Call for participation

Communismos 2.0 calling

Festival

Communismos 2.0

From circulation of capital, patriarchy and nationalism

to circuation of struggles, commons and micro communisms

25-27 May 2012

at Fabrica Yfanet squat

Thessaloniki – Greece

call for participation

We helplessly stand and watch our lives sink day by day. Unemployment, weakness to face the boss, new austerity measures, dilemmas, bullying, austerity measures, sacrifices, words like “Now, it’s not time for…”, stricter austerity measures, disappointment, frustration, even more measures. Isn’t this what they call crisis after all? Conventions made by people in time of crisis now seem vacant, deprived of any significant meaning, just words to nag about as things do not seem to take a turn for the better. But before crisis is being presented out of context, they had to give it a different meaning. Over the years, the media worked at full speed to present the crisis as something sudden and inevitable, as something ugly and unexpected that sounds the alarm and puts everybody in great danger. But, no worries, it is presented as a natural phenomenon, like a storm that hits with vengeance for a while before it gives in to yet another bright, sunny day, so the only way to overcome such calamity would be to put aside our unreasonable demands and wear our bodies off working. A nice picture, indeed, but it leaves us in dark about the causes, the consequences and the political exploitation of the crisis. And much more, it tells us nothing about what is ultimately in crisis today. Against naturalization and misleading simplifications regarding crisis, we believe that it exists, it is amplified and reflected in everyday social and class antagonisms. Speaking of crisis, one must surely have in mind that it is the difficulty the capital faces to form relations in its own terms. What is being debated here, is the ability of the capital (as relation and as value- in motion) to reproduce along with the social relations and anthropological types that it bears and formulates. Although crisis refers to the state, to bosses, to others, it also includes us, as we too are being exploited in the realm of capital-relationships.

Simultaneously however, but fortunately for us, crisis is an open-ended critical category, which does not only mean catastrophe, but also possibilities. Today, more intensely than ever, this slippery ground is the place where the circulation of capital, patriarchy and nationalism is tested and matched against the circulation of struggles, commons and microcommunisms. Two worlds face to face with each other, or better, a world facing its negation. One that is trying to restore and uphold the existing order by facing the actual movement that seeks to abolish it.

We think that the most suitable name for this world is capitalism. We see it today as it asserts itself through accelerated restructuring and overly intensive processes of primitive accumulation, while being consolidated with the intensification of gender oppression, homophobia and masculinity. We experience first hand the restoration of order via a status of emergency, a shock doctrine and the manu militari management of social movements. Realities, such as widespread precarity, terrorizing labour conditions and unemployment is how this world manifests in our lives. More particularly, we witness this in gentrified metropolitan centers, in fortified suburbs, at the gold mines of Chalkidiki, at new witch hunts of immigrants. We also see it in the transformation of european countris into a vast concentration camp, a Dachau for immigrants, who have to surmount towering border fences, while at the same time, trafficking and ovary trade pass through border controls with ease. Let us not forget that this world also lies under the mask we wear to perform our gender and racial roles, under the phantasmatic objectivity of value that rests in our lives for some self-valorization. It is embodied in claims for intellectual property, in efforts to enclose freedom of the internet and it lives off deterministic pseudo-dilemmas whether one is for of against the memorandum (in Greece), sides with left or right patriotism, chooses between staying with the euro or embracing chaos. All these are before us and they never fail to remind us of the grim outcome that is in store for us if we don’t stand our ground, if we don’t try to build collective disengagement routes.

On the other hand, we listen attentively for the echo of riots and uprisings around the globe to reach us, as their rough or sweet melodies are transmitted from one social place to the other. This sad world falls into doubt when we block its restructuring and deny to live a life in poverty. When we refuse to become more productive, to wake up early for work, to discipline our choices to “highly esteemed degrees”, to be accredited merely by our work and how much time we spend doing it. Capitalism is judged when workers take over factories and their strike is above any kind of mediation mechanism. When schools are no longer places where capitalism can peacefully reproduce, as students take over them to miss class and therefore hinder the intensification of their lives. In times when class forms through collective struggle and in times when that class doubts its existence. When a square is under occupation, when people march in solidarity, work together in neighborhood collectives, furthemore in immigrants’ struggle for survival and dignity and when people comradely look at each other. Moreover, when people don’t pay the bus fare, when they refuse to pay the “charatsi” (special tax imposed on greek home owners via the electricity bill), when neighbors lock their electricity power boxes to prevent the electric company from cutting power off, and when they meet again to block hospital cashier desks. When we throw stones at a demonstration, when we take the initiative to reduce supermarket prices, when we block the circulation of commodities. When our bodies are meaningful, when we question our gender oriented roles and our sexuality, when we stop idolizing ourselves, when we smash the mirrors of normality and break out to live the life that was given to us. It is then when we make the world turn upside down and bring back home our firm belief that history does not write itself, but it is written by people. The issue then is to sort out those historical moments from which we can draw strength. Strength for refusing, strength for being creative. Alongside all these, there is also the patient building of a different way of doing things, the creation of different forms of social organization and collective struggle. Cooking and eating together, sharing metropolitan parks, places to meet and squats, vegetable gardens at former military camps, independently organized radio stations, organizing self study sessions and lessons, setting up printing facilities, educating through parity and solidarity procedures, living together in occupied buildings, sharing a network and a mutual support fund.

Starting from all these moves, some bigger or more apparent than others but all equally significant, we accept that they do not compromise capitalism as a whole. We nevertheless aim to find their common connections and their continuity among them, to detect those features that point to an eminent destruction of capitalism. What is precious are the communities we create for our struggle, the communist gestures, the attack at the capitalist reasoning. They are glimpses of what is yet to come. The total denial of what means to steal our lives, the demolition of a world that writhes in crisis. Some have named this communism. For us it is important to start uttering this word.

