./english/40.txt:8:The political context of the left in Greece helps to explain this somewhat fatalistic approach. The left there has long been weighed down by the strength and the heavy dogmatism and sectarianism of the most orthodox communist party in Europe. The anti-Stalinist Synaspismos party, strongly influenced by the social movements of recent years, receives just a few per cent of the vote. An autonomous social-movement left has had no strong identity whatsoever.
./english/40.txt:20:But along with these signs of maturity went a sense of the need for innovation within the innovation. A few years back the focus was on breaking up hierarchy, creating decentralised, autonomous forms of organisation, ensuring space for the multiplicity of initiatives, projects and organisations that made up the movements. . But now there is a search for new ways of interconnecting the multiplicity.
./english/147.txt:24:Perhaps the most interesting part of the social movements in Italy is represented by the movement “tutte bianche” (white overalls), who have since Genoa changed their name to Disobedienti. The movement is an interesting mixture of ideas and tactics of Zapatismo, Italian autonomous Marxism, and libertarian influences. The central groups of the movement comprise Zapatista support collectives, Ya Basta! The three-plank program of Ya Basta! calls for a universally guaranteed “basic income,” global citizenship that guarantees free movement of people across borders, and free access to new technologies, which in practice implies extreme limits on patent rights.
./english/147.txt:68:The most important institutional props of the Italian movement are social centers, social forums, and magazines. Social centers represent an attempt to create autonomous spaces free from capitalist social and economic relations. They became vital for the survival of anti-capitalist movements by the end of the 1970s. There are dozens of social centers in Italy with different experiences and different political-ideological nuances, but they are all descendants of 1960s and 1970s revolts.
./english/147.txt:76:The first social forum was created before Genoa and was inspired by the spirit of Porto Alegre. There are now 140 social forums in Italy. While the “national” Italian Social Forum has had its spokespeople and hierarchy, local social forums act autonomously and represent a very important site of participation for citizens who have come closer to radical ideas after Genoa. The political map of social forums is complicated and intertwined. There are many who find this form outdated, but they have had impressive results, especially at the local level.
./english/162.txt:13:Two British critics, Anthony Davies and Simon Ford, posed exactly those questions, with direct reference to art. They pointed to the way that artistic practice was tending to integrate with London's financial economy, particularly through the vector of specially designed "culture clubs" where artists sought new forms of sponsorship and distribution, while businessmen looked for clues on how to restructure their hierarchical organizations into cooperative teams of creative, autonomous individuals: "We are witnessing the birth of an alliance culture that collapses the distinctions between companies, nation states, governments, private individuals – even the protest movement," the two critics claimed. (3) They perceptively drew a link between contemporary artistic experiments – those dealing with the use and appropriation of complex signs and tools, or with the catalysis of interactions between free individuals – and the politicized street parties of the late 1990s. But their analysis opposed these new movements, not to transnational capitalism, but to the outdated world of pyramid-shaped hierarchical organizations. Thus their image of the June 18 carnival: "On the one hand you have a networked coalition of semi-autonomous groups and on the other, the hierarchical command and control structure of the City of London police force. Informal networks are also replacing older political groups based on formal rules and fixed organizational structures and chains of command. The emergence of a decentralized transnational network-based protest movement represents a significant threat to those sectors that are slow in shifting from local and centralized hierarchical bureaucracies to flat, networked organizations."
./english/162.txt:56:Just reflect for a moment on what each of the major "counter-globalization" actions has involved. Collaborative research on the political, social, cultural, and ecological issues at stake. Various levels of coordination between a wide range of already constituted groups, concerning the preliminary forms of mobilization. Worldwide dissemination, through every possible channel, of the research and preliminary positions. Travel of tens or hundreds of thousands of single persons and autonomous groups to a given place. Self-organization of meeting and sleeping places. Intellectual and political cooperation on some form of counter-summit. The creation of artistic and cultural events in the spirit of the movements. A minimal agreement, worked out beforehand or in the heat of the moment, on the specific forms and places of the symbolic and direct actions to be undertaken. Legal and medical coordination in order to ensure the demonstrators' security. The installation of communications systems allowing for the transmission of precise yet exceedingly diverse coverage of the events. A social, legal, and political follow-up of the aftermath. Finally, a subsequent analysis of the new situation that results from each confrontation: in other words, a new starting-point.
./english/162.txt:80:"The proposal is to encourage as many movements and groups as possible to organize their own autonomous protests or actions, on the same day (June 18th), in the same geographical locations (financial/ corporate/ banking/ business districts) around the world. Events could take place at relevant sites, e.g. multinational company offices, local banks, stock exchanges. Each event would be organized autonomously and coordinated in each city or financial district by a variety of movements and groups. It is hoped that a whole range of different groups will take part, including workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, women, students, the landless, environmentalists, unwaged/unemployed and others....everyone who recognizes that the global capitalist system, based on the exploitation of people and the planet for the profit of a few, is at the root of our social and ecological troubles." (27)
./english/187.txt:55:Mass Consultation among the entire population. Around those issues decided upon in the spaces of debate at the European level, mass consultations will be carried out in order to extend the debate to the entire population. This consultation will be held around those themes decided upon in the European gatherings and the local assemblies can add other issues in their territories in an autonomous fashion. These actions do not mean ending the debates described above in section b), but rather just the opposite, widening and enriching those debates.
./english/187.txt:63:We understand the ESC as a network-based organizational process, at the European level, whose different elements function in an autonomous and decentralized, yet coordinated fashion on the basis of agreements tpreviously consensed upon at various territorial gatherings (European, regional, etc.).
./english/192.txt:44:Every effort was made to accommodate them: for example, the London ESF provided an Autonomous Space along the lines of those organized in Florence and Paris. As agreed at the European Preparatory Assembly, all meetings of the UK Organizing and Coordinating Committees were open. But many of those associated with the autonomists expressed hostility to the experience of the Social Forums as mass events and therefore to the participation of the unions and the NGOs. To have given way here would have led to an ESF in London dramatically smaller than any of its predecessors and confined to a self-selecting circle of the already converted.
./english/193.txt:5:Between 14 and 17 October, more than 25,000 participants came together at the ESF in London, located at the wonderful Alexandra Palace, as well as at several other locations in Northern and Central London where several ‘autonomous spaces’, ranging from a ‘radical theory forum’ to ‘tactical media’ and ‘beyond the ESF’, were also held. It is impossible to grasp all the issues discussed at the ESF, reaching from ‘life after capitalism’ to ‘life despite capitalism’, from ‘against privatisation’ to the ‘experience of the commons’, from the ‘women’s assembly’ to the ‘no border network’, from ‘organising for workers rights’ to the ‘first assembly of the Precariat in Europe’ (a theme barely present on the official ESF) and so on and so forth. The supply of seminars and workshops was enormous, but the process of merging seminars in the run up to the ESF in many cases had led to the bringing together of things that do not fit.
./english/193.txt:14:John Holloway’s book Change the World without taking Power has deeply influenced parts of the alter-globalisation movement. His question is whether the left should concentrate its struggle on the state, to influence it, even to take state power – or to reject the state? Holloway treats the state as an entity separate from society, its alienated form of organisation. He identifies parties as parts of the state, reproducing the alienated form, working ‘in the name’ of us, this way excluding us from decisions. The outcome is betrayal. As the state they exclude us and separate us from each other as state citizens. Moreover the state is the form of negative movement to repress social self-determination and self-organisation. So we have to stop reproducing these forms of social relations dominated by capital and state: ‘if we stop tomorrow, capitalism will no longer exist’. That means turning the back to the state, creating autonomous spaces, burning holes into capitalism. As the negation of capitalism is part of everyone’s everyday experience we could build on that to create our own spaces. In Holloway’s understanding the state is just an instrument for repression of disobedience and rebellion – some kind of Leninist approach to the state (or an unconscious anarchism). But what about the partial victories and achievements of the left, like the regulation of the working day, the welfare state and so on, as contradictory as they are? In the whole history of left defeats, it seems that small victories were assured by some kind of state politics too. It is obvious that this alone is not enough but it makes clear, in the sense Poulantzas offered, that the state is not a closed entity but a materialisation of changeable relations of social forces, therefore a redefinition of institutions might be possible.
./english/193.txt:20:Phil Hearst, a member of the SWP and of the 4th International, raised the example of Argentina. In the deep crisis in 2001 movements like the Piqueteros emerged. They did not refuse state offers, they tried to use state benefits for their self-organisation. But lastly, Hearst claims, they failed: one could not get self-determination without a change of social relations and institutions as a whole. There is a need for a sustaining party on a national level (in opposition a woman from Argentina threw in that the old left militant parties brought the movement to death). In other places, for instance Venezuela, the transformed state is pushing civil society and indigenous communities to self-organisation.2 That kind of politics is founded in existing social conditions, not in a mythical concept of revolution. Revolution is not possible in a sudden crisis, it is a long process, Hearst insists: the left needs institutions for continuous politics. The plurality of movements alone does not develop a solid strategic convergence of positions. Moreover the different movements do not play an equivalent role in this process. A party, and not simply the sum of social movements, might still be the best agent of conscious ‘unification’ (Bensaid) in a ‘worker’s state’. Again the point is unification (instead of pluralistic coherence) and again it is the working class as essentially united, leaving the current weakness of workers’ resistance out of consideration as concrete relations between movements and party too. A Basque disputant put the point that Argentina was ‘a moment of subjectivity’, that will have far reaching consequences, not a failure of autonomous politics and social movements – but the example clearly shows the contradictions in such a process of social transformation.
./english/193.txt:27:The creation of autonomous spaces is absolutely necessary, but is it enough when it is not done in a perspective of making the whole social structure available for transformation? Holloway’s concept of power and anti-power is closely linked to a dichotomy of the state and an (autonomous) civil society burning holes into the structure of capitalist-state rule. But if we take Gramsci seriously civil society or any autonomous space is not something apart from the state, but the primary and very contradictory field of struggles about hegemony. The capitalist rule is not only based in the relations of production but a cultural hegemony that goes through each one of us. How to deal with real contradictions in and between us? Giving the ‘we’ of the movements such an emphasis Holloway obscures other forms of domination, reproduced by ourselves. Moreover movements as networks are themselves building informal hierarchies (Spehr 2004), structured by power relations, with its own avant-garde, different levels of savoir-puvoir. But this construction of ‘we’ as one movement in all its diversity produces a myth like Hardt and Negri’s ‘multitude’ – which might explain the success of both books.
./english/193.txt:37:This link to concrete situations of resistance in time and space on the ESF is sometimes difficult to achieve. In many seminars and workshops you just get flat, already known analyses, simple propaganda and wishful thinking. Again and again the common enemy (neoliberalism, transnational corporations, the US, the WTO etc.) is condemned – in this sense the perspective on the ESF seems too unified; the few times debates became concrete consensus was melting away – the different approaches and goals were too diverse: a necessary result emerging from the contradiction of the ESF (and WSF) process itself as open space for discussion and self-education, without a real attempt to develop some applicable and visible alternatives. Therefore the Forum is no movement in itself (in contrast to Thomas Ponniah’s view8), but maybe a space for a new political consciousness and sovereignty, the modern form of articulation and association of structurally fragmented groups, classes and movements. However, because there is no alternative social project formed, the actual representative crisis of neoliberalism does not lead to a weakening of its hegemonic position. Pierre Khalfa supposes that diversity paralyses. 9 But its not diversity as such – which might enrich the movements – but a lack of deep analysis, including the production of neoliberal hegemony from below, in combination with non-committal plurality. This undermines a generalization of experiences, views and understandings (without closed unification under one primary force) preventing us from achieving coherent approaches and strategies. On the one hand there are more or less successful local social movements, creating autonomous spaces and transforming subjectivities, sometimes re-appropriating the essential means of reproduction from below, but hardly touching the relations of power on national or even transnational level. On the other there are global events for the altermondialist, national and transnational NGOs, some national parties, getting some media presence, shaping the public discourse, but far away from the everyday experience of the people, acting in some kind of representative vacuum without really questioning the ruling political form (Brand 2004). There is a need for intermediate political forms. At the heart of the problem lies the relation between representation and participation. A permanent movement (in the strict sense of the word) is difficult to sustain, movements are fragile forms with periods of higher or lesser activity, they develop out of concrete situations of dissent with the ruling mode of production and living, with a perspective of (molecular) social transformation, while the struggle for this transformation has to be a very long-standing one. Out of this results a need for institutionalisation to bridge times of less activity, disintegration, defensive situations and to overcome defeats, save experience and knowledge for the next generation of activists etc. A renewed concept for left political parties could be one possibility to create intermediate institutionalised political forms.
