. But in popular mainstream culture degrowth is often misperceived as an activity that involves self-control (stop shopping, stop driving, stop flying, etc.) and privation (don’t want or buy new things, etc.), that calls for a return to the past (stop using fossil fuels/new technologies, etc.) where life was hard (grow your own vegetables, make your own bread, stay local, etc.) and happiness rare. In addition, degrowth is usually framed within an apocalyptic timeline of a planetary life support system collapse —not exactly making it the most desirable of movement imaginaries. Such caricatures of degrowth are a far cry from notions of abundance, pleasure and play that are often present in artistic processes and that are concepts that capitalism has taken away from us.

As with most traditional progressive politics, degrowth has a tendency to work in a scientific, ‘reality’-based manner. Much of the work seems to be passing on information, statistics, facts, economic analyses, etc. It often feels overly academic and heady and ignores emotions —Where is the dreaming and fantasy? While there have been spaces for other forms of intuitive learning, celebrating, etc. at the recent degrowth conferences, this is often seen as merely an addition to the ‘rational’ lectures and workshops.

Stealing fantasy back from capitalism

Capitalism has captured our fantasies with the spectacle of consumerism; its celebrities have become our mythological heroes, its video games our wild adventures. It promises us the fantasy of a better life that can always be even better. Fantasy itself is the fuel of the entertainment business, popular culture and most religions, and yet we fear it as a tool of politics. We distrust anything that might seem irrational and relegate it to the ‘arts programme’.

Artivism, however, recognises that politics has always been about fantasy, because at its heart is imagining what kind of future world we want. We have been able to use such tools, steal them back from popular culture and create what Stephen Duncombe, author and founder of the Centre for Artistic Activism, calls ‘ethical spectacles‘. There, we collectively perform our dreams via imaginative participatory actions, creating new realities via symbols and stories that construct a truth together rather than waiting for it to set us free. The degrowth movement could learn from this and acknowledge that successful politics are as much an affair of desire and fantasy as of reason and rationality. To leave all these powerful tools in the hands of capitalism is a mistake. As long as capitalism’s lures are perceived to be more fun and more able to speak to our desires than degrowth, we will fail to make the radical cultural changes that are so necessary, and buying an iPad will still be way cooler than riding a donkey.

Instead of artists flocking to apply their creativity to the movement, they continue to work in the advertising industries and other machines that reproduce capitalism’s desire traps. Without their creativity degrowth will remain a beautiful set of ideas rather than a new culture. The questions we must ask are: How do we learn to educate each other to desire differently? How can degrowth become as sexy as capitalism? And how can small really become beautiful? And, last but not least, how can we begin to sense the inherent violence of industrial civilisation, to really, deeply feel the crimes against life that it perpetuates, to shake off the anaesthesia, the numbness, and return to aesthesia, the senses?

More coherence is needed

What degrowth can bring to artivism and especially to the art world is the drive for coherence between thinking and living. Separating what we believe in from how we act in the world inevitably leads to suffering, and confusing role models. With many in the cultural field there is a chasm between their politics, aesthetics, ethics and everyday life. Many artists and cultural producers fly from conference to biennale, to carry out work about climate change, while others exhibit anti-systemic work in museums sponsored by banks. Not considering their life as a material to work on, a concept Foucault articulates as ‘a technique of life, an art of living’, they reproduce separations of capitalism. Instead of applying their creativity to questions of how we could travel without causing climate breakdown, how we could organise without domination, how we could grow our food without destroying our soil systems, how we might build new communes, they continue to live in constant contradiction between what they believe in and how they behave. Degrowth’s focus on holistic practices could change this.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Building a culture of resistance where art and activism are no longer separate from everyday life

One of the most urgent tasks is to build a culture of resistance. I don’t believe that we will be able to put in place solutions to the ongoing social and ecological catastrophe without acts of resistance. Those who profit from the present economic system will not relinquish their power. We need movements that are able to show desirable alternatives while being prepared to resist the current system. Without a shared set of values and behaviours, without a culture where acts of resistance (from protest to sabotage) are supported by a wider population than that which is actually ready to take part in them, we will not have the systemic change necessary to achieve justice and avoid the collapse of our life support systems on this planet.

That is why things like bringing degrowth and a climate camp together are key, because not everyone is going to be suited for the front line of resistance. But all these people need to feel part of a shared culture. Yet movements so often forget this and don’t see the importance of creating the material infrastructures and affective sensibilities that support resistance in the long term. Unfortunately, many in the transition town networks — or in other cultures of ecological alternatives such as permaculture et al. — while thinking long term solutions and material infrastructures, seem to think that our culture will be able to magically transition from capitalism to ‘something nicer, greener, etc.’ without resistance. I don’t believe this culture will somehow undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane, equitable and sustainable way of living. I think we have to undo much of this culture and rebuild entirely different ways of being and sharing our worlds and that this is what resistance is: confronting and dismantling unjust structures of power to make way for other cultures to flourish.

This is what a culture of resistance looks like
A culture of resistance is one based on sharing our material and emotional support with those involved in a movement of resistance.

A culture of resistance is when in winter 2015 in France citizens opened up their homes and farms to the 200 people in the tractor and bike convoy that rolled up from the zad occupation (an autonomous resistance zone against a planned airport in western France) to the COP21 in Paris, despite the state of emergency and bans on their movements. A culture of resistance is not the so-called ‘ecological’ philosopher Bruno Latour refusing to sign a letter against the building of the same airport because he fears his name being associated with radical ecologists.

Routes of the Underground Railroad, 1830-1865. (Image: public domain)

A beautiful example of a culture of resistance was the underground railroad that enabled slaves to escape the southern United States. It’s not the French government evicting refugees from their self-made Calais camps to force them into a prison-like set-up with no communal space. At the heart of a culture of resistance is refusing a culture of domination in favour of a definition of love that enables the other to be free.

Breaking down the separations

In the end I think that in the new culture that will come after the culture of capitalism and domination, the role of art and activism will change radically. Art as a thing separate from everyday life, a thing for the rich to collect and profit from, a thing to watch or to own, done by others, will be over. It will be seen as a verb rather than a noun; a way of doing, a certain quality of paying attention that anyone can practice in everyday life, not just the ‘artists’.

Perhaps the notion of the activist as someone who is a specialist in transforming society, will disappear too, as in a society of the commons, run with local assemblies and a confederation of commons rather than the hierarchical state, everyone will feel part of a process of social transformation, part of a practice of politics. In this society, politics will not be separate from ethics anymore. Aristotle saw the pursuit of the good of the political community as a branch of ethics, the pursuit of human good as a whole. This pursuit he called Eudaimonia, meaning ‘the good life’, and he believed it was the ultimate goal of all human beings. 2300 years later, perhaps the degrowth movement will bring us closer to this dream than ever before.

Links

The Centre for Creative Activism, based in New York
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) brings artists and activists together to co-design new forms of creative resistance
Interview with its co-founders of Labofii John Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux

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Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

Lead image, Clown Army – Polizei Gorleben Demo 2010 Dannenberg, by Simon Engel (Flickr)

The post Degrowth in Movements: Artivism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

We hope the film Re-imagine the Future provoked your interest in exploring its themes more deeply. The quest to build attractive, functional alternatives to the world ordained by neoliberal economics is, in fact, growing. A kaleidoscope of innovations around the world is showing that the market and state are not the only players. A burgeoning Commons Sector is emerging and starting to flourish.

This webpage is a portal into the growing world of system-change activism, experimentation, legal and policy innovation, academic research and political analysis. Consider these links an invitation to enter into this world yourself. After all, the answers are not going to come from somewhere else; they have to start with us, personally and locally, and expand outward. We need to re-imagine the future.

Index

• What is the Commons?
• Key Commons Websites
• Activists/Thinkers Concerned about System Change
• Notable Movements
• 25 Significant Commons Projects
• Books and Essays
• Films & Videos

What is the Commons?

