FOCAAL FORUMS - VIRTUAL ISSUE Managing Editor: Luisa Steur, University of Copenhagen Editors: Don Kalb, Central European University and Utrecht University Christopher Krupa, University of Toronto Mathijs Pelkmans, London School of Economics Oscar Salemink, University of Copenhagen Gavin Smith, University of Toronto Oane Visser, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague A regular feature of Focaal is its Forum section. The Forum features assertive, provocative, and idiosyncratic forms of writing and publishing that do not fit the usual format or style of a research-based article in a regular anthropology journal. Forum contributions can be stand-alone pieces or come in the form of theme-focused collection or discussion. Introducing: www.FocaalBlog.com, which aims to accelerate and intensify anthropological conversations beyond what a regular academic journal can do, and to make them more widely, globally, and swiftly available. _________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Number 69: Mavericks Mavericks: Harvey, Graeber, and the reunification of anarchism and Marxism in world anthropology by Don Kalb II. Number 66: Forging the Urban Commons Transformative cities: A response to Narotzky, Collins, and Bertho by Ida Susser and Stéphane Tonnelat What kind of commons are the urban commons? by Susana Narotzky The urban public sector as commons: Response to Susser and Tonnelat by Jane Collins Urban commons and urban struggles by Alain Bertho Transformative cities: The three urban commons by Ida Susser and Stéphane Tonnelat III. Number 62: What makes our projects anthropological? Civilizational analysis for beginners by Chris Hann IV. Number 61: Wal-Mart, American consumer citizenship, and the 2008 recession Wal-Mart, American consumer citizenship, and the 2008 recession by Jane Collins V. Number 54: Accumulation by dispossession and Asia's “modernizing“ Left What’s left? Land expropriation, socialist “modernizers,” and peasant resistance in Asia by Luisa Steur and Ritanjan Das The meaning of Nandigram: Corporate land invasion, people’s power, and the Left in India by Tanika Sarkar and Sumit Chowdhury “Communist” dispossession meets “reactionary” resistance: The ironies of the parliamentary Left in West-Bengal by Projit Bihari Mukharji Land expropriation, protest, and impunity in rural China by Bo Zhao Agricultural land conversion and its effects on farmers in contemporary Vietnam by Nguyen Van Suu VI. Number 49: Exploiting Legal and Illegal Migrants in the New Europe "With calluses on your palms they don't bother you": Illegal Romanian migrants in Italy by Ana Bleahu Strawberry fields forever? Bulgarian and Romanian student workers in the UK by Mariya Ivancheva Indigenous resurgence, anthropological theory, and the cunning of history by Terence Turner www.journals.berghahnbooks.com/focaal Mavericks Harvey, Graeber, and the reunification of anarchism and Marxism in world anthropology Don Kalb New books discussed in this article: Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The first 5,000 years. New York: Melville House. Graeber, David. 2013. The democracy project: A history, a crisis, a movement. London: Allan Lane. Harvey, David. 2011. The enigma of capital and the crises of capitalism. London: Profile Books. Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolu- tion. London: Verso. Harvey, David. 2013. A companion to Marx’s Capital, volume 2. London: Verso. Lazar, Sian. 2008. El Alto, rebel city: Self and citizenship in Andean Bolivia. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press. Preamble (by way of an anecdote) have, though we did have a sense of what it came to stand for. De Keizer was located in the I met Theo van der Giessen sometime in Janu- historic center, on the princely Keizersgracht. It ary 1980. The sudden sweep of radical mass was squatted with the intention of turning it lit- squatter movements in several Dutch cities fas- erally into a protomilitary bulwark against the cinated me intensely, as it did so many others of state, and it became a potent symbol of urban my generation. Friends in Amsterdam invited resistance. me to come and see the escalating fight around Squatters’ movements, in particular but not De Grote Keizer (the Great Kaiser). De Keizer only in Amsterdam, had become uniquely co- was a prime urban property owned by a Dutch hesive in the preceding years and surprisingly multinational company with close ties to the politically effective. They appeared ready to state, now thrown onto the emerging market of forcefully defend the democratic right to the city urban gentrification—a concept we didn’t yet against the constitutionally enshrined liberal Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 69 (2014): 113–134 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2014.690108 114 | Don Kalb right to property (and hence speculation). action, that the neighborhood-based squatter Dutch squatters’ movements