Aims, organization and content of Communismos 2.0

In the above context we believe that it is important in critical times like these to articulate our theoretical tools gained from our experience as political subjects in a number of people’s movements and from our knowledge of setting up multiple ventures. The proposed conference-festival Communismos 2.0 seeks to help towards that direction. Certainly our intention is far from considering Communismos to be a semi-institutionalized organ of struggling communities, of people who are in struggle, of commons, of insurgents everywhere. However, we share the agony for the need to collectively discuss on forms and contents of struggle, to meet as political subjects having possibly the opportunity to collectively negotiate as a movement our fighting ground. Picking up the thread from last year’s festival, we believe it is essential to continue this legacy of talking about movements, depositing views and contents. So, this year we take again the initiative to organize Communismos 2.0 in Thessaloniki (Greece) at Fabrica Yfanet squat, however we wish for collectives in other cities to take their own initiative to organize such a conference themselves.

At this point, before we unveil the proposed schedule of this year’s Communismos we find it imperative to present a brief review and critical evaluation of last year’s conference. Those three days last May (27-29/5/2011) had been full and enjoyable. Three days during which participants had the opportunity to meet, share experiences, exchange viewpoints and deposit their thoughts. Three days that helped the circulation and critical analysis of struggles, three days that contributed to people getting acquainted with new ventures and participating in a process, surely fragmental but also pleasant and useful, where they were given the chance to map the reasons for our movements and arm themselves with theoretical and analytical tools. We state here, that we are committed to distribute to this year’s participates full reports of last year’s talks and procedures.

Nevertheless, at this point we would like to mention some weaknesses or negligences that we would like to amend this year.

-The general concept of last year’s themes and introductions to talks, as they were instructed by our first call for participation. It is our great concern to finely define this year’s issues so that discussions become more specific, more usable and fruitful.

-At set discussions, the presentation of different ventures frequently included just a simple presentation of their basic lines. We would like this year’s discussions to be enriched beyond the requirements of a plain presentation of ones aims, and make an effort to take stock of our actions, track down the things that help us move forward as well as our inhibitions that take us back. In this way we can draw informed conclusions about the future.

-The way we organized our talks following a pattern of centralized events which included densely written, lengthy presentations has proven difficult to follow by many participants and therefore prevented people from more actively taking part in the discussions. So, this year we propose decentralized discussions in the form of parallel thematic “workshops”. The proposed format will encourage a more familiar and friendly, collective atmosphere that was hindered last year by lengthy and impersonal viewpoints.

-Last year’s “loose” planning with long delays preceding discussions and the rush at the end of them makes us accountable and responsible to keep this year a tighter time schedule, requiring early attendance and fixed closing times.

-Lastly, we will make sure we improve parallel, supporting structures, such as accommodation, collective cooking and dining, as well as more creative ways to enhance our child-care facilities.

According to everything said here, we invite political groups, collectives, base unions, neighborhood collectives, students’ groups to take part at Communismos 2.0 on 25th-27th May 2012 in Thessaloniki (Greece), at Fabrica Yfanet squat.

Schedule and Structure

By structuring this year’s conference we seek to make it as flexible as possible, more specific and more participatory. For this reason this festival is spread in three days. The focus of the first two days is on movements relating to production and reproduction and what surrounds them. At the last day the focus shifts to more theoretical issues, with the intention to reflect on what has been done, but maintaining the relative autonomy that theory must have. We propose to collectives that wish to take part to choose one or more of the scheduled theme discussions-workshops and prepare up to 15′ minutes talks so that there is plenty of time left for discussion. Furthermore, we urge participants to have their contributions in print so that delegates would be able to consult them during the discussion at any time. The suggested topics that follow are indicative and in no case final. Our intention for the schedule is to make it more specific as applications for participation and proposals by collectives start coming in.

Proposed schedule

Friday 25th May

The battle in-out of-and beyond employment

-Labour precarity – forms of action (strike, general strike, interventions, blockages, direct action, institutionalized negotiations and beyond them)

-The condition of unemployment, forms of organization and action

-Student and labour struggle at the university

-Labour and gender

-Immigration:

immigration and aspects of the immigrant movement

potential meeting points of struggle for immigrants and locals

-Cooperative forms of labour in a time of crisis (a critical approach)

Saturday 26th May

Local movements, neighborhood collectives

-The possibilities and limitations of movements about the environment (landfills, mines, wind farms, dams and water projects fencing, biotechnology, etc.)

-Neighborhood collectives in struggle about health issues, electricity, municipal taxes, etc.

-The square occupation movement, “indignados”, an evaluation

-Structures of social solidarity and reproduction: their relation to resisting movements, their limits, contradictions and perspectives (collective kitchens, give-away bazaars, self-studying and social tutoring, barter structures, etc.)

Sunday 27th May

The meaning of communism

-Considering patriotism and national communities as a response to crisis

-Riots and uprisings as expressions of social unrest: their boundaries and the possibilities to overcome them

-Approaches to communism and its current strategies. Does communism lie in relationships based on sharing, in forming and defending what we have in common, in times of defetishisation or in the borderlines of today’s movements? Is it relevant today or a remnant of the past?

-Political and Social: limits and possibilities of political collectives and their relationship to social movements

-Estimates of restructuring: whether capital adopts as an immediate strategy the devaluation of labour, what are the long-term trends? (new technologies, new forms of exploiting social cooperation)

we look forward to your proposals by the 7th May 2012

contact e-mail: contact@communismos.com

let us not forget

«to spread anarchy – to live in communism».

Fabrica Yfanet

Thessaloniki, 4/4/2012

contact@communismos.com,

www.communismos.com

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.