Democracy Street Issue I

CONTENTS 1. On the Mexican resistance, the new culture of empathy and sharing and the new Zapatista initiative: the “little schools” that teach freedom - a conversation with two Mexican activists ................................................................................................................... 3 2. Words from both sides of the Wall …................................................................................ 12 3. Political apathy as a symptom …....................................................................................... 19 4. For the dissolution of the European Union & direct democracy ...................................... 24 5. The society of intercultural relations …............................................................................... 32 6. O τόκος η βία – The Debt / the violence ….......................................................................... 41 ...

7. The erosive effect of the dress-code ….............................................................................. 44

ISSN 2052-5915 First Issue, September 2013 Website: democracystreet.org Issued by: Polis Press Limited Sandra Patargo and Eduardo Velasco are student activists from Mexico. They were involved in the mass movement #YoSoy132 since its start and visited, as part of it, the Zapatista rebel territory this summer to participate in the new initiative of the EZLN, the so-called “Escuelitas”.

L.M.: Mexico is one of the countries where the line of struggle between neo-liberalism and the resistance against it is really clear. How does a young Mexican find herself on the side of the resistance and what is the current state of the student movement in the country?

Sandra: I support the resistance in Mexico because I am heir of 70 years of neoliberal policies and complete disregard for the minorities and human rights under the PRI and later with the PAN (the two main political parties in the country – L.M.). There is also complete neglect towards the youth, one of the main consequences being the criminalisation of youth movements and the structural violence against this sector.

The student movement, #yosoy132, has gone through several stages - common path in all social movements - being this a moment where our capacity and power of leverage has decreased. As I mentioned, this is a consequence of the normal process of a social movement, but also a consequence of the efforts put in place by the State and the media to criminalise us and delegitimise us. However, the symbol of #yosoy132 is still alive in Mexico, where young people all around the country are still strongly identified with the movement and take actions and protest under the #yosoy132 flag. There are also groups working on different topics and projects such as alternative media, the structural reforms and migration.

Eduardo: During the past year, from the beginning of the movement #Yosoy132, I’ve been working with the collective Más de 131, in many projects like Diarios de la Nación an art project that seeks to create social cohesion; another project is documenting the fight of the communities of Xochicuautla against a highway that threatens to destroy the last forest between Mexico City and the city of Toluca. We are also making a documentary of the movement #YoSoy132.

On the Mexican resistance, the new culture of empathy and sharing and the new Zapatista initiative: the “little schools” that teach freedom A conversation with two Mexican activists (interviewed by Levi Misli)

T

he student movement in Mexico is very strong and active; right now many universities in the country have shown their support to the teachers of La CNTE who are fighting against the structural reforms that intend to privatize education, the natural resources and take their jobs. There is a feeling that the PRI is back and we need to be united in order to survive.

L.M.: We see the country shaking once again with the reform in the education system and the planned semiprivatization of Pemex, the state-owned oil company, which by constitution is the only one which can exploit this resource in the country. How do you see the upcoming months in the light of these events?

Sandra: I see a tense and fractured country in the upcoming months. The reforms are a product of an alliance between the political elites which was sealed once Peña Nieto took office last December. The problem is not only the content of the reforms but the undemocratic process in the decisionmaking behind them. For example, the education reform is in reality a labour reform hidden behind an education one. Furthermore, its decision-making process did not include its main stakeholders; the professors (CNTE).

Regarding the energy reform, as with

the education one, the citizens were not part of the decision-making process.

This is particularly serious, considering that the privatisation of the Mexican state-owned oil company, Pemex, is of historical importance for the country and a great percentage of citizens are against the incursion of private companies in it.

The result of the imposition of these reforms is already visible with thousands of people protesting in Mexico City and other states, against both reforms and Peña’s policies in general. In this sense, the government will be facing strong resistance against the imposition of these undemocratic policies in the next weeks and months, notwithstanding the protests and social discontent visible all over the country related to other issues such as the undeniable violence, the economic paralysis, poverty and overall discontent against the neoliberal path the state has chosen for decades.

Eduardo: In the next months we will see many mobilizations around the country; people are not happy with all the reforms that are being imposed by the government. People want to participate in the decisions and no one feels represented by the politicians. Until now the response of the government from the different parties (PRI, PAN, PRD, PT, Morena, Partido Verde, PANAL) has been the repression of the voices

that demand change. The arbitrary detentions and the brutal force have affected the social mobilizations but the fear of going out to the streets is disappearing. We are seeing new forms of how policy is being made; there is a lot of creativity full of different artistic expressions. Political messages are being seeing on the walls with stencil and graffiti, Internet and Youtube have been amplifying tools to expose the injustice of the system, social media like twitter and video streams are the way to know what’s happening. There’s another culture being created based on sharing, empathy and it comes with music, photos, articles. What amuses me is that some of these patterns are been seeing in different parts of the world that are struggling.

L.M.: You visited the so-called “Escuelitas” in the Zapatista rebel territory this summer. They call them “schools for freedom” where activists who represent different struggles around the world can be taught by the Zapatistas. How were the lessons divided, what knowledge did the Zapatistas want to share with the activists?

Sandra: The lessons were divided into three. The ones taught in the books they gave us, two lessons given by Zapatistas in the caracoles

and the experience in the Zapatista communities. The four books were given to us at Cideci (University of the Earth) in San Cristobal de las Casas. The names of the books were: Autonomous Government I, Autonomous Government II, Women’s Participation in the Autonomous Government and Autonomous Resistance. Each book was divided into five sections, where members of each caracol would write about their experience in each of these topics.

The lessons we had in the caracoles were divided into two. The first one took place the day after we arrived to the caracoles and was a summary of the topics covered by the books. These lessons were presented by various members of the caracol - women and men - and covered topics that went from health, history, education, security, the justice system and economy. The second lesson took place the day we came back from the communities and was focused on answering specific questions we had about the content of the books and general doubts about their organisation. The third lesson, and I think the most important one, was the one that took place in the communities.

After we arrived to the caracoles, each of the students was introduced to their votan or guardian, who was the one in charge of our well-being and our learning in the communities. Once we

met our guardians we parted to the communities where our guardians live.

This was the most enriching part of the experience as we were able to see in practice all the things we read in the books and the things we heard in the lessons. In the communities we spent the whole day with the families, sharing with them their food, their everyday activities and their knowledge. We also had some time during the day to sit down and read our books so we could later ask them questions.

Eduardo: In the Escuelita Zapatista all members of the organization, elders, youngsters, women, and children were the teachers, so paying attention in what they do, what they say was vital to understand what EZLN has to say to the world. A Zapatista family opened their home and their hearts to show me the way they lived, the work they do, the food they eat, the time they enjoy together. The members of the family and my guardian, my Votán, told me about how they see the world and the way they resist against the bad government, not just its military side but every aspect of it: economy, ideology, psychology, cultural, political and social. They encouraged me to ask anything I wanted so they could answer me in that moment or later. Another world is possible, is one of their famous phrases that reflect the cause of the Zapatistas

organization founded with the highest values: love, friendship, respect, freedom, justice, peace, dignity.

In this 20th anniversary of the Caracoles, the Zapatistas support bases have shown what they have learned in the path they are walking.

During my time in La Escuelita I stayed in the Caracol named “La Garrucha: Resistencia hacia un nuevo amanecer” (Resistance for a New Dawn) the third one and inhabited principally by Tzeltales. There I could see the system they have been developing since the uprising in 1994. They are building their own education, justice, health care, banking, and cooperatives, a government based on collective work.

From their experience they created 7 principles for a good government: 1) to lead by obeying, 2) to represent; not replace, 3) to work from below and not seek to rise, 4) to serve; not selfserve, 5) to convince; not conquer, 6) to construct; not destroy, and 7) to propose; not impose.

The knowledge the Zapatistas from Chiapas, Mexico, want to share with the world is a lesson of freedom and dignity. By showing how the Zapatistas communities live every day, how they build their autonomy with care for the others, they show that freedom can be reached with every day actions. Each rebel act contains the essence of the worlds we dare to dream, worlds born

supporters have been displaced as a consequence of the violence coming from paramilitary groups.

Eduardo: While I was in La Escuelita in rebel territory the military airplanes passed, and immediately the General Commandment of the EZLN denounced the act of terror. In the communities they live in it is kind of different; they even make jokes of the fact that the government is worried about La Escuelita. Since the first steps the indigenous people that create the organization have lived clandestinely; the persecution and presence of paramilitary groups is constant but they are strong, both mentally and physically to face the situation.

Mexico, September 2013

from democracy, liberty and justice.

L.M.: The role the Zapatista uprising has played in the formation of the contemporary alter-globalisation movement is indisputable. In a few months it will be 20 years since the beginning of the rebellion. What is the place of the struggle in Chiapas in the context of the movements from the last several years - YoSoy, Occupy, Indignados and now in Brazil and Turkey?

Sandra: We could say the Zapatista struggle is the grandfather of the contemporary social movements and uprisings. They have taught us so much about resistance, democracy and the construction of a world we thought could never exist. The Zapatistas are not only a historical reference, but are an actual example of how twenty years of struggle can have as a result a real approach to freedom and autonomy.

Eduardo: The EZLN is very conscious about what is happening in the world.

The Zapatistas are also learning from these new resistances around the globe. They have a moral stand, so the Zapatistas will continue building their autonomy, open for the ones that

want and can hear their message.

The way they live, their struggle is an inspiration for everyone. All these social movements are now meeting each other, conscious of what’s happening on the other side of the world. More and more the movements are seeing that they have similar causes and common enemies: the big corporations.

