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People’s University in Washington Square

24 Oct
Out from the classrooms and into public space, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.

About

The People’s University brings education out from the classrooms into public spaces.

The People’s University refuses exclusions and limitations on access both to education and to public space.

The People’s University is open to people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and abilities. And it demands that those with privilege step up by stepping back and listening, so that we can learn from each other.

The People’s University draws inspiration from the occupations on Wall Street, other cities in the United States, and throughout the world.

The People’s University acknowledges that NYU, and other private universities in New York City and beyond, have colonized our neighborhoods, erecting physical and social barriers to inclusion. The People’s University will now decolonize the public space at the center of NYU’s real estate empire—Washington Square Park.

The People’s University acknowledges that a movement for economic justice and radical social change requires hard work and a lot of rethinking assumptions. Educational efforts and community organizing go hand in hand, and the People’s University will bring community groups, activists, union members, students and educators into dialogue to build this movement together.

The People’s University aims to remove education from the marketplace. Learning must be free of charge, and opportunities for education must be plentiful, not scarce. The People’s University is one small step in that direction, because it says that education is not a consumer good. It is what the 99% can and must share in common.

The People’s University is organized in solidarity with #OWS in Liberty Square and complements the education and empowerment work ongoing there. Events at the People’s University will cover a range of subjects, from “Understanding the Economic Crisis” to art and activism, from the history of worker occupations to the ongoing struggles of NYC communities against economic injustice.

Sessions en español and with sign language interpretation will be announced soon. Please join us, and propose your own sessions at nyu4ows@gmail.com.

The Private Law of Protest

14 Sep

The Private Law of Protest: Workshop at Kent Law School, November 4, 2011.

This one-day workshop will examine the deployment of private law by university management against students in the context of recent protests against the marketisation of learning and teaching. The workshop will draw on the experiences of occupiers and their lawyers in mapping and critiquing the use of tort, contract and property law to end, prevent and punish student occupations of university buildings. Among the questions we might ask are:

- How have the rights of free assembly and free speech been restricted – in principle and in practice – in recent occupation judgments?
- Has private law been used within the university in this way before? Has it been used in this way elsewhere?
- What sort of university space are we protesting to defend/create and for whom? How do protestors’ visions of university space depart from that protected by law?
- How useful are the tropes of ‘marketisation’ and ‘privatisation’ of the university in understanding recent developments in the private law of protest?
- How should we understand the relationships between the legal control of university space by management and broader government projects?
- How might we re-imagine the relationship of protest to the injunction, the contract and the possession order? Is there an alternative law of protest which departs from that underwritten by the state?

There is no charge for attendance, but for space and catering purposes, please email: m.enright@kent.ac.uk.

This workshop is generously sponsored by Social & Legal Studies.

Call for a Transnational Meeting in Tunisia

14 Sep

Call for a Transnational Meeting in Tunisia

We, students, precarious workers, unemployed, and activists of Europe and North Africa met in Tunis to share our knowledge and begin a process of common struggles. The struggles that have swept across North Africa over the last few months spoke to the entire globe because the absence of a future for the new generations was at the center of these conflicts. The front lines in these struggles were held by the new generation who is always the first to fight and the last to be listened to. In the context of the global economic crisis, there are many parallels in the reasons why we are fighting in Europe and why Ben Ali and Moubarak were toppled.

These struggles are demanding a radical change of a system based on generalized exploitation by parasitic governments of elites over the needs of the many. We are revolting against the misery of the present and to build new social relationships that are produced by processes of liberation and the reappropriation of our collective wealth. These struggles create common spaces that power constantly tries to fragment and repress.

This is why we are calling for a transnational Meeting of activists to share our struggles and to construct common strategies and campaigns. We don’t want to have a “media” event, but to construct a transnational network able to face these times of struggle and great social transformation.

We would like this Meeting to be a laboratory of reflection and common work around the following fundamental questions: migration and the free circulation of people and knowledges, precariousness, the question of debt and social services, free and accessible education for all, the construction of autonomous media and networks, the reappropriation of urban spaces, the mechanisms and the forms of social mobilization and the experimentation of new forms of organization and collective intelligence.

