Saturday 27 September 2014

SchNEWS closes

The ever-radical, ever-lively UK direct action zine SchNEWS has just announced that they are calling it a day after twenty years of reporting on some of the hardest conflicts in British politics. They say,  in part,

Playing the Facebook game demands a huge amount of energy, and the corporate monster is not a level playing field. With complex advertising deals and algorithms determining what you do or don't see, maintaining an impact on social media requires hours and hours per week of social networking. For us, that hasn't been feasible.
 
The pattern we observe is not people reporting from the front, but an increasing reliance on mainstream sources for actual news, padded out with a series of personal reflections. Rather than having a media that can reach out, we are confined to an internet echo chamber.

The very speed of real-time news has meant that it is only salaried commentators who can keep up. The demand for news this instant leaves activists fighting for social change playing catch-up, while their actions are reported and analysed by corporate media. By the time you’re out of the cop shop and in front of a computer, the twitterati have beaten you to it.

Thankfully the collective go on to say that they are taking time out but are planning to come back in a new form. Looking forward to it! 

Monday 8 September 2014

EuroNomade event in Italy: Constituent Spaces. Europe, struggles, world

Invitation to Passignano 2014

Constituent Spaces. Europe, Struggles, World



We are happy to invite you to the annual meeting organized by the EuroNomade network, to be held in Passignano sul Trasimeno on September 18-21. EuroNomade is a network of activists, scholars and researchers that has existed since 2013. Many of its members were previously part of the UniNomade network. Coming from the "workerist" and "postworkerist" tradition we aim at fostering political debates within social movements, in a way that works at the boundary between the university and political activism. We are particularly interested in asking questions about the meaning of a European subversive politics. We are therefore connected with comrades and networks in many parts of Europe, but we always try to develop our discussion within a broader framework. In this sense fostering relations outside of Europe (e.g. in Latin America and Asia) is particularly important for us. Indeed our work on Europe is part and parcel of a broader attempt to reinvent the politics of internationalism.

The Passignano meeting will be dedicated this year to two interrelated topics. We will start on Thursday, September 18, with a discussion with David Harvey. His recent work has focused on what we would like to call the "extractive" dimensions of contemporary capitalism. Although we have often critically discussed his work, we are particularly happy that he has accepted our invitation. What we want to discuss with Harvey are the different regimes and forms of what he calls "accumulation by dispossession" as well as the relation between dispossession and exploitation.

We are convinced that the discussion with Harvey, who will participate in the whole seminar, will be an excellent introduction to the topics that we want to address in the two following days (September 19-20). The first is what we tentatively call "social unionism." By this we mean emerging forms of social struggles, which often blur the boundary between the point of production and social reproduction. The second topic is ?Europe and the world,? which will have us discuss the position of Europe within the current world disorder. We are convinced that there is a strong connection between these two topics. In other words, we think that the quality and intensity of social struggles in Europe will strongly influence the position of Europe in the world, while this position will in turn have important consequences for the spaces of struggle as well as for the quality of freedom and equality in Europe. Moreover we think that there is an urgent need to reflect upon the connection between the two proposed topics in order to go beyond the predicament of the movement against the war in Europe, which was apparent in the last months in front of the multiple wars at Europe?s borders (Ukraine, Syria, Palestine...).

We really hope that you will join us in Passignano. We have invited activists and researchers from several European countries (including Germany, Spain, and Greece). There will also be a discussion about the current situation in Brazil, and more generally in Latin America, with the participation of Brazilian comrades. The format of the seminar will be mixed, with roundtables followed by discussions in smaller groups, especially on the 19th, when we expect to have an intense discussion on the perspectives of struggles in Europe next Fall. On the 21st we will close the seminar with an open assembly, where we hope we will be able to lay the basis for an even more intense cooperation for the next future.

For logistical infos, please write to Carlo: carloromag@yahoo.it -  +39 328 2627747

Thursday 4 September 2014

2014 entry date extended till 21 September


Applications for 2014 – 15 have been reopened and will stay open till 21 September (the day before classes start!)

Are you
-      -    active in social movement struggles but need space to stand back, reflect, recharge?
-      -   involved in community and voluntary activism but feel trapped by the structures?
-      -    politically minded but don’t know how to turn that into an effective and radical practice?
-      -    clear that social change is central to you but unsure how to build a life around it?
-      -    interested in spending a year with your peers and experienced practitioners?

Around the world today, movements and communities are making history – or trying to. The need for change is huge and the outcome is still all to play for. We see apparently-unstoppable movements squashed and apparently-hopeless ideas winning against all the odds. What makes the difference, and how can our movements find a way forward and even change the world?