• The Commons, Short and Sweet
• Introductory resources

Key Commons Websites

• Bollier.org
• Commons Strategies Group
• Commons Transition
• The Commoner (UK)
• Digital Library of the Commons
• International Association for the Study of Commons
• International Journal of the Commons
• Law for the Commons wiki
• Maps in the Spirit of the Commons
• On the Commons
• P2P Foundation
• Remix the Commons
• Shareable
• Sustainable Economies Law Center

Activists/Thinkers Concerned about System Change

• Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment
• Schumacher Center for a New Economy
• Next System Project
• Democracy Collaborative
• New Economy Coalition
• Great Transition Initiative
• P2P Foundation
• The Corner House (UK)
• Stir magazine (UK)

Notable Movements

(an incomplete list)

• Co-operatives
• Transition Towns, US / Transition Network
• Social and Solidarity Economy (in French)
• Degrowth
• Peer Production
• La Via Campesina
• Indigenous Peoples / First Peoples Worldwide
• Care Work
• Climate Change / Climate Action Network
• Community Empowerment: Democracy Collaborative / Institute for Local Self-Reliance / Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund / Movement Generation

25 Significant Commons Projects

• Alaska Permanent Fund and other stakeholder trusts
• Berkshares and alternative currencies
• Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons
• The city as a commons
• Cecosesola (Colombia)
• Community land trusts
• Creative Commons licenses
• Enspiral: social enterprise with shared vision and values
• Farm Hack: open source farm equipment
• Free software
• Guifi.net (Spain): community wifi
• HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theater community
• Customary land commons in Africa
• multistakeholder co-operatives
• Museums as commons
• Open access scholarly journals
• Open design and open hardware
• Open Educational Resources
• Potato Park (Peru)
• System of Rice Intensification, open source agronomy for rice
• Timebanking

….and countless other examples. See Patterns of Commoning and the Digital Library on the Commons.

Books and Essays

• Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons
• David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Commons
• — “Commons as a Paradigm for Social Transformation” (Next System Project, April 2016).
• — and Silke Helfrich, editors, The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Levellers Press, 2012).
• Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei, The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community (Berrett-Koehler, 2015).
• Commons Strategies Group, “State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship” (June 2016).
• Giacomo D’Alisa et al., Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2014).
• Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia, 2004).
• Lewis Hyde, Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership (Farrar Straus, 2011).
• —- , The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage, 1983/2007)
• Peter Linebaugh: The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberty and Commons for All (University of California Press, 2008).
• Mary Mellor, Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice (Pluto Press, 2016).
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Douglas Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity (Portfolio, 2016)
• Derek Wall, The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom: Commons, Contestation and Craft

Films & Videos

• The Promise of the Commons (2013). 50 minutes. Focuses on natural resources commons in the global South, with special attention to land grabbing and land rights in India, Nepal, Mexico. 20-minute version.
• The Commons (2103). A left-libertarian-anarchist perspective on the commons that explains the logic of capitalism and the potential of the commons to meet needs beyond the state and market. 36 minutes. Script for video narration.
• Peter Linebaugh: Who Owns the Commons? on The Laura Flanders Show. An interview with historian and author Peter Linebaugh on the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of that legal document and the struggle behind it today. 2015. 18 minutes.
• Better Not More: Principles and Practices Towards the next Economy. This video provides an overview of activist movements to decomodify nature, re-imagine the character of work, liberate knowledge and democratize wealth. 5 minutes. Produced by Kontent Film and Edge Funders Alliance.
• Podcast, “The Deeper Magic of the Commons.” Host James Lindenschmidt interviews a range of commons scholars and activists. 2016.

Lead image by Nullfy; additional images by Michel Desbiens, Jaap Joris and Michael Dunne.

This post was originally published in Bollier.org. You can find complementary material at Anna Grear’s site.

The post Re-imagine the Future: A List of Resources for Commoning appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“In the US, it’s not uncommon to think about cooperatives and non-profit social enterprise as something wholly outside the realm of conventional politics. Yet, in many parts of the world, and increasingly in some corners of the US, government, especially at the local level, plays a critical role in supporting ecosystems of enterprises that are structured to put people and planet before profit.

This relationship between local governments and the social economy, was the focus of the Global Social Economy Forum, which took place earlier this month in Montreal, Quebec, a province where roughly 7% of the workforce is employed by a co-op or non-profit business and where public investment in the sector hovers around $100 Million CAD annually.

Organized as a partnership between the Montreal Mayor’s Office and the Chantier D’ Le Economie Sociale, the forum brought together over 1300 people from 330 cities in 63 countries including more than 40 mayors.

Coming from a US context, where social, solidarity, or new economy efforts tend to be very grassroots, the size and public profile of the event was truly impressive. GSEF flags lined the Boulevard Rene-Levesque and the nation’s most prominent french-language TV business show hosted an hour-long special on the social economy from the conference center.

The forum served multiple functions. At times it was an opportunity for elected officials to recount their achievements in supporting social and solidarity economies or for the announcement of new initiatives such as the C.I.T.I.E.S learning platform. Other moments facilitated exchange and learning between governmental and community actors from around the world. Still others were focused on making a statement to the international community, encapsulated in the GSEF2016 Declaration, about the importance of social economy strategies to the goals of sustainable development.

Despite the size of the gathering and it’s North American location, participation from the United States was low at fewer than 30 people.

Three representatives of local government in the US participated in the forum. Alder Rebecca Kemble spoke about Madison Wisconsin’s investment in worker co-ops as a tool for racial and economic justice. Tracey Nichols, Economic Development Director for the City of Cleveland, discussed the city’s support for the Evergreen Co-op network. New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito addressed both the city’s investment in worker cooperatives and its leadership on participatory budgeting across the five boroughs.

Participation from the US also included NEC staff as well as representatives from member organizations and allies such as the Center for Economic Democracy, Cooperation Buffalo, OPEN Buffalo, Cooperation Jackson, The Sustainable Economies Law Center, The Democracy Collaborative, The US Federation of Worker Co-ops, The US Solidarity Economy Network, Magic City Agriculture Project, and The Highlander Research and Education Center, who organized a delegation of leaders from the US South.

US participants learned about inspiring models from around the world including:

Quebec, where the social economy does $2 Billion in sales annually and has been recognized in law as a critical component of the provincial economy and culture.

Seoul, South Korea, where collaboration between the city and social economy networks has led to the creation of over 3000 co-ops in just four years.

Kenya, where community currencies support marginalized communities.

Barcelona, where the new, social-movement-supported, administration of Mayor Ada Colau is rapidly creating a legal framework and public support system for the social and solidarity economy.

Cameroon, where more than 200 cooperative networks have been organized in villages across the nation, in addition to a network of mayors who want to promote SSE.

Bahia, Brazil, where, unfortunately, the ouster of President Rousseff poses a threat to the substantial public and community investment in co-ops and the solidarity economy.

More information of the GSEF can be found here.”

Photo by Giuseppe Milo (www.pixael.com)

The post Toward Post-Capitalist Cities? Reporting Back From The Global Social Economy Forum 2016 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“In the early morning of July 27, refugee families and supporters who were sleeping at Thessaloniki’s three occupied refugee shelters — Nikis, Orfanotrofeio and Hurriya — were woken up by police in riot gear. In a well-orchestrated police operation, hundreds of people were detained. Most occupants with refugee status were released, while some were transported to military-run refugee reception centers. The rest of the occupants, 74 people of more than a dozen different nationalities, were taken into police custody.

Immediately after Orfanotrofeio was evacuated, bulldozers marched in and demolished the building, an abandoned orphanage “donated” five years ago to the enterprising Greek Orthodox Church by a previous government. Under the rubble were buried tons of clothes, foodstuffs and medicine collected there by grassroots solidarity structures to be distributed to refugee families in need. Hours later, No Border Kitchen, an autonomous structure providing food to refugees in the island of Lesvos, was also forcefully evicted by the police.

On the next afternoon, the 74 occupants of the three occupied shelters were transported to Thessaloniki’s courthouse in handcuffs by heavily armed police, where they were cheered upon entering by hundreds of supporters, despite the debilitating heat of the Greek summer. The nine occupants of Nikis squat were condemned to four-month suspended sentences for occupation of a public building. The trials of the 65 occupants of the Orfanotrofeio and Hurriya shelters were postponed due to lack of interpreters; everyone was provisionally freed. Charges include “disruption of household peace” and “damage to property” — this last one an accusation fabricated by greedy owners who demand large compensations for supposed damages to their long-abandoned and unused buildings.

The response of the movements to the attack was swift and included the symbolic occupations of the headquarters of the governing Syriza party in Thessaloniki and other cities; marches and protests all over the country; the occupation of the Drama School of the local university, to be transformed into a center of struggle; and the rescuing of the refugees who were transferred from the occupied shelters to refugee camps — most of them vulnerable — back to safe places. To that we should add the mobilization of a big volunteer legal team to organize the defense of dozens of activists in three separate trials.

Nevertheless, the response was asymmetrical, as by Wednesday’s operation the police liquidated in just one day a great part of the infrastructure patiently constructed by the grassroots movement for solidarity with refugees over the last year. The raid and eviction of the three occupied refugee shelters thus marks another episode in the undeclared war of the Greek government against grassroots solidarity efforts.

Humanity in spite of everything

Since the summer of 2015, when Greece became the main path to Europe for people fleeing war, repression and poverty in Asia and Africa, the refugees who crossed the country encountered the Greek people, who had endured five years of austerity shock treatment, who had seen their lives degraded and their social, political and labor rights vanishing in a very short period of time.