We propose a 3-day Meeting in Tunisia in September 2011, and invite all collectives, groups, individuals and activists who adhere to this call and who wish to construct a transnational network of struggle.

Front de Libération populaire de la Tunisie

Knowledge Liberation Front

Network Welcome to Europe and other activists of NoBorder

Soliplenumk Revolte (Gottingen)

 

Source: http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/call-for-a-transnational-meeting-in-tunisia/

Defend Education – Fight Privatisation. London 9th November 2011

27 Jul

Next ROU Concept Meeting: What Would It Mean to go ‘In, Against and Beyond’ the University?

17 Jun

Since its inception the Really Open University has expressed a desire to go beyond defending the University in its current elitist and exclusionary form. In our opposition to the neoliberalisation of the academy we have held no nostalgia to the public university that was. We understand the University exists as a border, filtering those it allows/rejects from its boundaries based on a range of oppressive criteria, including but not limited to racist and patriarchal ideologies and a fulfilment of its role to reproduce a ruling elite.

We have also, however, rejected a simple dialectic of defend/destroy, opting instead for a politics of transformation. Many of us find ourselves ‘inside’ the existent university, whether that be as students or staff, undergraduates or postgraduates, but also as non students or those wondering whether to return to the university.

In many ways we have wished to develop a praxis of ‘in, against and beyond‘ the university, thus refusing to both reformism or a politics of purity. In this meeting we want to discuss in more detail what it might mean to be ‘in and against’ the university, and how this might affect our ability to ‘beyond’ its existing form.

Tuesday, June 21 · 6:00pm – 8:00pm
The Victoria Hotel
28 Gt George Street, LS1 3D

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102306929861659&pending

Call for a Transnational Meeting in Tunisia

19 May

Call for a transnational meeting in English, French, Arab, Italian, Polish.

Call for a Transnational Meeting in Tunisia

We, students, precarious workers, unemployed, and activists of Europe and North Africa met in Tunis to share our knowledge and begin a process of common struggles. The struggles that have swept across North Africa over the last few months spoke to the entire globe because the absence of a future for the new generations was at the center of these conflicts. The front lines in these struggles were held by the new generation who is always the first to fight and the last to be listened to. In the context of the global economic crisis, there are many parallels in the reasons why we are fighting in Europe and why Ben Ali and Moubarak were toppled.

These struggles are demanding a radical change of a system based on generalized exploitation by parasitic governments of elites over the needs of the many. We are revolting against the misery of the present and to build new social relationships that are produced by processes of liberation and the reappropriation of our collective wealth. These struggles create common spaces that power constantly tries to fragment and repress.

This is why we are calling for a transnational Meeting of activists to share our struggles and to construct common strategies and campaigns. We don’t want to have a “media” event, but to construct a transnational network able to face these times of struggle and great social transformation.

We would like this Meeting to be a laboratory of reflection and common work around the following fundamental questions: migration and the free circulation of people and knowledges, precariousness, the question of debt and social services, free and accessible education for all, the construction of autonomous media and networks, the reappropriation of urban spaces, the mechanisms and the forms of social mobilization and the experimentation of new forms of organization and collective intelligence.

We propose a 3-day Meeting in Tunisia in September 2011, and invite all collectives, groups, individuals and activists who adhere to this call and who wish to construct a transnational network of struggle.

Front de Libération populaire de la Tunisie

Knowledge Liberation Front

Network Welcome to Europe et d’autres activistes du No Border

Soliplenumk Revolte (Gottingen)

—-

Appel pour un meeting transnational en Tunisie

Nous, étudiants, travailleurs précaires, chômeurs, activistes et militants d’Europe et d’Afrique du Nord, nous sommes rencontrés à Tunis pour croiser nos savoirs et entamer un processus de luttes communes.  Les luttes qui ont traversé l’Afrique du Nord dans ces mois ont parlé à tout le monde parce qu’elles ont mis au centre de leur combat les conditions de vie et l’absence de futur des nouvelles générations, les premières à se battre, les derniers à avoir droit de parole. Dans le contexte de la crise économique mondiale, il y a plusieurs similitudes entre ce pourquoi on lutte en Europe et les raisons pour lesquelles on a chassé Ben Ali et Moubarak.

