transform! european journal for alternative thinking and political dialogue 2010 2010 06 06 Walter Baier ■ Marco Berlinguer ■ Lothar Bisky ■ Raffaella Bolini ■ Judith Butler ■ Eric Canepa ■ Jacques Fath ■ Elisabeth Gauthier ■ Haris Golemis ■ Maria Karamessini ■ Nicolás Muzi ■ The Opiskelijatoiminta Network ■ Moishe Postone ■ Barbara Steiner ■ Simon Tremblay-Pépin ■ Hans-Jürgen Urban ■ Christophe Ventura ■ Asbjørn Wahl ■ Louis Weber ■ Chico Whitaker Edited by Walter Baier, Eric Canepa & Maximilian Weber PortoPortoPorto Alegre:Alegre:Alegre: TheTheThe WorldWorldWorld TenTenTen YearsYearsYears AfterAfterAfter Butler | Postone | Golemis | Whitaker | Urban | Gauthier | Bolini 2 3 System Change – Not Climate Change – SUMMARY 103 Contents A People’s Declaration from Klimaforum09 Crisis and Capitalism Crisis, Europe, Alternatives and Strategic Challenges for the European Left 115 Editorial 4 Elisabeth Gauthier Walter Baier Can PIGS Fly? 129 On the Relationship Between Precariety and State Power 7 Haris Golemis Judith Butler A Waste of Time and Effort? – History and the Critique of Capitalism 25 The Need for a Strategic Re-orientation of the Trade Unions’ European Policy 137 Moishe Postone Hans-Jürgen Urban Porto Alegre: The World Ten Years After Are we Capable of “Reading” the World as it Really Is? 145 Ten Years Later – A Short Introduction 37 Jacques Fath Louis Weber Fact Finding The Social Forums And The Left in Latin America 41 The Social Crisis in Europe: Chico Whitaker Politics of Precariousness or Shift to a New Social Model of Regulation 153 Maria Karamessini The Challenges Before the European Social Forum 51 Raffaella Bolini Electoral Performance of the Left – A Survey 165 Barbara Steiner Only the Beginning is Always “New” – 10 Years of the World Social Forum 61 Walter Baier Chronicles The Crisis and the Future of the ESF 67 Regional Elections in France: Victory for the Left – Abstention and Comeback Asbjørn Wahl of the National Front 177 Louis Weber New Strategic Orientations for the WSF? 71 Christophe Ventura Quebec Solidarity: An Introduction for Potential Sympathisers in Europe 183 Simon Tremblay-Pepin Student Action Helsinki – Experiences of Freedom And Resistance 77 The Opiskelijatoiminta Network Transform! at the LF in New York 191 Eric Canepa Knowledge Is a Common Good – The Effects of the Open Source Movement on the Development of Politics and Society 87 Exploring Left Alternatives for Ending Poverty in the “First World” Marco Berlinguer Transform! Working Group Brussels 195 Nicolás Muzi About Good and Bad of Copenhagen 99 Lothar Bisky 4 5 Editorial tion. Haris Golemis and Elisabeth Gauthier sum up the results of the discus- sion for transform! That part of the magazine is supplemented by Hans-Jür- gen Urban’s contribution on the need for a strategic re-orientation of the Editorial trade-unions’ European policy. Our network’s second “major project” deals with the strategic perspectives of the left in Europe. In spring a first seminar took place in the context of this research line, the results of which have also been made accessible on our homepage. From the contributions proposed for discussion there, we are pre- senting Barbara Steiner’s survey on the “Electoral Performance of the Euro- pean Left”,which is part of a comprehensive study soon to be published. As usual, we are including reports on the next steps in the development of transform! The focus in this context is on two events: On the one hand, the foundation of the transform! Working Group Brussels, the goal of which is to provide space for the continuous discussion within the international communi- ty in Brussels. The Working Group made its first public appearance with two re- markably well attended events, one on the European Year of Poverty (see the ar- Walter Baier, Editor ticle by Nicolás Muzi), the other on the debt crisis in Southern Europe. The sec- ond event is the transform! network’s first appearance at the Left Forum in New ear reader, York, on which Eric Canepa has provided a report. DThe sixth issue of the transform! magazine presents a broad spectrum of texts relevant for the left discussion. The opening texts are On the Rela- tionship Beetween Precariety and Staate Power by Judith Butler and History and the Critique ad capitalism by Moishe Postone. With the publication of both these texts we would like to contribute to the development of a gener- al left culture of debate. his issue’s cover printing as well as the illustrations The thematic focus of the magazine is dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Tinside the magazine were provided by Viennese the World Social Forum, and the processes initiated by it. It lies in the very painter Lisi Misera. The artist, born in Vienna in 1951, nature of the subject to approach it from very