Despite the hardship, the ordeal of the refugees was generally not met with xenophobic reflexes, but with authentic empathy and solidarity on behalf of the population. The voices of the extreme right — which only a few years back had been organizing pogroms against immigrants in collusion with the armed forces — were marginalized, and Greek society generally demonstrated an outpouring of solidarity towards the immigrants.

The old xenophobic maxim — “if you like the refugees so much, take them to your home” — was actually put into practice: thousands of Greek homes were opened to host refugees, especially the most vulnerable ones — the sick, pregnant women and families with little children — sometimes as an intermediate stop to recover their strength before regrouping with family in the north of Europe, but often as a more lasting arrangement. Millions of rations of home-cooked food were taken to the camp of Eidomeni by ordinary people, where great numbers of refugees lived in deplorable conditions in tents and makeshift homes, waiting for a chance to cross the border to the north and continue their path towards northern Europe.

Solidarity in movement

This heartwarming response on behalf of Greek society marked a moral victory for Greece’s social movements, which throughout the years of the crisis have not only been resisting the assault on the popular classes and creating grassroots alternatives, but have also been combating racism, xenophobia and fascism at all levels: in the neighborhood, in the streets and in public discourse.

From the very beginning, the resources and infrastructure of the social movements, however limited, were mobilized to provide support and relief to as many as possible of the nearly one million refugees who crossed the country. The network of solidarity clinics — volunteer grassroots structures that were created some years back to offer primary healthcare to uninsured Greek and immigrant workers — actively took part in caring for the refugees and denouncing the health hazards in the government’s treatment of them. Social centers — notably Micropolis and Steki Metanaston in Thessaloniki, Nosotros and Votanikos Kipos in Athens, and a host of others — created points of contact for refugees, and put their existing infrastructures, like collective kitchens, food stores and kindergartens, at their service.

Local and international grassroots organizations set up autonomous relief structures — parallel to those of the state and NGOs — in Eidomeni and other areas where refugees were concentrated in high numbers. The occupied self-managed factory of Vio.Me in Thessaloniki made available a warehouse for the collection, storage and transportation of basic items like clothes, sanitary items and baby food that had been gathered by solidarity collectives from all over Greece and Europe, prior to shipment to the Eidomeni border to be handed out to refugees.

Most importantly, militant collectives and groups of refugees occupied a host of empty buildings throughout Greece, to be used as self-managed refugee shelters — notably Notara and City Plaza in Athens, as well as Orfanotrofeio and Hurriya in Thessaloniki. Other long-existing squats opened their doors to refugee families, including Nikis squat, evicted by police last Wednesday.

Dealing in aid

Evidently, the capacity of these self-managed and self-financed structures to make a quantitative impact on the plight of the nearly 57.000 refugees currently stuck in Greece is limited. However, they mark a qualitative difference from the efforts of the state and the NGOs, which dominate the relief efforts.

Undoubtedly, the Greek state did, after all, mobilize its resources to deal with the unthinkable humanitarian catastrophe by rescuing those who tried to cross over by boat from Turkey to the islands of the Aegean Sea. This marked an improvement compared to previous years, when the Greek coastguard notoriously practiced on-the-spot deportations. As recently as August 2015 they were even accused of actively trying to sink boats full of refugees.

Nevertheless, for the Greek state the plight of the refugees is primarily a matter of public order, and hence a field for the intervention of the armed forces. The care for refugees and the provision of basic needs is left to the hundreds of NGOs active in the area — many of them well-established and others founded overnight — which take advantage of the flow of local and European funds towards aid projects. Although the selfless and exhausting efforts of aid workers, who have to deal with incredibly strenuous situations, often in low-waged and precarious conditions themselves, are deserving of respect, the monopolization of aid by NGOs signifies the privatization of “solidarity”; its subsumption under quantitative goals, laws of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In a way, it signifies the creation of lucrative new markets out of human misery.

Charity vs solidarity

What makes the efforts of grassroots movements stand out in relation to the actions of the state and the NGOs is that they are motivated by different political imperatives. Contrary to the flow of aid from highly centralized organizations towards disempowered refugees, true solidarity flows horizontally among peers. Those who practice solidarity recognize themselves in the “other” and are motivated by empathy, not pity.

In occupied refugee shelters, managed as commons through participatory methods, locals and refugees cook together and eat around the same table; they take decisions together in the circle of the horizontal assembly; they recognize each other’s culture and customs and overcome preconceptions and stereotypes. Against the enforced segregation, solidarity initiatives create a common language and common spaces of action for locals and refugees.

Furthermore, where state policy wants the refugees “hidden under the carpet” — away from cities, crammed in military-run refugee camps in inhumane conditions — grassroots solidarity places them at the center of social life, where they can be accepted and included within society. Where European policies classify and selectively deport immigrants according to their origin, grassroots solidarity calls into question the distinction between “immigrant” and “refugee”, since in humanitarian terms it is not important whether displaced people are fleeing from wars or from poverty and repressive regimes.

Most importantly, where the state and NGOs treat the refugee crisis as if it were an inevitable natural disaster, grassroots solidarity denounces its root causes: the imperialist wars in the Middle East, the neo-colonialist dispossession of local farmers by multinationals in Africa and Asia, the inhuman immigration policies of “Fortress Europe” and, especially, the insistence on closed borders, which forces fleeing populations towards the sea routes — resulting in immense loss of life — and into the hands of a lucrative people-smuggling market.

The criminalization of solidarity

There is no doubt that the activity of grassroots solidarity movements on a collision course with the project of European integration, which envisions a strict international division of labor, national populations in perpetual competition in a collective race to the bottom, and borders permeable only by capital and goods — excluding immigrant human bodies, which are conceived only as a rightless reserve army of labor at the fringes of the formal economy.

In Greece, the focal point of the refugee crisis, this collision took the form of a spiteful scare campaign by the mass media against grassroots solidarity efforts, which were blamed for everything that could go wrong in the places where thousands of people were stowed away under inhuman conditionsas a direct result of European immigration laws. In time, these attacks were used as a justification for the exclusion of social movements from Eidomeni, and after the dismantling of that camp, from the “provisional” refugee camps set up by the state in former industrial areas on the periphery of Greek towns. Special controlled zones were created where only “accredited” aid workers are allowed, and efforts to interact and collaborate with the refugees are met with repression.

The scaremongering and repression culminated during the No Border Camp in Thessaloniki between July 15-24, when thousands of activists from around the continent met to protest — along with the refugees — the conditions of neglect and confinement in refugee camps and the impermeability of national borders that led to the present state of affairs. Mainstream media reporters documented and criticized every detail of the No Border Camp, which took place at occupied university grounds, after a last-minute refusal of the university authorities to grant permission to the organizers. A carefully calculated scare campaign during the camp was used to pave the way for the repressive operation of July 27, with the eviction of three occupied refugee shelters.

Repression and “the values of the left”

True to the surrealist political climate in Greece in the last year, the governing Syriza party condemned the raids as an “attempt at the criminalization of solidarity endeavors that runs contrary to the principles and values of the left,” while government officials blamed the police operation on the initiatives of the public prosecutor.

An outside observer might be inclined to believe that the government is simply unable to control its own police forces — after all, this excuse is routinely offered by pro-government sources, such as when riot police violently repressed a peaceful protest for the self-managed Vio.Me factory in early July. However, on closer inspection, it seems patently absurd that such a complex, coordinated and targeted police operation could be carried out without being green-lighted by the police’s political bosses.

Indeed, an interview with the aforementioned boss, the leftist Deputy Minister of “Civil Protection”, with a pro-government radio station on the day of the eviction is illuminating in this respect. The informative text reveals not only the extent to which Wednesday’s evictions are in line with the government’s policy, but also the government’s conception of social change and progressive politics. After making it clear that the operation had his blessing, the minister characterizes occupied shelters as “unjustified occupations” that constitute a “caricature of symbols” creating an “illusion of freedom”. He declares that the government “will not show a generalized tolerance to those initiatives, which, however well-meaning, are not in line with the interests of the state.”

In a very convoluted line of argumentation, where in just a few paragraphs he invokes “the values of the left”, “the struggles of the working class”, “the protection of democratic rights” and the “needs of society” to justify the attack on the solidarity movements, he states: “The left is not about autonomy. It is about the defense of labor rights, of society, of democratic rights … We don’t need the autonomous actions of a bunch of kids; we want a mass popular movement, we should turn the youth towards the parties of the left.” He concludes by accusing solidarity structures of being “piecemeal efforts” that offer help to a reduced number of refugees, in contrast to the organized efforts of the state.