Ces luttes demandent un changement radical d’un système qui se fonde sur l’exploitation générale et  le gouvernement d’élites parasitaires sur les besoins des majorités. On se révolte contre la misère présente et pour bâtir de nouveaux liens sociaux qui soient produits par des processus de libération visant la réappropriation de la richesse collective. Ces luttes ont créé un espace commun que les pouvoirs cherchent constamment à fragmenter et à réprimer.

Voici pourquoi nous appelons à un meeting transnational d’activistes pour partager les luttes et pour construire des stratégies communes. Nous ne voulons pas faire un « événement » médiatique, mais nous voulons construire un  réseau transnational à la hauteur d’un temps de luttes et de grandes transformations sociales.

Nous voudrions que ce meeting soit un laboratoire de réflexion et de travail commun autour des questions qui nous semblent fondamentales : la migration et la libre circulation des personnes et des savoirs, la précarité, la question de la dette et des services sociaux, la connaissance libre et gratuite pour tous, la construction de réseaux et de médias autonomes, la réappropriation de l’espace urbain, les  mécanismes  et les formes de mobilisation, l’expérimentation de nouvelles formes d’organisation et d’intelligence collective.

Nous proposons un meeting de 3 jours en Tunisie en septembre 2011, en invitant les collectifs, groupes et individus, activistes qui adhèrent au contenu de cet appel et qui souhaitent construire un réseau transnational de lutte. 

 

Front de Libération populaire de la Tunisie

Knowledge Liberation Front

Network Welcome to Europe et d’autres activistes du No Border

Soliplenumk Revolte (Gottingen)

 

—-

 

نداء لملتقى في تونس

اجتمعنا طلبة و عمال مفقرين و معطلين عن العمل ،نشطاء من أروبا و شمال افريقيا، في تونس لإثراء معارفنا و العمل على مشاريع نضالات مشتركة.فقد حاز ما حصل في شمال افريقيا من حراك شعبي اهتمام الجميع لكونه ناجما عن تدني مختلف مستويات العيش و غياب افاق مستقبلية حقيقية للأجيال الجديدة،التي على دورها الريادي في النضال تبقى بعيدة كل البعد عن التمتع بحق التعبير عن رأيها في الخيارات و القرارات وفي سياق الأزمة الإقتصادية العالمية نرى تشابها بين اسباب التحركات الشعبية و الطلابية في أروبا و ما أدى إلى سقوط بن علي و مبارك

هذا النضال هدفه تحقيق تغييرات جذرية في منظومة قائمة على الإستغلال و تسلط نخب عابثة على التصرف في شؤون و احتياجات الأغلبية ، يقوم ضد البؤس و الفقر و يسعى لبناء روابط و هياكل إجتماعية جديدة تكون نتاجا لعملية تحرر هدفها إستعادة الثروات المشتركة. وقد خلقت مختلف هذه النضالات فضاء مشتركا تحاول السلط بصفة دائمة تشتيته و قمع مكوناته
لذلك فإننا ندعو الى لقاء دولي للنشطاء من مختلف الأفاق للإستفادة من تجارب الجميع و بناء استراتيجيات نضال مشتركة .
نحن لانريد تنظيم “حدث” على المستوى الإعلامي بل بناء شبكة عابرة للدول تكون على مستوى النضالات و التغيرات الإجتماعية الراهنة

نحن نهدف الى لقاء يكون بمثابة المخبر للتفكير و العمل المشترك في ما يخص النقاط الأساسية التالية:

الهجرة و حرية تنقل الأشخاص و المعارف،الهشاشة الإقتصادية،مسألة المديونية بمختلف أشكالها، تردي الخدمات الإجتماعية،مجانية وتحريرالمادة المعرفية من كل ما يقيدها، إحداث شبكات و وسائل إعلام مستقلة،إستعادة الفضاء الحضري،طرق و أشكال التعبئة،الذكاء الجمعي و طرق التنظم الجديدة
نحن نقترح لقاء بتونس يدوم ثلاثة أيام في سبتمبر 2011 و نستدعي النشطاء المنتظمين و غير المنتظمين الذين يتفقون مع محتوى هذا النداء و يطمحون الى بناء شبكة نضالية عابرة للدول

