30-40 years ago, the state could afford to BUILD 1 million flats in 10 years, now it’s too poor to even RENOVATE them.

This exclamation is highly representative of the activism that has flourished in the suburbs of Stockholm these past years. In this case, it comes from Megafonen (‘The Megaphone’), a grass-roots activist group founded by young people in the Stockholm suburb Husby in 2008, around the principles of democracy, welfare, community, work and education. The state, says Megafonen here, no longer lives up to its proper function, which would be to ensure the material well-being of people through housing policies. The ambivalence of this perspective is already clear in the nostalgic reference to the heyday of Swedish social-democratic welfare, represented by the state housing policy which led to the construction of ‘1 million flats’ between 1965 and 1974. On the one hand, it recognises cuts, privatisations, closures, etc. as symptoms of an already existing capitalist restructuring. On the other hand, its actions emerge as the affirmation of what is left of the infrastructure and political institutions that formed the Swedish workers’ identity, e.g. public housing.

This ambivalence can be made coherent: by fighting the advancement of the restructuring, one is at the same time defending that which it has not yet reshaped. But then, one leaves aside an essential product of the destruction of workers’ identity: the end of the political existence of the proletariat in Sweden which, in the most pauperised areas, has been acompanied by the development of inarticulate riots between 2008 and today. If we take the practices of these riots into account, the ambivalence of Megafonen’s type of activism – the fact that it operates within that which incarnates the end of workers’ identity, and at the same time tries to organise upon the remnants of that identity –, appears as a contradiction between the conditions in which it exists and its perspectives. In a time in which the proletariat, in the obligation to sell its labour power which defines it, is structurally excluded from the table of collective bargaining, this activism still does, through its denunciations of ‘the state’ and its various institutions, affirm the possibility of a dialogue and a future within this society. In a word, it defends a welfare state which no longer exists.

It would be tempting to analyse this contradiction along a revolt-reform axis, in which the riots would incarnate the destructive language of ruptures, whereas the activists would incarnate the constructive language of politics. The riots would be a mere symptom of the destruction of workers’ identity, whereas the activists would be trying to find a remedy to it. But if one takes a closer look at the events in the long run, this political-theoretical construct does not fit. Of course, the riots are not harmoniously united with this activism. The practices of burning cars and setting fire to the head-quarters of various institutions, or fighting the police and the fire brigade, are qualitatively different from practices such as demanding specific political transformations and explicitly stating what institutions’ function should be. But with regard both to the subjects that carry out these practices, and to the practices themselves, the relation between riots and activism is not that of two clearly distinct camps. What is at stake is to reveal this contemporary relation between rioting and activism in Sweden, to see what this says about the current period more broadly.

Six years after the riots in Malmö, five years after the riots in Göteborg, and more than a year after the week of riots in Stockholm and other Swedish cities, the scarcity of writings about these events prevents us from even picturing what happened during the riots. Therefore, what is needed first and foremost is a description of the emergence of both riots and activism in the suburbs of these cities between 2008 and last year. The focus on the practices which compose the riots on the one hand, and the activism on the other, must be followed by an exposé both of their historical production and of that which structures the so-called suburbs today. This will lead us to look at the inner relation between the riots and the activism in these suburbs, and to formulate a question which exceeds the Swedish context: that of social and political integration.

1. Occupations, Campaigns… And Riots

The ‘Stockholm riots’ of 19-27 May 2013 do not just appear in a social and political vacuum. They were preceded by other Swedish riots, most notably the 2008 riots in Malmö, which started with an occupation of a public space, the 2010-2011 riots in Göteborg, which culminated in the formation of a movement for the refurbishment of the suburbs, and last but not least, the 2013 ‘Stockholm riots’ are in themselves inseparable from a longer Stockholm-specific history of defending public utility. When we take a close look at the practices which compose these events, the fragile relation between riots and activism comes to the front. As we will see, riots in the suburbs coexist with civic protest movements with explicit demands, although they also develop their own specific tactics. In the Swedish context, suburban riots emerged in defence of public space or against rent increases, and as such, they can be seen as a kind of illegitimate negotiation.

Along these lines, both in terms of subjects, practices and political outcomes, the ‘Stockholm riots’ of 2013 are a product of a longer contemporary history of riots. We could say that this history began in the part of Malmö called Rosengård in December 2008. ^[2] The riots in Rosengård were preceded by the occupation of a locale in the centre of Herrgården, one of the neighbourhoods which compose Rosengård. The occupation was organised by local youth with immigrant background and some white housing activists from other parts of the city. For 16 years, this locale had been used as a mosque by the Muslim Cultural Association, but also – a fact often left out in most reports of the events – by twenty other associations for cultural and educational activities like youth recreation, supplementary tuition and so on. With the planned restorations of the neighbourhood, Ilmar Repalu, a local social-democrat, as well as representatives of Contentus, the real estate company that owns the place, thought that a mosque would no longer ‘fit in’. To understand such an attitude, one must bear in mind that Rosengård, much like Husby in Stockholm or Backa in Göteborg, is an area which, following the transformations of the labour market and the growing unemployment starting in the 1970s, gathers almost exclusively first or second generation immigrants, of which a great number are Muslims. Once neighbourhoods with public housing for the working class, these ‘suburbs’ have now become some of the rare places which still offer rents and housing accessible to newly arrived people with refugee or family reunification background, but also to the unemployed, long-term sick-listed, former convicts, early retired/sick pensioners, etc. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s, such suburbs were commonly perceived as hideouts for gangs or drug addicts, their symbol is now another figure of Otherness: the Middle Easterner or the African, often associated with Islam. Hence, from the point of view of public authorities, the line between social refurbishment and cultural edification might be a very fine one.

However, the police only intervened in the locale with full powers – muddy boots, dogs, shields, batons and pepper spray – on 12 December, after three weeks of occupation. According to all the parties involved, the night after the eviction was probably the calmest of the week. More and more people gathered to defend the occupation, so the police had to drag them out of the place again. An hour or so later, calm was restored, but the occupation continued, displaced to the lawn in front of the place. People stayed around the police perimeter for several days and nights, pursuing the activities that were usually held in the premises. Mats were laid out for prayers, young people were hanging around, tea and bread was served, a couple of older men set up tents to sleep in, and an old parabolic antenna was used as fireplace.

Riots only broke out on Monday 18 December. Youth from the neighbourhood who had taken part in the occupation and their friends, most of them male and under 18, started gathering in small groups, circling around the area of Herrgården. To begin with, containers and some dustbins were set on fire, and the windows of another real estate company, Newsec, were broken. The day after continued in the same way while the police started to intervene more actively. One of the guys they had arrested was liberated by force, an officer was beaten to the ground, stones were thrown at the fire brigade. Finally, some of the young adults from the neighbourhood gathered and attacked the cops that were standing in front of the locale. They threw rocks at them and ran away. Still, both children, younger and older people stood in front of the locale. Having kept it under uninterrupted watch for two days and nights, the police then decided to close access to it by placing large containers by truck. This only caused general irritation to escalate. During the Wednesday, arson, the throwing of fireworks, stones and glass bottles at the police, as well as attacks on the offices of the local real estate companies spread all over the area of Herrgården. The police station in the centre of Rosengård was attacked. People set fire to dustbins placed out along Ramels väg, a central road in Rosengård, in order to stop the traffic. When the fire brigade arrived, it was chased away with fireworks and stones. It was also on Wednesday that a dozen autonomous activists, some with links to the Antifa scene, arrived in this part of Rosengård, but gathered only very briefly before they were all encircled and caught by the police (19 people were arrested that were not from the neighbourhood). The next day, Thursday, the police station in the centre of Rosengård was completely wrecked, while the local offices of the real estate companies Contentus and Newsec were destroyed and looted (some computers and other valuables were stolen). Powerful home made bombs started to circulate within certain groups. The whole of Rosengård was burning. People rebuilt barricades as soon as the police destroyed them, but only few of them directly confronted the police when they arrived.

The police, which was literally chased out during the Wednesday and Thursday, regained control over the area on Friday, aided by reinforcements from two of Sweden’s biggest cities, Göteborg and Stockholm. Several hundred riot police officers were now constantly present in Herrgården. Although the long period of intense arson, attacks on the police and building of barricades which we may call the ‘Rosengård riots’ was over, the practices that compose this event persevered. As a matter of fact, on 16, 17 and 18 March 2009, several dustbins, over-full due to the bad garbage maintenance of the local real estate companies, as well as a recycling room on Ramels väg were burned and stones were then thrown at the fire brigade as it arrived. ^[3] Stones were again thrown at cops on 2 July 2009, and containers set on fire on Ramels väg. Rosengård also faced minor riots in April 2010. The general climate was so tense that hundreds of people gather within less than a day when someone was reported to have been mistreated by the cops.

During the two following months of 2009, arsons multiplied in and around Göteborg, a couple of hours away from Malmö. Also, stones were thrown at the police and windows of various institutions wrecked. On 10 August, cops arrested a person suspected for illegal ownership of weapons and during this event ten clients in a shop in Backa were drawn out onto the street to be searched. ^[4] On 4 April 2011, the police chased two guys who had stolen a couple of pairs of jeans in a clothes shop in Göteborg and ended up hitting their car into them, hurting one of them badly. Riots broke out the day after, and lasted for two nights: in Backa, cars were burned and more stones thrown at the police. ^[5] In the meantime, Pantrarna (‘The Panthers’), a grass-root activist group which, very much like Megafonen in Stockholm, aims at defending the infrastructure and reinforcing the sense of community, had formed in Biskopsgården, a Göteborg suburb.

In Stockholm too, 2008 was a pivotal year. The new tactic of starting fires in order to attract the cops and the fire brigade, so that stones can be thrown at them, was to be introduced in its suburbs, indicating a change towards a more aggressive stance against the police. As the riots in Rosengård were going on in December 2008, cars were burned and confrontations with the police also occurred in Tensta in Northwest Stockholm. At the beginning of 2009, riots spread to the nearby areas of Husby and Akalla: cops reported having heard rioters shout that they were attacking them ‘in sympathy with our brothers in Rosengård’. In June 2009, the fire brigade was attacked in Husby and Tensta. Between August and October the same year, a lot of arson occurred in the neighbourhoods of Gottsunda and Stenhagen in the city of Uppsala, North of Stockholm. This started when a police patrol at which stones had been thrown called for reinforcement. In October 2009, after a one-hour bust in a youth recreation centre, which occurred because a green laser had been pointed at the police, a lot of cars burned in Fittja, another Northern suburb of Stockholm. In September 2010, due to the arrest of one of their friends, young people from the neighbourhood vandalised the metro station of Husby and attacked the local police office. ^[6]

During 2010 and 2011, the activist groups, which had been developing since the 2000s in Northwest Stockholm, experienced some victories. It is important to underline that the people in organisations like Megafonen originate from and live in the suburbs in which they are active, like Husby, Rinkeby and Hässelby. They are men and women who are older than those who start riots, they are more likely to take part in higher education, although they do share the racialised proletarian conditions of the rioters. One of Megafonen’s issues was the ‘Boosting Järva’ project (Järvalyftet) which began in 2007. The City of Stockholm is planning structural urban reforms which at the time in Husby, among other things, was to abolish the ‘traffic separation’ between roads and living spaces, demolish the existing pedestrian bridges, and create a new highway through Rinkeby and Tensta. Megafonen opposed this and during the 2012 occupation of a soon-to-be-closed recreation place in Husby called Husby Träff, the organisation put forward two sets of demands. First, the creation of a local board in each neighbourhood focusing on ‘jobs’ and ‘education’ which would give ‘real power’ to the inhabitants through the local associations of Husby. Second, the withdrawal of Husby strukturplan, the specific part of ‘Boosting Järva’ which concerned Husby. These actions did not hinder the planned closures of several schools (the Bredby school and the Bussenhus school), the local post office, the local health centre and the tax office of Tensta. But the demand of a withdrawal of Husby strukturplan was ultimately satisfied with the argument that given the resistance, there was no point in pursuing it. Megafonen also managed to stop the demolition of several houses, the privatisation of a bathhouse and ultimately the closure of Husby Träff. ^[7]

Riots broke out again in the neighbourhood of Risingeplan in Tensta, another Northwestern suburb of Stockholm, at the beginning of April 2013. Two recycling rooms and two cars were set on fire and the same night a demand was sprayed all over the neighbourhood: ‘LOWER THE RENT’ (SÄNK HYRAN). When the police and the fire brigade arrived they were surprisingly let in, probably because the rioters wanted the demand to be seen. ^[8] Six years earlier in this same neighbourhood, the monthly rent of a five room flat was 7 900 Swedish kronor; at that point it was at least 11 700 Swedish kronor, and during March and April 2013, the inhabitants were informed that a retroactive rent raise for the year was to take place. ^[9] The struggle against these transformations previously took other forms than riots. Some young people from the neighbourhood created the campaign The future of Risingeplan (Risingeplans framtid), with the explicit goal to speak to the media in order to spotlight the problems of their surroundings. The campaign not only highlighted high rents, but also the ill-treatment of inhabitants by service and maintenance representatives of the company. ^[10] Nevertheless, both the riots and the campaign focused on the local real estate company Tornet, which manages rental flats in Stockholm and in Skåne. At this point, it was hated by almost everyone in the neighbourhood because of the degraded flats (although there had been a renovation three years earlier) and the bad state of the public spaces, including wall sockets and electric cables hanging loose, stuck cellar doors, non-isolated windows, spots in wet areas, paint falling off cabinet doors, problems with the toilet flushes, etc. More riots took place in the middle of April: in the same neighbourhood, a recycling room was set on fire and a car trashed. On surrounding walls and in the recycling room, there was also more graffiti with demands, now looking more and more like threats: ‘Lower the rent or take consequences’, ‘Lower the rent with 50%’, ‘Remember 50%’ and ‘Hans you’re gonna die’ (Hans Erik Hjalmar being the director of management of the 500 flats). ^[11]

Worth mentioning as a possible heightening of tensions running up to the Stockholm riots was the police killing, in Husby, of a locally known 69-year old man. According to the man’s neighbours, he had been acting in a threatening way towards authorities, and when the police called for reinforcement the man locked himself in his flat. The police then forced the door and threw in a stun grenade, and as the man ran out he was shot dead – witnesses say he was shot 14 or 15 times by several heavily armed cops. Following his death, the police made a public announcement stating that he had been driven to the hospital in an ambulance, but according to young people from the neighbourhood who had witnessed the incident, the man’s body was left on the spot until late, and then simply driven away in a hearse. A demonstration against police violence was organised by Megafonen in Husby on 15 May. As in Rosengård in 2008, riots did not erupt immediately. For a week, tensions grew day by day. The riots only broke out six days later. ^[12] On the evening of 19 May, a group of young people enticed the police, the local firemen and the ambulance into Husby by setting several dozens of cars, a couple of trucks and a garage on fire. The police, whose function at this point was to protect the firemen, were targeted with stones and incendiary bombs at their arrival. Calm was restored quite soon. The next day in Husby was a very much like the first one, but the number of rioters grew to over 50. Police was called due to burning cars and on their arrival, accompanied by the fire brigade, stones were thrown at their cars. Four cops were wounded, and the windows of local schools and shops were broken. Earlier the same day, less than 24 hours after the outbreak of the riots, the organisation Megafonen held a press conference on the riots, highlighting the realities of segregation and police brutality.