./english/193.txt:81:3. Autonomous space seminar ‘life despite capitalism’, London School of Economics, October 17.
./english/195.txt:9:I think that the contrast between these substantially different ways of doing, these modes of producing events, is highly “educational” for all of us, and we can evaluate the final outcome in these terms. By focussing on process and the totality of our movements, what can we say about the ESF held in London last November? Ambiguous result. On the one hand, it has represented a clear step forward for our movement. This not only because 25,000 people have attended and all large events like these encourage encounters between people across networks. Also and especially because a section of the movement has overcome its insularity at events like these and, working with organizing principles based on horizontality, inclusiveness and participation, has broadened substantially the programme of and participation in self-managed and autonomous zones. About 5000 people, many of whom where wearing the bracelet of the “official” event, have been estimated to have participated in the broad range of activities of the autonomous zones, and defined future action programmes on crucial themes such as precarity, migration and communication rights.
./english/199.txt:3:The London ESF and the Politics of Autonomous Space
./english/199.txt:7:The third ESF has officially ended, but the barrage of attacks and counter-attacks around the autonomous actions and arrests continues to rage. The simmering conflict between the horizonal and verticals became fully visible when a group of activists from Beyond ESF, including the Wombles and many others, rushed the stage during an anti-Racism plenary Saturday night to denounce Ken Livingstone and the lack of democracy within the forum. Tensions grew after several activists were arrested on the way out, and resurfaced yet again when a highly respected Indymedia activist, who happened to have also played a key role in NOMAD and the broader ESF process, was dragged away by police after trying to make a statement following the march on Sunday afternoon. Things have since come to a boil as SWP members, the mayor's allies, and others dismiss such direct actions as violent, anti-democratic, and even racist, while their critics continue to defend the right to take direct action to publicly voice their concerns. Debates once pitting activists against mainstream politicians and bureaucrats in the WTO, World Bank, and IMF now rage within the very heart of the Global Justice Movement itself.
./english/199.txt:9:Before making too much of this situation, it is important to take a step back and reflect on the London ESF experience and the broader politics of autonomous space. Although perhaps more exaggerated this time around because of the nature of London's political culture- most notably the presence of SWP and Socialist Action- the tension between grassroots network-based movements and their more traditional organizational counterparts has been a constant since the beginning of the forums, and was present within earlier mass direct action mobilizations, including Seattle, as well. Intense struggles over political vision, tactics, and organizational form are not cause for alarm; indeed, they are constitutive of the convergence process that characterizes the forums and the broader movement from which they emerged. The important question is thus how to best manage such conflicts, rather than erase them entirely. And this is precisely where the politics of autonomous space has the most to offer.
./english/199.txt:11:Before describing my own experience in London , I should confess that I fully side with the horizontals. Not in the sense of an unrealistic utopia, but rather as a guiding vision, an ideal we should always aspire to. Horizontalism does not ignore informal hierarchies, but rather seeks mechanisms to control them, without reinscribing vertical structures into our formal organizational architectures. At the same time, horizontalism means always remaining open and flexible to diversity and difference- within certain limits, of course. Whereas those with divergent organizational practices may be welcome, those who support war and neoliberalism are not. I consider myself left libertarian and anti-capitalist, but I realize I form part of a much larger, complex, and contradictory whole. Building autonomous spaces, "separate, yet connected" as we used to say in Barcelona , becomes a way to manage conflict, respecting differences while sometimes acting together, and at other times taking critical action apart. Such a politics recognizes the importance of open space, but radically questions boundaries and clear demarcations. Rather than open space, we need to start thinking about multiple spaces, open not just internally, but also with respect to one another. Open space thus becomes networked space, physically manifest within and around the forum.
./english/199.txt:13:With respect to the politics of autonomous space, the London ESF was a tremendous success. Never before have there been so many diverse, disjunctive, yet complementary initiatives not entirely within or without, but rather straddling various mobile and often elusive boundaries. Some, like Beyond ESF, were more confrontational, while others, like the Indymedia Center or Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination were neither for or against, but rather involved their own innovative forms of political and cultural production across the terrain of the forum and, indeed, the entire city itself. Although autonomous, these spaces were not entirely cut off from official events. In addition to the highly public oppositional actions, many of us moved fluidly- as much as London 's expansive Underground system would allow- from Alexander Palace to Middlesex University , from the Camden Center to the LSE, and back again.
./english/199.txt:15:For me the London Forum began with Beyond ESF's opening of plenary on Wednesday night at Middlesex University , where spokespeople from each of the autonomous spaces presented their projects to an enthusiastic group of 200 grassroots activists. Over the next several days, Beyond ESF would be transformed into an electric hive of activity and encounter, involving thematic sessions, direct action planning, tactical workshops, and project coordination. Even more important were the informal exchanges among hundreds of activists gathered in the bar and canteen, or waiting on line at the vegan kitchen. I noticed a certain glow on the faces of old friends and comrades, which I instantly recognized from previous convergence centers, No Border camps, and PGA meetings. However, whereas such spaces often create a sense of living in a radical ghetto, this time we were mobile, reaching thousands of others within the official forum, while tactically intervening within the broader city as well.
./english/199.txt:19:The overall feeling of the official forum this year did leave a lot to be desired. It was not so much the massive cathedral dimensions of the Palace, which can actually be quite stimulating, but the way the internal space was organized. It felt more like a massive trade fair, with political ideologies, study programs, and volunteer opportunities on offer, rather than a true space of dialogue, encounter, and exchange. Not that previous forums lived up to this ideal either, but this was perhaps the furthest away. Whether the forum's commercial feel was a direct result of the influence of the GLA or the SWP, I'll leave for others to decide. On a positive note, however, the bitter conflict within the organizing process was certainly a major factor in the proliferation of autonomous spaces. As for the panel I attended on the future of the ESF, there was a definite sense of having arrived at a Crossroads, that we are beginning to reproduce the same events and actions, year after year. I sensed nostalgia for the excitement and novelty of Genoa or Florence , and a distinct lack of ability to envision an alternative path. Perhaps it is time to let go, and reinvent the forum as something entirely new.
./english/199.txt:23:That same evening I joined several hundred others from Beyond ESF for a Yo Mango Tube Party. We tried to maintain a low profile until arriving at the Circle Line, but the authorities caught on at Victoria Station. We were forced outside and reorganized into an impromptu Reclaim the Streets. Unfortunately, we were herded toward a nearby police station, where many were registered and eventually let free. I then went over to the Camden Center to check out the Indymedia Space. Unlike previous actions and gatherings where Indymedia was only a tool for reporting about other events, this year media activists organized their own schedule of activities, including a four day conference on Communication Rights. I was lucky enough to catch the end of a roundtable presentation in the main theater by activists from local struggles around the world, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America . There was also food, music, and dancing. In addition to the several hundred people gathered in the theater, hundreds more were drinking beer and sending e-mails in the bar, uploading news stories and videos upstairs, or chatting informally in the halls. Incredibly, there were just as many, or perhaps even more people than at Beyond ESF. The autonomous spaces were not only exciting and lively, they were simply overflowing, one into the other.
./english/199.txt:25:On Saturday and Sunday, although I also attended workshops and discussions at Bloomsbury , including an informal discussion about activist research, I spent most of my time at the Life Desite Capitalism conference. Together with several hundred friends and colleagues, many of whom had also moved between and among different locales, we explored the concept of the Commons in different spheres: land, labor, communication, etc. Although the opening and closing plenaries reproduced some of the hierarchical structure many of us criticize within the main forum, the smaller workshop discussions were interesting and worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the Saturday afternoon session on moments of excess, where our conversation ranged from mass direct actions to collaborative networking within open source development models. That evening I translated for a small group of Spanish activists at an ESF seminar discussion with Michael Hardt, who had just come from a gathering at Beyond ESF to found the first ever Assembly of Precarious Workers. Indeed, autonomous spaces are also excessive, bursting through the boundaries of the official forum, and the boundaries dividing one another.
./english/199.txt:27:Despite the vast number of innovative discussions, projects, and initiatives that came out of the numerous autonomous spaces, the focus of most post-Forum discussions has returned to the conflict between horizontals and verticals, and in particular, the direct actions and arrests at the Saturday evening plenary and Sunday's march. Once again, this is not entirely negative. Indeed, the aim of direct action is precisely to make conflicts visible, provoke discomfort, and challenge commonly accepted ideas. Direct Action is transformative, both for the targets and participants alike. The important thing is what happens between now and the next ESF.
./english/199.txt:29:This isn't the first time an autonomous action has stirred up controversy among the ranks of forum organizers and participants. During the WSF in 2002 in Porto Alegre a large group of international activists from the Intergalactic Laboratory of Disobedience in the youth camp and Brazilian anarchists occupied the VIP room at the Catholic University . Although we clearly articulated that our action was not against the forum, but rather the top-down way it had been organized, Brazilian Organizing Committee members were livid. Luckily, our strategically situated allies were able to calm their nerves, and conflict with the police was avoided. Unfortunately, the same did not happen this time around.
./english/199.txt:31:Moreover, the 2002 action had a concrete impact. At the International Commission meeting that spring in Barcelona , we learned there were no plans for a VIP room the following year. On our side, many of us in the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona realized we could have a positive effect by creatively engaging the forum from the outside. Thus began our part in a series of discussions at the Strasbourg Border Camp, Leiden PGA conference, and elsewhere around creating an autonomous space in Florence with "one foot in, and one foot out." Several different spaces ultimately emerged, including the Hub and projects organized by the Disobedientes and Cobas. Although the Hub in particular was perhaps more outside than inside, and was also widely criticized for its marginality, the autonomous space concept had caught on, and would be reproduced in different guises and to varying degrees at subsequent forums in Porto Alegre , Paris , and Mumbai. The autonomous space model has perhaps come to its fullest fruition this year in London .
./english/199.txt:33:Unfortunately, rather than accept the basic legitimacy of direct action to make publicly visible contradictions and disagreements within the forum process, some ESF organizers have chosen instead to denounce the recent actions as undemocratic and, even more alarming, racist. Their discourse sounds eerily like past statements from James Wolfensohn, George Bush, or Tony Blair. Why do they support direct action only when directed against others? On the other hand, it is unfortunate that activists chose an anti-Racist workshop to make their demands heard on Saturday night, although this has more to do with the fact that Ken Livingstone was speaking than anything else. There is simply no justification for the arrests on Saturday night or Sunday, and even less for the subsequent campaign of delegitimation. Yet all is not lost. There is still plenty of time for ESF organizers to react more constructively, and begin to incorporate the lessons learned leading up the next forum in Athens . On the other side, before the inevitable calls for abandoning the forum come again, we might wait and see, recognizing that the politics of autonomous space allow us to remain true to our own values, forms, and practices, while tactically intervening within the official forum to move out from our radical ghettos and simultaneously spark constructive change.
./english/199.txt:35:What I am ultimately suggesting is that we renew our vision of the forum itself, recognizing that our movements are too diverse, even contradictory, to be contained within a single space, however open it may be. This does not mean abandoning the process, but rather building on the London experience to recast the forum as a network of interconnected, yet autonomous spaces converging across a single urban terrain at a particular point in time. Some spaces may be larger, and thus generate more gravity than others, while the boundaries are always blurry, diffuse, and permeable. Moreover, there will necessarily be contradiction and struggle, even within and between our networks. Such conflict should not be feared, but rather recognized as an integral part of the forum itself. In places like Prague and Genoa urban space was divided among diverse forms of direct action practice. In London we finally began to incorporate a similar logic on our own terms, without reacting to an enemy. As for we critics, rather than return to our bunkers to recreate an imagined state of pure horizontality, we would do better to recognize that mass movements are always conflictual and contradictory, that horizontalism is about learning to manage conflict without reintroducing formal centers of command. This is the lesson I learned in London , and why I support the politics of autonomous space.