Front de Libération populaire de la Tunisie

Knowledge Liberation Front

Network Welcome to Europe et d’autres activistes du No Border

Soliplenumk Revolte (Gottingen)

—-

Appello per un meeting transnazionale a Tunisi

Noi studenti, precari, disoccupati e attivisti del Nord Africa e dell’Europa, ci siamo incontrati a Tunisi per condividere saperi e costruire lotte comuni. Le rivolte che hanno attraversato l’Africa del nord in questi mesi parlano a tutti, perché hanno messo al centro le condizioni di vita e l’assenza di futuro delle nuove generazioni, le prime a scendere in strada, le ultime ad avere diritto di parola. Nel contesto della crisi economica globale, sono molti i tratti comuni tra i conflitti in Europa e i movimenti che hanno cacciato Ben Ali e Mubarak.

L’obiettivo delle nostre lotte è la trasformazione radicale di un sistema fondato sullo sfruttamento generalizzato e il governo delle elite parassitarie contro i bisogni dei molti. Ci ribelliamo contro la miseria del presente e per costruire nuovi rapporti sociali fondati su percorsi di liberazione e sulla riappropriazione della ricchezza collettiva. Queste lotte hanno prodotto uno spazio comune che il potere cerca continuamente di frammentare e reprimere.

Su questa base proponiamo un meeting transnazionale di attivisti per condividere le esperienze di conflitto e costruire percorsi in comune. Non ci interessa fare un «evento» mediatico, ma vogliamo costruire una rete transnazionale all’altezza delle sfide e della trasformazione sociale. 

Il meeting che stiamo organizzando vuole quindi essere un laboratorio di riflessione e organizzazione su questioni politicamente centrali: le migrazioni e la libertà di circolazione delle persone e dei saperi, la precarietà, il debito e un nuovo welfare, l’accesso libero e gratuito alla conoscenza, la rete e la costruzione di strumenti di comunicazione indipendenti, la riappropriazione dello spazio urbano, i metodi e le forme di lotta, la sperimentazione di nuove forme organizzative dell’intelligenza collettiva.

Proponiamo allora un meeting di 3 giorni in Tunisia nel mese di settembre e invitiamo collettivi, gruppi e singoli attivisti che condividono questi temi e vogliono costruire una rete transnazionale di lotte.

Front de Libération populaire de la Tunisie

Knowledge Liberation Front

Network Welcome to Europe e altri attivisti di NoBorder

Soliplenum Revolte (Göttingen)

 

—-

 

Zaproszenie do udzialu w ponadnarodowym spotkaniu

My, studenci, prekarni pracownicy, bezrobotni i aktywiści różnych ruchów społecznych Europy i Afryki Północnej spotkaliśmy się w Tunisie by dzielić się wzajemnie naszą wiedzą i stworzyć podstawy dla wspólnie prowadzonych walk. Rewolucje, które przetoczyły się przez Afrykę Północną w ostatnich miesiącach przemówiły do tak wielu osób, gdyż w ich centrum stały warunki życia, brak jasnej wizji przyszłości nowego pokolenia, które po raz pierwszy wyszło na ulicę i zabrało głos. Przyglądając się im w kontekście światowego kryzysu ekonomicznego, możemy dopatrzyć się wielu podobieństw między konfliktami rozwijającymi się w Europie i tymi, toczonymi przez ruchy, które obaliły reżimy Ben Alego i Mubaraka.

Celem tych wszystkich zmagań jest radykalna transformacja systemu opartego na ogólnym wyzysku obszernych części populacji prowadzonym przez rządzące, pasożytnicze elity. Sprzeciwiamy się ubóstwu teraźniejszości i mamy zamiar zbudować nowe relacje społeczne oparte na ścieżkach wolności oraz procesie odzyskiwania wspólnego bogactwa. Te walki wytworzyły przestrzeń, którą władza stara się stale dzielić i represjonować.

