1o FEST
COMMUNISMOS
Festival- Conference
for an exodus from capitalism
Call for participation
in times of crisis we choose to fight
Crisis is a projection of class relations and conflicts.
Crisis constitutes the ground where exploitation, command, and bio-power are intensified. Accordingly, it forms the ground where labour and existential precarity gradually acquire a more hegemonic form. Crisis is the process by which the permanence of primitive accumulation of capital is intensified via enclosure and the theft of social conquests. Crisis is impressed in the chase of immigrants, in workers being made redundant, in oppression regarding one’s gender and in the quest for a desirable national unity.
Simultaneously, crisis is a fertile ground for strikes, insurrection, expropriations, self-reduction of prices, sabotage of both production and consumption. It is the refusal of depreciation of work, the promise of a circulation of struggles, it is the stones thrown at the police, and the solidarity among demonstrators, it is the yoghurts thrown at the faces of union-bosses, and the hatred for bosses in general. Crisis is the place where the limits and the possibilities of antagonistic movements are put to a test.
For this reason we claim that:
Crisis is a critical time for discipline and social insubordination. It is the virtual weakness of the capital manifested as social relation, as commodity seeking for new fields to extent both materially and abstractly. It is the failure of bosses to order and entirely control social reproduction, and all the visible and invisible refusals. Consequently, looking for an exit from the crisis they launch an overwhelming attack to the wages, to the insurance system, to transports, to education and health systems, to accommodation, to food, energy and the environment.
Today we are invited to deploy our strengths for the fight and we choose:
Communism[1], as the non-commodified form of social organization and reproduction, which is supported by class solidarity, in self-institutionalized, anti-hierarchical communities of struggle. It constitutes the social active movement, the diagonal vector, that aspires to compose, constitute and spawn class conflict. As communism we also perceive the creation of common relations, namely that social process that creates and reproduces the commons[2] and at the same time raises the enclosures around common wealth captured by capital, as it destroys them and thus dismantles what separates the proletariat from the means of production, reproduction, existence and communication. Simultaneously, we stipulate that the communism of commoning relations, includes the destruction of sexual social operations, destabilises the concept social sex and builds structures for social and domestic solidarity and reproduction beyond the sovereign model of traditional family relations. An integral part of communism of commoning relations, constitutes the suppression of exclusions based on nationality that strengthen all states and capital. These are manifested by borders, controls, clandestine persons, mechanisms and processes of depreciation of proletariate worldwide. A struggle for communism means the factual contestation of global work distribution that capitalism imposes through control and via streams of immigrants that are considered illegal.
Moreover, regarding war, fascism and patriotism as manifestations of a state in crisis, as well as towards the dilemmas of privatizations of neoliberalism or the state control, regulation ownership of neo-keynesianism and the gullible expectations of returning to the welfare state model, we select the attack to the mere wage labour, to patriarchy, property and state, while we advocate the struggle emancipated communities that structure the commons and communism.
For us, communism also constitutes the active deposit and the thread that joins movements, and revolts with anarchist, liberal, autonomous, and radical left characteristics against each form of power. Indicative are the examples of the communist labour councils in Germany and that of the anarcho-syndicalism wobblies in the USA in the beginning of 20th century. We also see the affiliation with the anarchist libertarian communism in Spain and with the archeio-marxists in Greece between the great wars. Accordingly, we don’t fail to see the autonomous German and Italian 70’s movements, as well as the useful self-organising experiences of the rebel assemblies in Argentina and in Chiapas as striking examples of what we mean by communism.
Aspiring an exit from capitalism, we reason now that the importance and the wealth of communisms could bring a new meaning to the movement’s efforts to accelerate the process of the crisis.
In this frame of mind we extend a call to every companion, collective and individual who place themselves on the side of class and social struggle to take a stance on the question of communism and exit from capitalism at the 1st Festival-Conference on Communism at Fabrika Yfanet (Thessaloniki) social center squat on 19-22 May 2011.