./english/200.txt:7:Various autonomous and anarchistic organizations were terribly afraid the forum's organization committee would be dominated by Trotskyites; the Trotskyites were wary of the involvement of the London mayor's office in forum preparations. Such an event is practically impossible to hold without municipal support. However, radical-left groups and others suspected the mayor's office, headed by the charismatic and ambitious Ken Livingstone, of wanting to reap maximum political gain from the event for itself and complained that city officials just wanted to organize some big conference without having any understanding of the forum's specifics. The mayor's office, on the other hand, was indignant at the activists' ineffectiveness.
./english/202.txt:9:The available means at the London ESF featured especially the numerous autonomous spaces, which attracted approx. 5000 people, many overlapping with those who registered for the official ESF. Many events and spaces encompassed broad themes which linked apparently ‘single’ issues, thus spanning the foci of existing political campaigns and coalitions. Perhaps the most notable example was the Assemby of the Precariat (and its declaration), situating precarity within an entire exploitative system which potentially threatens everyone but likewise which potentially links their struggles, depending upon the shape of capitalist strategies and our counter-strategies.
./english/205.txt:29:3 – Deterritories: the autonomous spaces
./english/205.txt:31:The exclusion of conflict from the inside caused its proliferation and concentration on the surroundings: London had not one, but various alternative spaces, almost a Forum in their own right. The proliferation was the consequence, to a certain extent, of the lack of public spaces; not surprisingly, three of these events took place in squatted social centres; that was also the ‘autonomous' solution for the accommodation crisis the official event still hadn't solved a week before the event (when the mayor rented the huge and useless Millennium Dome and made it available to all of those who paid £10 on top of the £30 registration fee).
./english/205.txt:32:It is interesting to highlight that this year's ESF probably had its least ‘ideological' ‘opposition' ever: even at the conference of People's Global Action – anticapitalist network whose existence predates the Social Forum process and is very critical of it – in July there was a great number of groups interested in taking the ‘one foot in, one foot out' approach. It was above all a matter of occupying space and making oneself heard; that this should end the way it did was much less the result of a ‘principled opposition' than a consequence of the specific circumstances of the British process, and the fact that the London lives under a police State in disguise: Beyond the ESF (the largest) and a few other autonomous spaces were under permanent surveillance, with helicopters flying overhead and policemen at the door to take pictures and monitor the flow of people.
./english/205.txt:38:It's unnecessary to remark how bad a precedent the use of the police by the organization of the ESF against participants is; but an evaluation that concentrated on that too much would end up forgetting the most important thing about these two days: that the autonomous spaces were above all extremely productive. Be it the discussions around how to develop an ‘activist research' and a ‘research activism', at the Radical Theory Forum and elsewhere; the excellent debates on precariousness and migration at Beyond the ESF; the exploration of the idea of ‘the commons' at Life Despite Capitalism; the creative and joyous search for new ways of protesting at the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination; the debates on media and knowledge and the No Vox night at Camden Centre – there was a tangible feeling of convergence and creation of subjectivities; it was a ‘less ideological' opposition not because it had no ideas or alternatives to propose, but because it shunned facile binaries – the simplistic ‘us and them', ‘inside and outside' – and favoured the least reactive, most productive aspects of the new European movements.
./english/205.txt:48:This new-fangled interest in popular education not only shows a realization of the need to go beyond the achievements of the period of the global days of action – raising awareness, expressing the dissent that was ignored by the hegemonic discourse, all of which, as ‘representations' of ‘the struggle', fall easily into the category of ‘propaganda by the deed' –, but especially a perhaps yet tentative move beyond the comfortable identity of ‘activist culture', with all its risks of self-referentiality. (It must be said that, as far the usual criticisms go, the autonomous spaces were mostly a young, white, university-educated affair.)
./english/205.txt:56:The most remarkable thing about it is how it clearly is about capturing subjectivities made diffuse and disjointed by the transformations of the last years and provide them with a new class subjectivity. While the concept of the ‘multitude' was too abstract for any immediate political use, what we saw this year was a rise of the ‘precariat': precisely the new ‘class' created by the regime of flexible accumulation, the ‘flexible', ‘flexploited' workers of the world. With no fixed job, no access to welfare, the precariat is the anomalous contradiction within the historical trend of capitalism towards the decrease of the labour journey: they work more for less. More than that, the concept makes possible a transversal analysis of contemporary society, in the sense that the precarious condition is extended to issues like housing and legal status, thus incorporating struggles such as those of the sans papiers and migrants, which were also very visible in the autonomous spaces.
./english/205.txt:66:But it's precisely to the fact that the attempt at controlling it has failed – that is, having succeeded at Alexandra Palace only to strengthen the position of the autonomous spaces – that we should look in search of a few initial conclusions.
./english/209.txt:31:Another positive factor has been the creative way the ‘horizontals' have reacted to the negative aspects of the process. Instead of walking away they have put extra energy into organising ‘autonomous spaces' ( www.altspaces.net ) which will, de facto, be a welcome part of the diversity the weekends activities. The work of the European Preparatory Assembly has also been exemplary in building on the experience of Florence and Paris to give a lead and sometimes a gentle push to those in London unwilling to work in new ways.
./english/210.txt:3:To asses the 3rd ESF we must take into account that the two elements of which the ESF consists had drifted apart. If we look at the London ESF as a process it is not hard to agree that it was a European success. 25,000 anti-neoliberal-antiwar activists assembled in London , debated, exchanged experiences, built or strengthened networks, organized campaigns and had a good time. The Autonomous Spaces were better than ever. The Preparatory Meetings worked all year round guaranteeing in hard conditions enough transparency and democracy, the expansion of collective intellect networks like BABELS, NOMAD and the Memory Project, things are in a way getting less national and more collective.
./english/221.txt:7:We networkers and flextimers of Northern and Southern Europe, autonomously gathered at Middlesex University and determined to go beyond sclerotizing ESF, solemnly join minds and bodies in the present declaration of conflict against Europe 's governments and corporate bureaucracies.
./english/221.txt:23:We call onto all our European sisters and brothers, be they autonomous marxists, postindustrial anarchists, syndicalists, feminists, antifas, queers, anarchogreens, hacktivists, cognitive workers, casualized laborers, outsourced and/or subcontracted employees and the like, to network and organize for a common social and political action in Europe.
./english/226.txt:18:The main problem seems to be the inability or the unwillingness of the groups of the far end of the political spectrum of the movement to seek consensus. In London, to put it simply, the opponents were unions and autonomous groups. Potential mediators, crudely put, took sides of the opponents, Socialist Workers Party, CP Britain, CND and Tobin Tax Initiative, some NGO's held with the unions. Attac, local Social Forums and other NGO's and Anarchist groups held with the Autonomous groups. A lack of willingness to seek consensus had revealed itself earlier and in different contexts. For example, in Paris it proved very difficult to convince the Italian basic unions to agree to a common European day of mobilisation on the 3 April 2004 together with the Europeans Trade Union Association, demonstrating against the dismantling of the welfare state.
./english/228.txt:21:2. Contacting again political spaces that do not participate today in the European Movement against Globalization; like antiauthotarian collectives and the left that has harsh relations with the Forum process. Of course we must bring back to normal our relation with the activists and groups that work together with us through “Autonomous Spaces”
./english/234.txt:9:Even if the Forum's "formula" and the thematic axis which characterize it is still significant, the building process is also important, and the interlace between these two aspects has become crucial. It is necessary to reconsider, during the Forum, the relationship between plenaries/seminars/thematic assemblies/social movements assembly, assigning a greater relief to the moments of aggregation and constitution of European networks around the different initiatives; it is also crucial the way in which the thematic merging process is qualified. The process which brought to the call for a second day of action of the migrants' movement - subscribed by tens of actors involved in their struggles, who met inside but also outside the ESF, in the autonomous spaces - is the best example of the way in which it should be possible to build up a political process on a European scale not only merging "similar issues", but around the assumption of common political contents and passwords.
./english/236.txt:17:• The twelve-session Open Space Seminar Series on the theme “Are other worlds possible? Cultures of politics and the World Social Forum” that was organised by Jai Sen, Mukul Mangalik and Madhuresh Kumar at Delhi University in India during August-December 2003, under the auspices of the History Society, Ramjas College. One of the outcomes of this project was the publication of the book Are Other Worlds Possible? The Open Space Reader compiled by Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar; another was the formation of two autonomous discussion groups among students from different universities in the city; and a third is a forthcoming set of books based on the transcripts of the seminars.
./english/237.txt:3:Autonomous Spaces: As an alternative ESF experience
./english/237.txt:19:The ESF organisers, almost entirely from political parties, claim that “the process was entirely inclusive with every shade of opinion and viewpoint within the global social justice movement.” Whilst the cumulative impact of the ESF was substantial, the collective efforts to shape the ESF came in the pre-packaged polemics of the traditional left parties with recruitment drives and little sense of the linkages or relevancy to autonomy and the grassroots. The mistrust of the non-standardised, non-card carrying organisations and the installation of rank and file power hierarchies meant the effective rejection of self-organised, self-managed and autonomous intervention. Without the relevant credentials and party/union card mandating us to participate, we were sans papiers in a new terrain of (in)vested power.
./english/237.txt:23:Activists who did attempt to intervene in the ESF process to democratise the structures of control and exclusion were labelled “wreckers” and “anarchists.” The “Horizontals” was a term coined at around this intervening time as a polar opposite of the vertical structures of the ESF process. Though a few horizontals remained in the process to fight for the adherence to the Charter of Principles or fight for open spaces within the organising process, many saw the creation of autonomous spaces outside the ESF as a new space for convergence.
./english/237.txt:28:So as one door closed, new doors were opened during the ESF preparations. These were doors that had been opened with crowbars. The coffee served was fair-trade Zapatista and the discussions were facilitated, not chaired. These were the doors of occupied social centres, campuses and town halls. Many discovered that by unlocking these doors and working with each other in very much more self-organised ways a stronger, more fluid and diverse socialised (rather than socialist) forum was possible. For many grassroots activists the development of autonomous spaces was the manifestation of participation though collective action. As spaces they represented exploratory forms of direct democracy, respect for diverse forms of political articulation and finding communality in our various forms of organising and difference.
./english/237.txt:30:The autonomous spaces (AS) were initiated by loose collectives that had disengaged with the ESF, deciding to meet and shape alternatives for the Forum participants outside of the official ESF process. The variety of the initial groups that met included Horizontals, Wombles, Indymedia, LetsLink, creative interventionists (Lab of ii), carnival, urban, creative forums and clowns. It was a mix of people more used to supporting each others’ tactics and actions through solidarity rather than all-out collaboration.
./english/237.txt:45:As we began socialising our physical spaces volunteers from Indymedia London, as one of the groups fully engaged in the autonomous spaces, also tried to petition the ESF organisers to utilise the movement’s media and networked resources in the same way. We urged them to decentralise the ESF working lists, to socialise the communication tools and to utilise alternative and community media groups. Most of these points were ignored by the official process, however, including the suggestion of setting up Internet cafes and delegate resource centres at Alexandra Palace. So after multiple attempts, Indymedia turned its attention to working autonomously not only with ASs but also with NGOs engaged in advocating communication rights. This coalition highlighted the need for an activist gathering of thousands to address the issue of the freedom to communicate. Working with NGOs was often difficult for a group with very open networks, and potentially confusing information channels, non-9-5 working hours and exploitable energy. However, the result was that we managed to create a looser form of collaboration, which resulted in a wider understanding of communication as it moved from the margins to become a more central theme. The Camden Centre played host to four days of discussion on tactical media and communication rights as well as free internet and a media centre. Meanwhile, the wider collaboration and relationships built with Communication Rights advocates turned into a very real node of critical support when, as a result of an unrelated incident, Indymedia’s servers were seized during the ESF preparations by the FBI.