Wychodząc z tej perspektywy chcielibyśmy zwołać ponadnarodowe spotkanie aktywistów w celu współdzielenia doświadczeń z toczonych walk oraz po to, by stworzyć wspólnie kampanie. Nie jesteśmy zainteresowani tworzeniem kolejnego medialnego wydarzenia, ponieważ celujemy w  stworzenie międzynarodowej sieci nadającej się do stawienia oporu wyzwaniom, przed którymi stoją nasze ruchy oraz do przeprowadzenia społecznej transformacji.

Spotkanie, które organizujemy w najlepszym wypadku miałoby stać się laboratorium teoretycznej refleksji oraz procesu organizacji skupionych wokół politycznie istotnych kwestii: migracji oraz wolności przepływów ludzi i wiedzy, prekarności, długu i nowego dobrobytu, bezpłatnego i wolnego dostępu do wiedzy, sieci i autonomicznych mediów, ponownego przyswojenia przestrzeni miejskiej, metod i form walki oraz eksperymentów z nowymi formami organizacyjnymi.

Proponujemy zatem 3 dniowe spotkanie w Tunezji we wrześniu, tego roku i zapraszamy kolektywy, grupy i pojedynczych aktywistów, którzy chcieliby pracować nad tymi zagadnieniami i tworzyć ponadnarodową sieć walk.

Front de Libération populaire de la Tunisie

Knowledge Liberation Front

Network Welcome to Europe oraz inni aktywisci NoBorder

Soliplenum Revolte (Göttingen)

The Crisis of the University and the Educational Significance of the Fees: Reducing the ‘Deficit’ or Fashioning Subservient Human Beings?

18 May

The Crisis of the University and the Educational Significance of the Fees: Reducing the ‘Deficit’ or Fashioning Subservient Human Beings?

“man is no longer man confined but man in debt. One thing, it’s true, hasn’t changed – capitalism” (Deleuze)

A one-day discussion seminar jointly organised by PhD students and staff members of the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences (University of Salford, Manchester)

The ‘cuts’ and ‘fees’ imposed by the lib-con government amount to the entrenchment of a new regime of control based on an extremely doctrinaire and contagious political ideology (managerialism) and guaranteed by a new bondage  (compulsory debt-financing). Repeated over and over again, the idea that ‘reducing the deficit is absolutely necessary’ ends up imposing an attitude of resignation in the face of what is taken as inevitable. Yet, we must ask: Why is the ‘deficit’ so bad for governments and so good for students? What if ‘being in debt’ is not just an economic matter, but a coercive pedagogy and a moulding mechanism to produce a particular kind of human being? Why is it that academics, students and support staff allow themselves to be managerialised, that is, pitted against each other?

These and other questions will be addressed in the seminar; topics to be discussed include: The politics of higher education and the question of university autonomy, self-government and academic freedom today. The rule of finance: financialisation and compulsory debt-financing. Managerial indicators of ‘quality’ and ‘satisfaction’: what kind of human beings lie behind such indicators and result from their use? The academics’ attitude and response to the politics of privatisation, marketisation and corporatisation of the university.

Confirmed interventions from:

Sarah Amsler (Aston University, Birmingham)

Peter Bratsis (University of Salford)

Bob Brecher (University of Brighton)

Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London)

Will Jackson (PhD, University of Salford)

Sukh Johal (University of Manchester)

Jennifer Morgan (PhD, University of Salford)

Karel Williams (University of Manchester)

Bob Jeffery (PhD, University of Salford)

Carlos Frade (University of Salford)

Friday 27 May 2011: 10:30 – 6 pm

Clifford Whitworth Conference Room (Clifford Whitworth Library), University of Salford (Greater Manchester)

(90 yards from Salford Crescent train station)

ALL Welcome

For further information contact: salforduniagainstcuts@googlemail.com

The Really Open University presents: A night of regeneration

17 May

The Free Association with guest John Holloway

a book launch and talk


8pm Wednesday 18 May
Albert Room, Victoria Hotel
Great George St, Leeds

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197835556925954#!/event.php?eid=197835556925954

ROU concept meeting: The possibilities and limitations of activism in and beyond Web 2.0

16 May

Image from Deterritorial Support Group

After a bit of delay, the Really Open University has set its next Concept Meeting! The topic of the participatory discussion will be ‘The possibilities and limitations of activism in and beyond Web 2.0’

Web 2.0 is a term used to encapsulate internet sites and applications that depend upon user-produced content. This includes a diverse range of sites including facebook, youtube, wikipedia, twitter, wordpress, digg and bittorrent.