To put it bluntly, society is not and should not be the subject of its own liberation; it is rather the passive object of concern and field of intervention for a benevolent government. Social struggles that are not mediated by the state and the parties of the left are either infantile or a threat to social peace — probably both. This totalitarian conception of society, public space and collective action is not new to leftist thought; only in its most recent incarnation is it combined not with state-guaranteed welfare, but with neoliberal dispossession and a state of “permanent exception” — a truly explosive mix.

The simulacrum of the left

Just as the minister was done bragging about the state’s capacity for aid compared to social initiatives, a report by the public organization Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (KEELPNO) was made public, which — based on a series of health inspections in sixteen migrant and refugee centers across Greece — concludes that thousands of people are crammed into the reception centers under substandard sanitary conditions, with precarious living accommodations and inadequate water and sewage facilities. The report advises the immediate closure of the camps and the integration of refugees within society — precisely what the grassroots solidarity movements, now officially under persecution for “not being in line with the interests of the state,” have been demanding since the start of the refugee crisis.

Furthermore, on July 28, just as the detained in the three eviction operations were provisionally freed pending trial, a young Syrian woman was dying of heart failure following an epileptic attack in the refugee camp of Diavata, near Thessaloniki — a death which could have easily been prevented, had there been permanent medical care at the camp, or had the woman been taken to a hospital in time. The death sparked an intense protest at the camp, with refugees demanding humane living conditions.

Despite its rhetoric, the government’s actions are another instance where the left is called upon to finish off what the right has been unable to do for years. Just as a third austerity package for Greece would have been impossible without a government “that has society’s interests at heart” — Prime Minister Tsipras famously wept while he signed the new memorandum — so a repressive operation as complex and calculated as the one carried out in Thessaloniki would have been impossible without a Deputy Minister of Civil Protection concerned about “the needs of society” and “the struggles of the working class.” In an artful inversion of the left’s vision of social emancipation, “workers’ struggles” are used to justify private property over social necessity; “democratic rights” are used to justify unwarranted repression of those standing in solidarity with refugees; and “the needs of society” are used to justify a campaign of dispossession against the popular classes.

It is evident now in Greece that the neoliberal left and the neoliberal right are two variations of the same project — a project that requires a disciplined, atomized, obedient population, preoccupied with maximizing individual benefit, having relinquished any kind of collective action to change society. The tragic events of 2015 — when the will of the people to end austerity was ignored and one more anti-austerity opposition was transformed into an enforcer of neoliberal restructuring — might well have pushed in this direction, by demobilizing the social movements and generating widespread resignation.

Solidarity in Greece is now criminalized, declared contrary to the interests of the state. However, there is a part of the population that remains determined to keep trying to give content to the word “solidarity”, to wrest it from the hands of repressive institutions, electoralist projects and lucrative non-profit organizations, and to transform it into the basis of a collective aspiration for a better life — built from the ground up on egalitarian and participatory terms.”

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While the movement has not used the term ‘commune’, it has, on occasion, been described by left theorists as seeking to constitute itself as a set of linked communes. This assessment has been based on the movement’s organizational form. But this struggle, while often strikingly similar to Raúl Zibechi’s account of territories in resistance in Latin America, is very different from how Marx and Bakunin imagined the struggles of the future in their reflections on the Paris Commune. It is primarily framed in terms of dignity, fundamentally grounded in the bonds within families and between neighbors, and often largely waged by women from and for bits of land in the interstices of the city.

If Abahlali baseMjondolo (the term means ‘residents of the shacks’) is to be productively connected to the idea of the commune in terms of a set of political commitments, it would require—as George Ciccariello-Maher has argued with regard to Venezuela—a detachment of the concept from ‘a narrow sectarianism’ with the intention to ‘craft a communism on local conditions that looks critically, in parallax, back at the European tradition.’

The Land Occupation

In Durban, as in much of the world, one starting point for this work is that the passage from the rural to the urban seldom takes the form of passage, via expropriation, from the commons to the factory, from the life of a peasant to the life of a proletarian. And for many people born into working-class families long resident in the city, work—as their parents and grandparents knew it— is no longer available.

When urban life is wageless, or when access to the wage occurs outside of the official rules governing the wage relation, the land occupation can enable popular access to land outside of the state and capital. And land, even a sliver of land on a steep hill, between two roads, along a river bank, or adjacent to a dump, can—along with the mud, fire and men with guns that come with shack life—enable spatial proximity to possibilities for livelihood, education, health care, recreation and so on.

Across South Africa, urban land has become a key site of popular contestation with the state and the liberal property regime. In Durban the steep terrain also enables opportunities for new occupations within the zones of privilege, nodes of spatially concentrated, racialized power. But, again as in much of the world, dissident elites have often been skeptical about the political capacities of the urban poor. The worker or peasant has often been imagined as the subject of a “proper” politics, a politics to come in which industrial production or rural land would be the key site of struggle.

Abahlali baseMjondolo has, affirming what it has called “a politics of the poor”, disobeyed the various custodians of a “proper politics”, affirmed the value of an “out of order” politics and taken the situation, the strivings and the struggles of its members seriously. It has affirmed the city as a site of struggle and impoverished people seeking to occupy, hold and develop land in the city as subjects of struggle. It has constructed a political imagination in which the neighborhood is seen as the primary site for both organization, through direct face-to-face deliberation and democratic decision-making, and the broader practices that sustain resilience.

A conception of political identity rooted in residence in a land occupation, whether established or new, has enabled the affirmation of a form of politics that exceeds the central categories through which impoverished people are more usually divided. This includes an ethnic conception of belonging that, in Durban, has increasingly been asserted by the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), as well as a national conception of belonging, undergirded by a paranoid and vicious xenophobia, asserted by the ruling party, the state and much of wider society.

The movement has been able to successfully resist these forms of division and has consistently taken a multi-ethnic form. People more ordinarily described as foreigners rather than comrades have often held important leadership positions, while the movement has been able to occupy and hold land and to sustain impressive popular support. But there are significant limits to its reach, it has been subject to serious repression, and it has not been able to sustain the political autonomy of its larger occupations over the long-term.

A Homemade Politics

Abahlali baseMjondolo was formed in 2005 in a group of nearby shack settlements, all on well-established land occupations, some reaching back to the 1980s or even the late 1970s. The people who formed the movement drew on a rich repertoire of political experience that included participation in the ANC, trade unions and the popular struggles of the 1980s. There were also familial connections reaching back to key moments in the history of popular struggle like the Durban strikes in 1973, the Mpondo Revolt in 1961, resistance to evictions in Durban in 1959 and the Bambatha Rebellion in 1906.

The movement was also shaped by practices and ideas developed in African-initiated churches and adapted from rural life. From the beginning ideas about a pre-colonial world in which personhood was respected and understood to be attained in relation to others were significant. But elements of the new liberal order, like rights-based conceptions of gender equality, as well as political traditions that claim descent from Marx, were also present. These were largely derived from trade unions and the alliance between the South African Communist Party and the ANC.

This new politics was often described as a “homemade politics” and as a “living politics”. The idea of a “homemade politics” carried some sense of bricolage, a general feature of life in a shack settlement, and both of these phrases marked a commitment to a mode of politics that emerges from everyday life, is fully within reach of the oppressed, and is fully owned by the oppressed.

The settlements where the movement was formed had all been dominated by the ANC. At the time the ANC, as Idea, was still entwined with the nation and the struggle that had bought it into being. As a result the break from the authority of the party, which resulted in autonomous elected structures being set up in each affiliated settlement, was often understood as a challenge to local party structures, rather than a rejection of the party altogether.

It was frequently assumed that the fundamental problem was that impoverished people living in shack settlements had somehow been forgotten in the new order. It was often thought that if they, like the industrial working class, could develop an organizational form to successfully assert themselves as a particular category of people, with a particular set of interests—as the poor—the sympathetic attention of leading figures in the party, and elsewhere in society, could be won, and that recognition and inclusion could be attained.

But there was, from the beginning, also an evident commitment to attain inclusion in a manner that altered the nature of the system in various respects. One was with regard to how decisions are made. Reflecting on that moment, S’bu Zikode, a participant in the early discussions, recalls: “There was a realization, at the onset, that it was a mistake to give away our power.” There was a clear resolve that the right of people to fully participate in all decision-making relating to themselves and their communities, a right understood to have been expropriated by colonialism, needed to be restored.

The implication of this is that there was a commitment to dispersing power and to changing the nature of the relationship between the state and society. Another commitment that was present at the outset was a rejection of the commodification of land. Again this was often framed in terms of restoration.