On the third night, riots were pursued in Husby, but also spread to Jakobsberg, a Northern suburb, where the local police office was attacked, two schools damaged and an art centre set on fire. All in all, 30 cars were burned, and that night, eight people were arrested. On the forth night, fires spread to 90 different places. As usual, when the police came to help the fire brigade, stones were thrown at them from all directions. Another police office was attacked with stones in Kista, close to Husby, and two police offices in the South of Stockholm were damaged. In Skogås in Huddinge, a restaurant was set on fire. The only police questioning of the night was that of a girl in her teens suspected of preparing a fire because of the blasting agents she was carrying under her jacket – she was sent back to her parents. Many other young people were sent back to their parents too, without questioning. This fourth night was the first one during which hundreds of parents, locals and members of the above-mentioned associations hit the streets of Northwest Stockholm to put an end to the violence and the arson. They were often referred to as ‘citizen patrols’ (medborgargarden). The riots then moved to the Southern suburbs of the city, accompanied by the same kind of practices: cars set on fire, cops attacked with stones when they arrive to help the fire brigade. A police car was set on fire and during this night, cars burned and stones were thrown at the police in Malmö.

On the fifth night, dozens of cars, three schools and a police office were set on fire. Fires spread to 70 different places, most notably to Rinkeby (five cars), Tensta (a school), Kista (a kindergarten), Jordbro (a car and a supermarket), Älvsjö (a police office) and Norsborg. Stones were thrown at the cops in Södertälje. There were still hundreds of people voluntarily patrolling the streets to restore calm, and the cops became a bit more active, as 13 questionings occurred during the night, all of them of people between 17 and 26 years of age. On the sixth night, less cars were set on fire in Stockholm (30-40) where police reinforcement from Malmö and Göteborg joined the local troops. The riots now spread to the city of Linköping, 235 km from Stockholm, where a kindergarten, a primary school and some cars were set on fire; to Uppsala, 70 km from Stockholm, where a school and cars were set on fire and some rioters wrecked a pharmacy; to Örebro, 160 km North of Stockholm, where a school and several cars were set on fire, a police office was attacked and a cop wounded. The seventh night was calmer in comparison: a police patrol in Vårberg in the South of Stockholm was attacked; in Jordbro, stones were thrown at the cops when they tried to arrest a young guy. Finally, on the eighth night, less than ten cars were set on fire which, according to the police spokesman, could be considered ‘a return to normal’.

So, in a sense, 2008 was the year that brought the riots of our times to Sweden, with one of the practices which compose them, arson of cars and buildings, becoming an everyday practice in certain suburbs of the big cities. Arson and its necessary counterpart, police intervention, is here a part of normal life. It is only socially considered as an ‘event’, i.e. brought into the sphere of the mediatic and the political, when it is accompanied by direct confrontations with the police, or arson of buildings such as police offices, shops and schools. As we have seen, the riots as ‘events’ and, in some cases, the everyday practice of arson, can not be isolated from the public declarations, the occupations and the demands that punctuate them. The practices of the riots tend to converge with the language of demands.

2. The Swedish Workers’ Movement and its Disintegration

In order to understand this state of things, we must now consider in what way the conditions, the subjects and the practices of the riots were historically produced. What has led to the current situation is the crisis of the Swedish model and the disintegration of the social-democratic workers’ movement. The restructuring of capital which started in the early 1970s has not put an end to the proletariat; it has transformed the modalities of the reproduction of the latter, so that these no longer form an essential, stable component of the reproduction of capital. What’s more, in the case of Sweden, the restructuring unfolds at the same time as the country becomes a centre for immigration. The transformation of the modalities of proletarian reproduction also implies a polarisation of this class, along the lines of one’s qualifications and one’s national origins, and most often the two together.

Central to our analysis will be the notion of integration and that of the state. Our approach thus implies to move away from the wage relation in the strict sense, because we will need to look at how concrete individuals enter and relate to the material community of capital, in ways that are always specific to them. This is why we will begin by exposing the Swedish social-democratic welfare state and its main product, namely the social integration of the proletariat, before we analyse the major effects of the crisis of this society. ^[13] These historical considerations are meant to prepare the theoretical tools for an adequate understanding of the Swedish ‘suburbs’ and the specifically ‘suburban’ riots which, as we hope to show, are not to be taken for granted.

The Swedish social-democratic welfare state rested upon centrally regulated wage determination. Its foundations were laid out in the Saltsjöbaden Accord of 1938, between Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen (hereafter SAF), the Swedish Employers Association, and the Landsorganisationen i Sverige (hereafter LO), the Social-democratic Federation of Swedish Trade Unions. Within a rather lately and rapidly industrialised country, it was the encounter of, on the one hand, the peasantry and the proletariat’s need for protection from the impulses of the market and, on the other, a capital which tended to be more and more concentrated (through investment banks and holding companies, cross-ownership, cross-membership of management and executive boards, etc.). According to the so-called Rehn-Meidner model emerging in the 1960s, LO was to coordinate wage demands and negotiations of all its member unions, thus setting a wage norm for all of them, which was to be high enough for wage increase and equality, but low enough not to endanger full employment. This ‘solidaric wage policy’ (solidarisk lönepolitik) supported both by the unions and the Social Democratic Party actually reinforced the concentration of capital, since corporations with intense accumulation ended up with relatively low wages with regard to what they accumulated, while smaller-scale corporations had relatively high wages with regard to their accumulation. This centrally negotiated mode of social regulation guaranteed the reproduction of a unified workers’ identity. Indeed, the social-democratic policies were fundamentally policies of distribution. Welfare was a social transfer ensured not only through high income, corporate, sales and payroll taxes, in order to finance production in the public service sector, but also through the centralised wage-policy which transferred a part of the potential wage increases of workers in the export-oriented manufacturing sector to wage increases above productivity in the public service sector. ^[14]

The Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement can then be said to be a spur in the development of Swedish capitalist society. The flip-side of the politics of distribution, with its central wage negotiations and high employment was, from the point of view of capital, no less than labour peace, labour mobility, total control over investments as well as over the organisation and rationalisation of the process of production. Of course, organised labour as well as farmers and reformist intellectuals were to counteract the ‘economic’ power of capital with their own ‘political’ power. But this ‘political’ power, though organised and represented as a popular movement or a counter-society, endorsed capital in the quest for its ideal pace: too high profits, it was said, would lead to wage drift, and too low profits would lead to unemployment. ^[15] In this sense, the Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement was a process of social integration. What allowed it to develop as such was the Fordist norms of production consolidated in the post-war era. A great increase in productivity, enabling the decrease of the cost of the commodities essential to the reproduction of the proletariat, could go hand in hand with a heightening of the real wages. In this way, mass production was validated by mass consumption, thus repressing the organic composition of capital. The capitalist development during this period was based upon the expanding scale, the technological innovation and the improvement of products developed from natural resources in the production of ‘staples’ commodities (such as lumber and iron). ^[16] Throughout this era, real wages increased following an equalised pattern, while the rate of profit remained relatively low. Unemployment was kept at 1-2 %. It was this steady and protected development that permitted the well-grounded national workers’ identity to support the Social Democratic Party, allowing it to maintain a parliamentary majority between 1932 and 1982 (with exception of one mandate). With no exaggeration, one could say that during this period, the Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement became one with the regime.

Until the middle of the 1970s, the reproduction of a unified workers’ identity and its extension to the middle strata was also accompanied by the integration of immigrants into the national workforce. The centrally determined wages and the strong political representation of the working class blocked the use of immigration as a modality of wage depreciation. ^[17] This horizon of an inclusive national workers’ identity was that of an increasingly instrumental affiliation. No anti-discrimination legislation was formulated, because the state and its active labour market policies were thought to be sufficient to create a rational social organism in which everyone could be treated equally. ^[18]

Mass consumption, education and specialisation were to make realities such as ethnicity and race irrelevant. ^[19]

The vehicle of this inclusive national workers’ identity was the Swedish state. Since the social surplus that both capital and labour aimed at maximising was in need of an allocator, this specific state developed as the unity of the mutual implication of capital and labour. The form of the inclusive national workers’ identity was that of universal entitlements, i.e. social incomes independent of wage labour. Both historically and in the post-war era, it generated working class unity, and extended the appeal of the coalitional social-democratic workers’ movement to ‘the people’ in general. The Swedish people’s ‘home’ (folkhemmet), the territory of the social-democratic politics of distribution, was nothing but the nation. From this point of view, the Swedish state was the locus of the collective bargaining model. It was only through the state that the distribution of welfare services could be established as a compensation for losses of income. As individual citizens, workers and capitalists were represented in the political parties in the Parliament, but they were also represented as functional interests, organised in LO and SAF, harmonised in the social regulation of the state. ^[20]

This process of social integration, constituting a political power against capital, but always endorsing the latter, is what we may call the social-democratic workers’ movement in the Swedish post-World War II context. The establishment of a mutuality of interests in the labour-capital relation allowed for an organisation of the proletariat upon what it represented within capitalist society (labour, welfare, use-value, etc.). This is what we call ‘workers’ identity’.

Grasped as such, the social-democratic workers’ movement and its specific workers’ identity compose a historical situation. Now, in order to understand their disintegration, we must grasp them in their development – a development which, at one point, hits against its own inner contradictions.

The wave of wildcat strikes that broke out in the spring of 1970 was symptomatic of the breach of the historical agreement that had been established between labour and capital during the first decades of the 20th century. This happened as Sweden entered a crisis of over-accumulation and declining productivity growth, both exacerbated by the oil crisis. During the rest of the 1970s, due to the falling rates of profit and the subsequent global breakdown of the Fordist circuits of valorisation, productivity growth in Sweden’s export-oriented manufacturing sector was no longer intense enough to permit wage increases in the domestic service sector. At the same time, unemployment began to rise. ^[21]

This crisis of the Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement is also the beginning of the restructuring in Sweden, i.e. the transformations of the capital-labour relation starting in the 1970s. In this country, the restructuring can only be understood in the long run. First of all, the restructuring was the end of income policies. In Sweden, production as such was internationalised from the late 1960s and onwards, while relocations started in the 1980s. It then became necessary, from capital’s point of view, to abandon joint central wage formation, especially since the unions had been able to force high wage increases during the 1970s. Hence the Swedish state lost its function as social regulator of the capital-labour relation, because the wage lost its status as an essential component of the reproduction of capital. Devaluation became a better option for capital than incomes policy, and the big industrial firms joined the major Swedish banks in order to develop financial activities within productive capital. ^[22]

Meanwhile, the restructuring established the impossibility of controlling exchange and interest rates. The Rehn-Meidner model presupposed low rates of interest and the development of the world market. As corporations and banks started undertaking evasive currency swaps, national state control of exchange and interest rates were rendered impossible. ^[23]

The eradication of the Swedish state’s regulation within the spheres of production and circulation was consolidated with new social-democratic policies between 1982 and 1991. Sweden’s weak export industry, the lack of foreign investments, the country’s budget deficit and its rising foreign debt favoured a politics of devaluation, as well as conservative fiscal and monetary policies. In the context of the financial crisis of 1991, expressed primarily as a housing bubble, this culminated in drastic austerity measures in Sweden: reductions in benefit levels, tightening of eligibility rules for health and unemployment insurance programmes and, ultimately, the abandonment of the political imperative to defend full employment.

Now, as the steady and protected development of the Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement is long gone, the wage relation can no longer support an inclusive national workers’ identity. Through the crisis of this movement and through the restructuring, workers’ identity has been disintegrated.

However, the process of this disintegration can not be understood with exclusive reference to the capital-labour relation. The disintegration at the level of the capital-labour relation (disintegration ‘from above’) is the crisis of the Swedish welfare state and the end of the Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement’s ability to politically influence the spheres of production and circulation through the state. The disintegration at the level of the capital-labour relation implied the end of national confinement of production, came with a growing financialisation of capital, and was accompanied by the constitution of a trans-national fragmented workforce. But the disintegration of workers’ identity also comes from below, from the internal relations within the proletariat. At this level, we must try to deal with the historical coincidence of the decomposition of the industrial working class and the increased immigrant inflows to Sweden. The most important effect of this historical coincidence is the polarisation it has created within the class itself, between a stable, national core on the one hand and a precarious, immigrant periphery on the other.

After the post-war influx of refugees, the period ranging from the 1950s to the early 1970s saw the arrival of immigrant workers, mostly from Yugoslavia and Finland. These workers made it possible to manage economic peaks and temporary labour shortages, but they never had the status of guest workers. In 1972, a ban was set on further labour immigration, which had been put forward by the unions in order to protect the wages of the national work force. From then on, immigration to Sweden has primarily been composed of refugees and asylum seekers, in addition to those arriving for family reunification. A new type of immigration has developed, originating primarily from the Horn of Africa, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. ^[24]
In the global restructuring, technological innovations and the reallocation of labour caused a decline in the number of industrial jobs, which was compensated for by the development of menial service jobs in new urban agglomerations. These jobs were and still are mainly occupied by immigrants, whilst the expansion of R&D and the ‘information industry’ in the late 1960s/early 1970s set the ground for the formation of new middle strata within the majority populations. These past years, there have been public programmes and subsidies to stimulate what goes under the name of ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’, which have boosted the already heavy presence of immigrants in the highly competitive self-employed sectors of cleaning, catering, restaurants and small retail stores. Whilst a large part of Swedish women were to be employed in the expanding public sector, immigrant women tended to be employed in the industrial sector. ^[25]
Not only did immigrants have the most physically demanding jobs – thus constituting a growing part of early sickness-related retirement –; during the 1980s, the downsizing, relocation, labour-substituting reorganisation and technological upgrading also occurred within the industries where immigrants were concentrated, thus exposing them to unemployment more than anyone. Last but not least, because of Sweden’s well-known inability to put its anti-discrimination legislation into practice, it was far more difficult for anyone with a foreign-sounding name, even with qualifications, to get stable employment. All of this amounted to several decades of class polarisation developing along two axes: an immigrant proletariat / national middle class axis, and an unemployed immigrant / national stable proletariat axis.