./english/237.txt:47:One of the political advancements of the AS was to gain the right to be in the official programme of the ESF, in order to reach those who were just coming for those days, young people who normally would only see the gilt facade of the event. However, to better visualise the breadth of the autonomous spaces a separate newspaper was created that gave readers a topographical vision of the spaces, with bright pink arrows as our signposts. Mapping our alternatives gave many people working on the autonomous spaces a sense of just how far and wide we had decentralised our spaces and participation. We didn’t just occupy buildings; we also occupied the streets. Most people in the queues for the official ESF took the papers, not only out of interest but because it was “free people, free spaces, free paper” - free as in freedom, not just without cost.
./english/237.txt:49:However, one common and very real problem the autonomous spaces shared with the official organisers of the ESF was the problem of accommodation. To house thousands the ESF hired the imposing eyesore of the Millennium Dome. To deal with the many that also needed free spaces outside of the mass convoys of organised coach groups, the ASs occupied a dilapidated, abandoned second campus. Within a few days there was music, water, electricity and vegan food. The use of the AS accommodation space was negotiated for use with low-waged security guards sympathetic to the rigors of precarious work, rather than with the failed suited guardians of a defunct big top.
./english/239.txt:11:At least at the autonomous spaces occurring alongside the ESF some mums and dads had the opportunity to organise a space, though it was simply a room aside from the whole event without any mixing with other activists or visitors. This just reflected the whole set-up of the kids-space. It was organised by parents and single parents, and it was for parents and single parents only.
./english/240.txt:13:While the reality in Europe is that the strength of the movements derives from largely self-organised migrants groups with their own set of demands, supported by some of the more internationalist trade unions, the RN imagined the trade unions as being at the forefront of the social movements. Based on this contradiction, the pre-ESF meeting of autonomous migration related groups ignored the existing RN proposal of themes and suggested speakers for seminars and organised an amazingly broad set of interventions both inside and outside the official ESF programme. Just to name a few: workshop on the IOM campaign was organised by Kein Mensch ist illegal; migration as a social movement was discussed by tavolo dei migranti, Kein Mensch is illegal, Act up/ Paris, or Precarity, Migrants and Social Movement brought together speaker from Spain, France, Britain and Italy, and of course in Middlesex where the two days were packed with issues around migration.
./english/240.txt:15:Collaboration between the RN and individual activists, groups and networks struggling on issues of migration proved complicated. RN decisions were made arbitrarily without any effort at consultation. Co-ordination and the setting of priorities was thus in the hands of a few. Minutes of meetings have never been published. As there was no open email list, groups who were not able to participate in one of the rare RN meetings had no opportunity to engage. Therefore, it was almost impossible for autonomous groups and activists to co-ordinate seminars through the RN. The lack of transparency caused constant battles, especially with organisations from outside Britain.
./english/241.txt:9:As an example of the emergence of this question, we can note that the first International meeting on activist research and social movements was held in Barcelona this year. It brought together “academic-investigators” coming from different experiences of social movement studies: from those where social movements are the subjects of the research, like the work emerging from community researchers or autonomous centres, to experiences where the social movements are the object of the research, such as the production of academic theses on social movements.
./english/243.txt:7:This workshop on Neo-Marxisms was just one in a long day at the Radical Theory Forum , organised as an autonomous space during the European Social Forum in London . It was originated by young, politically active academics, who wanted to create a space where education and activism could be interlinked. The well-kept social centre 491 gallery , which served as the venue, helped this to be not only a successful but also an enjoyable event. The workshops covered ‘Anti-Consumerism', ‘Feminist Theory' and ‘Practice at the ESF/WSF', as well as the philosophical and explosive question who the ‘we' in the Social Movements is. The discussions were at the highest level, but not exclusionary.
./english/244.txt:9:Could we just imagine for one instant the different routes that a “piece” of information, in a material way, can take before being read and understood by its receptor? I take here in my hands some of the free publications I got from ESF in London last October: let's explore them! because they are interesting, rich, complex and various. Those magazines, flyers, CD ROMs were brought to me by a friend of mine, as I couldn't come to London , so they are particularly precious to me. I am a lucky girl – I couldn't get to the ESF in London but some pieces of the information produced there came to me! In a way, when you begin to think about it, it is amazing how material information travels around. Each time that you read, watch or listen to something, you have a piece of data which comes towards you. Will you make use of it? Information travels from the ESF spaces and stands, from the autonomous spaces, from the wooden tables inside the squatted social centers, to our bags and our kitchen tables, tol the places where we will feel comfortable enough to take the time to read this piece of paper, put that CD or video on, put up this poster in your kitchen. Those are the multiple ways that social information travels around and spreads until it can be received, shared, read, commented upon and criticized. Some pieces of information will provoke reactions, actions and thoughts; others will be forgotten, abandoned, never read until the end: with this abandoned info contributing to the debris of mediascape information flows that are shaping more than ever our contemporary societies.
./english/244.txt:13:• How do the groups, organizations and actors involved inside the ESF processes (including the autonomous spaces surrounding them) communicate between themselves, in other words how do groups involved in social transformation communicate with other groups involved in this same objective?
./english/244.txt:19:But are we really aiming to do that? Do we need to make this step? Or shall we rather work to facilitate those alternative channels of autonomous information until they become powerful enough to be able to compete with mainstream media? AsSensitive approach to the problematic of social transformation would on balance opt for the second option, building new ways to open alternative ICT infrastructures and tools and then take them to mainstream citizens who are consuming information in their everyday life. But at the same time, who says that the mass media and alternative autonomous spaces are not both sides of the same global mediascape? And who says that we should abandon and desert completely broadcast medias that are often controlled by media actors who are slaves to the neo liberal dictatorship?
./english/244.txt:21:When you think about the “general” quality of contents and formats that you find inside the alternative and autonomous information and communication channels, it is always strange to realize that those actors, collectives and organizations sources that are producing so many forms of information aren't already considered as legitimate sources of information. The explanation for this is not simply dependent on the role of institutions or the mass media lobby. It also has to do with information receptors, potentially all of us. Why is it that even if those information sources generally count as diverse and serious, they are not being taken up as realistic sources of information by the wider population?
./english/244.txt:29:When someone gets to go to an ESF, inside or surrounding spaces like the “autonomous spaces” s/he looks for several things generally: on the one hand, to learn, hear, meet new groups, persons, activities, debates, methodologies. This means that through coming and assisting to conferences, plenaries, speeches, debates, workshops, he/she is going to enlarge and expand her/his own knowledge of the contemporary objectives of social transformation, and aims and strategies to achieve it. On the other hand, all these dynamics won't depend only of the short laps of time when you get to walk with thousands of other people from one meeting point to another one inside the related spaces of the ESF. Those processes are expanded in your daily life through your communicational habits, your inscription to mailings lists, blogs, newsletters and other online tools to receive online flows of information and data.
./english/245.txt:38:Indeed several meetings took place in the Autonomous Spaces during the ESF that discussed communication tools and memory projects in relation to the Social Forums. Two of these were held at the European Forum of Communications Rights and Indymedia Centre which was a collaboration between various progressive electronic media networks, community media
./english/246.txt:9:Since the first WSF in Porto Alegre, 2001, Social Fora have aroused great interest from people working in areas we can loosely define as ‘cultural’. There have also been since the beginning many discussions at Social Fora on the role and the present condition of ‘culture’ in our society; as well as cultural programmes that have accompanied the events. If one reads the statements issued by the culture working groups (or their equivalents) in different editions including their different spaces (Youth Camps , autonomous spaces etc.) it is easy to notice one common thread running throughout, quite often stated in similar words: that culture must be at the heart of the event, and must inform it as a whole, both in the discussions and the programme, and the way it is organised – it must not be ‘the icing on the cake’.
./english/246.txt:15:In fact, in the first two editions of the WSF there was very little discussion on how to integrate culture into the process as a whole. The cultural programme was basically arranged by the Culture Bureau of the Rio Grande do Sul state government, aided by the Culture Bureau of the Porto Alegre local authority. It consisted of a few exhibitions and film screenings spread around town (not in the space occupied by the WSF, the main campus of the Catholic University), seminars and pleanries on the subject, and most remarkably the concerts at the Por-do-Sol Amphitheatre, near the Youth Camp, on the bank of Lake Guaiba. In 2002, as a matter of fact, the organisation of the concerts was subcontracted out to an events manager. The Brazilian Organising Committee (BOC) would only have a culture working group after the 2002 edition, when one person was hired to be responsible for the area and organise the group. It worked closely with the Rio Grande do Sul Culture Bureau, which was still in charge of most of the executive decisions – the BOC culture working group, mostly composed by NGOs and a few local authorities, was based in Sao Paulo, therefore having little contact with the reality ‘on the ground’ in Porto Alegre. This group subsisted ‘autonomously’ for a while after the WSF 2003, and became somewhat involved in organising the Brazilian Social Forum. In the run up to Porto Alegre 2005, it was (in theory) subsumed by an international BOC/ International Council methodology working group; however, it has remained exclusively Brazilian and largely unchanged in its composition.
./english/259.txt:23:Of course, given its history, Barcelona was a provocative and pertinent setting for such an event. Here, the 19th century saw an expanding number of workers living in desperate conditions riot repeatedly against a bourgeoisie reaping the benefits of industrialisation. This created a fertile context for the growth of a militant anarcho-syndicalism, based on desires to establish decentralised and autonomously run productive ventures and services. In the early 20th century, Catalunyan socialists and anarchists began to resist Spain’s militarised imperial pretensions, marking a period of unrest in a context of repression by the Castilian dictator, Primo de Rivera. In 1936 a federated, election-winning alliance of anarchists, radicals, socialists and republicans faced a full-blown civil war with Franco’s militarised fascism.
./english/274.txt:14:But when faced with the question “I understand what you’re against, what are you for?” far too often radical activists and organizers on the whole are stymied; at best we end up mumbling something about a world of autonomous or semiautonomous communities based upon mutual aid, self-organization, and voluntary association. And those are all very well and good, and could form the basis of a liberatory society - but for many people such statements mean virtually nothing. It’s one thing to say that we want a world where people manage our own lives, the environment isn’t destroyed, and life is life desolate and alienating – but it’s another to start talking about what such might actually look like. And starting to
./english/274.txt:48: Just sit back for a second and list some of the examples of cooperative structures that you can think of: local community gardens, multitudes of cooperative an worker collectives, the Mondragon, time stores and labor exchanges, collective farms from the US to Russia, the Mararikulam cooperatives in India, the Kibbutzim, neighborhood assembleas from Argentina to New England, the ejidos and autonomous communities in Chiapas, gift economies and exchange clubs, free stores, squats, alternative currency systems, cooperative water management in Bali, communes and intentional communities, practices and concepts such as guanxi (China) and the potlatch (Kwakiutl), and so forth. Perhaps the question should not be whether a world based on cooperation and without hierarchy can possibly work, but why the many examples of how such
./english/274.txt:73: Through this process knowledge and vision are created through experience, through the result of human experience and creation. The goal of utopian thinking should not be to come up with impractical schemes of a how a future society might work or to formulate plans that preclude them from starting to be created now. When Marx labeled his socialist predecessors as “utopian” that was his objection, that they had plans and dreams which were unobtainable, and therefore to a large degree useless in trying to alleviate the totally unnecessary suffering brought about by capital and the state. While neo-liberals like to pretend that the market is autonomous and self-supporting, working off of principles inherent to itself, such conceals the inventory of ideas, practices, and values which underlie it and allow it to adapt to continually changing circumstances. Similarly, the long-term success of building movements against the state, capital, and all forms of oppression, is to create those reserves of knowledge, experience, and ideas that will enable us constantly redefines the specifics of non-hierarchal organizing based upon the changing circumstances of time and place.