different perspectives (see also studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Introduction to the thematic focus by Louis Weber). the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris. Among other places, she has lived and In 2010, the work of the transform! network will be centred on two major worked in New York, Paris and Africa. Exhibitions of her work took place in projects. One of them deals with the multiple crisis of the global capitalist New York, Paris, Budapest, Milan and Vienna, just to mention a few cities. system. The first seminar in the context of this project took place in Vienna The cover printing is from her “AFTER MILES SERIES”, inspired by the in the beginning of the year. The results are available on the transform!-web- music of Miles Davis and was painted in Paris (Cité des Arts). site (www.transform-network.net). One of the central conclusions of the The graphic illustrations inside the magazine are from installations of the seminar – namely that the financial and economic crisis which broke out in “AFTER MILES SERIES” (University of Applied Arts, Vienna and Lisi Misera 2008 has not yet been overcome but has entered a new stage – was only a lit- Studio, Vienna in coorperation with a Jazz musicians). tle later confirmed by the flare-up of the debt crisis in a number of member As always we hope with this issue of our magazine to have provided inter- states. In the meantime a broad public has become aware of the risks result- esting and inspiring reading. The editors and publishers are grateful for all ing from that crisis for the entire European structure in its current constitu- criticisms and remarks. 6 7 On the Relationship Between Precariety and State Power Judith Butler* s you will see, I am not offering a theory of state power, but wish to fo- Acus on certain dimensions that I hope you will find of interest. Although we usually think of the study of media as separate from the question of state violence, I want to suggest that recent efforts on the part of states such as my own to control the visual and narrative dimensions of war have not only re- sulted in a state effort to control and structure modes of public understand- ing that are dependent upon the visual and audible fields – what can be seen, what can be heard – but also what can be read. On the one hand, when the state issues directives about how war is to be reported, whether war is to be reported at all, it seems simply to be trying to regulate the understanding of violence, or the appearance of violence within a public sphere which now clearly includes the internet and forms of digital media. But we can ask: is this regulation of violence also violent in some way? And if it is, how do we describe that violence? It seems we are talking about two kinds of efforts. The first seeks to suppress the public understanding of violence, which verges on the denial that violence exists; the second seeks to structure the appearance of violence in such a way that violence is always already interpreted, ratio- nalised, and justified. Let me make clear from the outset that although I am attempting to de- scribe how such strategies work, I am very mindful that they do not always * (based on Judith Butler’s address at the Third Nicos Poulantzas Annual Memorial Lecture) 8 9 On the Relationship Between Precariety and State Power and State Precariety On the Relationship Between work. Indeed, the image is nearly impossible to control by virtue of the con- too is its alliance with corporate power. These alliances do not always work, temporary forms of its reproducibility. It travels beyond the reach of those of course, since firms like Haliburton have been convicted of corruption who seek to censor it, and it often turns back on those who think they have and have lost most of their investment potential in Iraq where, it turns out, controlled it – which is surely what happened with the circulation of the Abu the population is much less docile and ready for corporate colonisation Ghraib photos. But what I want to suggest as well is that the effort to deny vi- than the US ever expected. olence is itself complicity with violence. And the effort to control its interpre- I will try and approach these questions by talking briefly about the photo- tation, including its justification, is its own kind of violence. We might say graphs of torture in Iraq, the assault on Gaza (that started nearly one year that state regulations of war reporting, including the prohibition, recently re- ago), and briefly by considering the legal violence employed in immigration affirmed by the Obama administration, on showing the full gallery of torture debates in Europe. But before I do, I hope to say a few words about precari- images, is not the same as bombing or even torture.