An Autonomous Politics

The political form of the movement was constituted around elected structures in each settlement affiliated to an elected central structure. Meetings were required to be open to all and held in the settlements at set times. They took the form of inclusive and slow deliberative processes that continued until consensus was attained. It was a politics consistently constituted around an open and face-to-face democracy. The role of elected leaders was understood to be to facilitate this kind of decision-making and to adhere to it. There were also frequent assemblies, often attended by hundreds of people, and the smaller meetings would refer important decisions to these assemblies.

The slow politics that results from the need to attain consensus before acting sometimes meant that political opportunities were missed. But because people—wary of the frequently crass instrumentalization of impoverished people by parties, the state and later NGOs too—knew that they fully owned this movement, popular support was sustained.

The early decision to refuse any participation in party politics or elections was vital to sustaining unity, and deflecting constant allegations of external conspiracy. For some people it was purely a tactical measure while for others it was a point of principle. But a clear distinction was drawn between “party politics” and “people’s politics”. For Zikode, “we realized that to be in a political party was to be confined, as in a coffin.” Despite extraordinary inducements and pressures the movement sustained its autonomy from political parties and, later on, NGOs. In both cases the response from constituted authority was to resort to colonial tropes and present the movement as criminals under the control of malicious external white authority.

While the movement always understood that its original and fundamental power lay in self-organized communities, the capacity to occupy and hold land and the use of disruption via road blockades, it was never solely concerned with this sphere of action. Alliances were also sought with actors outside the settlements, like journalists, lawyers, academics and religious leaders. There were regular interventions in the wider public sphere, via lawful forms of mass protest as well as the media, and an often very effective use of the courts to, in particular, take contestation over land off the terrain of violence.

Autonomy was taken seriously within the movement, but it wasn’t imagined as an exodus from sites of constituted power. It was imagined more like Antonio Gramsci’s idea of the neighborhood council as a political commitment that would enable effective collective engagement on other terrains. People spoke, by way of analogy, of occupying space in sites of constituted power, like the media or the university.

The Long Shadow of the State

The organizational form developed by Abahlali baseMjondolo enabled a political space in which the oppressed, albeit it in this case self-identified as the poor rather than the working class, could, as Marx said of the Paris Commune, work out their own emancipation.

Although this process has, at points, had to grapple with internal difficulties and frustrations—such as new entrants bringing in contradictory projects, families seeking to turn the risk and commitment of a child or sibling into a reward, or distortions consequent to repression—it has often been undertaken with a strong sense of collective excitement.

But any affirmation of the commune as a political strategy rather than a description of an organizational form has to take careful account of the fact that, since 1871 and continuing with more recent experiences in, say, Oaxaca and Oakland, the declaration of a commune has seldom resulted in a sustainable political project. States rarely tolerate the emergence of even modest instances of dual power. In Durban the intersection of the ruling party, which employs technocratic, Stalinist and ethnic language to legitimate the centralization of authority, has used two primary strategies to regain control over territories in which a degree of political autonomy has been asserted.

One of these strategies is the simple exercise of violence—whether carried out by the police, private security, local party structures or assassins. Violence has been a constant presence during a decade of struggle. But there have been two periods of particularly intense repression that have both, in different ways, had a profound impact on the movement.

The first was the expulsion of the movement’s leading members from the Kennedy Road settlement in 2009, via the destruction of their homes by armed men acting under the direction of local party structures, and with the support of the police. This was a process that continued for some months. The second was two assassinations, and a police murder, in the Marikana Land Occupation, in 2013, followed by another assassination in KwaNdengezi in 2014.

Both periods of intense repression placed some people under severe stress resulting in anxiety and paranoia, as well as familial pressure, and resulted in real strains in the movement. In 2014, in an act of desperation when it seemed that murder was being carried out with impunity, a collective decision was taken to make a tactical vote against the ANC, with a view to raising the costs of repression for the ruling party, while remaining independent from any party political affiliation.

The second primary strategy of containment, frequently related to the exercise of violence, is the often very effective attempt to make independent development on occupied land very difficult while mediating access to state development through local party structures. For as long as the state has the capacity to demolish homes, an investment in building a brick and mortar house is not rational. Shacks, particularly in acutely contested land occupations, are often designed to be cheap, perhaps built from pallets salvaged from a warehouse. They are sometimes designed to be able to be collapsed when the demolition squad comes and rebuilt when they have departed.

When the state concedes the legitimacy of a land occupation and offers a housing development there will be significant opportunities for accumulation via local party structures, often enmeshed with local criminal networks, and access to the housing will be allocated through party structures. These two factors combine to make it almost impossible to benefit from development while being outside the party. In a context in which the party machinery offers the only viable route out of impoverishment for many people, responsibilities to family can begin to conflict with responsibilities to neighbors and comrades. This can result in a situation where some members of the movement go over to these structures. It can also result in a situation in which party structures return, from outside, at gunpoint.

For these reasons it is very difficult to sustain the political autonomy of a territory once the state has conceded its legitimacy and brought it into the ambit of its development program. Material success—winning land and housing—becomes political defeat. This has meant that while Abahlali baseMjondolo has endured, and grown, during a decade of struggle in which the movement has always remained vibrant, the sites where the struggle is waged with most intensity have been dynamic.

A Moment of Political Opportunity

If the political form of the commune is understood as the self-management of a spatially delimited community under popular democratic authority, then—although the term commune has not been used within the movement—it could certainly be argued that Abahlali baseMjondolo has been and, despite the trauma of serious repression, remains committed to the construction of a set of linked communes.

However, if the commune is understood as a form of politics with explicit commitments to the radical traditions developed in 19th century Europe, then things are more complex. Although the movement’s politics has evolved over the years it has always been committed to some principles that had a productive resonance with standard European conceptions of socialism and communism. This is true with regard to what, using Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar’s terms, can be described as both its interior emancipatory horizon and the practical scope of its day-to-day actions.

But dignity has consistently been a far more central concept than socialism. The practical scope of the movement’s work has overwhelmingly focused on the sphere of social reproduction rather than the sphere of industrial production.

In 2005 many people had thought that, via a powerful movement, they would secure land and housing, on their own terms, in a couple of years. Now there is a strong sense of the ANC as an outrightly oppressive force that is understood to have betrayed the national struggle by entering into a self-serving set of alliances to sustain the enduringly colonial structure of society. The horizon of struggle is much longer, and often more modest. Progress is understood to be a matter of resilience and resolve over the long haul, with most gains taking an incremental form.

But with a widening split within the ANC, and trade unions and organized students breaking from the ANC, there are new prospects for building alliances and solidarities outside of the ANC—alliances that could potentially enable a greater political reach on the part of what Abahlali baseMjondolo have termed, with reference to the self-organization of the oppressed, “the strong poor”. The splits in the ruling party have already offered some respite to the movement and, in one neighborhood, a tactical local alliance with Communist Party structures has helped to secure the—previously unimaginable—arrest of two ANC councilors for the assassination of an Abahlali baseMjondolo leader.

If the idea of the commune has a future here it will have to be appropriated by the oppressed and rethought from within their actually existing strivings and struggles. This would have to include the work of making sense of a moment of political opportunity as the collapse of the moral authority of the ANC spreads from the shantytowns, to the mines, factories, parliament and university campuses.”

This article was originally published at the ROAR Magazine.

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“In the neoliberal era, social counter-power emerges as the main resurgent force to contend the capital-state complex, whether in the form of labour struggles or direct democratic movements or in the form of struggles for the preservation / diffusion of the commons. Political forces within these societies in motion do not play the role of revolutionary vanguards, instead they protect and facilitate the process of the social revolution by political or military means. At the negative pole of the duality, the failure to sustain social reproduction under extreme conditions of inequality and corruption gives rise either to “failed states” or to progressive governments, which start building their hegemony in complex interrelation to grassroots movements. In this context, we are in need of subversive politics that weaken the bourgeois state by facilitating the emancipation of society.”

Of particular interest is Antonis’s argumentation against the notion of a partner state approach:

“…In this sense, there can be no partner state to the commons and social counter – power in the ashes of the disintegrating post-war welfare state, no matter how noble the intentions of its theorists are (Bauwens & Kostakis 2014, P2P Foundation 2015). In fact, such a term is a contradiction in itself, a platonian conception that shall always reside in the society of ideas, but will never materialize in social praxis apart from the impact on the grassroots struggles due to the disillusions it nourishes. States will never build what will be their own undoing…”.

Here you may have access to the final draft.

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The following interview was excerpted and shortened from the original.

“1. How did the solidarity movement start in Greece?