These fights against neoliberalism are a matter of survival. We can’t allow to forget the fights of the past; we have to take our place in history. Hand in hand, weaving the global revolution. The Zapatistas don’t try to show you the way or to tell the steps of the revolution. They understand the diversity of humans and the different contexts in each life, so what they say is to work for autonomy in your way, to search for the path that is best for you to walk. The important thing is to start walking.

L.M.: Is this going to be a constant initiative, will the school be open throughout the year for activists to visit and learn?

Sandra: We attended the first Escuelita, however they’ve already announced the opening of new dates so new sympathizers could be part of this experience. They also have different

ways of sharing their knowledge throughout the year, for example they told us they had language schools in the caracol of Oventik, were nationals and foreigners can go there to learn Tzotzil and Spanish.

L.M.: The Zapatistas faced a new wave of violent paramilitary attacks in the last two years. There was also a recent communiqué talking about spy airplanes flying over the five “Caracoles”. What is the mood in the rebel territory?

Sandra: The harassment from the State has never ceased to exist, however with the return of the PRI there is a fear that the situation in the region has started to become more tense. Nevertheless, we could say that the region is starting to experience something similar to what happened in the mid-nineties, where the paramilitary groups were actually acting upon the communities that show support to the Zapatistas or are non-partisans of the government as an indirect strategy to hit the Zapatista bases. An example of this is the violence perpetrated to members of the community of puebla, close to the caracol of Oventik where hundreds of members of the Abejas and Zapatista

Words from both sides of the wall

by Scintilla

T

here is often a difficulty in discussions to understand the perspective of supporting a Palestinian state, without questioning the inconsistency in basic anarchist projects. The national liberation tone of the conflict inevitably creates a charged topic for many anarchists that support the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

We must recognize that there exists indeed a contradiction. The last few days, discussing in Israel and the West Bank of Palestine with anarchists and Palestinians, we tried to detect this contradiction between the anarchists’ commitment to stand in solidarity with repressed groups of people with the conditions the groups themselves pose, and the fact that this term is - in the Palestinian cause - the creation of a new nation-state.

The issue of inconsistency.

State and anarchists While Palestine still remains an occupied territory, when the upgrade of the international status of the Palestinian Authority from an “entity” to a “non-UN member” was announced last November, the anarchists replied directly and bluntly that, lately, they are

mainly concerned with the escalation of the Israeli army’s brutality in the Palestinian villages, especially during the weekly demonstrations against the wall, that they are worried about being banned from the occupied territories where they participate in demonstrations, that they wonder whether they will soon be able to see their friends or whether they will end up being persecuted in their attempts to do so. Israeli anarchists, solidarity groups and several Palestinians have quickly overcome the celebrations that followed the positive vote at the UN, as they doubt that things would change “on the street”. However, as the discussion progressed, everyone recognised that the creation of a Palestinian state is not a minor issue, that they cannot afford the luxury to reject it, especially since the “State” remains an internationally accepted legal term and mainly an independent legal entity.

The notion of an international General Meeting in which entire populations can have the right to speak, remains remarkable. If the United Nations had been formed through a participatory social model, rather than following the hierarchical, neo-liberal “democratic” model, we might have felt less ashamed when mentioning them. However, at the moment, the capacity of a “state” still works as a unique collateral with which entire populations can be identified as distinct entities and therefore individual human rights can be acknowledged [1].

Anarchists understand that the creation of a Palestinian state may be the only viable way to relieve the Palestinian people from their long lasting oppression within a short period of time.

It is an evaluative judgment through which basic humanitarian concerns override an otherwise non-negotiable anti-statism. As a matter of fact anarchists are interested in standing in practical solidarity with the Palestinians, rather than just theorizing about the need for a revolution. However, any such actions are often disputed as external reinforcement of statism. The fact that anarchists continue to coorganise and participate in all sorts of actions of solidarity with the Palestinian communities, either internationally or in occupied territory, proves that the dilemma of supporting a Palestinian state has largely been answered.

Acknowledging that a contradiction exists is vital and useful, but the knowledge and the analysis of the situation helps us advance further, as at the present time solidarity is so important, that the cost of a theoretical inconsistency seems small. Adopting for example another, passive attitude, which would equal the acceptance of the barbarity the Palestinians are suffering, until we one day get rid of capitalism, would be a position cynical by all respects and in the end noncompatible with the basic anarchist imperatives. Moreover, the question whether anarchists can and should take

action in the direction of supporting a Palestinian state, the very nature of their actions responds to the dilemma. Given the loathing of anarchists for the policies of requests, reformism and gathering signatures, the way of direct anarchist action that finds indeed fertile ground in Palestine, is the answer.

The daily acts of resistance, in which Israeli and international anarchists participate alongside Palestinians, from defending shepherds and olive growers from the attacks of the settlers to the opening of blocked roads, the invasion of supermarkets exclusively for settlers and the setting up of barricades at the weekly marches along the West Bank, are cracks in the structure of the militaristic statism of Israel and support to the efforts of the Palestinian people to maintain their own dignity. These acts, whether one includes them in a long-term effort for the creation of a Palestinian state or not, are important.

The seed of solidarity Through direct action, the presence of Israeli anarchists in solidarity alongside Palestinians deeply shocks the majority of the Israeli society that treats them as either disturbed youngsters, or (and) ultimately as traitors of the nation. By no means accidentally, since the common struggle of Israelis and Palestinians, this everyday example of non-violent coexistence and cooperation, is a bomb in the foundations of Zionist militarism, challenging head on both the eternal image of the Other, the Arab, and the construction of the myth of the second Holocaust. This taboo is broken every day in practice and on the road: militarism in Israel exists in every aspect of social life and is something we interact with from a very young age. In every Israeli who comes from a Jewish family there supposedly exists a deep wound associated with a continuous feeling of threat. For some people it is about a real, lived trauma, however for many others is an artificial trauma, which they try to convince us that we carry in our DNA. What happens is that from a very young age we are told that the whole world wants to kill us, because it is assumed that there is something like a law of nature that says that those who are not Jews want to kill those who are Jews.

According to this myth things have always been so and will remain so for eternity. And for this reason, as Jews we will have to fight to defend ourselves.

Militarism is very keen - even before the compulsory military service - at school, but also from the early years of a person’s life before they even go to school. From preschool already at an age of three to four years, children take part in “introductory events” with the armed forces, at least once a year.

The way these events take place varies depending on the place of residence.

Those who live in small villages go with the whole school to a bigger city to participate in a tour of a military unit.

For those who live in big cities it’s the forces that come to their site. During the event they talk to the children about the various units of the army, for the “great victories” and their accomplishments.

There are several educational programmes specifically designed for young children, with illustrations and animations that work interactively [2].

Even if the number of Israeli anarchists is not large, their role is extremely important and perplexed. At the same time, the number of Palestinians selfidentified as anarchists is even smaller and there is no organised anarchist movement. The number of sympathisers is rising and during the last years the alliance of Israeli anarchists, international solidarity and Palestinians has brought again in the foreground traditions of civil disobedience and unpatronized popular resistance, which had left a strong imprint during the first Intifada (1987-89).

Apart from Israeli anarchists, anarchists from a variety of countries have in the last decade a strong presence in the region, mainly through the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a movement which coordinates Palestinians since the summer of 2001, when this effort started. Among the actions adopted by the ISM are human chains to prevent military interventions or detention of Palestinians protesting or opening barricades, the collective breaking of curfews, the escort of children to school or farmers to work, acting essentially as human shields against the violence of settlers and army. Palestinians from the beginning saw this perspective with excitement, both because it opened a road of internationalization of the issue, but also because the presence of people in solidarity from dozens of countries across the world,

including a very large number of Jewish background, somewhat mitigates the ferocity of the military attacks and atrocities of the settlers. While the ISM is not an anarchist but an activist organization, it has acted as an ideal vehicle so that a large number of anarchists originally from the U.S. and Canada and then from other countries, mainly from Europe, can operate in the region. Also, the way the ISM works, the decentralized organizational model with small autonomous groups, the use of consensus process to make daily decisions, the organisation from below of the Palestinian committees that operate through the ISM and of course the aim to use direct action, are giving this movement anarchist characteristics in the form of solidarity, mutual support, resistance and direct action. Those in solidarity don’t appear as saviors in Palestine, they don’t teach ethics and western values; they give the initiative to those living daily oppression 365 days a year.

The most substantive comment made

by Israeli anarchists operating in the ISM, was that they don’t collectively align with the Palestinians, in the Manichean way many European leftand right-wing parties and some of their voters do, essentially reproducing anti-Semitism and sometimes embellishing acts of indiscriminate violence, organized by fundamentalist groups. They focus on the fact that the situation in the region and the local communities is so complicated that an anti-imperialistic compass of black and white can only do harm.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect is that the view was also supported by Palestinian interlocutors, recognizing tactics of indiscriminate violence and cries for annihilation of the Other, the Jew, in the name of religious fanaticism as hopeless and destructive.

Not accidentally, the ISM focuses exclusively on non-violent actions regarding the presence of international solidarity, a stance that works beneficially in the way that a larger now part of the world (the international “public opinion”) approaches the Palestinians, and is diametrically opposite to that of the Israeli army and the settlers. It recognises the Palestinians’ right to resistance that includes violence but never against civilian population, something the Israeli army does not hesitate to do. Therefore, anarchists who are active in the region

use the tactic of non-violent resistance in a fight where there are many regular actions and clear acceptance of these limits from all those cooperating.