These internal class relations are also mediated and reinforced by the state. The social regulation operated by the state was once a vehicle for the reproduction of a unified working class; it now tends to marginalise all those who have not long been part of the stable national core of workers, or even regulates exclusion from the formal economy. In the 1980s and the 1990s, immigrants were facing a highly protected and selective labour market, and the Swedish legislation on job security (according to the last hired-first fired principle) led to a form of indirect discrimination, since it works against immigrants in cases of lay-offs or plant closures. Because of Sweden’s high labour costs and strictly regulated welfare system, small businesses must also be able to carry through large investments in order to get around, which often explains the limited niches available to newly arrived self-employed immigrants, or their necessity to ‘go underground’. ^[26]

At the same time, the various ethnic central organisations (riksförbund) which had been developed by Finns, Yugoslavs, Croats, Turks, Greeks, Kurds and Syrians were incorporated into state practices. Through its public support, the Swedish National Board of Immigration (Statens Invandrarverk) exercised heavy economic control over their activities, e.g. by preventing them from developing into political pressure groups, or from supporting existing parties, a control that implied a profound depoliticisation of immigrants striving to organise as immigrants. ^[27]
Obviously, the political contract, the norms of the citizen’s practices as well as the way by which he/she is represented, is continuously administered as a race-neutral contract. But as a matter of fact, the political contract is determined as white, because the general interest is that of those whose social integration is accomplished. The others are marked with a particular phenotype or genealogy, and can only hope to break into the sphere of political universality by affirming no more no less than this particularity. Indeed, the pluralistic 1970s policies of community rights did enable the formation of permanent institutions like schools or places of worship, but the modalities of the social and political integration of immigrants are becoming increasingly precarious. Certain populations are indeed encouraged to exist politically as representatives of their culture, if not to completely withdraw from the sphere of political universality. Very much like the class polarisation, both grass-root and parliamentary politics thus develop along two axes: an organised immigrant / established citizen axis, and a depoliticised immigrant / representable worker axis.

It then becomes clear that when the reproduction of the proletariat is no longer a stable component of the reproduction of capital, the state does no longer constitute the unity of a mutual capital-labour relation. Nonetheless, the disintegration of workers’ identity is not only the dismantling of the achievements of the workers’ movement. Welfare, too, is restructured, i.e. produced in a new form. When a proletarian movement is no longer confirmed within the reproduction of capital, welfare tends to become a mere cost for the state. The management of welfare then becomes an essential moment of the attack on real wages – ‘real wages’ in the wide sense of the term, i.e. including indirect wages and social transfers. This leads to austerity measures, i.e. partial or total suppression of the entitlements in themselves. In Sweden, this process was initiated in 1991 and radicalised from 2006 onwards with the right-wing coalition’s ‘work strategy’ (arbetslinjen). ^[28]
The new form in which welfare is produced lies in the particular relation between the state and the market which is at the base of the new Swedish welfare sector. Since the period between 1991 and 1994, private companies and venture capital conglomerates have emerged within the Swedish welfare system in order to conduct the welfare operations, whilst these operations remain publicly financed. This is the case in health, care and sometimes in education. Having been founded upon universal social entitlements, welfare is now a sort of public commodity. Then, as with all commodities, there are exclusive variants (for those in the inner city who can afford it) and mass produced ones (for those in the suburbs, if they are lucky enough to still have a hospital or a school where they live).

In this situation, the given integration of the national workers’ identity has been completely destroyed. The general attack on real wages and the subsequent management of welfare produces a situation in which, tendentially, workers identify not so much with the political labour-capital opposition as with the labour-‘outsidership’ dichotomy. Indeed, the partial suppression of welfare entitlements implies an increased selection of their recipients. Welfare is no longer an investment in the social citizenship of workers, it is marked as being ‘for those particularly in need’, for those in ‘outsidership’. ^[29]
What then prevails within the proletariat – and we are here at the level of the social experience of this situation – is a tendency to desperately cling to that which remains. For growing parts of the proletariat and the middle strata in the ‘majority population’, ^[30] the presence of immigrants and refugees is seen as a social problem of ‘outsidership’ in itself, very much in the same way as the new selective form of welfare presupposes that certain individuals are problematic in themselves. Beyond this analogy of the psychological and the structural, we must grasp their common element: the tendency to culturalise social conditions. In 2008, the right-wing liberal People’s Party (Folkpartiet) published a survey in which ‘outsidership’ is said to be a self-reinforcing culture which ends up constituting the identity of certain individuals. ^[31]
So far, these cultural frames of reference have produced one of the most successful political perspectives in the restructured Swedish welfare state, to the extent that the anti-immigration Swedish Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) became the country’s third biggest party in the 2014 parliamentary elections, receiving about 13% of the votes. After the decline of what Théorie communiste have called the workers’ movement’s hegemony ‘rival’ to that of capital, the general tendency is not to identify as a worker defying capital through collective organisations such as those of Leninism or Social-democracy; it is rather to identify as a worker having to struggle to remain a worker through individual distinction from some outside threat. As already indicated by the Swedish Democrats’ Party Program of 2010, what is at stake for them is not labour and capital, it is Swedish culture on the one hand and immigration, the EU, ‘American imperialism’ and ‘economic globalisation’ on the other. Since the growing immigration of refugees of Asian and African origins during the 1980s, this unease with what one is within this society has increasingly been taken out on these immigrants. When confronted with the ‘benefit dependency’ or ‘passivity’ of Mr. or Mrs. Immigrant, the Normal Swedish Worker’s own disintegration is elevated to a value, and the alien character of class belonging is transcended in a cultural community. As for the immigrants themselves, the restructuring of capital and the subsequent class polarisation which divides society into whites and ‘others’, the perceived homeland’s cultural practices is what some of them cling on to in order to create a stronger and more secure sense of identity beyond material precariousness or poverty. ^[32]

To conclude, the restructured Swedish welfare state no longer represents a regulator and allocator of the mutuality of the labour-capital relation; with its selective welfare and privatised planning, it now rather promotes the differentiated reproduction of the classes. Both wage labour and political representation have thus lost the universal and inclusive norms that characterised them in the post-war social-democratic regime. Their inner polarisation according to qualifications and national origins must then be grasped as a constitutive element of the labour-capital relation, as something which shapes social life and the experience one has of it in its entirety. The ideas about the dysfunctional lifestyles of the suburban ‘immigrant guys’ (invandrarkillar) and the deviant values of their Muslim families have become commonplace, to the extent that the Rosengård riots were often perceived as some kind of Islamistic rebellion, and the riots in Stockholm as a question of ‘cultural barriers’ (according to ex-Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt).

3. The Constitution of the ‘Suburbs’

The capitalist restructuring and the disintegration of workers’ identity only allows us to trace the historical production of the present situation. In order to grasp what is at stake in the riots in Sweden, we must now look at the constitution of this situation, that is look at the processes which continuously reproduce it in the so-called ‘suburbs’. In other terms, we will try to answer the question as to how the classes’ differentiated reproduction and profound polarisation – both products of the disintegration of the workers’ movement – persists in present-day society. This persistence is a matter of material anchoring of specific individuals in specific positions. With regard to the reproduction of capital, the processes of this persistence amount to one thing: discipline. However, the critique of class reproduction and polarisation must also understand them analytically, in and for themselves. We will try to show that these processes are a matter of (a) personifying a determined situation in the labour market, (b) of representing a certain element of the ‘population’ guarded by the state, and finally – only as a product of the persistence of the two previous positions, and not as something given – (c), of being located in a specific place.

a) The Market

The driving force behind the discipline is the market. The primary product of the creation of low-wage niches and a precarious informal sector, and of the production of welfare as a commodity, is a specific subject: the one who is crudely exposed to the market, i.e the one for whom labour is reduced to the compulsion to work. In the present period, this specific subject, and the objectivity it presupposes, are continuously reproduced in the ever-more expanding insecure, low-skill service sector. This subject is usually referred to as the ‘excluded’ one or, in more orthodox Marxist terms, as being part of the ‘reserve army’. But the subject at stake here is neither outside a society identified with a labour market (as ‘exclusion’ suggest), nor destined to it (as ‘reserve’ suggests). Through temporary, part-time or hyper-casualised jobs, this subject is actively taking part in the labour market, but this very activity presupposes that it is expelled from it as soon as it enters it. In one word, it is alien to the market, in the sense that it is a subjectivity which faces the value production cycle without ever being incorporated into it. It is stuck in the ongoing breakdown of the third moment of exploitation ^[33] : the transformation of surplus-value into additional capital, which makes it necessary to maintain the face-à-face of labour and capital, the separation between labour power and the means of production, the fundamental subject-object split without which there can be no exploitation.

This subject is composed by the significant groups which are now relegated from both the formal labour market and any unemployment insurance. This was reinforced when income tax reductions (on the employed) were traded-off for social insurance payment cuts (both in unemployment and sickness benefits). In the neighbourhood of Herrgården in Rosengård, only 15% of the inhabitants are engaged in formal labour. ^[34]
In Husby in Stockholm, the level of formal employment is 24% lower than in the greater Stockholm region. ^[35]
But the so-called ‘outsidership’ is not an attribute of this subject; it is only at the peak of a process of de-essentialisation of labour, a process which now concerns the Swedish society as a whole. Among the 20-25 years old of the Swedish population in general, 20% are without formal employment and not involved in education; in areas such as Herrgården and Husby, 40% are in this situation. ^[36]
Being at the peak of this process does not really imply a certain ‘segment’ of labour power, as if the whole question could be reduced to a certain level of income. It is a matter of a certain situation of labour power, namely the one which is never confirmed as waged labour, i.e. socially validated and socialised in a continuous process of production. This situation is constituted by the market’s alien character to a specific subject, and this subject’s alien character to the market.

To understand the constitution of this situation, it is no longer sufficient to speak of a mere class polarisation, in the sense of a relation internal to the proletariat. Indeed, the process through which a specific subject with specific properties is constantly thrown back into this situation must be grasped as a process of racialisation. In Sweden, this situation is that of the ‘immigrants’: persons born in the Middle-East, one of the biggest sources of immigration, are three and a half times more often employed in temporary jobs, while a growing part of young immigrants of first or second generation live on diminishing public assistance and occasional undeclared work. Just as union’s capacities to regulate the labour market through the state is disappearing, the informal sector is becoming more and more important in construction, agriculture, cleaning, catering, and domestic services for the urban middle-class; this informal sector is almost exclusively comprised of immigrants and illegal immigrants. ^[37]
Racialisation, then, is not only a segmentation of the class, as if a racial redefinition of the latter was occuring a posteriori upon a presupposed homogeneous unity. Racialisation is constitutive of the actual class, because it produces the situation of the unwaged – the alien character of the market to a specific subject – by personifying this alien character upon the basis of phenotypical characteristics, national origins and culture.

Those we referred to with the term ‘rioters’ above are such racialised subjects. Since they are only crudely exposed to the labour market, and their chances to be integrated into its stable core are nearly inexistent, the very conditions of their own reproduction appear as something alien to them, and can thus appear as something to burn or to destroy. Schools and shops are two of the primary targets of their practices of arson, because they materialise their experience of ‘social citizenship’: that of constantly being blocked out of it.

b) The Police

Therefore, if we are to understand the constitution of the ‘rioter’, we must leave the level of the impersonal force of the market to focus on this force’s actualisation, the one to which the rioters are constantly confronted at the level of their reproduction. This implies to look at the modality through which this driving force of the market is carried out: the police.

The social existence of the racialised subject is not that of ‘unemployement’ or ‘being surplus’, as if the social norm was that of employment and essentiality. Instead, it is socially produced in relation to a form of labour of which precarity is constitutive. It exists only to be controlled. In this sense, it is not disposed of as a potential use value for capital. It is only controlled; silence and calm being the only acceptable behaviour for this alien subject. In Husby, Rosengård, Backa and the other suburbs where arson is a normal practice, ‘social rest’ is now a question of avoiding direct confrontations between riot police and local youth. Policing, then, is no less than constant counterinsurgency.

This situation is only understandable from the perspective of the disintegration of the workers’ movement and the capitalist restructuring. Policing as counterinsurgency must be seen as a mode of social control specific to the racialised subject described above. In the heyday of the Swedish social-democratic workers-movement, social control was not primarily a matter of policing, because the reproduction of a unified workers’ identity was in itself a constant interiorisation of the function of the worker within capitalist society. First of all, the separation between subject and object, between labour power and means of production, was evened out by the continuity of the process of production within the manufacturing and public service sectors, as well as by the corresponding stable forms of employment, entitlements and, last but not least, union representation. This went hand in hand with the Swedish social-democratic horizon of a development of the productive forces which would at the same time be a deproletarianisation of the workers, in the sense that in the long run, this development was to give them access to the trophies of citizenship: education, culture, democratic participation. More generally, after its emergence in the 1930s, the Swedish social-democratic historical agreement between labour and capital was constantly reproduced through a kind of city planning in which material spaces acted as fundaments of workers’ steadiness. Take the neighbourhood of Möllevången in Malmö, for example. Once in power, the social-democratic regime managed to transform the slums that once composed it into a living symbol of the Swedish social-democratic workers’ movement, by literally embedding it in the institutions of Folkets hus (‘The People’s House’), Folkets Park (‘The People’s Park) and the newspaper Arbetet (‘Labour’). By one’s very presence in this neighbourhood, one could recognise one’s situation as a worker as one’s defining social characteristic, not only individually, but as part of a materialised and firmly established organisation. Then, the reproduction of labour power was at the same time its domination. The material life process of its regeneration coincided with the process of its continuous disposability and obedience.