The Greek grassroots solidarity movement is the offspring of the Squares’ occupation movement of summer 2011. The Squares’ Movement had a transformative effect on Greece, as it popularized the idea and practice of self-organization and direct democracy. This was novel for the vast majority of the participants. Many thousands of people came in contact with anti-capitalist grassroots experiences and forms of organizing – alternatives to the neoliberal logic. According to a poll conducted by Kathimerini, the largest rightwing paper, 28% of the Greek population (about 3 million) participated in one way or another in this movement. From this one can imagine the kind of cross-fertilization that occurred in these times of intense political fighting and social innovation.

Popular radicalization from, and political resistance to, the Troika-dictated “state of exception” and the Greek political system, took the concrete form of the grassroots solidarity movement. This started after the Greek parliament accepted the mid-term (2011-2016) bailout program (late June 2011). The popular movement responded by attempting to block its implementation. Strikes and government-building occupations – primarily in the public sector – occurred, but most importantly, there was a ‘no pay’ campaign against a new household tax. The tax was included in the electricity bills. Refusal to pay meant you risked having your power cut. The last People’s Assembly of Syntagma Square (end of September) called for the ‘no pay’ campaign. The Assembly stated “we won’t leave anyone alone against the crisis.” This became the banner of the solidarity movement. The campaign employed a diversity of tactics, ranging from appeals against the government to the high court, to (illegal) power reconnections. By late October, it spread through the whole of the country, ultimately including many different actors: from left and progressive mayors, unionists and lawyers, to dozens of neighborhood assemblies and committees, which collectively refused to pay.

This movement acted as the bridge between the Squares’ occupation and the appearance of the self-organized solidarity structures. The ‘don’t pay the debt’ demand amalgamated in the tangible act of ‘no pay’ – refusal to pay – the extra household tax. Over the next months, the mass and militant protests of the 28th October 2011 – the national day of OXI (NO) to the fascists in 1940, now acquiring a new meaning – brought down the Papandreou government. On 12th February 2012, it also brought down the technocrat coalition government of Papadimou. In the meantime, a whole network of solidarity structures and alternative economy initiatives had emerged: solidarity clinics, solidarity free-schools, alternative currencies, barter economy groups, self-managed cooperatives, and the ‘without middlemen’ (basic goods) distribution networks.

2. What is the role and purpose of the solidarity structures? Are they simply a response to austerity? Or something more?

Your question touches on some critical issues. There is an approach, that reads the current crisis predominantly from an economic viewpoint. This overshadows other facets of the crisis by focusing only on the (anti-)austerity discourse. This view, in my opinion, fails to break with the neoliberal concept (and dominant agenda) of politics, which means the reduction of the latter to mere economic logic. My critique does not imply a ‘need to abandon’, materialism, class struggle, or, Marxism, as analytical and practical tools. On the contrary, it refuses to reduce them to merely economic demands, or, issues (including the debate over the currency). Such is to refuse the mostly defensive demands that do not necessarily relate with the attempt to create the material conditions for building power(s) that can enable a movement and a people to apply their own policies and produce change. Such anti-austerity discourse usually regards the grassroots solidarity movement as a response to the collapsing ‘welfare state’, overlooking the different kind of politics and resistance practiced by the solidarity movement. Some view it as an example of an active and compassionate ‘civil society’ (or, NGO sector) that needs to expand, while others – coming from the ‘traditional Modern Left’ – consider it a substitute (and thus a threat) to the role the state-run public services should play.

The solidarity movement transcends those positions. First and foremost, the practice of the solidarity structures holds the potential to synthesize active popular participation – as a response to immediate needs of a population threatened by a humanitarian crisis – while it enables the resilience of this society to stand up and carry on resisting. Beyond supporting the suffering, it aims to engage them in the struggle to change both deeply rooted habits of political ‘assignment’ and the conditions that cause their hardships. Thus, it develops spaces and practices that could form a different paradigm. Specifically, a paradigm for people-managed ‘institutions’.

This implies a different role and practice than that of merely supporting an ailing society. Its modus operandi – based on assemblies and self-organization – can foster new kinds of social relationships, pushing against the disintegration of the social fabric. Moreover, the practices of the solidarity structures develop a favorable terrain for breaking the split between ‘beneficiaries’ and ‘benefactors’. In that manner the medical practice of a doctor in a solidarity clinic differs from his/her practice in a professional clinic. The political context within which this movement emerged has entangled needs, desires and emotions with the will to resist and change matters by becoming active and by creating. This is exactly where the dominant unjust system has failed you. Here lies the transformative potential of the grassroots solidarity movement, which is active beyond the confines of being merely support structures. This is where it differs from charities, NGOs, and the ‘civil society’, which are usually in pain to claim their apolitical, or, non-governmental (supposedly independent) role. In reality, they are instrumental of and to the neoliberal social model, where ‘civil society’ – named ‘big society’ (UK), or, ‘participatory society’ (Netherlands) – substitutes for the welfare state model. In contrast, the solidarity movement does not hide its political role and what it stands for, including its aim to produce social and political change, and to create the material conditions that permit a different democratic paradigm to emerge in order to restructure the existing clientelist public (welfare included) system. Thus, its difference from the ‘traditional Modern Left’ political culture is not in its long-term aims, but in that it goes beyond just demanding and voting. It defends social rights in a very tangible way by trying to develop tools and through standing by the people needs. This means forging enduring social relationships in order to show that there is an alternative based on a different set of principles, ideas (e.g. equality, universal rights), and mode of social organization.

This political practice becomes increasingly important in conditions of emergency, devastation, and crisis of social reproduction, which produced by the ‘state of exception’ regime and the neoliberal agenda still active in Greece. Moreover, it alters the concept of politics (and social policies), highlighting the importance of popular participation and/for a different role of the state. For a state not as a substitute of social action through its representational (political or technocratic) structures, but as a legislative insurer of what society can self-manage. From a social point of view, I find this refreshing and emancipatory. It is a process that underlines the importance of building material capabilities. For any kind of political emancipation and (exercise of power for) change to be successful, it must not be limited to an abstract rhetorical social referent. Political emancipation and change must also be oriented towards real popular participation and social autosuggestion. In other words, a notion of politics that enables and implants democratic processes and responsibilities of power in every aspect of social and economic action as a prerequisite for building the social dynamics and infrastructures that can allow one not simply to take power, but to enable the people to have power to exercise their will. Having said that, I must clarify that this struggle does not exclude the need to take power. It highlights, rather, something obvious to all after last summer’s tragic reversal of the OXI (NO) plebiscite: that you cannot have political power without having set state-independent bases of social organizing, popular power and alternative economic networks.

Unfortunately, this transformative potential of the grassroots solidarity movement has been dwarfed by fighting the ‘big battles’ strictly on the representational level (in the literary meaning of the term). In other words, they have been fought as mere symbolic representations of ‘Real battles’, as simulacra in Baudrilliardian terms. The main reason being the Left’s (and I do not refer to SYRIZA alone) perception about politics and about where political power lies.

So, if the field that the solidarity movement operates within has been defined, indeed, by the eradication of the welfare state, then constitutive for the movement’s formation and practices has been its rooting in the political struggles against the Troika regime. This comes in the form of the fight for democracy and popular sovereignty. A political imperative that has worked as the imaginative glue between heterogeneous attempts that solidified in a loose common front. This enabled the meeting of quotidian politics with the struggle for political power, even if this was expressed through SYRIZA. But, it experimented with collective processes of decentralized, open and participatory forms of bottom-up democratic infrastructures of resistance (today) and power (tomorrow).

4. What are the greatest challenges for the solidarity movement in Greece? For instance, what are some of the obstacles to creating more solidarity structures (such as health clinics, cooperatives, etc.)? And what are some of the problems existing solidarity structures currently face?

The further growing of the solidarity and cooperative movement cannot be reduced to a mere logistical matter, but it should be seen on two levels. First, in relation to their immediate needs in order to maintain the ability to meet the growing needs of a society under constant strain, or, to be economically viable in the case of co-ops. Second, in relation to their political potential as hotbeds of a different paradigm of social organization and popular participation. In my opinion the latter is the biggest, and most difficult, challenge and also the most critical aspect for the solidarity movement if it wants to maintain its vitality. Yet, the former is the most pressing one with ongoing policies of exclusion.

Since 2014 the growth-model of the solidarity movement has entered a different phase. This is distinct from the 2012–2013 period, when the solidarity structures mushroomed throughout the country embracing a vast array of everyday life and needs (food, health, agricultural and solidarity economy, education, culture, legal support, housing rights, solidarity to refugees, etc.). Despite the slowing-down of new formed solidarity structures, the constantly growing number of those affected by the memoranda, led more people to the solidarity structures. This resulted in (a) the growing and imminent need for more resources, as the solidarity structures often stretch beyond their capabilities, and (b) the multiplication of the activities of the solidarity structures beyond their initial field. Thus, solidarity clinics develop also food support projects, or, food solidarity structures try to develop cooperative production in order to meet their needs but also to create job places.