For the Israeli anarchists, their stance by the Palestinians’ side is a matter of responsibility and solidarity. But at the same time it also is, and perhaps more importantly, a struggle to free themselves from the oppressive shackles of the Israeli society, racism, militarism, homophobia, extreme consumerism, labor exploitation and growing economic inequality. With the great personal daily cost that they are required to pay and their courageous attitude, their words, their actions, it becomes immediately clear that the world is changing with pain, tenacity and passion of people who love justice.

Everyday life We promised to talk. These people let us into their homes, into their lives, they told us their stories. We laughed and shouted together. We saw some of these people die. That’s why we’re here.

To tell their story [3].

The April sun shines across the southern West Bank while we crammed into the small metal box that Sumi, a Palestinian who works as a liaison for the ISM, calls a car and we head to a small village outside of Khalil (the Arabic name of Hebron). There we meet Abu, who saw his house being demolished 15 days ago, while two more houses and three wells were destroyed. Since then he lives in a derelict mobile home with his wife and their six children.

Abu shows us his secret. He uses a new well to irrigate a small field destined for cucumbers and lemons.

If the army knew it, they would tear it down immediately. A few hills away rises the apartheid wall, like a snake of gray concrete immersed in Palestinian territory. The village falls into area C, which means that the Israelis are in control of security and construction activity. Consequently, Palestinians can never get residence permits for their homes, while the army can demolish at will. The Israeli army is doing everything possible to “clean up” the area from Palestinian farmers. The wells are apparently the only reason farmers remain and work in the area.

Of the 2,000 acres that were originally Palestinian land, over 300 acres have

been stolen from the nearby Israeli settlement. The land has become inaccessible due to attacks and threats of violence of the army and the settlers, who run around with weapons in hands.

In protest, the village organizes regular demonstrations every Saturday for over a year now, which are always answered with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. “But we shall never abandon our struggle for our rights,” Abu smiles with a shocking determination.

Another family next door, which has already received an evacuation mandate since their home is to be demolished, invite us with a smile to drink some juice. A Lutheran, two atheists women and an atheist Jewish couple drink and chat with a couple of Palestinian Muslims, while a bunch of kids play ball in the dirt road.

We ask Tariq and Esnad for any reactions to the tattoos some of us have and for the western way of dressing generally (notably for women), what is haram and what is not (in the Muslim religion what is prohibited is characterized as haram and what is allowed halal) . On the wall a painting of Vishnu is hanging, something I’ve never seen in a Muslim home. “We’re in Palestine, not in Saudi Arabia,” says Tariq. He starts talking about how much he dislikes that religion divides people and says he believes that religion is the biggest problem for the women of the so-called third world. “For as long as religion decides, we cannot have equality,” he says. Esnad agrees and asks us: “Do you have equality in your countries?”

Nablus, West Bank of Palestine, 07/04/2013 [1] A point to be noted here is that the states have a history of hostility against stateless people, refugees and nomads.

Jews and Palestinians are two of the many examples of oppressed stateless peoples (the Roma are also a typical example) in modern times. While many Jews were citizens (often second-class citizens) of European countries at the beginning of the twentieth century, an important precondition for the Holocaust was the deprivation of their citizenship, which made them stateless.

[2] Extract from the text “Militarism and anti-militarism in Israel,” a translation of a passage from the book “Si vis pacem: Repensar el antimilitarismo en la época dela guerra permanente”, published in Barcelona in May 2011 by the activist publications Bardo Ediciones.

[3] Catrin Ormedstad, part of her work is “Kolonialism och apartheid”.

Political apathy as a symptom

by Miltos

P

olitical apathy is a phenomenon that preoccupied and preoccupies many intellectuals and social scientists. It is a pathological symptom of a society that loses its creativity and digs deep the foundations of its decay. If we attempt to give a definition of political apathy, we would say that it is the condition where human beings cease to function as active political animals, they cease to consider themselves able to take responsibility for making decisions that determine their lives, finally cease to become exponents of a different social institution, ignoring any sense of autonomy [1]. Instead they adopt a passive stance characterized by mass behaviour, conformity, introversion and excessive individualism or as C. Castoriadis (2001) says, they prefer privacy to freedom.

The phenomenon of political apathy is not explained solely in economic and political terms but has mainly psychological basis. As seen from the very root of the word, “apathy” is derived from the privative a- and the noun πάθος-pathos (passion). The word pathos, from the verb πάσχω-pascho (suffer), has a negative meaning in philosophy, indicating the emotional attachment to an object to such a great extent that the command of reasoning is lost, which naturally leads to mental weakness and dependency. Positivist philosophies and religious metaphysics consider passions as defects that we must eliminate in order to be in charge of ourselves. On the contrary, in poetry, literature, art passion is connected with boundless enthusiasm, perseverance for the achievement of high goals, a mental disposition that leads to the transgression of the self.

Paschein (suffering) has a tragic substance and causes awe

to the audience and respect for the hero who sacrifices and is sacrificed in order to reach his/her goal. It is not a selfish goal, as it has a social and worldly dimension. Therefore, new forms emerge from the dialectic of passion; while it destroys the old, it creates new values and gives new meaning to the world. The realm, however, where passion positively emphasizes its creativity is the realm of politics, politics as the creation of new institutions and not as self-interest, geopolitical control, management of wealth resources or economic administration.

Passion in politics, when it expresses destructiveness is associated with the overthrow of an incumbent status.

It cancels the existing structure of a society and challenges the dominant power, it is in agreement with the project of freedom and lays the foundation of revolutionary consciousness.

The term αστυνόμους οργάς – astynomous orgas (instituting passions) – as expressed by the ancient Athenians – denotes this enthusiastic momentum for the institution of the laws of the city, or more simply the passionate participation of citizens in public affairs. Nonetheless, the collective “political passion” has been expressed only in few moments in history. We see it in the Athenian polis of the 5th century, in the beginnings of the French revolution, in the workers’ uprisings of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, in the great strike of 1905 in Petersburg, Russia, in the 1917 Soviets of anti-tzarist Russia, in the Spanish Civil War of 1936, in May 1968 and of course its seeds exist in many autonomous and anti-authoritarian movements today.

Political representation as a form of subordination The question that emerges is why the passion for political and social life remains the exception rather than the rule? Why do people constantly withdraw in the private realm, allowing public matters to be managed by representatives, “experts” and technocrats? What makes people not fight for emancipation when their most fundamental and vital interests are threatened? Even worse they applaud and consent to authoritarian rules imposed on them. What drives Wilhelm Reich (1983, p.53) to write that “what has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority or those who are hungry don’t steal and why the majority of those who are hungry don’t strike” ?

This leads to the following conclusion: the main issue is not to give the citizen consciousness of social responsibility – this is understood. The question is what inhibits the realization of such responsibility. What is it that drives millions of people to consider insane leaders as the only ones able to solve their problems and overcome the socioeconomic crisis?

Paraphrasing Nietzsche who says that a history of the “physiology of morality” must be written, similarly today we have to write a physiology of apathy.

The French thinker Etienne de la Boetie

(1530-1563), one of the first that dealt with this issue, in his Discourse on voluntary servitude (1548) is unable to understand this phenomenon. He vividly and derisively describes how people allow themselves to be governed by kings and princes despite their inner desire to reject such subordination.

He also mentions that human beings, choosing to live in authoritarian structures, are neither men – as freedom is the natural state of the species – nor animals, because even animals when their freedom is limited or when they are in captivity resist so strongly to the point of self-harm.

Therefore, the lack of passion for politics or otherwise the perversion of passion with its negative meaning as the inability to control ourselves and as an unconscious desire that must be satisfied at all costs, is dominant in all capitalist authoritarian societies. It is fed by them and easily becomes attached in most of its institutions, expressed through excessive consumerism, religion (here in particular we see an irrational passion so intense and widespread that surpasses all forms of creative imagination), adherence to political parties, lifestyle and commercial sports (soccer, etc). It would not be unreasonable to say that the whole economy and its institution is based on this kind of negative passions.

The whole process of production with its alienating impact is consumed directly by the absurd gratification of these pseudo-needs. It seems that the passion of economism kills the passion for freedom. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand that these passions are cultivated by the society that they inevitably create and the corresponding structures, hierarchy, relationships of competition and authority, for the sake of which people are forced to sacrifice any sense of political empowerment and autonomy. At the same time, the

sovereign power by exploiting this situation cultivates through education, family, religion and the media, the individual super-ego, that is the unconscious representations which are tautological with coercion and identify with the above standards in order to reproduce them.

Marxists never paid attention to the sociology of apathy. They never recognized this phenomenon, although there were conditions to help them identify that apathy, to some extent, is the result of the alienation that derives from productive relations. Marxists were more concerned with the dominance of the vanguard of the Party rather than with the thoughts and feelings of the masses which would lead them more quickly to the revolution. They saw the revolution as a social practice that would arrive when the time was ripe in a linear and deterministic manner. On the other hand, Cornelius Castoriadis, although he generally thinks that there is no specific nature in man, in the sense of an unchanged substance, in his mature works he believes that humans are basically idle, that by their nature they tend to behaviours that make them passive and indifferent. Obviously the great thinker of autonomy had come to this conclusion after seeing people prefer television soap operas and fancy cars to the struggle for freedom that would secure them not better wages and better working conditions, but participation in the formation of institutions, which in this very moment is done by a group of uneducated and politically incompetent rulers.

Consequently, the question of political apathy remains open and should preoccupy all those who want to engage seriously with the issue of social emancipation. We see the social revolution not as a gleam of history that takes place at regular intervals but as an institutional process, as a fact of

daily life that occurs with boundless energy, creativity, imagination and of course passion for life and freedom.