These days the internet is pretty hard to ignore. Increasingly our lives are online, we use it to shop, work, plan social events with our friends, read the news, download music, etc, etc. Therefore as the latest development of the internet, Web 2.0 is pretty hard to ignore. Many have done more than simply take part, proclaiming Web 2.0 to be a chance for activists to get their message out quicker and to organise in more fluid and decentralised forms. Proponents often point to the ‘Arab Spring’ where initial protests reportedly were sparked on the blogosphere and twitter, resulting in the government attempting to shut down social networking sites and even the internet all together.

However on the most popular Web 2.0 sites, users (or more rightly as the content producers, workers) face increasing repression. Just two weeks ago over 50 groups, accounts and pages associated with anti-cuts campaigns were taken off facebook. Furthermore, use of facebook and others takes away our anonymity and the Met has just bought technology designed for the US military to help track us using, in part, social networking. Even more troubling is that as the workers (those that produce the product) of Web 2.0, even our activism can be seen to be part of the capitalist machine.

The Really Open University with our facebook page, twitter stream and wordpress site certainly feel we cannot take the lifestylist position of abstaining from corporate Web 2.0. But much is left to discuss. Can we as Web 2.0 workers unite to cease the means of production? In this world, what is the means of production? Are there chances to subvert Web 2.0 to our ends? Is the internet so uncontrollable that it does not matter who owns it? What are the limitations and possibilities for the struggle for transformation in this new age (if it is a new age?)?

6pm, May 24 – Upstairs, Packhorse Pub, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds.


Reading/Viewing list:

http://www.metamute.org/en/content/analysis_without_analysis

http://www.metamute.org/en/InfoEnclosure-2.0

http://sociology-compass.com/2009/01/16/prosumers-of-the-world-unite/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/10/uk-uncut-tax-avoidance-twitter

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25929643/Immaterial-Labour-Biopolitical-Power-and-the-Web-2-0

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/25/twitter-facebook-uprisings-arab-libya

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU

John Holloway’s ‘Crack Capitalism’ at University of Leeds

14 May

This is a brief summary of the Leverhulme Lecture John Holloway gave on the 11th of May at Leeds University. The lecture focussed mainly on the ideas developed in his book, Crack Capitalism.  John spoke for over an hour (though it didn’t feel like it!) so this summary will no doubt do some violence to what he said but hopefully others there will correct these brief impressions and perhaps fill in any important gaps I have left. In due course a video will be made available on-line. He structured his talk round a number of key points and this is a set of notes on the ones I can remember and that made a particular impression.

Generally John avoids prescription but there are two things he was adamant about. Our understanding and action has to start from a concept of capitalism and from struggle rather than seeking domination. The two are related.

We look for enemies. We look for who is to blame so we have a target and adversary. We blame the government because they run the State; we blame the corporations, the capitalists, the bankers, or empire, or patriarchy. But all this is to miss the point. Behind all of these is the impersonal system that is capitalism. It is a system that has a life of its own, controlled by nobody, not State institutions and apparatus, not corporations, and not capitalists. Certainly some massively benefit more than others and some have more sway than others but the system that is capital holds all in its strangling embrace. Behind all our bogey men is the totalising (but not totalitarian) impersonal force of capitalism.