The Masters in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism (CEESA) at NUI Maynooth responds to the crisis by helping us learn from each other’s struggles in dialogue between different movements, different communities, different generations. The course is not tied to any single movement and participants come from many different communities and countries. Some are experienced activists who want to go back to education; others are less experienced people who are keen to get involved in movements. This mixture of ages, backgrounds, experiences and questions is an integral part of what makes the course so rewarding. Together we are building a diverse network of movement activists, radical educators and campaigners for equality and creating new alliances for change. See the video at http://tinyurl.com/ceesavideo

The course team are experienced practitioners and engaged scholars working on equality, radical education and movement struggles. The course combines social analysis, bottom-up organising methods and political strategy with a wide range of pedagogies and a focus on knowledge for change, taking a practical but radical look at the problems facing movements today. Our small-group classes run one or two days a week to facilitate participants, over two 12-week terms followed by work on a project aimed at developing your own movement practice.

Often we are told that we have to choose between our politics and “real life”. This course shows how to integrate the two with confidence, practicality, solidarity, emotional resilience, seeing the bigger picture, taking time out to reflect and supporting each other for the long haul. Participants go back to their own movements refreshed, set up new projects, find work in movement organisations, go on to further education - and bring back what they have learned to their own struggles.

For more details see the rest of this site or www.nuim.ie/study-maynooth/postgraduate-studies
Contact: adcomed@nuim.ie  or (01) 7083937
Closing date for applications: Sept 21, 2014

Monday 1 September 2014

Just out: Cox / Nilsen, "We Make Our Own History"

#wmooh: We Make Our Own History

Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen,
We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism.
London: Pluto Press, 20 August 2014
ISBN 9780745334813 (paperback); e-book and hardback editions also available
272pp; £17 from Pluto

We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - "ya basta!" - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North.
From this network of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. We Make Our Own History responds to these visions by reclaiming Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice.
This book marks a break both with established social movement theory, and with those forms of Marxism which treat the practice of social movement organising as an unproblematic process. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.
Short pieces related to some of the book’s arguments can be found at Discover Society, E-International Relations and the Pluto Press newsletter.

Endorsements:
Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Laurence Cox refresh historical materialism and social movement theory in this imaginative, lucid book. Their patient explanations, motivated by striking examples from actually existing collective struggle, both clarify and inspire. At once handbook and provocation, We Make Our Own History will reach a broad spectrum of readers in many parts of the world, benefiting analysis, strategy, and action.
(Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Labor, Land, State, and Opposition in Globalizing California)
 
Like most books, Laurence Cox and Alf Nilsen’s We Make Our Own History has its pluses and minuses, but overall it is a stunning read, one that every activist – and anyone concerned with the world around us – should read. Beautifully written in many places – with elegant, lucid argument, and with some great turns of phrase that open whole new windows of understanding -, it puts forward two seminal propositions about social movement that help us understand not only ‘movement’ but society itself, and through this ourselves as individuals and our relations to the world around us. An astonishing achievement, and a great contribution to social and political thinking that among many other things, revisits Marx and reveals the relevance of his thoughts to contemporary activism.
(Jai Sen, director of Critical Action: Centre in Movement and author / editor of several books on the World Social Forum and social movements)
 
Armed with a vocabulary able to grasp the structured agency of social movements and militant particularisms in constructing collective identities, readers will be vastly rewarded by this outstanding book and its understanding of the class struggles of social movements and their campaigns and projects across the past, present, and future transformations of capitalism.
(Adam David Morton, author of Unravelling Gramsci and Revolution and State in Modern Mexico)

Chapters
1: ‘The This-Worldliness of their Thought’: Social Movements and Theory
2: ‘History Does Nothing’: The Primacy of Praxis in Movement Theorising
3: ‘The Authors and the Actors of their Own Drama’: A Marxist Theory of Social Movements
4: ‘The Bourgeoisie, Historically, Has Played a Most Revolutionary Part’: Social Movements from Above and Below in Historical Capitalism
5. ‘The point is to change it’: movements from below against neoliberalism

About the authors:
Laurence Cox directs the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and co-edits the social movements journal Interface. He is active in a wide range of movements and has co-edited Marxism and Social Movements (2013) and Understanding European Movements (2013).
Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen. His research focuses on social movements in the global South. He is the author of Dispossession and Resistance in India (2012) and co-editor of Social Movements in the Global South (2011) and Marxism and Social Movements (2013).