[1] For the Greek-French thinker Cornelius Castoriadis, autonomy calls for rejection of every a-priori thinking and continuous questioning of institutions through the use of logos and imagination. Autonomy has a two-fold meaning: it stands for autos, “oneself” and nomos, “the law” (Castoriadis 2007, p.94). An autonomous person “is someone who gives herself her own laws,” in contrast with the state of heteronomy where norms, values and principles are acknowledged as a totally rigid system often guaranteed “by the instituted representation of an extrasocial source, foundation, and guarantee of law. The significance of the project of autonomy in the reinstitution based on norms and values that will contribute to economic equality is of crucial significance. Without selfinstitution or conscious action - “we make the laws, we know it” (Castoriadis 1997, p.18) - the functioning of a society is not determined by its members.

Bibliography Castoriadis, C., and Curtis, D. A., 1997. World in fragments: Writings on politics, society, psychoanalysis, and the imagination. California: Stanford University Press.

Castoriadis, C., 2007. Figures of the Thinkable. 2nd ed. California: Stratford University Press.

De La Boétie, E., 2013 (first published in 1548). Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. [e-book]. Available through: The University of Adelaide <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/ boetie/etienne/servitude/index.html> [Accessed 20 September 2013] Reich, W., 1983. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Middlesex: Penguin Books

For the dissolution of the European Union and direct democracy

by Michael Theodosiadis

F

or quite some time now the imaginary of a united Europe that would promote solidarity and cooperation is losing ground in the conscience of a large part of the population. From the overt attacks of European financial institutions against Portugal, Cyprus and the stigmatization of Greece, it becomes more obvious that the European ideal has significantly lost legitimacy, given the unwillingness of the majority of the leaders of the most powerful EU states to show compassion with its weakest members, responding with hatred and boundless cynicism.

And it is not only the Southern regions that have started to disapprove of this institution. Almost the entire continent is dissatisfied with the failed European vision, with the majority of the British public opinion supporting the country’s exit from the EU whilst in Italy, Giuseppe Grillo’s Five Star “Movement” (known for its Eurosceptic views) came second in the recent elections, leaving behind the conservative coalition of Silvio Berlusconi; an incident that indicates Italy’s reaction against not only EU’s austerity policies, but mostly against the violation of essential democratic rights (as the result of such policies), since there are no MPs, either elected through “democratic” procedures or unelected regulators (else called technocrats), to respond positively to the economic, social and political demands of the citizens whom they supposedly represent, but instead follow the instructions imposed by the parliament of Brussels.

Recent opinion polls in Greece indicate

the rise of eurosceptic tendencies, with 40% expressing their will for the dissolution of the EU[1], the return to the national currency and the restoration of the nation states’ sovereignty. At the same time in Portugal the recent polling reports reveal the rise of euroscepticism, given that 22% support the Left-Block[2]. But, what does all this mean? Some analysts will talk about “protest votes”, others about “hysteric populism” and even more will express, without hesitation, their disappointment for Europe’s degradation. Either way, the matter is critical and hasty conclusions should be avoided (especially now that public discussions are dominated by anger and indignation and, hence, debates are emotionally motivated).

Thereafter, what EU practically means has to be examined, together with the proposals of the various eurosceptic movements before providing further answers to this crucial issue.

The European idea The idea of a federation of states that would be able to defend Europe against the threats of the Ottoman Empire was first expressed by Maximilien de Bethune, the Duc De Sully, whilst the English Quaker William Penn was “one of the first to argue, in 1693, for a European parliament and the end of the state mosaic in Europe” (Urwin 1992, p.2). Later on, the Italian politician Giuseppe Mazzini favored the creation of a federal superpower, which would be called United States of

Europe, envisaging the whole project as an expansion of Italy’s unification.

Victor Hugo in the 1849 International Peace Congress in Paris, supported the creation of a supreme sovereign senate, which “will be to Europe what parliament is to England” declaring that “A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood...

A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.” This position was also supported

by Giuseppe Garibaldi and John Stuart Mill. Furthermore, the Italian philosopher Carlo Cattaneo, in order to dispute the warlike tendencies of the aristocracy, had been fond of the idea of USE as the only answer against the hostilities among the European states. Finally, the anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin supported that “in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe”[3].

Initially, the European ideal was manifested as the unique political orientation that could put an end to the armed conflicts that tormented the entire continent, aiming at transnational peace and stability; a notion that prevails until today, judging by the recent award of the Nobel prize to the EU for its supposed achievement to ensure peace in the region. The idea of the USE inspired the communist

and fascist regimes of the previous century, which were motivated solely by their desire for further expansion and conquests. Thus, during the first Nazi victorious military outcomes in 1940, Wilhelm II declared: ““The hand of God is creating a new world & working miracles.... We are becoming the United States of Europe under German leadership, a united European Continent” (Petropoulos 2006, p. 170), while a few years before Trotsky had called for the creation of the USE under a strong communist government.

During WWII the resistance movements against the Nazi occupation forces strengthened the voice of unity. The end of war and the reconstruction of Europe “brought together the necessity of fighting a common enemy, men and women from all the political persuasions within the Resistance, and from all walks of life, seemed genuinely determined to forget their differences in the fight for a common, peaceful and harmonious future” (Urwin 1992, p.7-8). Britain was also “a sympathetic supporter of the European Union” (Urwin 1992, p.9), thus the British Conservative prime minister Winston Churchill in his speech at the Zurich University declared the following: “We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living.”

This is how the unification of Europe started to grow timidly in the early 1950s, with France and Germany as the leading countries, while its complete integration was scheduled shortly after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. It was the era when the Communist Eastern bloc was collapsing due to mass uprisings that compelled the leaders of many Eastern countries to relinquish power whilst in most of the so called ‘free capitalist world’ neoliberal reforms had almost begun to take place a few decades before (Bottomore 1992, p.69-76), reforms that vastly adhered to the doctrine of the Chicago school of Economics, which advocates that a society can become truly prosperous and functional only if the majority of public services become eliminated for the sake of the markets (Friedman 2009). The failure of socialist ‘vision’ was utterly destructive for the notion of social change, signifying the retreat to conformism and the predominance of the supposed ‘triumph of capitalism’; the unexpected

collapse of all the Eastern despotic regimes that shamefully exploited and finally hijacked the idea of socialist transformation, became the final blow for the overcoming of capitalism, which in the eyes of millions ‘had been the winner of the battle’ without any alternative project left to replace it (Καστοριάδης [Castoriadis] 2001, p.5).

And thus the concept of European expansion and integration was entirely absorbed by the neoliberal imaginary – falsely associated with democracy and freedom – putting Keynesianism to the dustbin of history.

The North and the South Since the eurozone crisis hit the headlines, various stories appeared in the media regarding the “hard-working” Northern Europeans and the “lazy scroungers” of the South. But it is the Greeks more specifically against whom this hate campaign is directed. “The Euro is in jeopardy because of the lazy Greeks who instead of working and producing, they go to demonstrations, don’t pay their taxes, and live beyond their means” is a racist cliché we often hear from various EU leaders, economists, technocrats, and tabloid newspapers. But the slandering of Greece by the tabloid press cannot only be confined to the fact that her economy is weak, untrusted and unstable. It reflects the spirit of civil disobedience that has been rooted in the country for many years, passing from one generation to another, creating fear to the oligarchies of Europe. As an example, the rebellion of 2008 that rocked the entire country, after a police officer in Greece opened fire against the 15 y.o. Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Exarcheia (district of Athens).

During these events the Greek public openly denounced police impunity, corruption and unemployment, whilst this mass uprising affected the rest of the continent; this can be found in the pre-election speeches of Merkel and Sarkozy just weeks after the riots where they spoke about the ‘dreams and hopes of young people.’

What does all this mean? Simply that the Greek uprising could potentially cause a domino of revolutions across Europe,

and this is not simply a hypothesis: approximately 1200 demonstrators protested at the Greek embassy in Vienna on December 14, whilst the day before in Melbourne (Australia) a small group of protesters gathered outside the Greek consulate to express their solidarity and condemn the shooting of Grigoropoulos. In Copenhagen 63 people were arrested when they protested in support of the Greek rioters. On the night of 7 December and during the following week, spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity took place in numerous German cities. On the 8th of the same month, a group of demonstrators occupied the Greek consulate in Berlin. The occupation ultimately ended peacefully. In the first week after the incident, the German Indymedia network had reported demonstrations in 26 German cities, with participation ranging from a few dozens to several hundred people.

Finally, in Spain, 11 demonstrators were arrested and several policemen injured in clashes in Madrid and Barcelona, while police stations and banks were attacked by Spanish youths, fueling concern about copycat protests. In Seville, a relatively small convergence of people in front of a police station was announced for December 10, and turned into a spontaneous demonstration of over 100 people through the streets. Slogans were chanted denouncing the repressive role of the police and the State as well as in solidarity with Grigoropoulos and Greek riots.

Additionally, Greece’s scapegoating is a reflection of the cultural divisions between the European North and South, divisions that existed long before the economic meltdown and were brought to the surface by the current climate of introversion and social destabilization; modern Greece’s culture is overwhelmingly oriental, significantly more in comparison with that of Span and Portugal. Consequently, in the eyes of many Northerners, Greece is a country that does not comply with the standards of the occidental world, follows different societal patterns, customs and ethics, and for this reason has no place in the European Union. In other words, Greece has been victimized thanks to the Northern European anti-oriental mentality that directly or indirectly fuels the victory of racist parties in many national parliaments. But while the economy

was booming, the Northern Europeans’ image of superiority was overshadowed by the fast growth rates and profitability.