The Structure of the Festival
Our wish is the structure of fest-communismos to promote as much as possible a more direct and active attendance. For this reason, beside the main events, we aim to organize thematic workshops that will run through the whole duration of the festival, at which organized introductory presentations prepared by individuals and collectives could help towards a more conducive discussion. The proposed thematic workshops are the following:
Communism vs Capitalism: The moment of capitalism’s structural crisis is also the moment where our own contradictions are erupted. Today more than ever, communism should be expected to constitute a solution to the obvious dead-ends of the system. Nevertheless, in nowadays, communism seems like a distant utopia. It is this distance that we are now called to cover as the susceptibility of capitalism leaves us with the space to act and imagine.
– Fighting for commons against enclosures
§ The meaning of commons and enclosure in connection to crisis, the fetishism of commodity and the permanence of processes of primitive accumulation.
§ Critical analysis of policies, methods, objectives and prospects of actions and “I do not pay” movements in transports, health, energy (radical revolutionary or social-democratic assimilation prospects).
§ The gender dimension of commons and enclosures, the social reproductive force of women as an obstacle to the new enclosures.
– Crisis & Class struggle in working places
§ Analytical approaches on crisis and debt regarding the capital’s weakness to reproduce and face instances of social disobedience.
§ Bosses’ attacks, the prevalence of precarity, and the role, the objectives, the possibilities and weaknesses of autonomous working class struggles (study of class composition, proletarian experience and circulation of struggles).
§ Structures of labour autonomy (base-unions, labour solidarity committees, struggle labour groups, self-regulating solidarity funds)
– Communization and Social Reproduction Structures
§ The form and theoretical frame of self-organised networks for creating autonomous class structures of communization and social reproduction.
§ Examples of barter, against commodified forms of social reproduction, collectives, self-governing means of production, reproduction and communication.
– Insurrection in times of crisis
§ The importance and the meaning of revolts and fighting movements in a time of crisis. Focusing on the revolts in North Africa and the initial conclusions drawn from them.
Based on these thematic units send us your proposals for attendance at contact@communismos.com, initially in abstract from until 20th April 2011 and as complete proposal until 20th May 2011. Our objective is all the material assembled since the festival regarding proposals to be available throughout the duration of events and workshops.
The structure of the festival will daily contain two circles of discussions (morning – afternoon) based on the aforementioned thematic units. Each circle of discussions will last 3 hours including a proposed 20′-30′ presentation/preparatory/introductory section by a collective or an individual, always with the aim to have plenty of time for discussion.
Hospitality, accommodation, collective food preparation, concerts, installations, performances, are an integral part of commons in communism.
We are looking forward to your proposals
and don’t forget
«to propagate anarchy, to live in communism»
Comradely
cafe la rage
Thessaloniki, 15th March 2011
1 A lot of significant definitions of our political vocabulary, including the term communism, have undergone such a destruction that are consisted almost useless. In its common use, communism has led to mean the opposite of what it actually stands for, that is to refer to absolute state control and the stalinist hierarchy of fossilized communist parties. We could easily as well abandon this term and invent a new one, but then we would also leave behind the great history of struggles, dreams and expectations that are connected with it. As women and men anarchists we perceive that a person’s struggle against power is a struggle of memory against oblivion, we consider that it is better to fight for claiming the meaning of communism back, in order to restore it or renew its meaning.
[2] When referring to commons we do not mean the commodity common goods that the state via setting up the public sector exploits, controls, enclosures and trades. We don’t consider commons as something that stands independently, nor as simply existing common resources (natural, energy, environmental, genetic, cultural). We do not view commons as something that exists alone, but also as something that shouldn’t be claimed, with the form of demands towards a power. On the contrary, commons are manufactured, are created, are formulated and are reproduced each and every time through the processes of commoning – communing relations, that are constituted by communities of struggle.