Today, as growing parts of the proletariat are being expulsed from the process of production, as a consequence of the disconnected circuits of the production of surplus value and the reproduction of labour power, the reproduction of labour power no longer coincides with its discipline. Capital can no longer have direct disposal of alien labour through the process of production, because there is no socially recognised identity at its base ensuring a form of spontaneous social self-control. This implies that the discipline carried out by the police must be considered in its historical specificity. Today, its function is to control those who are alien to the market. This control is not only carried out on immigrants within the country. In a world where any surplus value can be invested or turned into additional capital anywhere, anytime, control is a matter of global management of a fragmented and mobile workforce. It then becomes harder and a harder to distinguish control and immigration control. The REVA project ^[38] aims at combating irregular migration through amplified identity checks and deportation. It began in Malmö in 2008, and broadened its range to Stockholm in 2013 (REVA controls were reported in Rinkeby and Husby at the end of February 2013). REVA, a collaborative project between the Swedish police force, migration services and prison service, is also partly financed by the European refugee fund. National policing is thus a component of a broader, global policing. Through the control of immigrants within Sweden, another control is exerted: that of dominated populations as such, those that are structurally in an inferior position on the maps of capitalist production and circulation. Here, it is important to note that these controls often coincide with ticket inspections. Only the racial profiling distinguishes a REVA control from a regular ticket inspection. The REVA’s interventions within strategic commuting and transfer hubs ^[39] suggest that this is a control of mobility. At the level of the city, it is a control of the material access to mobility, in agglomerations where the price of public transport is a real issue. At the global level, it is also a control of the legal access to mobility, in a situation where growing parts of the world’s population stand outside all formal modes of reproduction, but still remain trapped within capitalist society. In this sense the police’s control practices are constitutive of racialisation too. Not only through ‘racial profiling’, but more fundamentally by implementing the discipline of the market, which constantly retraces the frontier between the ‘outsidership’ of immigrants and the social citizenship of honest consumers. Along these lines, the substance of racialisation is not personal prejudice or some reactionary state ideology. It is the material and symbolic space of the Western city, where the formerly colonised African populations once essential to European capitalism, or the populations having fled from the authoritarian regimes or the war lords of their countries, are now continuously pushed out to the peripheries of social reproduction and identification.

No wonder that in the riots in Sweden, as in France and Denmark, cars are one of the privileged targets of arson. Even if they belong to the – naturally hard-working – neighbour, they remain symbols of the exclusive character of social citizenship. And because self-consciousness is always constituted in the Other’s outlook on the individual, REVA, and the regular identity checks and strip searches by the police in the suburbs, tend to force the subject of the ‘deviant immigrant kid’ to identify with himself precisely as a ‘deviant immigrant kid’. This identification is at the same time its recognition of itself as a subject existing only to be controlled. This is why the police becomes the focal point of all ‘suburban’ riots in Sweden. Through its everyday practices of control, the police is the very actualisation of the alien character of society, existing only as an external force to be imposed on the ‘deviants’. Riots become a form of self-defence against the constant pressure of this external force. The rioters aim the police, the symbol of the European quelling of that without which, historically, Europe as a capitalist fortress would not have been possible: the racial construction of the global circuits of accumulation. Thus, burning cars to attract the police in order to throw stones at them, setting police cars on fire, or destroying police offices are practices that become an end in themselves. As such, they are strictly limited to the ‘suburbs’ spaces of the ‘deviant immigrant kids’.

c) The City

In point of fact, the police control carried out on immigrants actualises the discipline of the market along specific geographic patterns. At the level of the city, this is the relation between the ‘centre’ and the ‘suburb’, where the latter is always that which has to be controlled, kept calm. We have also hinted at how, at the level of the global cycles of accumulation, this relation could be seen as a mise en abyme of the relation between the centres of this cycle and their peripheries. As such, the relation between centre and suburb can not be understood as a given one, as if this relation was born out of the inherent properties of the centre and the periphery in themselves. We must try to grasp the relation between centre and suburb as the material product of discipline.

In Stockholm, suburbs such as those of Hallunda, Fittja and Alby, which compose the area called Huddinge, were initially built for the 70s working class coming from the north of Sweden (Norrland, Jämtland and Härjedalen). Indeed, in the era of the workers’ movement, which tended to integrate the reproduction of the proletariat in the reproduction of capital, housing was an essential component of labour reproduction. The housing policy formulated by the social-democratic Commission on Housing and Redevelopment in 1934, and supported by the Minister of Finance, insisted on the stabilising function of public housing, which was to be assured by municipal housing companies owned by the municipalities and run on a non-profit basis. Through subsidy programmes aimed at improving the quality of buildings, at equality between different forms of tenure, and at a rigorous control of rent levels, ^[40] a common housing stock was made affordable for the general population: Interestingly, no specific estates, like ‘social housing’ in the UK or in France, were built for those ‘especially in need’. These subsidies sprung out of the workers’ funds of the Rehn-Meidner plan: a 20% tax on profits was controlled by the unions for reinvestment, partly in public housing. ^[41]

But with the rising unemployment and the toughening of the labour market which followed the early years of the restructuring, the Northwest and Southwest ‘suburbs’ of Stockholm, and the historically proletarian neighbourhoods of Backa and Rosengård, were the only ones to offer affordable rents to the proletariat. Once the very milieu contributing to the social integration of workers, these areas have now become places which one is forced into, urban dustbins, much like the French banlieues. This process is reinforced by the progressive marketisation of public housing. Since the beginning of the 1990s, municipalities have been selling their estates – mostly to sitting tenants, but also to private landlords – while the municipal housing companies lost all government support. The deregulation of transfer pricing for housing units and the inflation of the costs of urban land are making it unattractive to build for rents. Thus, the Swedish model of housing is evolving towards that of a market-oriented system without support mechanisms. Here, too, certain aspects of persistent state regulations have the effect of regulating exclusion or of excluding through their regulation. A very monitored system for allocating rental housing, as well as strict rules concerning personal sub-letting, are blocking out all those without steady income, savings or home-owning parents from the formal housing market. ^[42] Hence, in neighbourhoods such as those of Herrgården in Rosengård and Risingeplan in Tensta, the ‘Million programmes’, once monuments of workers’ identity, are commodities among others, subject to transactions on the rental housing market. Here, there is no production of space but only its degradation. Housing does not exist as an essential component of labour reproduction, as during the workers’ movement; it exists crudely as a source of rent, of which mold and cockroaches are daily reminders for the inhabitants.

The ‘suburb’, then, is not what it is because of where it is located, but because of who lives there and how. A quick look at the map indicates that ‘suburbs’ like those of Rosengård, Backa, Gottsunda, Husby, Tensta and Rinkeby are actually not that ‘suburban’; from the centre, they can often be reached by the bus or the metro in 15-20 minutes, and sometimes their urban landscape is not that different from that of more well-off areas simply referred to as ‘Stockholm’, ‘Göteborg’ or ‘Malmö’. The distance that separates them is psychological more than anything; not ‘psychological’ as opposed to ‘geographical’, but psychological in the sense of space as it is experienced. In Swedish, the very notion of the suburb’ (förorten) has become an umbrella term for all that is perceived as deviant: first and foremost immigrants but also, as mentioned above, the long-term sicklisted and former convicts, early retired/sick pensioners (for example the 69-year old man who was shot a dozen times), etc. It is a place one is ‘forced out’ into, because the process of gentrification is a coercive one, which materialises the class frontiers between the white citizens of the centre and the racialised subjects of the suburb, thus materially anchoring the process of racialisation. Through Husby, Tensta and Rinkeby, a highway can be drawn, while only a couple of kilometres away, luxury flats such as those of Kista Tower are being built. Seeing as the discipline of the market, actualised in the police and materialised in the suburb, is what constitutes the alien subject – the one for whom it is sufficient to live in a certain area to be the focus of attention in matters of control and discipline –, neighbourhoods like those of Herrgården or Husby are areas that people tend to leave if they get enrolled in stable employment or education.

Despite all this shit, or maybe precisely upon the basis of it, an identity is formed in these suburbs, expressed most notably in rap lyrics, with its reference to ‘the concrete’ (betongen) and ‘the hood’ (orten). It is only with this in mind that we may understand how both the activists of Tensta in Stockholm and those of Herrgården in Rosengård could identify with themselves as ‘renters’ trying to establish a dialogue with the ‘real estate companies’, in some cases ‘the municipality’ or the ‘state’. Indeed, as the activists of ‘The future of Risingeplan’, or those who occupied the cellar space in Herrgården, were continually ignored both by the real estate company and by the commune or the tenants’ associations, riots eventually broke out. And the rioters, too, targeted their practices of arson, sabotage and occasional looting at the very headquarters of these ‘real estate companies’. The shared demands of the activists and the rioters were those focusing on the lowering of rents, or on keeping or regenerating their infrastructures.

The identity formed in such struggles is a syncretic one, based upon these shared conditions of discipline. It is not the homogeneous workers’ identity based upon the male, white, skilled worker. The suburbs of Husby, Tensta, Rinkeby, Herrgården, Backa, etc. do in themselves gather hundreds of languages and backgrounds, which has given birth to the now well-known dialect of ‘Rinkebysvenska’ (Rinkeby Swedish), but it is only when some aspect of the neighbourhood is attacked by elements perceived as alien to the community – cops, real estate companies or local politicians – that collective practices carried out by school kids, students, young unemployed, adult workers and the elderly emerge. However, the fact that this syncretic identity is based upon the shared conditions of discipline presupposes that it only exists through its internal divisions. Polarisation being a constitutive element of today’s class relation – historically produced in the restructuring, and maintained as such by the processes of racialisation, control and segregation –, the internal divisions within the proletariat are as determining as the labour-capital relation. This is not to imply that the central division at stake here is of a sociological nature, opposing a static delimitated group of ‘activists’ and another one of ‘rioters’. We know that the members of Megafonen, Pantrarna, and other organisations that we have mentioned often both originate from and live in the same suburbs as the rioters. What we mean is that there are internal divisions within those who live in the suburbs, and that these internal divisions are expressed in different practices and discourses that come from specific subjects constituted in the struggles.

4. The Language of the Riots

This is where the relation between rioting and activism, and its significance for the present period, comes to the forefront. The simultaneous constitution of the rioting practices on the one hand, and new forms of activism on the other, raises the question of their respective methods and perspectives.

First, we must look at the nature of the relation between rioting and activism. In the present situation, is there a possibility for activism to transpose the riots into its own positive language, i.e. its own tendency of affirming the possibility of a dialogue and a future in our society?

Let us first stress the historical novelty of this question. Riots have not always consisted in practices separated from movements of social integration. In the riots in Möllevången in Malmö of 1926, which broke out in a conflict between strikers and non-strikers, violent practices including those of confronting the police could to a certain extent be legitimised and defended by the institutions of workers’ identity, for example by the newspaper Arbetaren (‘The Worker’). And in the end, these riots became an impetus for dialogue, since a lot of workers from the city accepted to take part in a big, centrally organised peaceful demonstration. The riots thus had the possibility of being socially integrated from the start, because the practices that composed them, unlike those of today which are often a matter of sporadic and ephemeral communities, sprung out of an emerging and increasingly institutionalised workers’ identity. ^[43]

We must also clarify the following: when we raise the question of the possible integration of the riots in our period, it is not to imply that the latter now stand ‘outside’ society, as if they were immune to recuperation or less subject to the ‘illusions’ of this society. What we mean is that the practices of attacking one’s own living conditions, which pose one’s racialised class belonging as something alien, are impossible to integrate as such. As the representative of a political party, of a union or any other established institution, one can not ‘organise’ and ‘coordinate’ the burning of police offices or the sabotage of infrastructures, simply because one incarnates the very society that is attacked through these practices, and that one’s existence as such a representative presupposes that of urban administration, of police control, of the cleavage between social citizens and ‘outsiders’.

This is why the activism which, while denouncing the functioning of the state and its institutions, defends what it perceives as the remnants of the workers’ movement, is poised on a knife-edge: it is trying to represent a part of this society for which this very society is something alien. If activism defends the riots, it abolishes itself as a socially recognised representative, and if it does not defend the riots, it must repress them like the rest of society. Following its press conference after the very first day of the ‘Stockholm riots’, Megafonen was to be treated like a cause, a reinforcement, a leader or a mediator of the riots, but always as its representative. Even the political opposition to the right-wing coalition in power in Sweden only reacted 24 hours later. During the second day of the riots, Megafonen gave its view on them. These quick reactions show in themselves how strongly Megafonen is rooted in Husby and its surroundings; otherwise, the organisation would not have had the confidence required to make statements about these events as they happened and where they happened. Although Megafonen understands the social problems which cause the riots, ‘Megafonen does not start fires’, because it aims at ‘long-term change’, ‘constructive resistance’ and ‘social refurbishment’. ^[44]

In other words, and this has become a widespread cliché in the Swedish left: they understand the anger of the rioters, but think that they should express it differently. Disappointment, it is said, must be made into something progressive. When they formulate such an idea of channelling the unease of what one is within this society, they are much like an echo of certain revolutionaries who appraise the rioter’s ‘potential of violence’ against the police, but not the fact that they target their own living conditions (schools, local shops, buildings, etc.). In both cases, what is implied is that beneath the practices of the riot, there is an underlying force which could be reoriented in another direction. It then is up to the activist, the active subject, to organise this underlying force, a passive object. From the viewpoint of this activism, the self-destructive practices of the riots must make way for a coherent, political movement.

But when one seriously considers the social constitution of the suburbs, it becomes clear that one cannot disagree with the form of the riot without denouncing its content. The subject of the riots is nothing but its practices. The form is not a set of alternative mechanisms (the riot or ‘constructive resistance’) separated from its motor (anger because of one’s living conditions). What the self-proclaimed agents of Organisation are unable to grasp is that it is not a matter of Organisation and Non-Organisation – in other words, themselves and the rioters –, but a matter of two different forms of organisation, and thus two different contents being organised. On the one hand, riots are organised by those for whom society appears as an external force. Yes, ‘organised’: fixing gathering places takes a lot of communication; blocking paths, getting paving stones, forming ammunition groups and trackers takes a lot of coordination; keeping these practices alive despite the reinforced police patrols implies to know all hiding places and shortcuts of an area. The content here is that of creating turbulence; the form is that of an ephemeral coming together. On the other hand, the coherent political movement is organised by those who still see a future within this society, or who are subjectively constructing a visible future, even one which looks concretely impossible from outside perspectives: the reconstruction of the welfare state. In Stockholm, Megafonen set up a fund-raising for those without car insurance whose car had been burned; it also supported the ‘civic patrols’ helping the fire brigade to extinguish fires and helping the police to send young rioters home. The content here is that of civic behaviour; the form is social integration.