From this it follows that the unification of 27 different countries, with different history, customs and traditions is not an easy task since there are inherent cultural and ethical contradictions between European nations, or as Canovan (2005, p.10) says, “the European Union contains some of the most deeply rooted nations in existence, making implausible the idea of building a single European nation to displace them in the affections of EU citizens”.

But these contradictions cannot be overcome through bureaucratic mechanisms and institutions, neither the creation of a single European identity is realistic, but rather the development of strong solidarity bonds among the existing ones, which cannot be achieved since the modern European ideal has been based upon profit and economic antagonism (these are the main elements of the neoliberal imaginary). When financial competition dominates all social relations, and additionally there is lack of political motivations and genuine projects (the result of apathy, de-politicization and retreat to conformism) then it is more likely for contradictions to be expressed in the form of reactionary populism, especially when economic turmoil forces national groups to stick to their own imaginary world; “peoples of different ethnic origins compete with one another in pursuit of jobs, political influence, and states” (Harff and Gurr 2004, p.78). As they compete directly for the scarce resources their identities become more important to them. And since some groups are more successful than others, inequalities increase. This becomes the general condition for national, ethnic or racial divisions and conflicts (Harff and Gurr 2004, p.79).

Subsequently, economic antagonism results in the demonization of the less powerful, of the less similar and the strengthening of populism.

The rise of populism

Unlike Southern countries, where euroscepticism is usually a privilege of the leftists, in the North the British conservative party (Tories) and the farright party UKIP are the most extreme exponents of xenophobia with their voters and supporters asking for a referendum that would determine the country’s participation in the EU, aiming at the limitation of migration; if Brittan stops participating in the EU, the right to free movement will not anymore apply in the country. This at prime facie could be understood as a direct effect of the economic downturn; as aforementioned, intense competition over scarce resources cultivates a climate of introversion, whilst this competition is also expressed in national or racial terms. For Canovan (1999, p.9), “tension [...] provides the stimulus to the populist mobilization”. But additionally, populism is a result of political apathy, a phenomenon that was evident during the years of prosperity. Apathy and conformism discourage elucidation on the political prattein, leading to ideological regression.

This is not only true in the North but also in the South where in the many antiausterity demonstrations that took place last year there was a small number of protesters carrying anti-Merkel banners or blaming specific leaders for the economic downturn (or even resorting to conspiracy theories). While their number is insignificant (despite that the Press attempts to portray them as the main feature of each anti-austerity event) this does not mean that the foundations for the rise of populist mass action have not been placed.

Greece is a good example, where the rise of neofascist Golden Dawn is largely attributed to the widespread indignation against the corrupt political intelligentsia. Nonetheless, Golden Dawn is not explicitly eurosceptic, neither the Greek, Spanish and Portuguese right are overwhelmingly ‘polluted’ with anti-EU rhetorics, in contrast with the British, Swedish or French right.

The next step: neither national nor geographical but political independence Despite the aversion that one might feel by the attacks of the Press and of the financial and political elites of the EU against Cyprus and Greece, and the deprivation of democratic rights and civil freedoms in the countries of the South, the belief that the solution is the return to national governments and national currency is not justified.

This is because the problem is neither monetarist nor national. On the contrary, the problem is deeply political and the voices that demand powerful leaders and national borders cannot be considered “political”. They rather express pre-political views, since they indirectly justify violence and the exclusion of social groups from the political sphere (given that most of those who talk about national independence come from nationalistic circles). Quite the contrary, what is really urgent is political independence, namely a community’s (and not necessarily a nation’s) right for self-regulation, without interference and always in contact with other communities.

Europe of (and for) the people can be nothing but the Europe of direct democracy, of anti-centralization and everyday political action. It is impossible to speak of direct democracy and tolerate Eurozone and EU, a gang of neoliberal oligarchs. It is impossible to speak of direct democracy (political, economic and social equality) and horizontal structures within an organization that shows no respect for the basic constitutional rights (whatever happened to the negative vote of the Irish people regarding the Treaty of Lisbon?). Neither is possible for this bureaucratic Hobbesian mechanism to be transformed into something better, since its centralized structure make it impossible for people’s will to be expressed. Therefore, we need to introduce new projects concerning the European issue, against the brutality of isolationism promoted by nationalistpopulist partied, and the ideologically

bankrupted neoliberalism through the struggle for real democracy, individual and collective autonomy.

The EU must be dissolved and be replaced by an open network of solidarity and cultural contact among the people, which will secure that there will be no central mechanisms to trespass local decision-making (unless there is threat for territorial attack and the community has decided accordingly, something that could be prevented through cultural fraternization networks.) The decisions will be made by the citizens of the community themselves and not by the oligarchs, such as the European Parliament in Brussels. However, in order to accomplish this we must first reject every ideological blindness, either the liberal pro-EU fetishism or the nationalistic imaginary of the right.

Notes [1] According to polls issued by Metron Analysis (Greece 2013), 38% support the further integration of the EU while 40.4% call for its dissolution.

Source: <tvxs.gr/node/123477> [2] Two years after the last general elections the Portuguese public under the pressure of harsh measures made a big shift to the left. At least 22% of voters claim to support the LeftBloc. Source: <http://www.lifo.gr/now/ world/28450> [3] The Anarchist Sociology of Federalism by Colin Ward.

Source: <http://library.nothingness.org/ articles/anar/en/display/334> Bibliography Canovan, M., 2005. The People.

Cambridge: Polity Press.

Canovan, Margaret. (1999). Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy. Political Studies, 41(1), 2-16.

Harff, B., and Ted R., 2004. Ethnic Conflict in World Politics. 2Nd ed.

Boulder: Westview Press.

Marshall, T. H., and Bottomore, T. B. 1., 1992. Citizenship and social class.

London: Pluto Press.

Petropoulos, J. 2006. Royals and Reich, Oxford: University Press Urwin, D. W., 1991. The community of Europe: A history of European integration since 1945. London: Longman.

The society of intercultural relationships

By Michael Theodosiadis

O

ctober 2010: Reactions erupted after the statements of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding the “failure” of multiculturalism; in the beginning of the 1960s, “our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany, and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, some day they will be gone’, but this isn’t the reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed.” Similarly a few months later the British PM David Cameron said from Munich that “state multiculturalism has failed”. His declaration raised intense disagreements from the side of the opposition Labour Party and the Muslim community of England, but was welcomed by far-right parties and racist organizations across Europe. Members of the English Defence League (who on the same day were protesting in Luton against the “islamization” of Britain) openly expressed their satisfaction. At the same time, such statements are constantly used by various right-wing propagandists who speak about the “necessity to return to ethnocentrism and patriotism,” and see immigrants as instruments of an alleged secret plan of cultural deterioration of Europe (for instance, the Norwegian butcher Andres Breivik), while trying by every means to turn social rage against foreigners.

For the first time after several decades, racism comes back taking on threatening dimensions. In the recent parliamentary elections of Greece (June 2012), the neonazi party Golden Dawn won the fifth seat, gaining 6,92% of the total votes[2], plunging the country in terror and racist violence. In the 2009 EU elections, the right-wing United Kingdom Independence of Nigel

Farrange (who considers the EU a hideout of communists) won the second place with 16.09% while the neo-fascist British National party climbed to 8.23%.

In Finland, the right-wing populist party True Finns reaches 12%, Wilder’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands 16.97%, and in the recent French parliamentary elections the far-right Front National of Marine Le Pen came third. At the same time in the U.S. there is increase in neoNazi organizations by 250% and the Tea Party Movement unleashes frontal attack on public sector unions and immigrants, targeting activists, gays and minorities.

A multidimensional phenomenon At prime facie the rapid rise of unemployment increases the supply of manpower and hence hardens the competition in the job market. Thus, the anti-immigrant voices call for the restriction of jobs available for foreign workers, presenting this solution as vital and pragmatic. But even from a capitalist perspective, this perception is utterly wrong: immigration at some point results to the creation of new job opportunities, as there are more consumers and, hence, increases the demand for goods in the market. Also, many immigrants become engaged in self-employed activities; entrepreneurs set up or develop businesses and seek for employees to cover basic positions, or they are hired in jobs that are not anymore attractive to natives.

Nonetheless, the rise of xenophobia cannot only be confined to the economy, as this prevents us from

understanding the multidimensional substance of a complex phenomenon.

If our aim is to acquire a holistic conclusion on this crucial matter we cannot close our eyes to the other aspect of the crisis that underlies the foundations of occidental traditions, that of political and cultural crisis as well as a crisis of values, which will be discussed below.

How contemporary societies feed isolationism Before we get to the point of adopting the populist view that “multiculturalism has failed”, we should see this model as a result and not as a cause or an end in itself. The passage from modernity (identity and hierarchy) to post-modernism (elimination of identity, homogenization, anti-nationalism) is a key element of the post-Cold War era. However, the notion of nonidentification of post-modernism is rather the prevalence of the logic of “anti-modernism” instead of reflecting a cultural and philosophical tendency of a given historical era that aimed to overcome (and not simply to challenge) outdated meanings as those of nationalism/social conservatism.