practiced the in- groups, generally of an anarchist bent and obvi- sights of the French Marxist Henri Lefebvre and ously into “direct action”, would be destroyed the then still young (and still Marxist) Manuel one by one if they did not become more overtly Castells—who was fascinated by the Dutch de- political and join their forces for concerted and velopments but, not knowing Dutch, failed to proactive mobilizations. De Keizer and the or- really study them—as well as David Harvey. Not ganization around it was the ultimate embodi- many of us who were directly involved in squat- ment of that radically confrontational prac- ting and “direct actions” had read any of this tice—though much more was soon to come. work. Nor had I. One day in January I happened to be hang- Van der Giessen and his crew had metal- ing around De Keizer as an “outer guard”. We plated the inside of the six majestic seventeenth- got a signal that the police were harassing some century patrician houses that formed the of “our people” a few hundred meters away. The property. Impressive wooden and iron struc- situation had been tense for days and there was tures now supported the walls and windows talk of a pending attack by security forces. I ran from the inside and could supposedly with- toward the designated place, not knowing what stand any “normal” police attack. On the roof, to expect or do. I saw two police cars and a six stories high, were placed scores of old televi- handful of officers running around and pulling sion sets, refrigerators, old bathtubs, and buck- some people toward the cars. I was completely ets with oil, to be used as urban projectiles. Tens inexperienced and paralyzed. But then there of thousands of squatters and sympathizers in was, at once, Van der Giessen. Tall, imposing, Amsterdam and the country at large—some long dark hair, black leather jacket—some- said more than 20,000 in Amsterdam alone, but where between Moses and Che Guevara. He no one knew exactly how many—could be mo- screamed to me from a distance, pointing to bilized within a couple of hours via a “telephone some loose cobblestones on the side of the road. chain” and via Radio de Keizer, an illegal 24/7 With just one big stone upheld in his hand and broadcaster located in the building. These peo- intense eyes, he now moved slowly to the scene ple formed the “outer guard”, which would resist in a menacing fashion, with swift and com- the police on the street. Hundreds of what we manding reactions to any movements around used to call “the hard core” would be inside the him, and with just me as his totally ineffective building, seemingly ready to risk their limbs backup. From a three- or four-meter proximity while defending De Keizer as a squatters’ com- he ordered the officers back into their cars, all mons. From a group of some twenty key people, while holding the big stone above his head, Theo van der Giessen, a tall, charismatic, ener- pointing it now to this agent and then to another. getic man with a Maoist background, had stood His victory over some 6 armed police officers in out in persuading-cum-pushing the tens of thou- not more than 20 seconds was stunning. sands of young squatters in the city into a uni- Aha, I thought in my youthful excitement, so fied political movement. By 1980, squatting in that is how you do this. It seemed an easy thing. Amsterdam was not just about occupying empty But of course it wasn’t. It was not a military vic- buildings both privately and publicly owned— tory but a moral one. It presupposed a history of of which there were many in the late 1970s due increasingly rough fights around the legitimacy to capitalist and urban crises. In the preceding of property speculation, around housing policy years they had learned that, in order to be able and urban politics. It also could not have hap- to do just that, they had to be ready to collec- pened without a clear left-right division in ur- tively confront hard political power, including ban public culture, nor without the gradual tip- the deep legality of property and security struc- ping of the moral and physical balance of power tures in the urban state. Van der Giessen and in the bigger cities, and in particular in Amster- others had explained, and then demonstrated in dam, against the rights of property and the Mavericks: Harvey, Graeber, and the reunification of anarchism and Marxism | 115 state. Dual power, in one way or another, was a tics will be useful in what sort of conjuncture, fact. Crucially, the recently installed right-wing he argues. In contrast to Graeber, he does not government in The Hague, elected by the ex- spend many words on the moralities of political panding suburbs and the suburbanizing prov - resistance, which are in a sense the singular fo- inces, was seeking an open confrontation in the cus of Graeber’s OWS book and of much cur- urban centers with what it perceived as chaos, rent “horizontalist” preoccupations as well.