By distinguishing these two forms and contents of organisation, we do not wish to condemn activities like those of supplementary tuition, independent lectures, and so on, which make life more bearable for a lot of young people in the suburbs. We intend to reveal their horizon, the perspective on the transformation of society that they presuppose. This horizon is, in Megafonen’s own words, that of ‘a more cohesive Stockholm’. ^[45]
They thus echo the social-democratic perspective of a unified society. The very content and form of these activities make them into vehicles of a renewed social regulation. Tendencially, this is already what they are becoming in their everyday practices. In Göteborg, Pantrarna go as far as projecting to start training courses in professions that are in need of workers. It is thus noticeable that when welfare has become a public commodity, this type of activism tends to replace certain functions which were once taken care of by the state. It tends to do communal work for free, and to present this as social emancipation.

On this view, activism can indeed transpose the riots into its own positive language, but only by substituting the practices of the riots by those of social integration. The nature of the relation between riots and activism is that of an incorporation, an activity of transforming the content of the riot in order to give it a socially recognisable form.

Nevertheless, as our description of the riots in Sweden revealed, activism and riots do not develop along a revolt-reform axis as two clearly separated realities. The riots may express demands, and they do often emerge out of a politicisation operated by activism. We cannot address the question of the possible integration of the riot strictly from the viewpoint of the positive language of activism. Indeed, this positive language is not an intrinsic property of activism; it might also be shared by the riots.

Then, if the positive language, that of affirming a possibility of a dialogue and a future in our society, is not restricted to activism, the question of the relation between rioting and activism leads us to consider the different expressions of this language. How is it expressed in riots? How is it expressed in activism?

In the Swedish context, riots are not intrinsically destructive. Even from a consequentialist point of view, the one which usually concludes that ‘the rioters don’t hurt anyone but themselves!’, ^[46] the riots tend to incarnate a modality of demanding. That the major real estate companies of Herrgården in Rosengård (Newsec and Contenus) finally decided to renovate the moldy flats during the spring after the riots; that no further closures of the local youth recreation centres occurred; that a new sports ground with longer opening hours was built; that, in some cases, rents were lowered 25% – all this can only be seen as a way of satisfying the demands that were explicitly formulated during the occupation, and of the demands that local politicians, municipality workers and heads of real estate companies read into the acts of the rioters. This is also the case in Stockholm where, after the events in Risingeplan of April 2013, the real estate company Tornet withdrew its proposal to construct 167 new buildings. ^[47]
The reason, according to the CEO of the company was that ‘[w]e must establish a coherent dialogue with the inhabitants, and put an end to the threats against our personnel.’ ^[48]

Here, then, it seems that the riot tends to incarnate the positive language of a dialogue and a future by burning and demanding at the same time. It is a form of constructive destructivity. From the Swedish outlook, we must then ask if this could be seen as a new form of social bargaining. Of course, this would not be the centrally organised social bargaining of the Swedish workers’ movement. As we have seen, the universal and inclusive norms that characterised political representation under the post-war social-democratic regime have made way for differentiated and polarised modes of political representation. From the specific outlook of the situation within the Swedish suburbs, this reveals that the strong racialisation of certain proletarians goes hand in hand with that of the political contract. For the rioters, who are not only at the peak of the de-essentialisation of labour, but also exposed to the most intense control and gentrification, social bargaining surely can not consist in that of the citizen striving to be politically representable. This bargaining can only express itself through intensified conflict which inevitably soon dies out, because what the rioters are rejecting in their practices is the very existence of this political representation of which they are normally excluded. During riots, for short periods of time, the rioters provoke political and media debates about their living conditions; they force the improvement of some aspects of their reproduction (housing, infrastructures, etc.); during this short time span, they could even be said to constitute a class – not as objectively defined by the relations of production, but in the fact that they recognise themselves as a political collective, composing itself upon the basis of things previously not understood in these terms: repression, poverty, police hatred, etc. This is at the same time the limit of the riots. The riots become an intrinsically suburban ‘question’, a chronic sickness medicated with occasional improvements and, more importantly, constant policing. In Sweden, the strategies of the latter have not consisted in arresting a lot of people, but have focused on re-establishing calm in collaboration with the pacifying elements of the suburbs. ^[49]
Precisely because riots tend to become part of the normality of certain suburbs, the normal course of capitalist society is not endangered by them, not even at the level of its reproduction. It follows its course not despite the riots, but with them.

Thus, in Sweden, riots penetrate the movement organised around the positive language of social bargaining. But it does so by re-appropriating the language of the demands, by transforming it into a more conflictual and broader struggle. In Rosengård, the riot emerged as the very extension of a demand-oriented occupation, but against the initial civic mode of bargaining, by directly attacking the perceived forces behind the eviction (the real estate companies and the police). In Risingeplan during the months preceding the ‘Stockholm riots’ the riot emerged from within the campaign as another more turbulent modality of demanding: demanding by burning, reclaiming a very drastic lowering of the rent, and not just another survey by the tenants’ association. The positive language of dialogue and a possible future exists in the riot, but in the sense of demanding immediate solutions to concrete problems, not within the perspective of a cohesive society or a Social Democracy 2.0.

However, in Sweden, it is also the other way around. Not only does the riot penetrate the movement; the movement also tends to penetrate the riot, in its striving to become its representative: we have seen how organisations like Megafonen and Pantrarna stand in a relation of incorporation to the riots. By symbolically covering certain costs of the destruction of the rioters or by taking in charge the qualification of the young, they tend to affirm a coalition, here and now, of all the antagonistic elements of civil society. This subject strives to be ‘political’, in the sense that its practices tend to organise the coming together of people which in everyday life only exist through the racialised class relations which the reproduction of capitalist society presupposes. In activism too, the positive language exists in and through demands, but demands which are put forth following the modality of integration.

This is a broader tendency. The riots in Copenhaguen in the winter of 2007, ^[50] for example, culminated in the publication of an open letter in the major newspaper Politikken signed ‘The boys from inner Nørrebro’ (‘Drengene fra Indre Nørrebro’), in which both rioters and a young worker from a recreation centre gathered in order to describe the youth’s everyday experience of police controls and brutality. A particular police officer was actually fired after the events, and meetings between the police, the young worker, some youth who had taken part in the riots as well as parents from the neighbourhood were held in Nørrebro. More recently, this political subject has even reached the European parliaments. In Greece, for example, during the early days of the riots of December 2008, Syriza presented itself as the party that recognised that the rioters – those who occupied universities, sabotaged shops and metro stations, confronted the police – do what they do because their future is blocked. Six years later, it has become clear that the sole political recognition of this absent future implies that the state and a socialist economy is to provide this future to the rioters.

5. Movement and Explosion

The specificity of the riots in Sweden, in comparison with those that took place in Athens in 2008 and in London in 2011 – which both started not as acts to defend welfare, but in response to police killings –, is that they emerge as a defence of the infrastructure of the suburbs. This reveals that the current crisis of restructured capital develops in differentiated temporalities. No important government spendings and no austerity measures were needed in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the crisis of 2008, on account of the combined attack on indirect wages during the financial crisis of 1990-1994, aggressive monetary policy as well as a rather restrictive loans policy. Hence, the restructured Swedish welfare state does, to a larger extent than countries like Greece or England,^[51] contain something to defend, namely social benefits, notably materialised in housing and infrastructure, often upon the basis of the particular relation between the market and the state described above. In Sweden, then, the relation between rioting and activism is not the openly conflictual one which we have seen in France where, during the French anti-CPE movement of 2006, the rioters from the Parisian banlieues literally attacked the students’ demonstrations or general assemblies, by burning cars or seeking confrontation in a way that broke with the demand-oriented practices of the latter.^[52]
In Sweden, the language of demands may be shared by activism and rioting although, in some cases, these demands can be projected reconstructions made by politicians, municipality workers or CEOs of real estate companies. Of course, there are demands and there are demands: the restless demands of the rioters (lower the rent! or solidarity with our brothers!) are not the general ones put forwards by organisations like Megafonen, requesting more welfare and democracy, but they do emerge in the same situation. The decline of the heavily centralised unions that were once the primary mediator of all social bargaining leaves a void that can only be replaced by forms of organisation that we may call immediate, in the sense that they are not integrated in a socially recognised institution. ^[53]
The forms of this immediacy are diverse; they are both the taking over of abandoned state functions, the filling of the void, and the direct action against the perceived sources of one’s social deprivation, the defiance of the void. In Sweden, then, the defence of social benefits becomes a catalyst for riots: burning and demanding can coincide.

But the practices of burning and demanding can not coexist in a harmonious way. By burning the very infrastructure of their reproduction and at the same time demanding an improvement of this reproduction, the rioters are acting against and for their perpetuation within this society. Through their practices, they thus tendentially split apart their constitution as racialised proletarians in relation to capital – the processes that determine their specific situation –, and their reproduction as racialised proletarians within capital – the processes that perpetuate what they are in this society. ^[54]
These acts of splitting apart the constitution of what one is within this society on the one hand, and the reproduction of it on the other, is nothing revolutionary in itself. They only reveal a rift between this constitution and this reproduction; they do not undo the inner relation between the two. There is nothing that says that the mere revelation of this rift could not be integrated to the reproduction of capital. As we have seen, this is already the case in some rare occasions, when the exposure of this rift is represented politically not as the splitting apart of the constitution and the reproduction of the class – calling for a rupture with existing relations of production – but as an inadequacy between this constitution and this reproduction, an inadequacy that calls for social integration: ‘an education and a job’ to the ‘excluded’ who seem uncomfortable in their situation as ‘excluded’. Thus, when actors such as activist groups or parties emerge in order to represent the rioters, they are not ‘recuperating’ the riot. They emerge from the very limit of the riots: their social and geographical isolation to those who are alien to the market – their existence as strictly ‘suburban’ riots.

With regards to the near future, the relation between rioting and activism we have tried to depict allows us to formulate two questions.

The first question concerns the tendency of activism to strive towards the constitution of a coherent, political movement which is to integrate the rioters. In Sweden, this is the case with Megafonen and Pantrarna. By trying to produce a coherent, political movement, these organisations emerge in response to the practices of the riot. But in this response, this alien character of racialised class belonging is represented as a deviation from a political norm, a political norm which is often that of the welfare state of the workers’ movement. These organisations treat exploitation and racial domination as something which is to be transformed through the redistribution of existing wealth. For them, the economy is not constituted by class polarisation and racialisation; it is fundamentally neutral. This leads them to represent the riots as the living proof of the necessity to integrate denigrated identities, which are only blocked by the discrimination operated by those in power. A similar tendency has been seen in Ferguson these past months, especially among the older generation of militants, those affirming the necessity for black people to act like good citizens in order to be treated as good citizens. For them, citizenship is not constituted as the structural exclusion of blackness from whiteness; it is fundamentally open to everyone. As we pointed out above, these actors emerge from the very limit of the riots; they present the ‘outsidership’ of the rioters as a passive state deprived of action. It is important to note that this tendency contains a highly repressive moment: by affirming that identities must be integrated, or that we all should act like good citizens, they affirm the necessity to pacify the movement in order to produce a coalesced political subject. In Sweden, this is constantly taking the form of a differenciation between the rioters – ‘criminal gangsters’, ‘throwers of stones’, or why not ‘professional activists’ (sic) ^[55] coming from other parts of the city – and the locals – ‘hard working people’, ‘shop owners’, ‘citizens’, etc. This classification is at the same time an exclusion of the practices of the rioters. Indeed, the coalesced political subject does not admit internal struggles like the ones that appear both in the Swedish ‘suburbs’ and in Ferguson: struggles between the self-employed proletariat – owners of small retail stores, restaurants, etc. – and the younger proletarians. Then, it should come as no surprise that it stands on the side of the ‘civic patrols’ in Stockholm, the post-riot clean-up in London or, more recently, the Oath Keepers in Ferguson. Can this activism successfully level out the practices of the riot into a new force of social bargaining, which can be calmed as soon as its demands are satisfied? The latest developments in Greece (Syriza) and Spain (Podemos) might already be indicating such a tendency. ^[56]

If so, upon what basis does this social integration occur, i.e. what is its internal relation to capital and to the state?

The second question concerns the tendency of the riots to take the form of social explosions. The inarticulateness of the riots – their diffuse and ephemeral character, their refusal of any civic dialogue, their restless demands when there are any – must be treated in and for itself, and not merely as the sign of an incapacity to speak properly. Indeed, within the existing state, the riots can not be articulated as riots, simply because there is no space for deliberation, especially in a period when the one and only necessity of capital is to get on with the restructuring. But also because the process of this restructuring presupposes the structural exclusion of the proletariat from the table of collective bargaining. The riots are fundamentally non-relational: their relation to the capitalist totality, although systematic, is not directly mediated by any socially recognised institution. In this, the riots blatantly reveal that the production of racialised class belonging as something alien is no less than its production as something alien. Of course, they manage to transform accumulated anger into a collective event. This is blatantly expressed by the fact during the riots, people from other ‘suburbs’ quickly converged in Husby in Stockholm, and that people from other parts of the US joined the riots in Ferguson. What’s more, as seen in France in 2005, or in Sweden last year, riots are becoming longer and more spread out phenomena. This in itself can be celebrated. But communisation, the intertwined processes of abolishing capitalist social relations and of producing ourselves in new material communities, can not consist in riots, not even generalised ones. How could this intrinsic limit of the riot, its existence as a riot, i.e. as a social explosion, as the expression of accumulated unease against but always within capitalist society, be overcome? As suggested by the relation between rioting and activism, what needs to be overcome is not the destructiveness, for the establishment of constructiveness; nor is it constructiveness, to set destructiveness free. In areas like those of the Swedish suburbs, this would first of all imply to overcome the isolation of the strictly suburban riot. This would be about more than burning the cars of the rich in the city centre. It would begin as the putting at stake of the geography of capitalist accumulation: the relation between the capitalist core (Europe or the city centre) and its periphery (immigration or the suburbs). This could only be produced as internal struggles within the proletariat, because if there is one thing that these riots reveal about the revolution of our period, it is that we can not expect struggles to hit capital directly at its foundation, to only affect capitalists: there are no pure struggles.