Cornelius Castoriadis in Rising Tide of Insignificance (1995, p.13-34) speaks on the identity crisis of the Western world explaining how for first time in history every societal role has been lost, constituting individuals unable to acquire rational orientation, to internalize meanings that provide answer to questions such like ‘what

can I do and why.” Ideals such as the nation or religion were used as meaningful significations before the total prevalence of insignificance, concepts that xenophobic voices seek to revive in a society that tends to lose its ‘faith’ even in capitalist growth.

metaphysical ideas and deterministic historical laws (such as historical continuity of the nationalist imaginary), avoid conflict with the values and rules they have set as ideal models. As these values are now an integral part of themselves, any objection is at the same time a challenge of their very existence. In other words, it is a kind of identity fetishism.

The barbarism of institutionalized The bipolarity heteronomy of Western An anthropological/psychoanalytic approach (see Cornelius Castoriadis: civilization The Imaginary Institution of Society) recognizes that every society is governed by certain dominant values, which might confer a particular meaning in its members’ (these values are common to all people in this society). Today we are witnessing an unprecedented, by the standards of modern history, paralysis of the spirit of the questioning of societal norms.

The inability of people to put these given values into question is a key feature of heteronomous societies.

The most extreme cases of social and individual heteronomy are encountered in countries where theocratic institutions control every human activity. For example, the question “is the law fair?” for a Christian fundamentalist has no meaning, as in this case the codes that regulate human behaviour are Given

by God Himself, which means that they cannot be questioned. The same could happen with some other sort of identification, based on an x ideology, such as nationalism, Marxism when adopted blindly and instrumentally, subcultures, different behavioural patterns and generally anything that provides meaning and justifies human existence, or whether, alternatively, gives a purpose to every human activity. Based on Freud (A General Selection from the works of Sigmund Freud, s.218-227), when a person cannot be satisfied by his/her own ego, seeks gratification idealizing an external object. This object significantly lacks freedom of criticism, while all its features are exalted, leading to idealization. Under these conditions, the object is treated in the same way as our ego and everything it stands for is right and blameless. So, persons who are trapped in an ideological microcosm or who identify their ego with various

For a Marxist racism is a method of dividing the working class (or the struggling masses). More specifically, as reported by Marx and Engels (1970, p.64), the dominant values of an era are a creation of the ruling classes, who, exercising full control over the production of material goods for their own interests, at the same time and for the same reason, they manage by various means to promote concepts and ideas which are harmless to their interests. Therefore, under this light, xenophobia could well be described as a creation of oligarchies and somehow a weapon for the manipulation of the masses, in order to divide the anticapitalist movements, as part of the working class oppresses another, favouring thereby the capital. But this approach is certainly not enough to clarify the objective reality and does not identify the real causes of a phenomenon at which we should look for solutions. The elimination of classes in a future society according to Castoriadis (1981, p.58) does not automatically signify the disappearance of obscurantist sentiments deriving from the ideas of the past. Therefore, this Marxian approach reflects only one aspect of reality, ignoring the bipolarity of Western traditions, which will be discussed below.

“The project of autonomy is a creation of our history. This heritage of our tradition, of democracy and philosophy is not the only legacy. We have another legacy: the Inquisition, Stalinism and racism, all these are also creations” (1992, p.23). This is the tradition that understands power and authority as a method of command-obedience relationship as a brutal and treacherous art of enforcement, which comes “from

the old concept of absolute power that accompanied the rise of the European nation-state, of which the oldest and largest yet representatives were Jean Bodin, in sixteenth-century France, and Thomas Hobbes in England of the seventeenth century says Arendt (1975, p.38). Characteristic of this heritage is racism and the ideal of ‘European racial superiority’ used in order to justify the expansionist wars and colonial regimes, explains the same author in one of her most notable publications, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1976). Of this bipolarity we choose the project of autonomy, which based on Castoriadis is identical to freedom and equality.

The conditions that prevailed after the outbreak of the “economic” crisis created the appropriate climate for the emergence of racism either as an ideology or indirectly to awake the old imaginary of European superiority. The regression observed in recent years is obvious in every aspect of society, not just in issues of relations of natives and immigrants, white and visible minorities.

The riots of August 2011 in Britain gave food for thought in government circles about the disorder which prevails in schools around the country. In a related report, the Center for Policy Studies is considering the possibility of a school which will be under the control of former military personnel says The Guardian (2011). The riots fueled the British public opinion with even more reactionary tendencies and brought to the surface the aggressive conservative British imaginary (this can be widely seen in the attitude of the media on issues regarding strikes and demonstrations, and by the racist comments that flooded the social networking sites after the Woolich murder); such tendencies have been kept hidden for years (reflecting the heteronomous side of occidental traditions) and were expressed in moments allowed by the conditions.

Multiculturalism: a new approach The This setback is mainly caused by the revolutionary apathy of recent decades. Addiction to consumerism (which almost becomes character of obsession), lack of political ideals and, minorities as a result, confinement to the private sphere, left a huge gap behind which the conservative political forces try to exploit. Beyond this, even though Cameron and Merkel’s allegations manage to sound agreeable to various racist groups, we must admit that they contain a small grain of truth which if we perceive as a starting point we would not necessarily conclude to xenophobic hysterical beliefs. We should first, however, understand better what we mean by multiculturalism.

At prime facie, it could be argued that a multiculturalist society is characterized by plurality in tastes, ethics and customs, where groups from different cultural backgrounds are brought together. It is considered as the main feature of modern, “democratic” and tolerant, societies and for many intertwined with the concept of human rights. But there is also another aspect of multiculturalism: that different ethnic groups coexist in a society does not necessarily mean that they live in harmony. Here the various ultra-conservative narratives, directly or indirectly, suggest that it is impossible to achieve harmonious coexistence between different racial groups. However, these efforts of people to come into contact with different cultures, debunks such obscurantist and deterministic ideas.

The same fanatical opponents of multiculturalism are unaware that the existing social institutions do not aim at shaping intercultural anthropological types, but instead people-machines whose only target is to increase their economic status. This, in short, means that peaceful coexistence of different cultures is not an immediate pursuit of our society if there is no primary financial incentive. So, the answer to the question “are there interactions between different cultures and ethnic groups in a modern society, to the extent that they eliminate various kinds of tautological closures?” is partially negative. In other words, is it a multicultural society that we really want in order to put an end to racism, or would it be better to take things further, looking for even more radical solutions which will be more viable in practice?

As aforementioned each society gives itself answers to the primary questions of existence, thus creating a wide magma of values called “dominant values” (the imaginary, as Castoriadis would say). Multicultural society is also under the domination of the values that underpin the modern Western society (economism/productivism/domination of nature) which are heteronomous values. Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution managed to overcome the mythical element by replacing it with what the instrumental logic that man’s welfare is materially measurable and infinitely improvable through the expansion of industries. Under these conditions, intercultural relations will be promoted only indirectly inasmuch as the ‘laws’ of the market allow, to the extent that they will consider that there is need for harmonious co-existence of some groups, and that we see that, contrary to what many liberals believe, the absolute dominance of the market do not develop intercultural environment. Instead, the revolutionary character of minorities together with the emancipatory movements and social struggles for civil rights and equality that developed in the past centuries, managed to shape a new social reality in the occident. For this reason in most Western cities today we can see people of different racial backgrounds coming together, developing bonds of friendship, love relationships, without facing prejudice as to the diversity of their external characteristics (skin color, height, eye shape). Also, many Western countries have adopted policies for the support of foreign-language speaking groups (with schools, colleges and universities, radio stations and newspapers, which operate in many different languages). All this, of course, are the fruits of long-standing social struggles for justice and equality, as described above. If we look at modern British history we will see that the years since the early 1950s till the mid 1980s are particularly troubled in regards to immigrant/native relations (as more or less in the rest of the Western world).

Struggles of minorities took place for equal rights (culminating in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.), events that helped the minority populations strengthen their role in society .

Towards a society of intercultural relations The struggles of immigrants and minorities, as mentioned above, had the effect of reducing racial discrimination, setting foundations and paving ways for equality and dignity. But the objectives of these struggles were not fully fulfilled; the ghettos have not disappeared despite that there are many blacks, asians, whites who live in harmony with each other. It is a phenomenon still present in the impoverished suburbs of large cities, which of course means that the struggle for social justice is far from over.

Therefore, the model of multicultural society was initially based on the concept of tolerance of differences and not on acceptance. The tolerance of differences promoted by the multicultural society does not necessarily mean acceptance, does not mean that there are no invisible walls within a modern society. In a city like London, different religious minorities have created their own sub-societies.

These sub-societies are governed by their own dominant values, and partly follow – but do not adopt, whether they’re right or wrong - the imaginary of the dominant British culture; they follow some of its norms and rules without being incorporated into it because a Muslim, for example, does not entirely devote his/herself to the accumulation of money but follows religious imperatives.

This further contributes to the isolation of ethnic groups, which produces phenomena such like the reaction of a religious group when the followers of another criticize them. All this, of course, do not indicate the failure of coexistence of different people, but the lack of contact between ethnic groups.

Therefore, what is important for us today is the search for methods that will shape a new type of co-existence, conditions that promote as much as possible cultural communication while limiting chauvinist trends on all sides. In short,

it would be preferable that the issue of intercultural relations extricate itself from the private sphere, the parliaments and the yellow TV broadcasts, and pass into the political sphere, as one’s contact with people from different cultures is a unique opportunity not only for the understanding of the different, but also for self-review. This, however, first requires changing the existing institutionalization, having in mind that every social institution shapes specific anthropological types.

