Life Despite Capitalism
by - 03.06.2004 00:00
The initiative of "life despite capitalism" to be held within the next ESF in London:
This is a general title within which a series of initiatives can be arranged, and for those of you who were involved, it is a development of the "commons and community" seminars we held in Florence and in Geneva. The idea is to have events under this title IN BOTH the "official" ESF and also in the autonomous space that peoel are beginning to organise. Life despite capitalism is therefore "transversal"/everywhere/horizontal.
San Francisco, June 2004
wiki space for thinking about life despite capitalism. with some intro text and ideas. You can access it at:
http://esf2004.net/en/tiki-index.php?page=LifeDespiteCapitalism
please have a look and feel free to develop the text (hoping you are familiar with wiki, if not, get familiar, it takes 10 minutes!) This is a space that in principle anybody can access once they get login and password at the esf2004 site.
Life Despite Capitalism
General Description
This is the proposal for a stream of initiatives, on the theme of "life despite capitalism." The content, form and organisation of these initiatives has to be worked out together, by whoever want to participate in this process. The process of making this stream happening should be a living example of life despite capitalism.
Some of you may have recognised this heading echoes another one that was used in previous Social Forum editions (European and World) and, possibly, will be used also in this one. To call this stream "life despite capitalism" instead of "life after capitalism", is to problematise alternatives as something of the here and now, and not of a distant future, after "capitalism" has been abolished. The degree in which we are able to do and produce things and relate and learn from each other in ways that are rooted in dignity, respect and common access to resources, is directly opposed to the competitive and commodifying ways shaped by the production for profit.
Life despite capitalism is an opportunity to debate strategies, theories, and actions that are relevant to dent the power of capital to shape our lives and our relations to each other and create instead spaces of social action in which:
a) it is us who reclaim our own many powers (and not capital who can uses our own many powers for its accumulation purposes);
b) it is us who decide the norms and ways to relate to each other in the re-production of our livelihoods (and not an abstract market mechanism or a vertical state)
And since profit-driven capitalism never ends in trying to colonise life to its own image, then the reclaiming of our many powers is also the reclaiming of a political space to kick capital back from our life.
LifeDespiteCapitalism also means despite those counter-hegemonic or subaltern ideologies, organisations and practices that have proven ineffective or counter-productive, or that actually reproduce within themselves major characteristics of capitalist and even pre-capitalist class societies.
LDC, finally, has to mean a critical eye to our own ideas and experiments in resisting and surpassing.
http://esf2004.net/en/tiki-index.php?page=LifeDespiteCapitalism
please have a look and feel free to develop the text (hoping you are familiar with wiki, if not, get familiar, it takes 10 minutes!) This is a space that in principle anybody can access once they get login and password at the esf2004 site.
Life Despite Capitalism
General Description
This is the proposal for a stream of initiatives, on the theme of "life despite capitalism." The content, form and organisation of these initiatives has to be worked out together, by whoever want to participate in this process. The process of making this stream happening should be a living example of life despite capitalism.
Some of you may have recognised this heading echoes another one that was used in previous Social Forum editions (European and World) and, possibly, will be used also in this one. To call this stream "life despite capitalism" instead of "life after capitalism", is to problematise alternatives as something of the here and now, and not of a distant future, after "capitalism" has been abolished. The degree in which we are able to do and produce things and relate and learn from each other in ways that are rooted in dignity, respect and common access to resources, is directly opposed to the competitive and commodifying ways shaped by the production for profit.
Life despite capitalism is an opportunity to debate strategies, theories, and actions that are relevant to dent the power of capital to shape our lives and our relations to each other and create instead spaces of social action in which:
a) it is us who reclaim our own many powers (and not capital who can uses our own many powers for its accumulation purposes);
b) it is us who decide the norms and ways to relate to each other in the re-production of our livelihoods (and not an abstract market mechanism or a vertical state)
And since profit-driven capitalism never ends in trying to colonise life to its own image, then the reclaiming of our many powers is also the reclaiming of a political space to kick capital back from our life.
LifeDespiteCapitalism also means despite those counter-hegemonic or subaltern ideologies, organisations and practices that have proven ineffective or counter-productive, or that actually reproduce within themselves major characteristics of capitalist and even pre-capitalist class societies.
LDC, finally, has to mean a critical eye to our own ideas and experiments in resisting and surpassing.