Zaschia Bouzarri

November 2014

[email protected]

The relation of exploitation contains, in an immanent way, a direct relation of domination, of subjection, and of social and police control. But when one takes the relation of domination, of subjection, as the totality of the relation of exploitation, the part for the whole, then one loses sight of the relation of exploitation and of the classes. The moment of coercion taken as starting point and posited as the totality of the relation between the individual and society inevitably lapses into the point of view of the isolated individual and the critique of everyday life.

— Théorie Communiste, The Glass Floor1

A Revolution in Daily Life

Across the domains of government in the canton of Cizire, people are working, mostly on a voluntary basis, to make ambitious transformations to society. Doctors want to build a modern free healthcare system but also, they told us, to collect and disseminate suppressed local knowledge about healing and to change the conditions of life in general. They aim, they said, to build a way of life free of the separations – between people and between people and nature – that drive physical and mental illness. Academics want to orient education to ongoing social problems. They plan, they said, to abandon exams and destroy divides between teachers and students and between established disciplines. The new discipline of ‘gynology’ (the science of women) constructs an alternative account of mythology, psychology, science and history. Always and everywhere, we were told, women are the main economic actors and those with responsibility for ‘ethics and aesthetics’, ‘freedom and beauty’, ‘content and form’. The revolution aims to overcome the limits placed on these activities when the State is taken as a model for power.

It was repeated to us again and again that the coexistence and coordination of changing cross-cutting pre-existing identities is to replace ‘one flag, one language and one nation’. The new administration is composed of quotas of representatives from Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian communities, nominated according to their own practices. Although the militias and security forces are ethnically mixed, Assyrian groups have their own battalions. Everyday life has changed most for women, who were previously restricted to a life indoors. Although the streets are still mainly the province of men, women have set up their own education structures and their own local councils. All mixed political bodies must be 40% women and all co-representatives must include one woman. Women are thus both autonomously organised within the revolution and its archetypal subjects. The billboards in Qamislo show the YPJ’s women fighters more than YPG’s male ones. ‘We will defend you’, one reads.

Members of the YPJ spoke to us about the non-hierarchical organisation that exists within the militias. There are elected commanders, they said, but they participate in all the activities of communal life in the same way as everyone else. But it’s not all love and post-structuralism. Discipline is also an important part of the ethics and aesthetics of daily life. The women we saw being educated as security forces (Asayish) were taught sitting in rows. It was a bit of a shock on the first day of our tour, to be greeted by a line of trainees in uniform, standing with perfect rigidity in a line doing that call and response thing armies do, precisely and very loud. YPG training videos, set to music, play on every TV. Even in the University, where young people live collectively, cooking and cleaning-up happened in a super efficient way: tasks are performed efficiently, divided up between everyone, so that equality and horizontality and automatic discipline overlapped perfectly.

Another ethic and aesthetic ambiguity surrounds the significance of the PKK’s Ocalan, or ‘Apo’ (the name for him people more commonly write on walls and carve into their guns). His picture hangs on the wall in almost every room. The ‘libertarian turn’ of the PKK, with which Rojava’s PYD are affiliated – its renunciation of hierarchical structure among other things – was initiated by him. It is interesting to note, that it was also after a period spent in this region, before his arrest in 1999, although he is always attributed with coming up with the ideas. The other images that adorn walls, dashboards and plants are those of martyrs – their faces against a coloured background that denotes their organisation. Is it significant that Ocalan is the only person still alive to be given this honour and a leader with whom no one can communicate directly and with no de facto power?

Weakening the State

The point of the revolution, many people told us, is not to replace one government with another, it is to end the rule of the state. The question, the co-president of the Kurdish National Congress put it, is ‘how to rule not with power but against power’. State power is being dispersed in a number of ways. The education of people as Asayish is taking place on a large scale, with the aspiration that everyone will receive it. It is part of an attempt to diffuse the means of coercion to everybody. People’s self-defense, were were told, is ‘so important that it can’t be delegated’. Through education (not only in the use of weapons but also in mediation, ethics, the history of Kurdistan, imperialism, the psychological war waged by popular culture and the importance of education and self-critique), the fighter in charge of one training centre told us, the aim is to finally abolish Asayish all together.

The new administration (with a parliament and 22 ministries), appointed for now by various political parties and organisations but to be eventually be elected, has taken responsibility for some state functions. When in spring 2012, ISIS reached Rojava, anticipating the carnage of a confrontation between Isis and Assad and seeing the opportunity in the situation, the Kurdish forces surrounded the Syrian state forces in Derik and negotiated their departure (without their weapons). After consultation with other political and social forces in the area, the same happened across Rojava. However, the Assad regime has not been completely ejected. In Qamislo, the largest city in Cizire, it still controls a small area which contains the airport. The old state also continues to operate in parallel with new structures. Syrian hospitals to the south still accept some of the very sick and the regime still pays some civil servant salaries including those of some teachers.

Meanwhile, the new administration is balanced by multiple autonomous elements. Separate from it, communes (weekly open neighborhood councils, with their own local defense units and sub-councils dedicated also to youth, women, politics, economy, public services, education and health) and city and canton-level councils consisting of delegates elected by them, deal with immediate practical problems that can be resolved immediately. Both the administration and the communes were set up by TEVDEM, a coalition of organisations including the PYD, co-ops, academies, women’s and youth organisations and sympathetic political parties. These organisations all have their own decision-making structures and sometimes there own education programmes in their ‘cultural centers’ ‘houses’ and ‘academies’. The result of all this, is both that all political forces have complex, cross-cutting reliances on each other and that there are plenty of meetings to go around.

And Communism?

Little existent agricultural or industrial production takes place in Rojava, despite its flat and fertile soil. The ‘bread basket’ of Syria, most of its land has been owned by the State and used for mono-cropping wheat and extracting oil. Its Kurdish population often immigrated to souther cities to form a class fraction working for lower wages. The new administration took the land and distributes portions of it to self-organised co-ops who are working to expand the farming of animals and to increase and diversify what is grown. It continues to extract some oil and to refine it into low quality diesel to sell in the canton and to distribute to co-ops and other institutions. What co-ops produce is sold either to the administration or in the bazar under administration price controls. The administration provides each household with a bread ration. Smuggling is huge.

Those overseeing these changes describe them simply as practical solutions to the problem of how to reproduce the population in the context of war and embargo. This is very different from how the immediate practical transformations to the domestic sphere were described. The women’s militia, members of the YPJ told us, ‘opened a space for liberation’: ‘You take part in life in a new way and, when you are with others, you realise that you are a power.’ And, they said, ‘when people saw us fighting alongside the men they also accepted us fighting against male-centric mentalities’. There was no talk about the positive empowerment came with the necessity of disrupting relations of exploitation and exchange. Perhaps this was because the people we were bought to talk to were mainly middle class, although this fact itself is also significant.

In some ways, opposition to the state is opposition to capital, on the level of its global force. The new administration opposes, as they see it, NATO in two forms: in one as Turkey-supported ISIS in one and in the other US and international capital (a category into which the KRG – where two ruling families now construct refugee camps along one side of their motorways and shopping centers along the other – also falls). They have no illusions about the motivations of those who give them military support: ‘Everyone, including the US now, portrays it as it we are on their side!’ TEVDEM laugh. But there is no opposition to value in its everyday form continuing to exist. Those that debunk the claims of over-enthusiastic western activists about the revolutionary nature of what is happening in Rojava are right to describe it instead as the building of a shield against today’s war and most brutal oppression, using, as well as an army, a new kind of ideology replacing that of national liberation2 .

The situation also has something in common with the sad trajectory of struggles around the world in the past few years. The state, now an agent of global capital, is seen as the guilty party by movements composed of middle as well as proletarian classes. Meanwhile, the nation is seen as the force to oppose it. Struggles rally under the ideology of citizenship (and the race and gender hierarchies this presupposes). The transformation taking place in Rojava rests to some extent on a radical Kurdish identity and on substantial middle classes contingent who, despite radical rhetoric, always have some interest in the continuity of capital and the state.

Yet, at the same time, it also shares something with the high points of the struggles of the crisis: its riots. In some ways the strategies employed in Rojava were born from analysis of the failure of riots: in 2004, only months after the PYD formed, an uprising of Kurds demanding political freedom from the Syrian state met not only with immediate torture, murder and imprisonment but with a long period of brutal oppression. We decided, they remembered, we would not make the same mistakes again.

What is taking place is not communisation. But it is a real movement against state plunder and coercion – fighting both militarily on its boarders and inwardly through the diffusion of power within them. The limits of the struggles in Rojava in this sense are those of struggles everywhere where the relation between labour power and capital has become a matter of repression and struggles that take that repression as a starting point. It is another struggle taking place far from the strongholds of capital’s reproduction and not directed at over turning relations of exploitation. What will be interesting in Rojava, for now largely cut off from the force of global capital, is what struggles will emerge over relations of exploitation… over the distribution of land, over assignment to different kinds of work, over prices and wages, over imports and exports. What transformation of property and production relations will women demand as they return from the militias?

Becky

• 1Theorie Communiste (2009) The Glass Floor
• 2Il Lato Cattivo (2014) The Kurdish Question

Introduction

At the outset of 2015, anyone hoping for a recovery of labor markets is told to lower their expectations.[1] Specious apologetics on the resilient turnaround of unemployment rates and job creation stumble against continuously revised growth forecasts reflecting the inertia of both high-GDP and emerging market economies. On a global level, the period since the crisis of 2007-08 has witnessed, at best, tepid economic activity despite unprecedented monetary stimulus and liquidity injection. Business investment remains predominantly stagnant, most recently with energy producers dramatically cutting back total capital investment.[2] Even China is stuttering and decreasing its appetite for raw materials[3], while the professed German success story cannot be read without the unfolding process of precarious centralization of capital in a rapidly declining Eurozone, rather than as an indicator for lasting growth.[4] At the same time, the world economy continues its recourse in unrestrained leveraging[5], further exacerbating credit-to-GDP ratios, with, according to a recent report by the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies, total public and private debt reaching 272% of developed-world GDP in 2013.[6] The recent alarm of deflation means a rise in the real value of existing state, corporate, and household debt. Corresponding to the fiscal approach of higher budget deficits is, since 2010, the outright purchasing of government, corporate and real estate bonds by central banks and paid for with newly printed money – i.e. ‘quantitative easing’. The European Central Bank has, most recently, followed the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan in the latter policy despite the fact that it has yet to demonstrate itself as an effective response to decelerating economies. Instead, the money created enters into the banking system, shoring up balance sheets on finance capital and fomenting bubbles within assets held.

These conditions outline the phenomenal contours of the present crisis of capital accumulation, which is at the same time a crisis of the reproduction of the capital-labor relation. Since the economic restructuring of the 1970s, deregulation has expanded the flexibility of labor markets and fundamentally reoriented the conditions of the class relation. While unemployment remained relatively abated during the postwar period – alongside the assurances of the welfare state – developments in capital accumulation since then have witnessed an unprecedented ascendance, in terms of duration and concentration, of both unemployment and underemployment.[7] Since the early 1970s and through the dismantling of the Keynesian wage-productivity deal of the postwar period, the capitalist mode of production has been stumbling to combat the anguish of diminishing returns. Its recourse of economic restructuring consisted in the expansion of finance capital and increasing the rate of exploitation in an attempt to stabilize and defer its own inherent propensity to undermine the process of self-valorization. The 21^st century thereby opened with a reign of labor-power devaluation that has only intensified its duress, which, alongside fiscal and sovereign debt crises expressed in austerity, continues to wield unrelenting immiseration.

Materially, the crisis of 2007-08 has only worsened the conditions of labor with, for example, the labor participation rate in the US now at a 36-year low[8], eclipsing any earnestly lauded low-wage job creation and its feeble average hourly earnings. For that segment of the proletariat not losing their jobs or dropping out of the labor force altogether – for which unemployment statistics have very little to say – the types of employment still available are largely temporary, part-time, seasonal, freelance, and in general, precariously informal without contractual guarantee of compensation. Thus, as the present moment finds an overcapacity of surplus capital unable to find lasting investment, the effective demand for labor-power follows suit and diminishes. Through the critique of political economy, this phenomenon finds systematic expression in what Marx refers to as the ‘general law of capital accumulation’. Here, the proportional expansion of total capital, itself resulting from the productivity of labor and therewith in the production of surplus value, yields a mass of workers relatively redundant to the needs of the valorization process. This tendency arises simply from the nature of capital.[9] As capital develops labor as an appendage of its own productive capacity, it decreases the portion of necessary labor required for a given amount of surplus labor. Therefore, the relative quantity of necessary labor needed by capital continuously declines. This occurs through the organic composition of capital in which competition between competing capitals induces the generalization of labor-saving technologies such as automation, thereby increasing constant capital at the expense of variable capital, resulting in a relative decline in the demand for labor.[10] The production of this relative surplus population is the devaluation of the total labor-power that takes on the form of a dislodgement of workers from the production process and in the difficulty of absorbing them through customary or legally regulated channels. If the labor-power of the proletariat cannot be realized, i.e. if it is not necessary for the realization of capital, then this labor capacity appears as external to the conditions of the reproduction of its existence. It turns into a crisis of the reproduction of the proletariat who is surrounded, on all sides, by needs without the means to adequately satisfy them.[11]

Friends have pointed out that surplus population is a necessary product of capital accumulation and therefore a structural category deriving from the ratio of necessary and surplus labor. It is a tendency that is always already there and inherently constitutive of the capital-labor relation independent from its historical configurations. So why might one justify its emphasis within the present conjuncture? After all, the notion of a surplus population ‘is already contained in the concept of the free labourer, that he is a pauper: virtual pauper.’ (Grundrisse) The task therefore remains to demonstrate why the relative surplus population is paradigmatic of the class relation in the present moment and what are the implications for contemporary class struggle.