./english/281.txt:3:2) Exactly how would you describe your politics? (Or alternatively, describe your political development to date?) BARBARA BIGLIA: I have been involved in social movements and the autonomous feminist movement since 1986. My participation is not always committed due to personal problems, scepticism, boredom and so on. I have decided never to get involved with formal political parties or groups. (followed on next page) 65
./english/281.txt:22:7 I basically work with groups that are affiliated to anarchist or autonomist perspectives. They could probably be grouped under the label Direct Action Movement. 8 In a way I just want to systematize and improve the work begun by autonomous feminists years ago. As an example of such research see the article archived at, http://www.tmcrew.org/sessismo/index.html.
./english/281.txt:25:2. What’s their ‘relevant community’?, and 3. Who plays the part? They believe that ‘traditional intellectuals’ tend to produce a system of knowledge, which is more static and explanatory so that it can be validated by academia. In contrast, ‘organic intellectuals’ develop a more situated and dynamic analysis related to the possibility of action, which then has to be debated and accepted by militants. I find this distinction interesting despite the authors’ romantic vision of activists9, and also despite their more expansive definition of activism (they include trade union stewards and leftist party apparatchiks as activists). Nevertheless, I believe this situation is not specific to Social Movement studies. It emerged from an ethical position within academia (Biglia, 2000). The problem occurs if we set out to explain and justify the SM point of view instead of using its theoretical tools to subvert mainstream knowledge. We, as activist-academics, have to ensure this by introducing the Radical Social Movement’s (RSM) ideas into academia. Some of us have already attempted to do that with feminism10, researching and producing knowledge in all areas (and not just women’s issues) using an ‘autonomous’ feminist perspective. We need to tread carefully otherwise activist theories become ‘rapidly recolonized’ and may even become ‘a source of new, sexy courses and research subjects whose purpose is to attract students, funding and status’ (Barker and Cox, 2001-02, 9). When the Radical Social Movement (RSM) was powerful and involved large sectors of society, the interaction between the two kinds of intellectuals was particularly strong. For example, the Italian anti-psychiatric movement of the 1970s, was firmly connected to street protests. It was characterised by an intense interaction between ‘professionals’ and ‘non professionals’. There was no separation between theorists and activists- theories were constructed collectively and shared practices played a big part in the process. In this context we could locate the Calate di Reggio Emilia11, characterised for the interaction between some psi-
./english/281.txt:26:9 They say activists are looking for intangible rather then material success. I think that, unfortunately, amongst activists we can find all kinds of attitudes. 10 Lots of different ethical and political positions define themselves as feminist and these distinctions are frequently so strong as to make it difficult to talk about feminism. In this context, I am referring to autonomous or radical (but not separatist) feminism. 11 This was part of the anti-psychiatric movement. The action was significant because people living in the mountains of Reggio Emilia subjected psychiatric hospitals to
./english/281.txt:40:In this sense activist critics of academia are still relevant; for example, Cecilia17, criticises academic Italian feminists who did not come out against the reformists who wanted to forbid abortion. The second painful example comes from the Italian anti-psychiatry movement. Law 18018 which in theory aimed for a more open model of psychic pain, left three enormous legislative holes: First, it retained the TSO19; second, it didn’t close the criminal ‘madhouses’ (Barbieri, 1995); and, finally, it supported the inabilitazione20 (Biglia, 1999). The government passed these laws with the approval of society since they were seen as liberating. The supposed empowerment either didn’t materialise or was pushed through in a reformist manner (Telefono Viola21). In this way the government boycotted all the genuinely alternative approaches. First, subsidies were eliminated and later on draconian laws were employed to shut down individual and collective radical projects. Ironically, the Italian psychiatric laws are still deemed ‘progressive’ by some. These were two examples from the past but I believe the germ of a very similar process can be seen in various sectors of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Academic writings have often favoured reabsorption of critics by recolonising collective knowledge within the borders of ‘scientific space’. The second phenomenon, which needs discussing, is the ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics of the state. Within autonomous groupings the development of a collective identity has always been a necessary component of recognising a common struggle and the fight against oppression. We need a group consciousness in order to be subversive, since ‘any group that leads an autonomous existence [...] constitutes a constant danger for the dominant group’ (Apfelbaum, 1999, p 269). Obviously if the identity becomes homogenising it could suffocate the group and the subjectivity within it (Biglia, 2003). As I explained before, various occasions are used to
./english/281.txt:50:in dialogue with others of a similar disposition and intellectual bent; if they have to watch their back (p 19). It is significant that even the Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) which Hakim Bey (1985) wishes to see transformed into Permanent Autonomous Zones (PAZ) are generally characterised by two or three individuals in charge of hefty ideological decisions. So dialogues that Ussher wants to see develop become closed dialogues where it is advantageous to conform to the critical ‘party line’. The biggest problem is that, within supposedly horizontal groups, which are not explicitly authoritarian, it is difficult to recognise leadership and subject it to criticism. This is a strange process in which we are all ‘free to think’ as our unacknowledged leaders, otherwise we are out. Moreover, such groups tend to become endogamous in order to avoid contamination from other critical sources and frequently end up not co-operating with each other because they all believe they possess the deeper and more radical critique of the status quo. Theoretically there may not exist a separation between knowledge-theories and activism. We are critical academics so we must be on the same side as activists. We organize horizontally and we don’t want to manipulate the movement. But we celebrate our arrival to a meeting with half an hour of theoretical chat not understood by non-specialists. I want to mention two experiences in this regard, one from my activist space and the other from my academic milieu. The first experience comes from an assembly of activists I was involved with around ten years ago in Italy. In theory it was a closed group (just for militants with similar politics), organized horizontally as a response to an upcoming protest. The group consisted of about 30 people. Most of us, between 18 and 24 years old, learned about the meeting just a few days in advance. The meeting started with a 90-minute talk by two academic-activists who read from a written paper. After their talk they ask if there was any disagreement with their analysis. I felt as if they were mocking us. Obviously for me, as for most of my friends, it was impossible to understand let alone provide an impromptu critique of a highly complex analysis. Faced with this interrogation all we could do was to try to decide whether we should remain in the group or leave. Another example comes from a few years ago in Spain, during a meeting between critical teachers and students who wanted to change academia. All
./english/281.txt:53:the students sat at the back of the room and remained silent throughout. In contrast, the lecturers occupied the front row and monopolised the ‘discussion’. When I complained that if we want to change the authoritarian dynamics of academia we have to make an effort to create a space in which everyone feels free to talk, one of the lecturers retorted, ‘here everybody can talk freely and if student don’t feel free it is their problem’. At this stage one student did say that it was difficult to talk under such conditions, but he was ignored. What I am trying to say is that this ‘TAZ’ frequently becomes a closed ghetto that tends to produce a static critique- a critique that can be ‘easily’ reabsorbed by mainstream academic discourse. Our inability or unwillingness to be self-critical tends to normalise our contribution. At the same time not-so-critical academics see the autonomous zones created as an opportunity to acquire power. It seams that having acquired an academic position most criticals start to feel tired of fighting and prefer to maintain their little privileges and end up becoming auto-referential and a bit pathetic. Having analysed some of the limitations and negatives influences of academic discourse, I want to end by returning to the question posed by the editors of ARCP. It seems to me that in both academia and the ‘anti-globalization’ movement the ‘radicalising’ process mainly consists in emptying the content of criticism. Given this situation, is a cross-fertilisation between critical psychology and the anti-capitalist movement possible? I feel the only positive fertilisation possible is achieved through being a person- I mean the voluntary performing of ourselves and our bodies and not our professional ‘persona’. That doesn’t mean we cannot bring to the University ethics and practices developed by us as militants. Moreover, we can serve our activism through knowledge gained in academia and the privileges of our status. But we have to be careful not to instrumentalize Radical Social Movement practices and theories for the benefit of academics nor engage with the Radical Social Movement with a superior attitude. I believe if we want to be useful to the Radical Social Movement we should not aim to do something for RSM as academics, but instead work within them and act as activists. Perhaps the best thing Critical Psychology, as a ‘theoretical group’, could do is to let the anti-capitalist movement get on with its work without interference. As persons with a psychological background and a critical attitude we can use our knowledge within RSM
./english/281.txt:56:to subvert academia by taking a radical position in the classroom and research. I agree with the criticisms friends made regarding the pessimism of this paper. Perhaps we have to look at the positive experiences being developed outside Academia. Although this article is not the space to enter into a deep analysis of that space, I like to mention it briefly. Research-militants from different disciplines are fighting against the commercialisation of knowledge and are producing shared-knowledge (e.g., the GNU Project, Copy left), organizing autonomous teams of research (e.g., Universidad Nomada, Laser, Facoltá di Fuga, Universidad de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo). And many people use shared-knowledge in their neighbourhoods or work places. Reappropriation of knowledge is a necessary tool for social transformation, nevertheless, I believe it is just as important we maintain a strong self-critical attitude. And finally what we should do as researcher-academics? …A bit less talking, a bit more doing!● Acknowledgment It would take an entire book to mention all the people that, in some way, have contributed to the formation of opinions expressed in this paper. For this reason I just make a collective acknowledgment. Firstly, to all the activists that shared with me their analyses especially friends from Italy, Catalonia, Chile, Britain, Spain and Argentina. Secondly, I owe a real debt of gratitude to autonomist feminists particularly to UEP and MPKbarna groups. At the same time I have to thanks all the people that without defining themselves as activists have a strong social commitment to everyday life. Moreover, thanks to Erica Burman and Ian Parker who introduced me to the most committed parts of critical psychology. Last but not least I would like to acknowledge Jordi Bonet-Martin, Ricard Moreno-Alegret and Laurence Cox, who commented on the first draft of the work. To all of you lots of hugs and cariños, grazie! 80
./english/281.txt:58:References Amoroso M. (2002) Barcelona entre valles y flores, DIY: Recursos Oscuros Apfelbaum, E. (1999) ‘Relations of domination and movements for liberation: an analysis of power between groups (Abridged)’, Feminism & Psychology 9 (3): 267-72. Barbieri D. (1995) Un lager italiano. Quei matti da slegare en Avvenimenti del 20 Settembre 1995. p. 54-56 Barker C., Cox L. (2001-2) What have the Romans ever done for us? Academic and activist forms of movement theorising en http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp8.html Bey H. (1985) T.A.Z. Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, NY: Autonomedia Bey H. (1993) Permanent TAZs, NY: Autonomedia Biglia B. (1999) Buscando hilos: l’Antipsichiatria italiana, El rayo que no cesa nº 1 Biglia B. (2000) Universidades: ¿espacios de creación o recreación de conocimientos? on Athenea Digital, revista de pensamiento social, April 28th. Biglia B. (2003) Women in mixed SMs, experiences of contradictions in their subjectivities & individualities, in press Bonet-Marti J. (2003) A l’altre costat del mirall o per que m’interessen unes jornades de conrecerca des del Moviments Socials. Photocopies. Bucalo G. (1997) DIzionARIO ANTIPSICHIATRICO. Esplorazioni e viaggi attraverso la follia. Sicilia: Punto L Charles N. (2000) Feminism, the State and Social Policy. London: McMillan. Colacicchi P. (1993) Le Calate di Reggio Emilia in Antonucci G. Critica al giudizio psichiatrico, Roma: Sensibili alle foglie Diaz, G. (1983) ‘Roles and contradictions of chilean women in the resistence and Exile’, pp.30-38 in Davies M. (eds) Third World Second Sex. London: Zed Books Fernández Poncela A.M. (2000) Mujeres, revolución y cambio cultural. Barcelona: Anthropos Gordo-Lopez A. (2001) De la Crítica al Academicismo Metodológico: líneas de acción contra los desalojos sociocríticos: photocopies. LASER (2002) Scienza Spa. Scienziati tecnici e conflitti. Roma: Derive Approdi. Law I. & Lax B. (1998). What is critical psychology? An interview with Erica Burman & Ian Parker. En Geko Vol 2: 51-61 Lopez-Adan E. (1996) Terrorismo y violencia revolucionaria. Bilbao: Likiniano Elkartea.
./english/283.txt:67:Finding ways of accessing financial and intellectual resources to create an autonomous education institution.