In this context the main challenge for the movement is how to deal with the issue of resources, in order to cope with the exponential growth of needs, without sacrificing its political characteristics. If we allow those practices of mutuality and engagement to wane out, the implication will be a restricted practice of mere provision of social services – a function not much different from the NGO, or, volunteering sector. The greatness of this movement has been that it aims to build the ability of the people themselves, through a culture of self-organization, to resist, not simply to survive and get by. Yet, the latter becomes of primary importance under conditions of violent exclusion, proletarianization, and crisis of social reproduction, as a means to maintain people’s physical and moral strength and resisting capabilities. However, if the practices a movement devises do not foster a different mindset, relations and tools, away from a ‘benefactors – beneficiaries’ model, its scope risks to be reduced to countering the most extreme facets of the humanitarian crisis, instead of contributing structurally to building the potential for its end.

Therefore, despite the pressing and immanent challenge of resources, the most significant challenge is to keep up its role as political energizer and incubator of social transformation. Our ability to respond to this will decide the future character of the solidarity structures as spaces of social self-organization and popular participation. The political atmosphere in Greece after last summer’s shocking developments, which have affected the desire of the people to mobilize – as the (political) aims of the previous period (remember the OXI – NO) have evaporated – make this challenge even more crucial for the solidarity movement.

On the positive side the response of the Greek people to the ‘refugee crisis’ stands as the latest sign of the resilience and the yet available psychological resources of this society to resist, even in times of political frustration and setbacks. Moreover, the solidarity with refugees’ actions have prompted in some cases the creation of new permanent solidarity structures that address the needs of both refugees and local communities. One more indication that the people find the strength to mobilize when something motivates them deeply, when they feel they contribute to, and become agents of, something bigger than mere survival.

Regarding the cooperatives’ growth, as I said earlier, it is linked to the people’s efforts to get out of unemployment and lack of income, while their development stumbles on a hostile and inadequate institutional framework. The main problem is the scarcity of funding and financing options, especially in order to start a cooperative, as cooperatives are excluded from the state’s incentive policies for the creation of new companies (at the benefit of private entrepreneurship). In addition, certain professions (e.g. lawyers, civil engineers) are not eligible to operate under a cooperative scheme. This has led many to create cooperatives with low-level investment in the service sector (cafes, taverns, new-tech support, groceries). There is also the lack of any provision for social use, or socialization, of defunct and abandoned production units, in both private and public sector, e.g., the premises of the old farmers’ cooperatives, that now stand idle and dilapidating. For these reasons, we are in the process of founding a cooperative and solidarity economy forum. This is a collective entity which aims to facilitate (a) front desk information and legal support for anyone wants to start a cooperative, (b) development of tools and training according to the needs and aims – financial, or, political – of the self-managed cooperatives, and (c) to stir, intervene and promote a friendly image for the concept of workers’ self-management and changes in its legal framework.

5. What is the relationship of various solidarity structures to the broader left-wing in Greece? Are there any specific state policies that could greatly aid or clear the way for the strengthening of the Greek solidarity movement?

There may be actions the state could take, not for the solidarity movement but, for those hit by the memoranda, alas those are destined to remain gestures rather than ‘great aid’. Indicative is the example of the government’s ‘parallel program’. It was to be discussed just before Christmas, but the government withdrew in less than 24 hours after it announced it, under the creditor’s pressure and in order the 1 billion euros instalment of the bailout to be released. The program, which included provisions for health care of the uninsured by the public health care units, returned and adopted last week in the parliament, but reduced. Thus it demonstrates that there is a very low margin for maneuver under the regime of creditors’ supervision. In the framework of the third memoranda, everything must be approved, or tolerated, by the ombudsmen of the Quartet (former Troika). As long as the government’s priority, as itself has declared, is the implementation of the structural changes dictated by the bailout agreements, this will determine what in reality can do and what not.

In the cooperative economy, for example, new legislation is on track, indeed. Yet, it is one thing to see it in comparison to the existing problematic one, and it’s another in relation to the economic readjustment policies. The latter – privatizations, markets ‘liberalization’ etc. – in reality drastically diminishes the productive capability and economic stature of the country, undermining its ability for political and democratic sovereignty. In that respect, while the cooperative and social economy can be a tool for promoting a mode of socialized production, the overarching economic conditions move drastically to the opposite direction undermining such potential. It is not a coincidence that, from the government’s (and EU’s) point of view, the cooperative economy is considered as one of the means to counter the huge and long-term unemployment. It is way to enhance alternative forms of social entrepreneurship, instead of being a model for building a different economic paradigm outside the confines of the dominant international division of labor.

By the same token, one can better understand the government’s projects regarding the humanitarian crisis. Financial shortage and bailout commitments allow the allocation only of a certain amount of funds for ‘solidarity tokens’. It is attempted, indeed, a rationalization in the use of the existing funds in order to reduce the exploitation of human need by various speculators. However, these programs are disproportional to the needs and numbers of those who slip into poverty due to the ongoing re-adjustment and austerity policies (with more pensions’ cuts on the way). In this framework I do not think the state can do much.

After all, the role of the solidarity structures cannot be reduced to that of satisfying the social needs produced by the bailout agreements, regardless who administers them. A fundamental principle of the solidarity movement is that it does not want to substitute for the welfare state. Its role is, rather, to create those conditions and paradigms that enable the structural undermining of the bailouts and thus become a force of change outside the neoliberal constrains. In other words, its aim should be not to save the world, but to change it. On that political horizon, it can build synergies with various actors, including the state. Yet, when the state decides otherwise, prioritizing the implementation of the bailout and readjustment policies, any cooperation, even if it addresses emergent social needs, becomes part of a different agenda. For example, if the solidarity clinics are considered by the government as means to reduce its burden to provide universal health care, this provides a framework that may turn them into replacement for what the government cannot deliver. So it’s down to the solidarity movement to decide what kind of relations can have with such policies and institutions. In any case the state cannot replace the function of the solidarity structures as places of social self-organization. Thus, even if universal healthcare is reinstated, the distinct role of the solidarity clinics as a different paradigm of self-managed basic health care centers and generators of people-centered health policies, will come even more to the forefront.

Regarding the relationship with the broader left, I want to repeat that the solidarity movement started and still can be a transversal movement and event, among and beyond the different left factions. Its relationship with the Left (and the antagonistic movement) is a complicated and troubled affair, and not a linear and peaceful one, as many have presented. The fortunate conjunction of the political left with a people’s grassroots movement, and of quotidian politics with the struggle for political power is a moment that does not occur often. It’s a socio-political mix that reveals our potential. It also tests various limits and dominant perceptions of the political left, more specifically its capability to cooperate with and accommodate the desires and forms of action of “oi polloi” (the many). The discrepancy (and mingling) between the discourse of the ‘politicos’ and the common people has been a prevalent trait of these years.

The backbone of this movement consisted by the social left and by many who received their political baptism in the anti-memoranda struggles. Its meeting with the political left was inevitable as long as there existed the common aim to rollback the causes of social devastation. As the stakes of the political conflict rose, and the cracks of the political system grew, this popular discontent met with the alternative SYRIZA represented at the time. This was (and is) a process and a relationship under constant negotiation. One that fosters hybrid forms, as it deals with (creative at times) tensions between old habits and established (dare I say, dated) concepts of politics with an emergent political culture constitutive of new agencies. I am not referring just to the parties and social movements relation, but between what I call “specialists of resistance” (political groups, trade unions, social movements) and the emerging political subjectivities and vocabulary of a popular majority. At the same time, the issue of liaising with institutions – local or central authorities held by the radical left (not only SYRIZA) – has been a critical test for the solidarity movement. The grassroots’ movement and the struggle against those in, or for, power (expressed through SYRIZA, but also in the distinct form of the OXI referendum) followed parallel, cross-cutting and (considerable at times) overlapping routes. But it is a mistake to conflate the two, or, to consider them as two separated autonomous realms.

In a double act, the solidarity movement grounds the struggle for political power in the everyday fights and needs of the people while it highlights the centrality of the struggle to remove those in power, in order to open up possibilities for an alternative. This experience suggests a different viewpoint that transcends the distinction (by fusing) “social movements” vs “political representation”. It draws a different line: between those who understood politics as ideological critique and those who understand it as the effort to create the material conditions in order “to make possible the impossible”, as Marta Harnecker argues.