The difficulty of a category

After the restructuring of 1970s, the foregoing spectacular representation of expanding prosperity and full employment, which would ostensibly lead to greater and more stable social integration into the spheres of production and consumption, reversed. Since this retraction, the undiminished centrality of production is confronted with a structurally distanced and weakened position of those employed. During the postwar period of the Situationists’ critique, the spectacular appearance of the proletariat had shifted from its role as workers to that of consumers. Today, the spectacular image of proletarian conditions instead appear as an ‘exclusion’, referring to parts of the population unlikely to ever be exploited under conditions that would make them respectable consumers. When describing the general law of capitalist accumulation, Marx observes stagnant, floating, latent and pauperistic tendencies within his elucidation of the relative surplus population. Thus, even beginning with Marx, the phenomenon of surplus populations elicits a heterogeneity of contemporary working conditions in more or less dynamic oscillation between the poles of employment and unemployment. From the erratic nature of seasonal, part-time, informal and freelance work[12], to the treacherous ruse of entrepreneurialism under ‘sharing economy’[13] and unpaid internship regimes; from the labor migrations of the countryside to the slum-dwellers of the urban metropolises; from the indentured parody of student debt and political Islam[14], to the universal uncertainty facing younger generations – as a whole, the proletariat today is colored by an unprecedented objective imperative of significant labor-power devaluation that puts its conditions of reproduction into total ambiguity. As such, dividing an absolute line between employment and unemployment for grasping the dynamic of surplus population appears grossly inadequate for comprehending its logic as emanating from the historical development of capital accumulation. Instead, in order to resist the temptation to simply focus on the immediacy of the given – and with it the enchantment surrounding the moniker ‘concrete’ – we attempt to elucidate the essence of the concept of relative surplus population as a category of social mediation unfolding the self-reproducing totality of capital.

Adorno observes that ‘[s]ociety becomes directly perceptible where it hurts.’ In fact, there is no shortage of sensationalized and emotionally arousing imagery presenting its audience with the conditions of structural unemployment. Temptations abound to hold fast to the immediacy of moralistic categories of discrimination, exclusion and expulsion that can, at best, promote the equitable distribution of exploitation. Celebrated political agents such as the ‘multitude’, ‘precariat’ and ‘excluded’ – all seeking, at heart, to triumph over inequality under the horizontalist banner of full employment – obscure the truth of the class relation while praising a narrow practicism in the service of that which is simply the case.[15] Symptomatic of these surface-level observations is the withdrawal from communism to egalitarianism and communitarianism, from critique to moral concern. Identitarian divides along a hierarchy of privilege or oppression carry little conceptual weight beyond the tokenized glorification of those at the margins and in the reification of deprivation. While the essence of a category cannot but be apprehended through its forms of appearance, critical reflection is impelled to move beyond those immediacies without leading into empty abstractions.[16]

Marx’s conception of the relative surplus population refers to a structural phenomenon of a contradictory totality and is not your run-of-the-mill sociological category. As such, the empirically given conditions of the capitalist mode of production are only moments that methodologically disclose objective law-like tendencies for which capital posits its own conditions of existence. As has been said before, ‘[t]he concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.’ (Grundrisse) The categories of the critique of political economy cannot be reduced to an overtly empiricist perspective for which quantitative facticity reigns. Against the positivism of presuming the existence of social facts in themselves, the immediacy of the conditions of surplus populations must reveal deeper mediations. These deeper mediations can be found in the concept of class insofar as class does not refer to a collection of individuals sharing common attributes such as income, consciousness, cultural habits, etc., but is instead an inherently antagonistic relation between capital and labor that structures the lives of individuals.[17] Strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as class ‘membership’. Such an understanding cannot help but wield the perspective of totality without which class collapses against a spatial schematic of discrete social ‘spheres’, ‘levels’ or ‘instances’. There is no mono-causal determination, but different moments of a totality of the class relation of capital-labor of which the phenomena of the relative surplus population derives.

In analyzing surplus population, it becomes clear that an ordered aggregation of social tragedy elevated through quantitative facticity is not a substitute for immanent criticism. The concept of relative surplus population is not an empirical category and yet incorporates the concrete within itself. As both concrete and abstract, the relative surplus population is at once both a directly observable and universal component of the accumulation process.[18] The surplus proletariat is a qualitative category of the productivity of labor in the capitalist mode of production that has quantitative dimensions because the productivity of labor is determined by the ratio of constant and variable capital. Without this understanding, one risks regressing into the assumption that the employed and unemployed constitute two different segments of the population, rather than a dynamic of the capital-labor relation. This dynamic is characterized by the insecurity in realizing labor-power against capital’s prerogative to increase surplus labor, and not as a sociological taxonomy for which individuals are organized. It has been observed that Mike Davis’ useful characterization of the phenomenon as a ‘continuum’, rather than as a sharp boundary between the employed and unemployed, is a more suitable description.[19] By defining the surplus proletariat as a continuum, one is capable of grasping the phenomenon as a general dynamic that exists of the capital-labor relation, one which signifies individuals frantically moving along the spectrum of unemployment, underemployment and employment at an unprecedented rate of precarious transitioning. For this, the surplus proletariat expresses the truth of class mobility. The point is to break down a rigid separation between employed and unemployed as if these were static social positions within the economy. The problem of the surplus proletariat is not reducible to the seemingly simple question of who works and who does not, but a dynamic that runs through and constitutes each of these positions. Expulsion from the formal labor markets derives from a contradiction embedded within the wage relation itself. Those suffering from chronic unemployment are part of production as much as they are its product. Unemployment must therefore be grasped as a category of exploitation and not external to it. Additionally, diffuse underemployment translates into both a disciplining mechanism by capital for those that are employed in seemingly stable positions and as a means for lowering the value of labor-power and increasing the rate of exploitation. Contractual workers have to ‘discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population’ (Marx). In this way, there is nothing superfluous about the surplus proletariat. The surplus proletariat is actually a dynamic within the proletariat qua concept. Because of this, it can further be said that, like the objective antagonism of the class relation itself, the structure of surplus proletariat permeates the lives of every individual in differentiated ways and yet, is not reducible to identity. The totality of the surplus proletariat, as it derives from the capital-labor relation and in the imperative to devalue the total value of labor-power, is present within all individuals.[20]

The surplus proletariat at present

The novelty of the production of the surplus proletariat within the present moment can be respectively approached from the tripartite perspectives of labor, capital and state, each of which reveal nuances about the present gap between the supply and demand for labor. Present accessibility to contracting labor markets is wrought with the conditions of a flexibilized workforce and casualized employment contracts to an extent that effectively renders most employed already half unemployed. The activity of the surplus proletariat presupposes its exclusion from the market as a precondition for its entrance. The renewed trumpet of entrepreneurialism, for which anybody can become a teacher, taxi driver or motel manager, is only the language of a labor force intensifying its internal competition. Self-employment, while once appearing as a sign of success, now signals the procession of atomization marching steadfast into utter peril. Further, since the 1990s, those living near or below the poverty line as a result of mediocre labor markets have become increasingly reliant on low-interest rate consumer credit in order to augment the languishing strength of wages.

For all of this, it can be said that the restructuring has qualitatively shifted the proletariat from virtual pauper unto what has been described as its concrete lumpenization.[21] If, during the mid-19^th century, the surplus proletariat consisted in the potential pauperization of the free-laborer, the restructuring of the 1970s-80s has established the concrete realization of the virtual pauper as a permanent condition of the proletariat in its relation to capital. As such, the surplus proletariat refers to the current position of labor-power in its difficulty in confirming and realizing its sociality through – and because of – the wage relation. Further, the antagonistic relations of the surplus proletariat tend to express themselves along gender, racial and generational lines.[22]

These developments within labor markets signal a crisis of the reproduction of the labor force. Indeed, for Marx, writing in the Grundrisse, it is the means of employment that characterizes the surplus proletariat: ‘this should be conceived of more generally, and relates to the social mediation as such through which the individual gains access to the means of his reproduction and creates them.’ Attempts to simply define the surplus proletariat as a specific location within the production process falls short of grasping its dynamic in accordance with a form of social mediation and in relation to the sphere of reproduction. If, in the present moment, capital no longer guarantees the regularity and sufficiency of the wage relation in the reproduction of labor-power, the proletariat enters a crisis at the level of its own reproduction. The surplus proletariat is thereby the expression of capital’s attack on the reproduction of labor-power, a position of stark contrast to postwar social democracy for which stronger wages and larger state welfare expenditure characterized the conditions of exploitation. During this time, capital refused its deal between itself and labor, which had aimed at an integration of labor into the process of accumulation. It can also be said that this rupture in the reproduction of the class relations was a reaction of capital on the cycle of class struggles of the 1960s-70s in which the proletariat put pressure on the preceding wage-productivity deal by succeeding in acquiring massive wage increases and thus raising the costs of the reproduction of labor force.[23] In contrast to this situation, the present expression of the surplus proletariat is the permanent devalorization of labor-power inextricably connected to the depreciation of capital currently accelerating within the crisis. The proletariat of the global slums and ghettos is only the condensed form of this overall crisis of reproduction. This process, in what the late Robert Kurz has referred to as a ‘spiral of devalorization’[24], outlines the contours of an era of lagging growth alongside the proliferation of the surplus proletariat and its crisis of reproduction.[25] The safest prediction is incremental deterioration lasting decades.

As a dynamic of the capital-labor relation, the relative surplus proletariat emanates from the present crisis. Simply invoking the ‘industrial reserve army’ – for which the term reserve and its association with a potential trajectory of implementation no longer captures the conditions of the surplus proletariat – does not reveal much about the present conjuncture – that is, that the growth of the surplus proletariat cannot be understood as an exclusive crisis of labor but indicative of the present limitations of capital accumulation.[26] This crisis accelerates capital to make labor more productive thereby lowering the portion of necessary labor, which means – in Marxian terms – to increase the organic composition of capital. The other side of the coin is that this development is also undermining capital’s own precondition for valorization: human labor force.

Furthermore, any industrialization that has taken place over the last decades – largely stimulated by the liberalization of finance capital – is hardly labor-intensive and employs a proportionately smaller number of proletarians compared to earlier periods and industries of the 20^th century. For instance, when considering the economic growth of the BRICS markets (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), of course it can be observed that in these areas capital accumulation has, as of late, proceeded at quicker rates than those economies that developed at an earlier period. Indeed, these countries, most notably China and India, have seen accelerating growth rates accompanied by considerable geographical shifts in global manufacturing output and employment. However, within these markets and since the 1980s, there is only a slight increase in industrial employment as a portion of the total employment[27], with nonagricultural employment predominantly moving towards service sectors, most notably in Brazil. As a percentage of, for example, China and India’s total workforce, the proportion of manufacturing employment barely approaches 15%. Additionally, in China since the 1990s, there has been a gradual decrease in the number of proletarians active within the production process relative to the total population.[28] Here, despite the fact that there has been expanding industrial operations within China during this period, this has not resulted an automatic increase in the size of its workforce, but rather in its decline. As China thereby loses manufacturing jobs in its older industries, relocating to areas of even greater labor-power devaluation in Southeast Asia (e.g. Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh), the newly emerging industries “have absorbed tendentially less labour relative to the growth of output.”[29] Here, Marx’s description of the latent surplus population bears a noteworthy resemblance to the urbanized and migrating labor force of the Chinese surplus proletariat[30] whose forced expeditions across both countryside and continents – itself the result of the capitalization of agriculture – are plagued by uncertainty.[31]

The global stagnation of the number of industrial workers as a percentage of the total workforce correlates with an expanding low-wage service sectors characterized by the labor flexibility of the surplus proletariat. As such, while the capitalization of emerging markets might reduce the absolute number of poor in these countries, this process predominantly entails the proliferation of low-wage work. Telecommunications and computerization in India might yield higher rates of GDP, but increasing underemployment remains the rule. Further, in the past, the state expenditures of the BRICS countries concealed the reality of an industrialization that is not absorbing a workforce at a rate congruent with the rate of accumulation. These safety nets, which often took the form of subsidies for staple commodities, are now largely dissolving through privatization and austerity.

The main problem for capital in the contemporary crisis could be expressed in the following tautology: Capital is forced to make labor more productive and needs more capital to do so. However, against the historical background of an already very high organic composition, the minimum amount of capital needed to invest in order to receive a certain return of profit is too high. As such, to get more capital needed for investment, capital has to make labor more productive. Because of this tautology or aporia, capital increasingly flees the sphere of production and finds refuge investing in financial markets where it seems easier to acquire profits out of monetary, state treasury, or housing market speculation, etc. This tendency can also be described as an escape from the strict regimentations of the law of value – an escape that can never be, in the end, successful.

The present crisis takes on the appearance of a general devalorization that, besides entailing reconfigured terms of exploitation, elicits fiscal deadlocks resulting from exorbitant deficit spending. The state is at once both the precondition, and result of, conditions of capital accumulation. The present crisis of capital expresses itself as a crisis of the state, which in turn, appears as monetary stimulus, liquidity injection, austerity and, in the end, repression. Police are concentrated in areas emptied of capital. Within this context, state administration of the surplus proletariat corresponds to a globalized geographical zoning of labor forces expected to take on mounting importance in accordance with, for example, massive immigration and refugee flows, as well as an urban and suburban social division of labor.

Through the Second World War, the alleviation of crisis was implemented in the form of a massive destruction and devaluation of capital. Thereafter, the state was primarily geared at stabilizing the crisis by ever-increasing deficit spending, which in turn, secured the Keynesian wage-productivity deal between capital and labor.[32] While this deal would eventually come to a close in the crisis of 1970s, the period of 2007-08 affirmed the frivolity of such an approach in achieving real economic growth. Currently, the function of the state, regardless of its social democratic posturing[33], is continued austerity through which the state lowers its share of the cost for the reproduction of labor force – a policy that inevitably results in more criminalization and repression.[34] The state as a mediating moment of total labor-power devaluation can be most potently witnessed at present within Southern European countries for which creditors compel governments to, for example, reduce the amount of public holidays, overtime rates and severance packages, dissolve collective bargaining agreements, and generally rollback public expenditure on welfare programs, i.e. the indirect wage. Here, the state loses its integrating force as the possibility of political mediation tendentially disappears. It is therefore no coincidence that social struggles in recent years increasingly consist in a direct confrontation with the state.[35] In the past, the state was the stabilization of crisis. However, the Keynesian solution is no longer an option because of state insolvency after having subsidized the private sphere alongside heavy borrowing throughout the postwar period. In the past, the reproduction of the surplus proletariat could be mediated by the revenue of preexisting surplus value distributed through state expenditures and social benefits. In such a scenario, more plausible prior to the economic restructuring of the 1970s, the indirect wage of the surplus proletariat was filtered through the taxation of private enterprises. Now however, the state itself is in crisis and can no longer guarantee the reproduction of labor-power. This inability is an expression of the global devaluation of labor-power, leading to the unrivalled eruption of a generation of surplus proletarians with a bleak future.

