Come to the Opening of the European Central Bank! | Frankfurt 2015
A Call from the Destroika for a Fantastic Convergence of Resistance

Poster English

From issue-less “days of action” to inconsequential general strikes, the recent struggles in Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal invariably seem to stumble over the limit of their own national frame of reference. The standpoint of the nation, long considered synonymous with political activity per se, be it that of the State or one or another revolutionary party, has revealed itself as being the very scale of our own collective powerlessness. It is this powerlessness, turned against itself, that fuels the fire of so many nationalist resentments.

There is nothing more to be done from the national perspective, from the standpoint of the nation as a whole; standpoint eminently suited to every imaginable form of reaction. The nation as such is a dead letter. The State can do nothing more than set the table for the dreary meal dished out by the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission: the Holy Trinity known as the Troika. For us the national perspective is finished. For us there is only the local on the one hand, the global on the other.

The Troika, not content simply to oversee or even directly administer the budgetary functioning of entire States, seeks also to dictate the very conditions of our lives, reducing the latter to a simple question of “human resource management”. The impression of being dominated, overwhelmed, and finally altogether crushed by a self-appointed clique of “Core European” bureaucrats has become one of the more salient features of the present.

Whoever has studied the methods of the IMF knows that the former are not limited to a simple “Shock Doctrine”. The strategic apparatus of the IMF and the World Bank peruses a dual function: one finds on the one hand an effectively brutalizing process of violent economic restructuration, on the other, a system of “micro-credits” that work to soften the impact of the latter, stimulating the creation of small economic units. The goal of this double movement is simple: transform everything, everywhere, into an enterprise. The oft celebrated “social economy”, the “solidarity economy”, are in no way an appropriate remedy to the “Shock Doctrine” but its effective compliment. We do not desire a better economy, be it ever so “social”, we desire the end of calculation, the end of evaluation and measure; the end of the accountant-mentality, in love as much as in the workshop. Continue reading →