The potential of this movement, as a multiplier of possibilities and capabilities, has been undervalued, if not ignored. The political left saw it as just another “social movement”, due to its perceptions of change and (through) political power. This movement has laid out a different question, or rather task, than the “take or not take power” (in order to change the world). By building self-organized social structures, it delineates processes to “create power,” which also enable the power to change when one acquires state power. If there is a reason to argue for the transformative potential of this movement, it is exactly due to its capacity as a network of (infra-)structures and as generator of policies designed on the basis of its practices through the deepening of democratic processes and popular participation.

Thus, we speak about a potential public sphere from (those) below, able to produce both alternative policies and the power to exercise (or fight for) it. This is not an ‘optimist projection’ but statement of its strategic potential. Had this movement been considered in its full potential, it could have acted as a counterweight to the creditors’ blackmails. It could have been a means to solidify the political will and perspective of the people. It could have also produced its material backing, had the SYRIZA, as opposition and government, taken it seriously since 2012. Even in the case of being forced into a deal, this movement could have provided SYRIZA with a wider margin to negotiate and move. It could, and still can, foster the potential for a real and pragmatic alternative plan. An alternative plan that extends beyond the impasse of the dilemma of signing onto the purported realism of TINA (“there is no alternative”) and a creditors’ enforced GRexit.”

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“Since the beginning of the Greek financial crisis, both the Right and the Left have advanced a narrow set of narratives, policy possibilities, and even political actors. One movement that has largely remained outside of the discourse has been the solidarity economy movement. A key organization within the solidarity economy movement is Solidarity for All. Solidarity for All is an organization that offers technical support, capacity building, and network-scaling for the various grassroots initiatives around Greece.

In a 2014-2015 report entitled Building Hope: Against Fear and Devastation, Solidarity for All draws attention to “the devastating effects of the radical neoliberal experiment on Greek society.” The report also sets out to highlight “another experiment: that of Greek society taking action through self-organization and solidarity, of people standing up and resisting their economic and political ‘saviours.’”

In the report, Solidarity for All cites statistics that are often unseen in accounts of Greece. For example, the organization notes that “If we include the economically inactive population…56.3% of the population are out of work.” Undoubtedly, this number has increased, as it is drawn from 2014 data. Between 2008 and 2013 the youth unemployment rate increased from 21% to 59%. With the increase in the unemployment rate, there has been dramatic reductions in unemployment benefits, both in terms of the nominal support provided, as well as the relative total of the unemployed who receive any benefit at all. While 58% of the registered unemployed received benefits in 2008, only 14% received (reduced) benefits in 2014. With healthcare tied to employment, at least 2.5 million people have lost “their social security status.”

The report goes on to cite skyrocketing increases in the number of people unable to pay their mortgages, taxes, as well as the total amount of overdue bills. With the foreclosure ban lifted in the midst of crisis, banks have been able to seize and confiscate property and homes. Together all these statistics, and many more, provide a startling image of a country that now sees the majority of its population living under the poverty line. It is for this reason that a UNICEF report has referred to this crisis as a “Great Leap Backward.” The economic cost is clear, but the psychological and social impact is immeasurable.

Nonetheless, as the report emphasizes, there are alternatives, and they are sprouting up throughout Greece. These include solidarity healthcare clinics, food solidarity structures and solidarity kitchens, “without middlemen” networks, immigrant solidarity networks and cooperatives. With the crisis bringing the capitalist mode of production into question, these democratic organizational forms are being sought out and created. As Christos Giovanopoulos – member of Solidarity for All – emphasizes in this interview, these alternative institutions are not simply about fulfilling a need, but about building capacity and ensuring all participants have agency within those same alternative institutions.

Thus, one finds a range of organizational designs and setups even with one type of alternative institution. As Solidarity for All states, “There is not one model of solidarity clinics, each one is unique, and the same goes for all the solidarity structures. While all solidarity health centers are self-organized, some are linked with local doctors’ associations and trade unions, some with local political groups, or cultural centers.” The solidarity clinics are nationally aligned in the Cooperation of Solidarity Clinics and Pharmacies. With Attica being the main site of alternative institution building, the region possesses the Coordination of Solidarity Clinics and Pharmacies of Attica. As the report itself states, the aim of these clinics is not to substitute for the state, but to fill a need and work in conjunction with existing health workers’ unions.

Food distribution has also taken different forms with solidarity food structures, solidarity kitchens, and “without middlemen” networks. Without middlemen networks connect food producers directly to consumers through mechanisms such as preorder. The result is reduced prices in food, as well as ensuring a higher income for producers. These networks also provide a framework through which socialization of production, distribution, and even consumption, can be steadily built and scaled. One example of this is that each producer of a given bazaar donating two to five percent of their goods, which are then distributed to families that cannot afford to purchase food.

In the case of cooperatives, the state put in place a social cooperative enterprise law. When I visited Greece in August, I was told approximately 700 enterprises are registered under this designation, however, many of these enterprises are not substantively cooperatives, and instead are NGOs. The real number according to the report, as well as a Social and Solidarity Economy volunteer in Solidarity for All, is between 300 and 400 cooperatives. This includes the high-profile workers’ self-managed firm VIOME, a recuperated enterprise that has endured frequent attempts by authorities to liquidate it and sell off its assets.

Also, expanding due to the rapid inflow of migrants and refugees is immigrant solidarity networks and structures. These have received increased attention in large media outlets, and have been noted for the inclusion of migrants and refugees in the decision-making processes and apparatuses of such organizations.”

This article was excerpted from here.

The post Greece: Solidarity for All (1): The state of the solidarity economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“Momentum needs to reach beyond the familiar campaign politics of the Left — not abandoning the conventional modes entirely but combining them with economic initiatives and self-organization endeavors that can develop the capacities and create the resources through which to build power to transform society (as well as win electoral office to manage the state).”

In the context of the Momentum movement around Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, by Hilary Wainwright:

“Were it to assist these kinds of initiatives — what could be termed grassroots productive democracy rather than just state-led social democracy — Momentum could bring about a far-reaching movement, laying the groundwork for a Corbyn win in the 2020 general election. The creation of such a movement could simultaneously set in motion the dynamics for supportive and transformative post-election alliances.

Scotland’s Radical Independence Campaign is an exemplar in this respect: it was a non-party social movement that brought together a diverse range of campaigning and productive civic organizations to organize for a “yes” vote in the country’s referendum.

Especially pertinent for the Corbyn campaign have been the initiatives of Common Weal, which was set up to generate and disseminate grassroots economic alternatives. They developed a new language of mutuality and collaboration — a “we” against the competitive market “I” — furnishing living models of a socialism that does not revolve exclusively around the state (even if it does require the support of a different kind of state). This they share with Corbyn, who has a plural understanding of social ownership, regulation, and intervention.

They have also provided sustenance to the belief that there can be something better than the current state of affairs — breaking the fatalism that leads people to vote for the status quo or abstain — and spurred in people a sense of confidence about their agency and abilities, another feature of Corbyn’s socialism.

This new kind of democracy should incorporate labor as well. But for that to happen, the division unions traditionally erected between the economic and political must fall. It might have made sense at the end of the nineteenth century, when trade unions seeking parliamentary representation set up the Labour Party.

Now, however, as workers engage in struggles that push their unions in a more directly political direction, there’s an opportunity to erode the outdated demarcation. Activists — including those from Momentum — can speed along the process, assisting in the creation of economically transformative initiatives, fusing the political and economic to bring about systemic change. Something Different

Corbyn’s original campaign for the leadership contained within it the inchoate method and tools of radical change. The veteran MP ran within his own party, looking to rise to its highest post on his own radical terms. But he also stepped outside the party, mobilizing social forces that previously found Labour repellant.

Similarly, Momentum needs to reach beyond the familiar campaign politics of the Left — not abandoning the conventional modes entirely but combining them with economic initiatives and self-organization endeavors that can develop the capacities and create the resources through which to build power to transform society (as well as win electoral office to manage the state).

As for Corbyn, he built the language of his campaign around the experiences of his constituents and their stories of (often extreme) deprivation. He’s given voice to their plight in the House of Commons, using People’s Question Time to underscore the unjust policies of the current government.

Similarly, in the run-up to the election, Corbyn could collect positive, inspiring examples of people building an alternative: the ways in which English, Scots, and Welsh are self-organizing, the collective initiatives people are launching to take care of themselves and their neighborhood — in short, the basis of new sources of working-class power in communities and in new forms of work.

Corbyn has already caused a seismic shift in Labour politics and taken the media and the establishment, Labour and Tory alike, by surprise. As one journalist from Sky TV told me when the insurgent candidate was gaining momentum, “Corbyn has completely upset our template.” The reporter delivered the remark with extreme perplexity.

We shouldn’t be astonished if Corbyn and his young supporters, unaccustomed as they are to political convention, ultimately deliver even broader change on a national level.”

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