So it is necessary to understand what we mean by capitalism as an impersonal system. The key thing here is that it is a system that structures the social relations that make up society. John spent some time on this. We can understand the system fundamentally in terms of the social relations and social cohesion it produces, seen as a triumvirate of equivalences – capital, money, labour. It is this system that engulfs us in a “tsunami of social determinations”. We are obliged to work and live within the money economy to survive. This reduces (or attempts to reduce) our social relationships to monetised relationships and transforms our activity into labour that reproduces the system and provides the engine of capital accumulation. But there are cracks in capitalism that allow us to push against this current and take some opportunities and the responsibility to say “no”, to refuse to fit into the pattern of capitalist social relations. We can engage in different types of doing that are within, against and in some instances beyond capitalist social relations and the spaces we can do this in are everywhere, in many respects quite everyday and ordinary. These possibilities are the result of a fundamental weakness in the capitalist system: it depends on us and our labour to meet its need for accumulation and to reproduce the form of social cohesion the system requires. It is dependent on those it dominates. This is the key to the possibility and actuality of our resistance.

Living in the cracks in social relations and activities that deny and resist the social determinations of capitalism is not the old failed agenda of trying to take control of the state in order to build a new society from the top. It is not a project to seek domination via the State. Resistance and change need to start on the ground by subverting the forms of social relationships that the system depends on. John gave many examples of cracks in capitalism, spaces where literally or metaphorically signs at the edges announce that capitalist social relations are not welcome and do not operate here. He instanced, among others, the Zapatistas, the  Really Open University and the students taking the MA in Activism and Social Change at Leeds University he is currently working with. Other excellent examples are the Social Science Centre at Lincoln and the Roundhouse Journal.

The cracks and their forms of relations and activities are fluid and dynamic. To some extent they come and go. But there is evidence of proliferation and confluence.

This, I think, is the gist of John’s argument. The questions from the predominantly student audience were impressive and homed in unerringly on what John himself admitted was a potential weakness in his position. Early on in his lecture John characterised capitalism as a dynamic and developing system driven by the necessity to handle its dependency on labour and its disrupting potentialities. Resistance tends to be neutralised and absorbed, even sometimes commodified and swallowed into the system of capitalist relations. The problem of this feature of the capitalist system seemed to be the context of nearly all the questions. One question was concerned that the many instances of cracks would not necessarily join up and coalesce into a total transformative movement to overcome and replace capitalism. Just as likely would be that they would remain isolated and fail ultimately to be transformative. How would the ‘confluence’ that John alluded to occur? Surely it would need some sort of organised cohesion, some forms of overarching leadership? John’s response was to say that institutions do not work. Inevitably hierarchical and vertical structures and relations develop. Distinctions begin to be made between roles, between part-time and full-time, more or less committed, and so on. Gradually forms of domination and distinction emerge and solidify reproducing in many respects the forms of social relations that were being resisted. But how, if not through organisation and leadership will the confluence of cracks occur? John gave as an example the forms of communication and transition that occurred with the Zapatistas – resonances and echoes created and transmitted through poetry, art, theatre, and forms of non-hierarchical democratic dialogue. No one mentioned the internet at this point, a form of communication that has developed its radical (and to some extent repressive) potential enormously in recent years.

John was asked what his attitude is towards more conventionally ‘reformist’ approaches, for instance the attempt to institute some sort of financial transaction tax to finance welfare measures and/or pay for public services. John’s answer invoked his earlier reference to resistance within, against and beyond. There are different forms of resistance which individuals will be more or less comfortable with. But the bottom-line for him is that capitalism stinks and needs to be completely dismantled. His response echoed that of Slavoj Žižek – of course no one can object to feeding the poor but we should be fundamentally concerned with and focussed on the system that produces and reproduces their poverty. Reformism ultimately supports and reproduces the system of repression and indignity.

One questioner made the powerful point that cracks as characterised are often instrumental for the system. One of John’s examples of a space where relationships and actions do not conform to the pattern of capitalist relations is the family. But historically and still today the family is crucial to the functioning and reproduction of capitalism.

To summarise John’s answers to all the questions, he consistently stated that there are no guarantees, that the possibility of change is uncertain, even that it may be too late. But the hope and potential for change rests in autonomous struggle, not the acquisition of the power and institutions of state. It is the practice, proliferation, propagation and confluence of other ways of doing that resist and subvert the social determination of capitalist relations that we should engage in, promote and nurture.

Taken from: http://terrywassall.org/blogs/capitalism/2011/05/12/john-holloways-crack-capitalism/

Use the comments function is you want to discuss John’s talk/ideas .

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