The outcome of the Italian elections should send a clear message to
Europe’s leaders: the austerity policies that they have pursued are
being rejected by voters.
[...]
[T]he reality is that much of
the European Union is in depression. The loss of output in Italy since
the beginning of the crisis is as great as it was in the 1930’s.
Greece’s youth unemployment rate now exceeds 60%, and Spain’s is above
50%. With the destruction of human capital, Europe’s social fabric is
tearing, and its future is being thrown into jeopardy.
[...] The reality [...] is that the cure is not working, and there is no hope that it
will – that is, without being worse than the disease. Indeed, it will
take a decade or more to recover the losses incurred in this austerity
process.
[...]
An alternative set of
well-discussed policies could work. Europe needs greater fiscal
federalism, not just centralized oversight of national budgets. [...] [I]t clearly needs far more
European-level expenditure, unlike the current miniscule EU budget
(whittled down further by austerity advocates).
A
banking union, too, is needed. But it needs to be a real union, with
common deposit insurance and common resolution procedures, as well as
common supervision. There will also have to be Eurobonds, or an
equivalent instrument.
European leaders recognize that, without growth, debt burdens will
continue to grow, and that austerity by itself is an anti-growth
strategy. Yet years have gone by, and no growth strategy is on the
table, though its components are well known: policies that address
Europe’s internal imbalances and Germany’s huge external surplus [...].
Concretely, that means wage increases in Germany and industrial
policies that promote exports and productivity in Europe’s peripheral
economies.
Photograph: Monika Graff/Getty Images, May 1, 2012nydailynews.com
[A]nyone who arguesthat demands mustbe capable of beingsatisfied assumes thatthere is someone orsome existing institutionalpower to whomone could appeal tohave one’s demandssatisfied. Union negotiationsbacked bythe threat of strikesusually do have a listof demands which, ifsatisfied, will avert thestrike, and if not, willcommence or prolonga strike. But when acompany, corporation, or state is not considereda legitimate partner fornegotiation, thenit makes no sense to appeal to that authorityfor a negotiated settlement. In fact, to appealto that authority to satisfy the demand wouldbe one way of attributinglegitimacy to thatauthority. So articulating demands that canbe satisfied depends fundamentally on theattribution of legitimacy to those who havethe power to satisfy the demands. And whenone ceases to direct demands to those authorities,as happens in the general strike, then itis the illegitimacy of those authorities that isexposed. [...] But if those existing institutions are complicitwith the economic regime that dependsupon,and furthers, the reproduction of inequality,then one cannot appeal to those institutionsto bring about an end to the conditionsof inequality. Such an appeal woulddefeat itself in the course of its articulation.Simply put, the appeal or demand that soughtto be satisfied by the existing state, globalmonetary institutions, or corporations, nationalor transnational, would be giving morepower to the very sources of inequality, and in that way aiding and abetting the reproductionof inequality itself. As a result, another set ofstrategies are required, and what we are nowseeing in the Occupy Movement is preciselythe development of a set of strategies that callattention to, and oppose, the reproduction ofinequality.
[...]
[I]twould not be possible to think democracy withoutan ideal of radical equality. So radical equalityis a demand, but it is not directed to thoseinstitutions that reproduce inequality. It is directedto the people themselves whose historicaltask is the making of new institutions. The appealis to ourselves, and it is this new “we” that isformed, episodically and globally, in every actionand demonstration. Such actions are in no sense“apolitical.” They take aim at a politics that offerspractical solutions at the expense of addressingstructural inequality. And they remind us thatevery form of politics gains or loses its legitimacydepending on whether it accords equality to thepeople it is said to represent. Otherwise, it failsto represent, and so destroys its own legitimacyin the eyes of the people. In demonstrating, inacting, the people come to represent themselves,embodying and reanimating the principles ofequality that have been decimated. Abandonedby existing institutions, they assemble themselvesin the name of a social and political equality, givingvoice, body, movement, and visibility to anidea of “the people” regularlydivided and effacedby existing power.