./english/290.txt:126:In second place, the strike appears to us as an everyday and multiple practice: there will be those who propose transforming public space, converting spaces of consumption into places of encounter and play preparing a "reclaim the streets", those who suggest organizing a work stoppage in the hospital when the work conditions don't allow the nurses to take care of themselves as they deserve, those who decide to turn off their alarm clocks, call in sick and give herself a day off as a present, and those who prefer to join others in order to say "that's enough" to the clients that refuse to wear condoms... there will be those who oppose the deportation of miners from the "refuge" centers where they work, those who dare - like the March 11th Victimsπ Association (la asociaciÛn de afectados 11M) - to bring care to political debate proposing measures and refusing utilizations of the situation by political parties, those who throw the apron out the window and ask why so much cleaning? and those who join forces in order to demand that they be cared for as quadrapalegics and not as ≥poor things≤ to be pitied, as people without economic resources and not as stupid people, as immigrants without papers and not as potential delinquents, as autonomous persons and not as institutionalized dependents. There will be those who...
./english/293.txt:33:We saw that many of these jobs in the margins: the invisible, unregulated, unmoored jobs were in no way interrupted or altered by a strike of this type, and that the precarization of the labor market had extended to such an extent that the majority of working people were not even effected by the new reforms against which the strike was directed. Therefore we tried to think of new forms of living this day of struggle by approaching and confronting these new realities. We decided to transform the classic shut-down picket into a survey-picket. Frankly, we didn’t feel up to upbraiding a precarious worker contracted by the hour in a supermarket or to closing down the little convenience store run by an immigrant because, in the end, despite the many reasons to shut down and protest, who had called this strike? Who were they thinking of? Was there even a minimal interest on the part of the unions for the situation of precarious workers, immigrants, housewives? Did the shut-down stop the productive process of domestic workers, translators, designers, programmers, all those autonomous workers for whom stopping this day would do nothing but duplicate their work the next day? It seemed more interesting to us, considering the gap between the experience of work and the practice of struggle, to open a space of exchange between some of the women who were working or consuming during that day and with those who were moving in the streets. This small, discreet sketch of an investigation was the starting point for what became the project of the ‘drifts’.
./english/298.txt:50:The UK higher education system has gone from being a manageable cottage industry more or less autonomously run with a moderate number of students living more or less well on a grant system, to something that in places really looks like mass higher education – without the grants and with a new system of fees. There is obviously much to be said about this process.
./english/298.txt:97:What I am saying is that even if many graduates are going to be disillusioned with the actual earnings and working conditions (or lack of) that they will have to face, it is difficult to know what this outsourced and redundant surplus of educated labour could turn into – how it is going to interact with the communication machine, for example. I think that the early phase of the ‘free labour’ bonanza (where many chose to perform work that they perceived as rewarding either for free or for very little money) is over. At least in Europe, I have noticed a great interest in the problem of the exploitation (and economic sustainability) of autonomous, ‘creative’ labour.
./english/299.txt:105:Another significant fact is that Spanish prostitutes and prostitutes from Western Europe in general are being progressively substituted by immigrants from Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sex work is a feminine survival strategy inseparably joined to present migrations, and together with other escapes such as marriage or sexual tourism it shapes the new circuits of globalization.[18] Sex work is a flexible kind of work which could be, and in some cases is, autonomously managed, unregulated and intermittent. In this sense, it is an opportunity for many people who find their access to a decent income and basic resources restricted on the one hand by the State (immigration laws) and on the other by the labor market. Nevertheless, this same flexible and alegal character of sex work may deepen not only the stigma but also the precariousness that weighs upon workers.
./english/299.txt:113:The trade in persons for sexual activities has increased, a trade that goes against the will of the women in question using extortion and violence and which, whether we like it or not, cohabits in many contexts with the free practice of prostitution.[19] It is important here to refine the distinction between (1) forced work (slavery), (2) debt-indentured work (partial slavery) (3) paid work (without debts related to migration) and (4) åautonomousπ work (more subject to self-organization of time, activity, place, etc.). We are aware that these categories or regimes require a development which is, in turn, extremely controversial.[20]
./english/299.txt:161:What is clear is that these fantasies ≠ be they of equality or domination/submission ≠ are produced in the context of a social system that is hierarchalized in accord with certain axes, which we have tried in various ways to define. The resulting stratification takes into consideration (1) the work regime (coerced, indentured, paid without debts and autonomous); (2) social, labor and geographic mobility; (3) the degree of exposure of the body (direct in the case of prostitution, semi-direct in massage, or indirect in peep shows and telephone lines); and (4) the organization of work (in flexible and networked enterprises like the chatlines or the larger brothels, or familiar structures like those of some other brothels, autonomy as in the case of some prostitutes, mafia systems, etc.). If we cross these categories of position and regime we have a fairly complex map of axes.
./english/300.txt:12:With this in mind, this essay will attempt to follow (in an illustrative way) the history of collaborative research methodologies utilized in radical geography as a ‘contact zone’ (Merrifield 1995; p. 64) between the academy and activism. The idea of the ‘contact zone’ can basically be seen as a point of ‘contamination’ and hybridity. While many academics are and have been social activists and vice versa, they often participate in the academy and activism as spheres of life which are differentiated psychologically, socially, institutionally, etc. The ‘contact zone’ in this case helps to breakdown the mental ‘wall’ between the academy and activism, and helps deconstruct the notions of an isolated site of knowledge creation and diffusion (i.e. the autonomous Kantian university). In order to be clear it should be stated that not all participatory research is necessarily radical nor is all radical geography participatory but rather when these two tendencies meet they can create this unique space of interaction referred to here as a ‘contact zone’.
./english/303.txt:35:The most troubling aspect for Ricardo was that the GSF had not created any channels of communication with the militant anarchists, largely due to the Forum’s strict “non-violence” stance. The dominant political forces within the GSF- the White Overalls, NGOs, ATTAC, radical labor unions and Refundazione, the reformulated Communist party- were characterized by autonomous Marxist, socialist, and social-democratic perspectives and the use of strictly non-violent tactics. On the other hand, the guiding political ethos among decentralized grassroots networks like PGA or MRG is broadly anarchist, at least in the sense of horizontal networking and coordination among diverse autonomous groups. This networking logic also holds for the question of violence versus non-violence, where a “diversity of tactics” position generally prevails. For radical anti-capitalists like Ricardo, even those who would never engage in violent tactics, the important thing is to establish dialogue and coordination among all groups, regardless of the tactics they choose. The strict non-violence position of the GSF, along with their perceived unwillingness to communicate with groups outside their direct action guidelines, was thus perceived as a major obstacle to overcome through the mediation of the radical internationals.
./english/303.txt:67:Finally, the question remains as to the most appropriate context for practicing militant ethnography and how to distribute the results. One obvious place is the academy, which despite increasing corporate influence and institutional constraints, continues to offer a critical space for collective discussion, learning, and debate. Indeed, as Scheper-Hughes (1995) suggests, those of us within the academy can use academic writing and publishing as a form of resistance, working within the system to generate alternative politically engaged accounts. Moreover, as Routledge (1996: 400) points out, there are no “pure” or “authentic” sites, as academia and activism both “constitute fluid fields of social action that are interwoven with other activity spaces.” Routledge thus posits an alternative “third space,” “where neither site, role, or representation holds sway, where one continually subverts the other.” The more utopian alternative is suggested by the rise of multiple networks of autonomous research collectives and free university projects, including the “activist research” conference cited above. In my own case, by examining the cultural logics, networking activities, and utopian imaginaries within contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements, I hope to contribute to both academic and activist spheres through exploring, as the Argentine Colectivo Situaciones puts it, “the emerging clues of a new sociability within concrete practices (2001: 39).”
./english/320.txt:46:are purely oriented towards the gaining of consensus, nor that repressive projects rely on coercion alone. Rather, they differ above all in their response to large-scale, organised movements from below: the accommodative response to such movements does not exclude coercion vis-à-vis ethnic minorities, the lumpenproletariat or the radical wing of such movements (consider e.g. the Italian compromesso storico between Christian Democracy and official Communism, achieved at the expense of the autonomous Left). Nor does the repressive project abandon all attempts to gain consent; rather, it restricts these to narrower social groups than before.
./english/320.txt:58:However, good sense coexists with hegemonic conceptions of the world - 'a conception which is not its own but is borrowed from another group' - that conditions and constrains our practical activity in "normal times" (ibid.: 327). The crucial point here is to avoid conceiving of the lifeworlds and lived experience of subaltern social groups as hermetically sealed, autonomous spaces of radical otherness5 but rather as hybrids of subaltern and dominant practices and worldviews (see McNally, 2001: 150). Subalterneity and the ways of being and doing that defines it should be 'seen to be forged relationally and historically' as opposed to 'an essential characteristic of social being' (Moore, 1998: 352). In other words, it is the shifting truce lines between movements from above(which
./english/323.txt:256:literary journal Yang. She's a member of various feminist groups and networks, such as the autonomous
./english/325.txt:18:When the important role of the student movement and the autonomous women’s movement diminished in the 1980’s in Europe –from this time on the feminist (and gay and lesbian) movements became more and more institutionalised -, the role of the squatters movement increased. Marxist ideas disappeared and anarchists’ notions got the upper hand. Especially in the Netherlands, the government bought different squat buildings after 1982, by which the threat of eviction disappeared and all kinds of alternative cultural and political initiatives could arise (Duivenvoorden 2000). Projects, little industries and services started which form the basis of the typical squat subculture: grocery stores, bookshops, clothes shops, hairdressers, tool rentals, bike repair shops, health projects, feminist centres, galleries, music studios, free radios etc. ‘Back then it was no problem at all to live in what might be called a squatted zone for almost 24 hours a day; even on holiday you could travel to squats in other European countries’ (Kallenberg, 2001: 92-93). But by the end of the 1980s things changed. Because of new ‘anti-squat’ legislation, from this time on house owners could easily evict the squatters, and so nowadays a lot of squats exist for a few months only. Therefore it is harder to create concert halls, restaurants, shops and other provisions. Some groups choose to move into legalized squats, organizing in these their cooperative of the ‘Volkskeuken’ (People’s Kitchen, vegan food for a few euros), their squatting consulting centres, info café’s etc. Another reason why most of the workshops and other provisions quitted or chose a legal format is that the social services no longer tolerate extended unemployment, nor useful or pleasant voluntary work being done on full unemployment benefit. Squatters are idealistic but also ‘strategic’: in order to survive, they constantly have to use the possibilities the system unintentionally offers them.
./english/325.txt:24:As said, in the eighties the squatters’ movement not only became ‘the’ movement by the involvement of all kinds of networks, also a fierce feminist struggle took place. ‘In no other movement feminism has played such a big role as in the squatters movement’ (Huijsman, 1989, p. 221). Feminist activists organised themselves in autonomous women’s groups within the squatters’ movement; at the same time they criticized the male squatters continuously for their attitude and behaviour. ‘In the squatters’ movement the men in particular are changed by the feminist women’ (ibid, p. 250). In the journals of the squatters’ movement much was written about feminism, but the regular media didn’t give attention to this aspect of the movement. Therefore only a few people know that half of the squatters have been and are women. Like in feminism, in the squatters’ movement the slogan ‘the personal is political’ became central and also the notion ‘politics start in daily life’ (Kallenberg 2001, Van Tricht 1995). In this way the alternative, but mostly male squatters’ culture changed in a culture that was more open for other experiences in daily life.
./english/331.txt:129:A relativistic approach (values clarification) is equally inappropriate – it leads to the entrenchment of individualism and a focus on rights rather than responsibilities. However, a consideration of psychological development of reasoning skills does not mean a relativistic attitude to morals. Kohlberg’s emphasis on the development of abstract reasoning skills was narrow and incomplete as a model of morality. However, it should not be confused as relativism, but taken exactly as it is: a useful way of conceptualising progression in the analytical thinking skills necessary to develop autonomous moral capability.