Based on the project of intercultural relations, we set as our initial goal the quest for philia, [3] in contrast with the notion of tolerance (that is characteristic of the liberal multicultural philosophy). Philia was for Aristotle (1992) the most fundamental precondition for a political community to exist, safeguarding a city from strifes and violent conflicts. Contrary to the defensive logic of tolerance, philia does not aim to cultivate and preserve a permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, differ from one’s own, but 1) to the understanding of the potential catastrophic consequences of social division and exclusion, 2) to the search for common cultural values, seeking at the same time to break the taboos and to end situations that lead to the alienation of the ego and consequently to the enslavement of humans to values which operate only as vital lies, and 3) to the acceptance of diversity through the cultivation of strong solidarity bonds among citizens (for this rejection of the values of economic antagonism and competition that trigger nationalist mobilizations as mentioned in the previous article is utterly required) Considering as primary step the creation of open political assemblies where all citizens can collectively make decisions, under such a procedure every citizen has the opportunity to express his/her own reflection which could hardly be achieved through the dominant biased media. Thus philia, not only enhances communication and solidarity, but additionally strengthens interaction among different ethnic groups, as different cultures are brought into contact in the assembly, where values, norms and institutions are explained and potentially called into question. By allowing ethnic groups to come closer with one another, misconceptions and stereotypes can at any time become rejected, since ignorance and fear for the different is

constantly eliminated. Therefore, If the anti-fascist, emancipatory movement today does not want to lose its radicalism, it should understand that the struggle against racism is also a struggle for the creation of a public sphere, for the establishment of direct democracy, a regime characterized by openness and eterotita (ετερότητα)[4], instead of demanding equality within a society where strong inequalities exist, and lack of communication deprives every vital sociability.

References: Αριστοτέλης, 1992. Πολιτικά. Τομ. 2. Αθήνα: Κάκτος (Aristotle, 1992. Politics.

Vol. II. Athens: Kaktos [My translation]). Καστοριάδης, Κ., 1992. Ο Θρυμματισμένος Κόσμος. Αθήνα: Ύψιλον (Castoriadis, C., 1992. The broken world. Athens: Ypsilon) Arendt, H,. 1970. On Violence. Orlando: A Harvest Book.

Arendt, H., 1976. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 6th ed. USA: A Harvest Book.

Arendt, H., 1990. On Revolution. 6Th ed. London: Penguin Books.

Arendt, H., and Canovan, M., 1998. The Human Condition. 2Nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Bookchin, M., 1992. Urbanization without cities: The rise and decline of citizenship. Montréal: Black Rose.

Castoriadis, C., and Blamey, K., 1997.

The imaginary institution of society.

Paperback ed. Cambridge: Polity.

Finley, M. I. 1., 1985. Democracy ancient and modern. 2Nd ed. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S., 1937. A General Selection from the works of Sigmunt Freud, London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press.

Marx K., and Engels. 1970. The German Ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

[1] Το Βήμα Online [2] See also: Michael Theodosiadis 2012: Interpreting the results of Greek elections (June 2012). Source: <http:// wp.me/pyR3u-aRU> [3] Aristotle’s notion of φιλία (philia) translated as friendship (between the citizens), meaning harmonic co-operation rather than competition and aggression (Finley 1985, p.29) was conceived as the most reliable safeguard against civil wars (Arendt 1990, p.34); “η γαρ τοΰ συζην προαίρεσις φιλία” (the will to live together is created by friendship)” says Aristotle in Politics (Volume II, 1992, p.52), meaning that family connections, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, solidarity that brings human beings together in peace is a product of friendship. But additionally, friendship according to Bookchin (1992, p.38) “implies an expansive degree of sociality that is a civic attribute of the polis and the political life involved in its administration”. It should not be confused with the equivalent Latin word amicitia which rather denotes career success depended “not only upon lineage and wealth but also on the elaborate system of friends” (Bookchin 1992, p.45), pointing out the misinterpretation of the Greek notion of polis by the Roman intelligentsia.

[4] According to Hannah Arendt (1998, p.176) the concept of eterotita (or else acceptance to diversity) was initially born in ancient Greece.

ὁ τόκος/ἡ βία (the debt/ the violence)

by Julia Riber Pitt

D

avid Graeber writes in Debt: The First 5,000 Years: “The story of the origins of capitalism, then, is not the story of the gradual destruction of traditional communities by the impersonal power of the market. It is, rather, the story of how an economy of credit was converted into an economy of interest; of the gradual transformation of moral networks by the intrusion of the impersonal -- and often vindictive -power of the state” (p. 332).

Definitions of words tend to get morphed, and the word “capitalism” is no exception. What people today will tell you means “free enterprise” was originally a term coined by socialists to denounce the system of exploitation and monopoly. As far as I’m concerned, capitalism should be thought of as a usury-based economy, usury being an all-encompasing term for a fee on a borrowed good. Your boss does not pay you; you pay the boss for renting the means of production with the product of your labor. Rent to landlords as well as capitalists’ profits stolen from labor should also be considered as be forms of usury.

Capitalism is not just a commodity market system, a system of wages, or a “right” of increase; it is the systematic extraction of increase from labor through exploitative property. The boss who steals the product of labor, the creditor who syphons off what you have produced by way of interest payments, the landlord who takes as much as he can from you without producing anything himself do not rule on their titles alone, but on their constant acts of extortion. No one can have a reciprocal relationship with a ruling authority, be it a politician, a landlord,

a boss, or anyone who takes more than what has been given them. When right-libertarians claim that exploitation wouldn’t mean anything if there was no government granting privilege, they fail to see the inequality that exists inherently as a result of such a system based on such actions. This sort of institutionalized parasitism will always end with the parasites being on top.

The system of increase is purely based on domination. Already we see domination move beyond the act of theft into a public mindset that legitimizes it as it has been conditioned to accept it. The forms of authority and the like become symbolic. Just like consumer culture, which breeds on the domination of the commodity-form, there is a culture of extortion that has emerged.

Justification must precede the right. In a just society, demanding more than for what one gives would no longer be taken as a fact of nature but something that must justify its legitimacy to go on.

All of us are individuals, yet all of us hold characteristics in common; we are both part of nature, yet each of us must possess our own unique nature. The self and what it owns are both unique and shared, but as an unresolvable contradiction, the individual self must constantly justify the context in which it owns things exclusively and what it owns in common with others, so that both the individual and the collective may continue to develop. That is why one’s right to property, whether it is shared or solely theirs, must be justified between individuals as such in order for justice to be realized and freedom to exist for all. As well, it is only when we become committed to justice, and reorganize our institutions according to

such, will we rid ourselves of this awful system. Technology in itself won’t do it. Running away from everything won’t do it. Asking the governing state to temporarily “save” us won’t do it. We have to think of what kinds of values we want our system to embody.

The libertarian (including left-libertarian) means of dealing with this are also faulty, namely the claim that a free(d) market is the necessary prerequisite for justice, since - according to them - open competition will drive down rents and profits to a near low. I myself used to promote this notion about a year and a half ago, now I think it’s completely dubious. The market itself, no matter how open or competitive it is, will not end this exploitation and domination by usury; nor will it bring about justice. The whole idea requires the market to be in equilibrium, which it can never be, and assumes certain behaviors from producers (such as the notion that consumers will always gravitate towards the cheapest commodities, or that commodities in a market free from state-granted privilege will be completely absent of the hyperreal and that commodities will only symbolize what they are in reality - for example, shampoo at the drugstore will just be shampoo and not a symbolic representation of “perfect hair”). I find that free market anticapitalists also tend to confuse equity with scale; an exchange between a consumer and a small producer - even if free of all regulations and taxes - is not necessarily an honest one. Take Bitcoin for example: it is toted as being “revolutionary” because it is a “stateless currency”, however, if it functions identical to the currencies

of capitalism (be it gold, silver, or “Federal Reserve notes”) it is just the same. If there is interest on it, even at a small percentage, it is not behaving as an object of liberation but merely as an object that imitates the dominant system, even if that imitation is somehow lesser than what we experience every day in the capitalist economy. I will write a more in-depth critique of this notion, especially its connection to agorism and agorist tactics (i.e. merely “crashing the system” without an entirely different system to replace it), later on.

With that said, there are plenty of ways we can overcome this. Do the anarchist thing by creating new institutions and taking over the old so that any repeat of the usurious system of the past becomes unthinkable in the future. We can create interest-free mutual credit, squat buildings, hold rent strikes, and create cooperatives. Always keep our principles in mind. Instead of trying to outcompete capitalist parasites in their own rigged game, we could transcend them. It should be said that the removal of capitalist profit, rent, and interest

(usury) is not the revolutionary act; it is how we put together this dissolution on the basis of cooperation and federation that forms a revolution both economically and socially. The way in which we relate to each other when we exchange will progressively shape how we relate to each other elsewhere. After all, mutualism is just a gift culture. Usury is domination. Rent is parasitism. Stop paying it.

The erosive effect of the dress code

by Sofia Zakary

H

umans are renowned for spending their time preoccupied with trivialities, meaningless or harmful activities, making life difficult for each other by choosing to behave in ways which they regard as utterly important but which are ultimately senseless and destructive. One of these quirks of people is the enforcement of dress code at workplaces (let alone work and the wage system itself, an issue worthy of separate discussion).

For the purposes of this text let’s accept that some work still needs to be done, and that the abolition of work - as Bob Black appealing writes - is not immediately possible. Since we live in a society largely immersed in the work ethic, we should actively bring into question the components of this ideology if we ever want to see it loosing its grip on the minds of the people.

A number of laws and regulations exists regarding the clothing and appearance bosses can enforce upon employees; colars, ties, skirts, hair-length, grooming restrictions, and even the seemingly lax custom of dress-down Friday consist a strict framework imposed on the human body and behaviour.