The above text is an excerpt from the article So, what are the demands? And where do they go from here? byJudith Butler, published in tidal: occupy theory, occupy strategy, #2, March 2012, pp. 8-11; all issues are available in fullhere and here.
The subject of the photograph is photography itself,
and the ways that life is documented, manipulated, trivialized, and celebrated
with photographs. Kenneth Josephson found a snapshot of a ship taken by an
anonymous photographer and used it for a postcard, and he employed it to convey
his conviction that what is being viewed is not as important as engaging with
the ideas behind it. The “reality” New York State depicts is the reality he
created with the choices he made, similar to the choices that artists make for
other kinds of art—subject, materials, composition, and emphasis.
I find this to be one of the most interesting texts on the crisis: it is an interview given by David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, to Marco Berlinguer and Hilary Wainwright. It is titled Their Crisis, Our Challenge and was published inthe British magazineRed Pepper back in 2009. I am posting some key excerpts below, while on the same subject you may also see the talk David Harvey gave at the RSA, titled The Crises of Capitalism.
One of [...] [the] basic principles [of neoliberalism] [...] was
that state power should protect financial institutions at all costs.
This is the principle that was worked out in the New York City crisis in
the mid-1970s, and was first defined internationally when Mexico
threatened to go bankrupt in 1982. That would have destroyed the New
York investment banks, so the US Treasury and the IMF combined to bail
Mexico out. But in so doing they mandated austerity for the Mexican
population. In other words, they protected the banks and destroyed the
people - and this has been the standard practice in the IMF ever since.
The current bailout is the same old story, one more time, except bigger.
[...]
Which means you're not going to
come out of this crisis with a crisis of the capitalist class; you're
going to come out of this with a far greater consolidation of the
capitalist class than there has been in the past.
[...]
Many on Wall Street are thriving right now. Lazard's, because it
specialises in mergers and acquisitions, is making megabucks. Some
people are going to be burned, but overall it's a massive consolidation
of financial power. There's a great line from Andrew Mellon (US banker,
secretary of the treasury 1921-32), who said that in a crisis assets
return to their rightful owners. A financial crisis is a way of rationalising what is irrational - for
example, the immense crash in Asia in 1997-98 resulted in a new model of
capitalist development. Disruptions lead to a reconfiguration, a new
form of class power.
[...]
Whether we can get out of this crisis in a different way depends very
much upon the balance of class forces. [...] Finance
capitalism could survive the crisis, but whether it does depends
entirely upon the degree to which there is going to be popular revolt
against what is happening, and a real push to try to reconfigure how the
economy works.
[...]
The term 'national bail-out' is [...] inaccurate, because they're
not bailing out the whole of the existing financial system - they're
bailing out the banks, the capitalist class, forgiving them their debts,
their transgressions, and only theirs.
The money goes to the banks, but not to the homeowners who've
been foreclosed on, which is beginning to create anger. And the banks
are using the money not to lend to anybody but to buy other banks. They
are consolidating their power.
[...]
What I think is happening at the moment is that they are looking for a
new financial set-up that can solve the problem not for working people
but for the capitalist class. [...] The
only thing they would care about is if we rose up in revolt. And until
we rise up in revolt they are going to redesign the system according to
their own class interests.
As I'm not the greatest fan of indie folk, orthe Twilight series for that matter, it took mesome time to come across Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron and Wine– this is the stage name of the singer/songwriter Samuel Beam. Apparently the song was selected by Kristen Stewart for the prom scene at the end of the first Twilight film, which I watched with considerable delay.
And so the song stayed with me; every time I come across a flightless bird, or when I become one myself, I find it soothing. Maybe it is because of its irresistible melody, or maybe it's just me reading too much into it; like being grounded and bleeding, and yet still hoping and struggling to fly away.
Any day now.
I was a quick-wit boy
Diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes
Wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair
I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map
And called for you everywhere
Have I found you
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping
Or lost you
American mouth, big pill looming
Now I'm a fat house cat
Nursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats
Curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean
Blood of Christ mountain stream
Have I found you
Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding
Or lost you
American mouth, big pill, stuck going down