./english/331.txt:132:Ryan & Lickona (1987, described in Arthur 2003) propose three elements of character development, knowing, affective & action. This is useful: knowing involves a didactic approach – providing information and examples, sketching out relationships and giving opportunities to begin to develop empathy. The affective is a response to this knowledge and the development of empathy at a specific level. It is the beginning of abstraction through imagination. Considered action can only develop once the affective is fully grounded. It is the very next step in the development of a truly autonomous moral character.
./english/331.txt:133:Empathy is the bridge between moral habits and moral character: Piaget’s ‘heteronomous’ morality, Kohlberg’s ‘conventional’ stage, Kupperman’s first (primary) stage (Arthur 2003) all belong on the first side; post-conventional moral reasoning, autonomous morality and Kupperman’s third (college) stage (Arthur 2003) belong on the second. The virtue ethics approach to character education has value on the first side, as long as it is grounded in a social-learning approach and allows children to construct meaning around principles through action and reflection.
./english/331.txt:257:5.An emphasis on the transition from knowledge through critical evaluation and autonomous moral judgement, to action based on that judgement.
./english/344.txt:21:Other international organisations involved, such as the European Trade Union Confederation (1974) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC 1948). are similarly social-reformist and based in Western Europe. The unification also involves the trade-specific internationals (e.g. public service or agriculture) of the ICFTU and WCL. Some of these have already merged. However, these further complicate the merger. The Global Union Federations associated with the ICFTU in the Global Unions network, are much older than, and autonomous from, the ICFTU. Those of the WCL are merely departments. The WCL, moreover, seems reluctant to have the global or regional merger reaching down to national level. The role of the ETUC in the whole process needs emphasis for two reasons. Firstly, it provides an explicit or implicit model of a unified union body, being formally autonomous from the existing international centres and having long included national unions of both the Communist and Catholic tradition (Moreno 2005). Secondly, however, it is itself self-subordinated to the European Union and thus to an elite social accord of problematic value. This has been extensively argued by veteran left labour specialist, Richard Hyman:
./english/344.txt:33:This virtual invisibility has also been true of ‘virtual reality’. Bearing in mind the increasing number and professional quality of international union or labour websites, and the ease of publication on them, this invisibility is puzzling, at the very least. Neither on the site of the ICFTU, the Global Unions or the WCL has it been possible to find more than a few meagre messages on something supposedly of significance to tens of millions! (This invisibility extends even to the otherwise innovative and autonomous site, LabourStart). Indeed, an inquiry about this lack, addressed to the Press Office of the ICFTU, produced only a reference back two years to a resolution of its 2004 Congress! One can only speculate about this virtual silence. Perhaps the leaderships are themselves ambiguous about the project, or worried about its success, or simply aware that this represents a new form without a new content.
./english/363.txt:53:These three programmes, in the long years of defeat, have very different histories and very different spaces of survival: very schematically, these were found in alternative cultures oscillating between criminalisation (McKay 1996) and co-optation (Storey 1994) for the "1967 project"; in urban "temporary autonomous zones" (Bey 1991) where the "1968 project" could still generate concrete anti-authoritarian projects, particularly in west European metropoles (Katsiaficas 1997, Ruggiero 2001); and ultimately in a certain kind of left intelligentsia for the "1969 project", which could turn its hard-won skills into academic cultural capital and the skills of institutional infighting.
./english/363.txt:218:What they can perhaps do is develop tools that ordinary people can learn to use when and if they feel the need strongly and clearly enough to be able to act on their own behalf: modes of organisation, processes of self-education, ways of talking, which are appropriate for the new purposes that people give themselves in such situations. Such tools are badly needed: without them, people who have not had a long experience of autonomous activity, of head-on confrontations, of working together in cooperative ways, will "reinvent the wheel" in the shape of some of the most basic mistakes of past movements (see WSM 1998 for some important reflections on this).
./english/363.txt:221:Three kinds of things are particularly important here. One is the development of autonomous institutions. It is in the nature of contemporary capitalism, which has commodified or otherwise colonised so many of the needs met in previous generations by movement institutions, that there is (notoriously) little space for developed movement organisations. Nevertheless, if they are thought of not as "the new society in the shell of the old", but rather spaces within which we can learn how to interact with each other in new ways around practical tasks, to sustain even marginal institutions is a useful act in itself. (One important example, not so marginal at present, is the demonstration: the extensive participatory planning processes behind the current "global demos" and the widespread discussions after the events are quite remarkable in these terms.)
./english/363.txt:223:A second need is communication (see Gillan 2001). There is much concern about "media perception" of the current protests, as if any revolutionary movement had ever had the mainstream media on its side. And yet, despite state control of the broadcast media in May 1968 in Paris, or 1989 in Eastern Europe, people manage, time and time again, to make their choices and take action nevertheless. Again, the alternative and underground media were small prior to the events (see e.g. ID-Archiv 1991, Dagron 2001), but their existence made it relatively easy to "get the word out" - through flyers, posters, small magazines, pirate radios and the like - when the situation changed. A movement which does not develop autonomous means of communication is a movement which expects never to challenge the status quo except in marginal ways (see Cox 1997 for more on this).
./english/363.txt:229:What does all this mean for movement intellectuals? Firstly, clarity is a crucial quality: not just (or even not mainly) clarity of thought, important though that is, but above all clarity of actions. To be clear about the difference between the social relations involved in maintaining the status quo, those which are potentially opposed to it and those which are already opposed to it and to act accordingly is to make life choices that matter: what we do and why, who we associate with and how, the ways we talk and under what circumstances are not neutral choices. Autonomous institutions and autonomous individuals cannot ultimately be separated.
./english/368.txt:42:Beyond an understanding of this flexibility, it is important to recognize that The Net does not exist independently of what are often called its "users". The Net is not some objective or politically neutral technology to be "used" in this way or that. It is not a "form" to be filled arbitrarily with "content"; both form and content are constantly being autonomously reinvented and transformed. Networks have been put to uses which have escaped the intentions of their designers and thus become something new, while new networks have been created for purposes unimagined by the designers (and vendors) of the hardware and software employed. These things have made any assertion of "objectivity" or technological determinism less and less credible.
./english/368.txt:94:Capitalist Counterattacks against the Appropriation of Cyberspace The capitalist response to the autonomous appropriation of cyberspace has had many sides. To begin with, there has been increased monitoring, reporting and analysis of our use of cyberspace in ways designed to delegitimize and inform counter-strategies. In February 1995, for example, there were several mass media stories on the use of The Net to spread the word of the Mexican government's attack on the Zapatistas and to mobilize opposition. For example, the Washington Post, Newsweek and TV GLOBO all ran original stories about the new "high-tech" guerrilla war.(36) Such reporting, often biased, has had contradictory effects. It has made both enemies and friends of the Zapatista solidarity movement more aware of what has been going on, stimulating both more opposition and more support.
./english/368.txt:158:The future elaboration of flexible, interlinked, uncontrollable networks must be worked out at these increasing levels of complexity. While the experience of the circulation of the Zapatista uprising can teach us much about the ways in which rhizomatically organized, autonomous
./english/370.txt:11:The world of interface design is today undergoing dramatic changes which in their impact promise to rival those brought about by the use of the point-and-click graphical interfaces popularized by the Macintosh in the early 1980's. The new concepts and metaphors which are aiming to replace the familiar desk-top metaphor all revolve around the notion of semi-autonomous, semi-intelligent software agents. To be sure, different researchers and commercial companies have divergent conceptions of what these agents should be capable of, and how they should interact with computer users. But whether one aims to give these software creatures the ability to learn about the users habits, as in the non-commercial research performed at MIT autonomous agents group, or to endow them with the ability to perform transactions in the users name, as in the commercial products pioneered by General Magic, the basic thrust seems to be in the direction of giving software programs more autonomy in their decision-making capabilities.
./english/370.txt:14:For a philosopher there are several interesting issues involved in this new interface paradigm. The first one has to do with the history of the software infrastructure that has made this proliferation of agents possible. From the point of view of the conceptual history of software, the creation of worlds populated by semi-autonomous virtual creatures, as well as the more familiar world of mice, windows and pull-down menus, have been made possible by certain advances in programming language design. Specifically, programming languages needed to be transformed from the rigid hierarchies which they were for many years, to the more flexible and decentralized structure which they gradually adopted as they became more "object-oriented". One useful way to picture this transformation is as a migration of control from a master program (which contains the general task to be performed) to the software modules which perform all the individual tasks. Indeed, to grasp just what is at stake in this dispersal of control, I find it useful to view this change as a part of a larger migration of control from the human body, to the hardware of the machine, then to the software, then to the data and finally to the world outside the machine. Since this is a crucial part of my argument let me develop it in some detail.
./english/370.txt:29:Thus, machines went from being hardware-driven, to being software-driven, then data-driven and finally event-driven. Your typical Macintosh computer is indeed an event-driven machine even if the class of real world events that it is responsive to is very limited, including only events happening to the mouse (such as position changes and clicking) as well as to other input devices. But regardless of the narrow class of events that personal computers are responsive to, it is in these events that much of the control of the processes now resides. Hence, behind the innovative use of windows, icons, menus and the other familiar elements of graphical interfaces, there is this deep conceptual shift in the location of control which is embodied in object-oriented languages. Even the new interface designs based on semi-autonomous agents were made possible by this decentralization of control. Indeed, simplifying a little, we may say that the new worlds of agents, whether those that inhabit computer screens or more generally, those that inhabit any kind of virtual environment (such as those used in Artificial Life), have been the result of pushing the trend away from software command hierarchies ever further.
./english/370.txt:47:Schemes to decentralize this aspect do exist, as in Drexler's Agoric Systems, where the messages which flow through the meshwork have become autonomous agents capable of trading among themselves both memory and CPU time. {7} The creation by General Magic of its Teletext operating system, and of agents able to perform transactions on behalf of users, is one of the first real-life steps in the direction of a true decentralization of resources. But in the meanwhile, the Internet will remain a hybrid of meshwork and hierarchy components, and the imminent entry of big corporations into the network business may in fact increase the amount of command components in its mix.
./english/375.txt:198:I want to respond to one of the earlier speakers when he talked about how agreed with the concept of multitude because it reflected a desire for autonomy against centralisation.. But when you look at the world toady, you look at George Bush, the US ruling class, and you look at how authoritarian they are, we do not want to have anything to do with the system they run. But I think you have to look how they run a system, George Bush is not acting on his own, he has a class behind him, the United States ruling class, he has tremendous power, he has military power, a state that can go anywhere in the world, tremendous economic power, with the big corporate links that his government has, therefore they have control over ideas, and mass media and education, and I think that he concept of multitude recognises that power. If you recognise that power, we cannot just run away from it or hide from it or be autonomous from it.
./english/380.txt:53:Few legitimating theories of the information and technological revolution, however, contextualize the structuring, implementation, marketing, and use of new technologies in the context of the vicissitudes of contemporary capitalism. The ideologues of the information society act as if technology were an autonomous force and either neglect to theorize the coevolution of capital and technology, or use the advancements of technology to legitimate market capitalism (i.e. Gilder 1989 and 1999; Gates 1995 and 1999; Friedman 1999). Theorists, like Kevin Kelly, for instance, the executive editor of Wired, think that humanity has entered a post-capitalist society that constitutes an original and innovative stage of history and economy where previous categories do not apply (1994 and 1998; see the critique in Best and Kellner 1999). Or, like Bill Gates (1995 and 1999), defenders of the “new economy” imagine computer and information technologies producing a "friction-free capitalism," perceived as a highly creative form of capitalism that goes beyond its previous contradictions, forms, and limitations.
./english/380.txt:69: In particular, an economic determinism and reductionism that merely depicts globalization as the continuation of market capitalism fails to comprehend the new forms and modes of capitalism itself which are based on novel developments in science, technology, culture, and everyday life. Likewise, technological determinism fails to note how the new technologies and new economy are part of a global restructuring of capitalism and are not autonomous forces that themselves are engendering a new society and economy which breaks with the previous mode of social organization. The postindustrial society is sometimes referred to as the "knowledge society," or "information society," in which knowledge and information are given roles more predominant than earlier days (see the survey and critique in Webster 1995). It is now obvious that the knowledge and information sectors are increasingly important domains of our contemporary moment and that therefore the theories of Daniel Bell and other postindustrial theorists are not as ideological and far off the mark as many of his critics on the left once argued. But in order to avoid the technological determinism and idealism of many forms of this theory, one should theorize the information or knowledge "revolution" as part and parcel of a new form of technocapitalism marked by a synthesis of capital and technology.