Theoretically, employers are liable for sex, gender and religious discrimination but they can appear to be on the right by claiming that their policy is to treat all employees “equally strict”. There is the case of Miss S. who was not allowed to wear trousers at work. The British Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decided in favour of the employer because they had maintained an “even-handed approach between men and women” by imposing a different

but equally strict dress code for both sexes. The bosses, therefore, have secured the “right” to use their power on the employee’s body so long as they distribute the pressure evenly.

“But I don’t feel this way,” some would argue, proudly. “I am a valued member of a company and I enjoy my work. I like to dress appropriately even if it is not officially required.” This statement is an alarming indication of how deep is the encroachment of the workplace into the spontaneity and imagination of man, who is turning, or has turned for that matter, into homo economicus, not a person any more but primarily an employee.

What’s wrong with the dress code?

“Clothing is a very powerful way in which social regulation is enacted: it turns bodies into readable signs, making the observer recognise patterns of docility and transgression, and social positioning” (213), writes Ines Dussel and in this remark she is generally right. Clothing is a language of sorts which has a transforming capacity; one is regarded by others not as a body but as a body charged with an added meaning. This meaning is mainly two-fold: it either shows obedience to social expectations and behaviours considered desirable and normal, or it suggests a divergence from the norm, an inclination to a freer attitude. As an

example, it is highly improbable to see a squatter wearing a tie and suit, or a boss dressed like a punk. Although aspects of various sub-cultures have been incorporated by capitalism and are often appealing to the masses (piercings, tatoos, drug use, certain types of non-conventional clothes or hairstyles), the duality of the social message of clothing remains the same: formality and informality are largely expressed by the choice of clothing.

The business suit may not necessarily be as strict as the military suit but it still is a type of suit, even in its more relaxed variations. These variations exist, as Colin Ward explains, because there has been a “relaxation of dress codes, pioneered all through the 20th century by the radical nonconformists’ rejection of fashion” (2004). Ward here refers to the dress code which distinguishes social classes but his observation is significant for the business dress code as well. Despite these changes, which were brought about by the encouragement of class mobility, and despite that the non-comformist opinion seems to have penetrated social norms (hence the relaxation of the dress code), the worship of “decency” has not been eradicated from the work place.

What I want to focus on is the effect of the dress code on the body, and subsequently on the mental framework and behaviour of the wearer. “No matter what sort of uniform it is [...] to put on such livery is to give up one’s right to act as an individual”, writes Alison Lurie (1983). This statement will be confronted by those who claim to see a logical pattern in the dress

code or by those who might say that any combination of clothes ultimately refers to a dress code. My point of disagreement is that the behaviour of people in every day life strongly testifies in favour of Lurie’s observation: the effect of the uniform/suit is detrimental for the human mentality.

The uniformed body, rather than resembling a living being, tends to resemble an object. Holding a job is like acting a role (in fact, the word role is often used instead of the word job), and what the employee wears is the costume appropriate for the role. The employee, as an actor, is not supposed to use his/her own words, express his/her own feelings, be him-/ herself. He/she has a function to fulfill, a performance (another theatrical-register word) to carry out. The dress code is the sine qua non of the performance; at all times the subject must put on the right appearance, must conform to instructions and standards. Without the uniform the employee is no more fit to perform, is not allowed on the stage of the workplace. Putting on the uniform, the subject is expected to put on an attitude and a character which often is very different from the character of the every day man or woman. Consequently, as the subject spends a great deal of his/her life at work, elements of this character start permeating the mind.

A long-term familirisation with the uniform is effective in order to make humans accept it as normal. It is important to instill the dress-code logic into the minds of children from their early years in school, before they start developing their critical thinking abilities. Sameness and discipline, thus, restrict the natural drive for individuality, self expression, and imaginative thinking. The school uniform is an effective way to make “students adhere to the dress code and use proper manners as a way to provide them with social skills, including those needed for future employment”¹. This dehumanization of the self and the disconnection from others can deeply affect the state of mind of pupils. The individuals may say that their choices are theirs and that their body and mind belongs to them; they would not admit otherwise. But their behaviour and choices tell a different story: they take the world around them for granted and do not question authority and social norms. This is not to say

that the transformation is absolute and irreversible; in this case we would entirely cease to behave like humans and would become mere automatons, which cannot be true for any of us.

Anyone is capable of moments of revelation or deep thought. The problem is that these moments become fewer and rarer, while the moments of apathy and obedience take more and more space and time, saturating the mind and eroding its qualities.

“The struggle to impose the discipline of labour upon our activity is a struggle fought by capital each and every day: what else do managers, teachers, social workers, police and so on do?” (2010) John Holloway writes. These professional categories are not mentioned in random. They are all required to wear uniforms and their position is closely connected to discipline. They represent a top-down structure and their function is to impose and be imposed. Without the right uniform they would not have been able or allowed to be part of the structure. At the same time, consumers/customers expect this structure; they do not trust a company when the staff do not behave and look in a specific way. Without the right shoes, hair, or tone of voice an employee is not to be taken seriously.

Thus, people themselves, those who are under the yoke of capital, perpetuate and impose the logic of the boss.

Is casual a dress code?

Some might argue that casual clothing is still a dress code, that no matter how free we believe we are when we dress “as we like”, we are still dressed according to what is generally acceptable by society. For example, we don’t go about dressed as aboriginals, or like people used to dress a hundred years ago. I want to support that this lingering post-modern logic of homogenisation, of elimination of criteria and difference in attitudes, is irrational and self-indulgent. It would have some validity if all types of clothes had the same appearance and significance, and therefore we would have been right to criticise them equally. It is plain to see that sports shoes are very different from formal shoes, or that a jumper is not a shirt. There is a reason why we use different words to express different

things. The dictionary entry for casual is: “subject to or produced by chance.”

The word casual comes from the Latin word casus, which means “chance, occasion, opportunity; accident, event.” Given than the dress code is identified with restriction, casual dress by definition cannot be a type of dress code.

Words speak for themselves: chance, opportunity. If you do not have the chance to be yourself, you will find yourself transformed into someone you are not, a person without a chance to be free in the movements of the body and the workings of the mind. The encroachment of the mind takes place in all different ways; the supermarket, the spectacle, the factory, the office, the strict dress code turn the spontaneous into calculated vacuum. Where this vacuum predominates there is little or no space for the spontaneous, the casual.

Is anything an option?

Liberation from the dress code is one of the things that needs to be done if we want to take steps towards human emancipation. However, the major problem in which the dress-code issue is entailed, is the work ethic and work itself. A dress-what-you-like attitude that would not be complemented with a radical change of opinion towards work, would not be a solution. On the other hand, freedom of choice does not mean that minimum rules should not apply.

What is constrictive is not the existence of rules in themselves but the fact that decision-making is either restricted to the elect few or that social norms which come from above are widely and passively accepted as effective and superior. It is of utmost importance that rules be made by members of a society who can think and decide as equals among equals. So long as there is a deficiency of (political and economic) equality in society, rules will keep being imposed vertically.

What would these new rules be? It is not politically mature to give readymade, individual answers to issues that should be handled collectively, but a few suggestions can be made. Going naked or semi-naked for example would not be an option, unless you live with an indigenous tribe in the Amazonas. And

if you decide to go out the door wearing different shoes and your clothes inside out, you will soon find that this is neither aesthetically desirable nor practical, as the pockets will be on the wrong side and the texture of the cloth will be rough on your skin. What is most important is not to make exaggerated comments about clothing trying to disprove the necessity of rules, but to dismantle the existing logic of servility and to promote freedom of behaviour and mind.

What about hospital workers, construction workers, garbage collectors...

The list can go on to include others such like the police, judges, fire fighters, cooks etc. First of all we need to consider what occupations among these are necessary and why.

For example, we don’t really need the police, as their job is to protect the elites and not to prevent crime.

This can be the subject of a separate article but suffice it here to say that the existence of police does not reduce the crime rates. Peter Kropotkin gives a substantial solution to crime in Law And Authority: “It is well-known that two-thirds, and often as many as threefourths, of such “crimes” are instigated by the desire to obtain possession of someone’s wealth. […] Moreover, it is also a well-known fact that the fear of punishment has never stopped a single murderer. He who kills his neighbour from revenge or misery does not reason much about consequence; and there have been few murderers who were not firmly convinced that they should escape prosecution. This immense class of so-called ‘crimes and misdemeanours’ will disappear on the day on which private property ceases to exist.”

We need to re-evaluate the necessity of all occupations and the amount of time we spend at work. This might include fewer working hours and collective solutions to neighbourhood problems which could eliminate the need for professionals (cleaners, construction workers, child minders etc). A more

relaxed stance towards work would lead to more work-free time, the minimisation of the dress code, and the abolition of phony decency. Re-think the real meaning of the human essence: imagination and creativity. Shed the rigid hierarchical suit.

Notes: 1. The quotation is from the study “Tuck in that shirt! Race, class, gender, and discipline in the urban school” by Edward W. Morris. Morris spent two years studying Matthews Middle School in Texas, USA. References Black, Bob. The Abolition of Work.

Loompanics Unlimited, 1986.

Dussel, Ines. School Uniforms and the Disciplining of Appearances. Published in Cultural History and Education: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Schooling, Routledge, 2013.

Holloway, John. Cracks and the Crisis of Abstract Labour. Antipode, 2010.

Kropotkin, Peter. Law and Autority.

International, 1986.

Lurie, Alison. The Language of Clothes.

Henry Holt and Company, 1981 Morris, Edward. Tuck that Shirt!

Published in Schools and Society: A sociological approach to Education.

Pine Forge Press, 2008.

Ward, Colin. Anarchism: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, 2004.