./english/380.txt:73: Some poststructuralist theories that stress the complexity of globalization exaggerate the disjunctions and autonomous flows of capital, technology, culture, people, and goods, thus a critical theory of globalization grounds globalization in a theory of capitalist restructuring and technological revolution. To paraphrase Max Horkheimer, whoever wants to talk about capitalism, must talk about globalization, and it is impossible to theorize globalization without talking about the restructuring of capitalism. The term "technocapitalism" is useful to describe the synthesis of capital and technology in the present organization of society (Kellner 1989a). Unlike theories of postmodernity (i.e. Baudrillard), or the knowledge and information society, which often argue that technology is the new organizing principle of society, the concept of technocapitalism points to both the increasingly important role of technology and the enduring primacy of capitalist relations of production. In an era of unrestrained capitalism, it would be difficult to deny that contemporary societies are still organized around production and capital accumulation, and that capitalist imperatives continue to dominate production, distribution, and consumption, as well as other cultural, social and political domains.[3] Workers remain exploited by capitalists and capital persists as the hegemonic force -- more so than ever after the collapse of communism.
./english/380.txt:137: In their magisterial book Empire, Hardt and Negri (2000) present contradictions within globalization in terms of an imperializing logic of “Empire” and an assortment of struggles by the multitude, creating a contradictory and tension-full situation. As in my conception, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a complex process that involves a multidimensional mixture of expansions of the global economy and capitalist market system, new technologies and media, expanded judicial and legal modes of governance, and emergent modes of power, sovereignty, and resistance.[6] Combining poststructuralism with “autonomous Marxism,” Hardt and Negri stress political openings and possibilities of struggle within Empire in an optimistic and buoyant text that envisages progressive democratization and self-valorization in the turbulent process of the restructuring of capital.
./english/392.txt:340:their respective semi−autonomous processes to come together, rather than as
./english/392.txt:341:being a huge meeting of mostly autonomous individuals and organisations.
./english/394.txt:9:Social Forum : In principle, wanting to be open, relying on autonomous action on the part of everyone
./english/395.txt:211:events happen autonomously with little or no ‘online’ exchange of content.
./english/401.txt:167:Estanque reveals the dramatic historical development of contradictory class and communal relations that seem to have permitted this exception to the rule of national-industrial unionism in Portugal (as elsewhere!). Beginning as a region of pre-industrial shoe production, where the putting-out system was practiced alongside farming, the Sao João de Madeira (SJM) traders/capitalists were early involved with Brazil. As the area industrialized in the 20th century, it became highly dependent on export production, and Portugal itself the second-largest shoe exporting country in Europe. Most recently SJM footwear has found (or been given) its place as an unlabelled subcontractor to major North European multinationals. At the same time, whether under liberal or authoritarian national conditions, the region appears to have developed a sharp sense of local identity, through the paternalism of local entrepreneurs and/or autonomous associational self-activity. It has been involved in major historical class and democratic struggles, industrial and national. And, most recently, the union has had to juggle the tensions between 1) practical and effective defense/advance of member's immediate interests, and 2) those of a growing radical-democratic local, national, European and global community of which it considers itself to be a constituent part.
./english/403.txt:31:The tensions within the autonomous networks regarding media representation have allowed for an easy capitalisation by more media hungry and obedient groups (Aggy K and Andrew 2002).
./english/403.txt:101:Aggy K & Andrew (2002) ‘Renegotiating the Terrain — Autonomous Social Movements’, http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=26875&group=webcast, accessed 26 May 2002.
./english/403.txt:161:Lacey, A. (2001) Networks of Protest, Communities of Resistance: Autonomous Activism in Contemporary Britain. Ph.D thesis, Centre for European Studies, Monash University, currently submitted for examination.
./english/476.txt:24:The WSF will return to Brazil in 2005 and is planning to go to Africa in 2006. Finally, the internal structure of the WSF was a subject openly debated. An international council had been founded in 2002, with some 150 members, all co-opted. It is broadly representative, but certainly not elected. For were it to be elected, the WSF would become a hierarchical structure. But is this "democratic"? The international council makes real decisions - where the meetings are held, who will speak at the plenary sessions (the "stars"), and who may or may not be excluded from attendance. To be sure, most of the sessions are organized from the bottom up. In Mumbai, there were 50 or so such simultaneous "seminars" at every meeting-time, all in effect autonomous. In the sessions analyzing the structure of the WSF, the push was for more openness of decision-making. And all this, without turning the WSF into a hierarchical structure. Not easy, but at least publicly debated.
./english/477.txt:20:Finally, the internal structure of the WSF was a subject openly debated. An international council had been founded in 2001, with some 150 members, all co-opted. It is broadly representative, but certainly not elected. For were it to be elected, the WSF would become a hierarchical structure. But is this "democratic"? The international council makes real decisions - where the meetings are held, who will speak at the plenary sessions (the "stars"), and who may or may not be excluded from attendance. To be sure, most of the sessions are organized from the bottom up. In Mumbai, there were 50 or so such simultaneous "seminars" at every meeting-time, all in effect autonomous. In the sessions analyzing the structure of the WSF, the push was for more openness of decision-making, a way for participants to have input on the decisions. And all this, without turning the WSF into a hierarchical structure. Not easy, but at least publicly debated.
./english/510.txt:26:But the great challenge is found elsewhere. This is the taking advantage of an invaluable opportunity, made available through respect of the World Social Forum's Charter of Principles, for strengthening civil society in each of the three countries as a new political actor independent of governments, parties, and political leaders. A Social Forum opens the way for building links between organizations, by overtaking the barriers that generally divide them and by the mutual recognition and the discovery of their autonomous strength, with respect for their diversity.
./english/512.txt:10:This is evidence of the increasing assimilation of the way of doing politics that is written into the WSF Charter of Principles: by horizontal action in networks, without internal struggles for hegemony, making room for civil society to emerge as a new political actor, autonomous of parties and governments.
./english/512.txt:39:Why should governments and parties not be given the central place they have always enjoyed and their activities be supported through the WSF process? That would risk reducing the whole meaning of the Forums to dust. Of course, governments and parties have a role that is very often decisive in bringing about the changes required to build the “other world”. But why not let civil society reinforce the battle fronts and do so autonomously?
./english/512.txt:41:It is not a question of bringing the Forums as such into those battle lines. In themselves they are not political actors – and thus cannot set themselves to become the new “subject of history” that the experts in politics hope to encounter. They are just a space. But they are a civil society space, for the different sectors of society to exchange ideas and experience and find avenues to effective political action, including the means to pressure and constrain governments and parties, and to contribute to bringing about changes by doing whatever is within their grasp without depending on either. Never before did civil society have an instrument of this kind with which to develop its interrelations autonomously.
./english/519.txt:55:The fundamental cause for the difficulties we are now dealing with comes from the increasing confrontation in international politics, established by Wash-ington and followed in group by central governments – which is, basically, a problem of correlation of forces (and, therefore, a capacity problem in concentrating forces and initiatives). If we had been able to support the mobilization level achieved in Geneva or in the protests of February 15th, 2003, we wouldn’t be facing the difficulties we are facing now. The central problem to the present global left is not, in this sense, the lack of candidates to direct the mass movements with “fair” public poli-cies - directions that should have more dissemination of their ideas – but the enlargement of self-organization and autonomous protagonism of wide popular sectors.
./english/527.txt:38:No one will disagree on the need for more participatory democracy. However, the question on how and if movements can ally with politicians and/or political parties is much more difficult to answer. The WSF in Caracas was a case in point, since many observers and participants feared that Chavez would try to appropriate the forum. There was quite some resistance against a possible funding of the WSF by the Venezuelan government. Civil society, it was said, has to be autonomous and cannot work with governments. This debate was sharpened by a letter from Chico Whitacker, one of the Brazilian founders of the Forum. Because of the corruption within Brazilian politics, he dismissed from the PT (Worker’s Party) and fiercely defends a politisation of society, without political parties.
./english/527.txt:40:This debate was highly favoured by the ‘horizontalists’ who believe in a self-managed and autonomous movement. Horizontalists look at states and political parties as parts of the oppressive system of capitalism. The hierarchies they conceal are said to be hindering the emancipation of people and thus have to be dismantled.
./english/527.txt:42:Again, many contradictions have to be outlined. The Brazilian president Lula surely was as present in Porto Alegre as Chavez was in Caracas. One could even argue that the two first WSF have contributed to have him elected. And why is money from Chavez a problem, when no questions have been put on funding by Petrobras (Brazilian petroleum corporation) and money has been accepted from the Ford Foundation? Where should the autonomous civil society find the millions of Dollars that the organisation of a world event inevitably costs?
./english/534.txt:34:In response, the state oil company PdVSA provided free and safe shuttle service between the airport and the city. Once in the city, the government provided free transportation on the metro system, tents for the meetings, and even bottled water for participants. The government also waived visa requirements and airport taxes to facilitate the participation of as many people as possible. Chavez seemed to recognize this balancing act, "we have helped with forum and are willing to do so in future," he stated, "but its work is completely autonomous."
./english/549.txt:8:But nominations, power and awards bring with them expectations and responsibility. When speaking of the abstract concept of 'global civil society' a very concrete space within the 'global civil society' comes to mind: I think of course of the World Social Forum process, a process that has emerged into the largest self-formed, autonomous and spontaneous gathering of civil society to date.
./english/565.txt:298:software development is made of hundreds of autonomous clusters
./english/565.txt:472:autonomous server over the Internet, without resorting to hosting
./english/569.txt:25:This had the great advantage, compared to previous forums at Porto Alegre, of physical contiguity (although the walk from one end to the other, particularly in the summer heat of a city in the grips of a drought, was pretty arduous!). But this gain was undercut by the division of the site into 11 distinct 'Thematic Terrains', each devoted to their own political theme: Thus Space A was devoted to Autonomous Thought, B to Defending Diversity, Plurality, and Identities, C to Art and Creation, and so on. The effect was tremendously to fragment the Forum. If you were interested in a particular subject - say, culture or war or human rights - you could easily spend the entire four days in one relatively small area without coming into contact with people interested in different subjects.
./english/580.txt:27:There was a fair amount of common ground in the themes for the ASF 2003 and the WSF in 2003. However the manner in which the two programmes were structured and organised around these basic themes was quite different. While for the ASF there were six Conferences organised (in addition there were two sectoral conferences) that reflected the six thematic areas, for the WSF there were ten conferences that broadly reflected the concerns of the thematic areas but were much more “autonomous” in their content – i.e. they did not necessarily follow the thematic areas very closely. In the WSF 2003, in addition to the Conferences, there was an attempt to focus discussions on key issues and concerns by organising a large number of Panel discussions “round table” discussions. In contrast during the ASF there were only four panel discussions.
./english/598.txt:17:Events can change the meaning and nature of representation, however. Thus, the brutality with which Italian police attacked protesters at the G8 summit at Genoa in 2002 set the pace for bringing the social movements and trade unions together. It created a desire to cooperate, which made it possible to build trust and organise the [November 2002] Florence European Social Forum in a way that involved everyone, the Italian forum spokesperson and Aids campaigner Vittorio Agnoletto explained in Mumbai. Thus, after experimenting with creating autonomous spaces, many Italian social movements now often work alongside the cautiously left trade unionists of the CGIL.
./english/598.txt:27:Crucial to this rethinking of the role of political parties, especially their relationship to social movements, is a challenge to conventional ways of understanding knowledge, whose knowledge is important and how it is produced. Traditional parties of the left have long acted as if knowledge can be centralised for dissemination to a passive membership. The mass membership have not been seen as creative, knowing, autonomous and interconnected human beings; they have been treated as supporters, voting fodder or, in the military analogy, the rank and file. Historically, this attitude has deprived left parties of a huge source of creative power.