The struggle of the surplus proletariat

Against the flippancy of mixed signals, we might now forewarn readers to withhold two concerns that may arise – potential dead-ends which, in essence, express two sides of the same coin: the idealization of labor either in its past glory or in its present volatility. Firstly, the foregoing discussion of the phenomena of surplus proletariat within the present moment is not to be understood as a lamentation on the marginalization of what is often imagined as a classical productive worker with a heavy hand at the bargaining table that may have characterized previous periods. If anything, the present conjuncture and the dynamic of the surplus proletariat signal a poverty of the workerist perspective. The point is not to attempt a restoration of prior conditions of exploitation, but to confront the historical limits of the reproduction of the class relation today. The production of communism is not the glorification of labor but its abolition. The internal opposite of this directionless mourning is the elevation of the conditions of the surplus proletariat into a unique revolutionary subject capable of feats for which others lucky enough to maintain preceding conditions of exploitation are structurally prohibited. The proliferation of riots within the present moment as an addendum to the development of the surplus proletariat does not necessitate a romantic projection that distinguishes an identitarian agent closer to communism than those more fortunate.[36] Even those most satiated can be recalled at their worst.

The dynamic of the surplus proletariat is a dynamic of the fragmentation of the proletariat – that is, a process that reconfigures the total labor force in accordance with the changing conditions of capital and its devaluation of labor-power, effectuating internal transformations to the proletariat as a whole and to its differentiated relations to the production process.[37] As a result, contemporary class struggle is frequently comprised by participants originating from varied backgrounds and experiences, often in conflict with one another. This inter-classism can perhaps most notably be seen in the conflicts surrounding what is on occasion referred to as ‘middle-strata’ and in its angst at sinking into less favorable conditions of exploitation. Its crisis, which includes its appeal to fairer economic distribution, is itself a moment of the totality of the surplus proletariat, i.e. in and through the internal fragmentation of the proletariat. The present problem of the surplus proletariat thereby evokes the question of inter-classism as a dynamic within the contemporary struggles of the proletariat whose fragmentary nature often appears as its own limit.

This problem has often been described as a problem of composition, i.e. as the complexity of unifying proletarian fractions in the course of struggle. Indeed, the content of revolution no longer appears as the triumph of overflowing proletarian class power as it might have during the first half of the 20^th century.[38] Struggles whose site of conflict is less the realm of production, but increasingly the sphere of reproduction, expresses this development. The Arab Spring, Indignados, Occupy, Taksim, Maidan and the heterogeneous riots abroad, for example, have not seen the affirmation of the workers’ identity in conflict with capital, but rather the unavailability of constituting a unifying identity in the dynamics of these movements. The recent racial upheaval against the police in the US, most notably in Ferguson and Baltimore, shares little in common with the employment ambitions of yesteryear. This is further corroborated by the expansion of the surplus proletariat alongside the increase in surplus capital unable to find lasting investment. The workers’ movement no longer provides consistency to class struggle. As such, fragmentation emerges as a new class consistency. Contemporary struggles express themselves less as a unity than as an aggregate of segmented interests sharing various affinities through material reproduction (evictions, food prices, transportation costs), abstract demands (‘corruption’, ‘inequality’, ‘injustice’), or through self-sacrificing identifications with false fragments impersonating the social whole (with either national or religious sects). As a result, what was in the past the centrality of the wage-demand characterizing the struggles of the previous period has become tangential. The surplus proletariat, as a dynamic of class struggle in the present moment, cannot harbor the dreams of a Keynesian class compromise. The class affirmation of the proletariat is perpetually on the defense.

When considering the concept of the surplus proletariat within the context of class struggle, the preceding discussion should have made clear that it is not simply an empirical question of who these groups are in their composition. Contemporary sociological identities are themselves forms of appearance, moments of the totality of the reproduction of the capital-labor relation and therewith in the devaluation of the labor-power commodity presently unfolding through the surplus proletariat. The more important question for communist theory is what the personifications of the category of the surplus proletariat do against who they are – i.e. as an immanently negative force of their own proletarian condition as a class against itself in its crisis of reproduction. The discussion remains open as to how the concrete development of the surplus proletariat, which is at the same time the developing crisis of capital, intensifies the division and fragmentation of the proletariat, and along which lines does it do so within contemporary struggle (e.g. antagonisms between geographical locations, between a skilled and unskilled labor force, through the stigmatizations of age, race and gender, etc.). The concept of the surplus proletariat thereby elicits the more important question of how, within the present moment, the expropriated and exploited class – in spite of its intensifying divisions – can act in and against itself as a class of capital. In this way, the surplus proletariat is simply only the most contemporary appearance of the proletariat itself – one whose essence remains that of being unified in its separation from the means of its own reproduction.

Surplus Club

Frankfurt am Main, Spring 2015

[email protected]

[1] Most notably, ‘[t]he International Monetary Fund has cut its growth forecasts for the global economy on the back of a slowdown in China, looming recession in Russia and continuing weakness in the eurozone.’ <http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/20/imf-cuts-global-economic-growth-forecast>. Additionally, the International Labor Organization ‘forecasts a grim employment picture for the global economy as a whole over coming years.’ <http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/21/world-economy-needs-280-million-jobs-in-next-five-years-ilo-says/>. Expectations for Latin America fare no better as the IMF ‘said it expects economic contraction in Venezuela and Argentina and growth of just 0.3 percent in Brazil in 2015, and it also lowered its forecast for Latin American growth in 2016 to 2.3 percent, down from 2.8 percent.’ <http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2370538&CategoryId=12394>. Brazil’s economy in particular nears implosion as ‘economists for the fourth week in a row raised their inflation forecast for this year and lowered their estimate for economic growth.’ <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-26/brazil-economists-raise-2015-cpi-cut-gdp-for-fourth-week-in-row>. Nor is northern Europe immune to slowdown as ‘Sweden’s government cut its economic growth forecasts and predicted it will fail to reach a budget surplus over the next four years.’ <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-20/sweden-cuts-gdp-forecast-as-deficit-seen-stretching-past-2018>.

[2] ‘Chevron Tightens Belt as $40 Billion Makeover Sweeps Oil Sector’. <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-30/chevron-profits-fall-to-lowest-since-2009-as-oil-prices-collapse>.

[3] ‘We Traveled Across China and Returned Terrified for the Economy’. <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-09/we-travelled-across-china-and-returned-terrified-for-the-economy>.

[4] The allegedly ‘stable’ economic boom in Germany is based on the restructuring of the labor market of the last decade that resulted in a significant decrease in the cost for the reproduction of the social labor force. <http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/05/rich-germany-has-a-poverty-problem-inequality-europe>. Additionally, an economy predominantly based on exports to other countries, the purported resilience of the German economy can end very rapidly with the next downturn in the global economy because of its export dependency and low wages. <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/eurocrisispress/2015/03/12/germany-the-giant-with-the-feet-of-clay/>.

[5] ‘Debt mountains spark fears of another crisis’. <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2554931c-ac85-11e4-9d32-00144feab7de.html#axzz3QuNTKwet>.

[6] ‘Deleveraging, What Deleveraging? The 16th Geneva Report on the World Economy’. <http://www.voxeu.org/article/geneva-report-global-deleveraging>. Southern European countries in particular have seen their debt-to-GDP ratios climb 15% in the last 3 years. ‘Germany faces impossible choice as Greek austerity revolt spreads.’ <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11407256/Germany-faces-impossible-choice-as-Greek-austerity-revolt-spreads.html>. Most notably as of late is China’s debt, which, now at 282% of GDP, has quadrupled since 2007 and is, alongside latent overcapacity, predominantly attributable to an overheated real-estate market. ‘Debt and (not much) deleveraging’. <http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/economic_studies/debt_and_not_much_deleveraging> and ‘How addiction to debt came even to China’. <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/585ae328-bc0d-11e4-b6ec-00144feab7de.html#axzz3SjqvVqAV>.

[7] ‘Most of the world’s workers have insecure jobs, ILO report reveals’. <http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/19/most-of-the-worlds-workers-have-insecure-jobs-ilo-report-reveals>.

[8] ‘The December Jobs Report in 10 Charts’. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/09/the-december-jobs-report-in-10-charts>.

[9] As Marx writes, ‘Die Vermehrung der Produktivkraft der Arbeit und die größte Negation der notwendigen Arbeit ist die notwendige Tendenz des Kapitals.’ (Grundrisse)

[10] Here it is worth emphasizing the relativity of this decline – that is, even if capital quantitatively increases the number of people employed, the general law of capital accumulation posits that it will do so proportionately slower than the overall rate of accumulation. This means that ‘the working population always increases more rapidity than the valorization requirements of capital’, and that ‘in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.’ (Das Kapital Band I)

[11] As Marx writes: ‘Das Arbeitsvermögen kann nur seine notwendige Arbeit verrichten, wenn seine Surplusarbeit Wert für das Kapital hat, verwertbar für es ist. Ist diese Verwertbarkeit daher durch eine oder die andre Schranke gehemmt, so erscheint das Arbeitsvermögen selbst 1. außer den Bedingungen der Reproduktion seiner Existenz; es existiert ohne seine Existenzbedingungen und ist daher a mere encumbrance; Bedürfnisse ohne die Mittel, sie zu befriedigen; 2. die notwendige Arbeit erscheint als überflüssig, weil die überflüssige nicht notwendig ist. Notwendig ist sie nur, soweit sie Bedingung für die Verwertung des Kapitals.’ It should further be emphasized that this forceful compulsion of need satiation is a result of this crisis of the exchange relation: ‘daß es also die means of employment und nicht of subsistence sind, die ihn in die Kategorie der Surpluspopulation stellen oder nicht. Dies ist aber allgemeiner zu fassen und bezieht sich überhaupt auf die soziale Vermittlung, durch welche das Individuum sich auf die Mittel zu seiner Reproduktion bezieht und sie schafft; also auf die Produktionsbedingungen und sein Verhältnis zu ihnen.’ (Grundrisse)

[12] ‘One in Three U.S. Workers Is a Freelancer’ <http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/09/04/one-in-three-u-s-workers-is-a-freelancer/>.

[13] ‘Against Sharing’. <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/against-sharing>.

[14] ‘ISIS Paying Off Student Debt to Lure American Recruits’. <http://dailycurrant.com/2015/01/20/isis-paying-off-student-debt-to-lure-american-recruits>.

[15] As Adorno writes: ‘Nominalism is perhaps most deeply allied with ideology in that it takes concretion as a given that is incontestably available; it thus deceives itself and humanity by implying that the course of the world interferes with the peaceful determinacy of the existing, a determinacy that is simply usurped by the concept of the given and smitten with abstractness.’ (Aesthetic Theory)

[16] As Zamora writes, ‘the categories of “the unemployed,” “the poor”, or the “precarious”, are swiftly disconnected from being understood in terms of the exploitation at the heart of capitalist economic relations, and find themselves and their situation apprehended in terms of relative (monetary, social, or psychological) deprivation, filed under the general rubrics of ‘exclusion,’ “discrimination”, or forms of “domination”.’ Zamora, Daniel. ‘When Exclusion Replaces Exploitation.’ <http://nonsite.org/feature/when-exclusion-replaces-exploitation>.

[17] C.f. Gunn, Richard. ‘Notes on Class’. <http://www.richard-gunn.com/pdf/4_notes_on_class.pdf>.

[18] It is for this reason – i.e. the simultaneity of the abstract and concrete – that, hereafter, the category of ‘surplus population’ will be referred to as ‘surplus proletariat’. As Marx notes in the introduction to the Grundrisse, the category of ‘population’ – which presumes society to be a quantitative collection of atomistic individuals – is itself a ‘chaotic’ abstraction from the class relation. ‘Population’ is therefore a convoluted subjectification of a concept which the present text is attempting to emphasize not as an identity but as a dynamic social relation. As for Marx’s own use of the term ‘surplus population’, it should be recalled that his invocation of the category has largely to do with the debate against Malthus and as an argument against overpopulation as a biological necessity. As such, Marx establishes the category to bring attention back to the historical and social determinations of the phenomenon of overpopulation. In a way, it might be said that Marx’s categorial employment of ‘surplus population’ is a sort of détournement of Malthus, i.e. a polemical appropriation of Malthusian categories of classical political economy by inverting their upside down standing. It is for this reason that Marx refers to relative surplus population, rather than absolute surplus population. It remains an open question how seriously one should contend with the ideological force of Malthusian overpopulation theories in the present moment. This is a legitimate inquiry insofar as there implicitly remains Malthusian presuppositions about demographics within sociological discourse that effectively mystifies the historical specificity of labor productivity in the production of surplus populations. A more topical example would be the populism surrounding ecological catastrophe and its adherence to issues of consumption and demographic patterns, rather than to the real subsumption of nature by the form-determinations of value.

[19] Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, 2006.

[20] In accordance with the extent to which the capital-labor relation, expressing itself through the surplus proletariat, pervades both relations between individuals as well as through individuals, the following articles describe, in one way or another, the bleak horizons of struggling with the affliction of being recognized only partially by capital: ‘Young people ‘feel they have nothing to live for’’ <http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25559089>. ‘Spanish Suicides Rise To Eight-Year High’. <http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-03/spanish-suicides-rise-eight-year-high>. ‘Is Work Killing You? In China, Workers Die at Their Desks’. http://investmentwatchblog.com/is-work-killing-you-in-china-workers-die-at-their-desks/. ‘The Greek Mental-Health Crisis: As Economy Implodes, Depression and Suicide Rates Soar’. <http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2079813,00.html>. ‘Suicide rates increased with global economic crisis’. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/266181.php>. ‘US suicide rate rose sharply among middle-aged’. <http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-suicide-rate-rose-sharply-among-middle-aged>. ‘Banker Suicides Return’. <http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-24/banker-suicides-return-dsks-hedge-fund-partner-jumps-23rd-floor-apartment>.

[21] As Rocamadur from Blaumachen writes, ‘[t]he dangerous classes of the 21st century are not the traditionally defined lumpen-proletariat which, as a permanent fringe of the reserve army of labour, used to live in its own world, and therefore represented from the start an ‘outside’ from the central capitalist relation. The new ‘lumpen-proletariat’ (the new dangerous classes) is encroached by the normality of the wage relation, precisely because the ‘normal’ proletariat is lumpenised. The crisis, on the one hand, causes an abrupt pauperisation of many workers (as is the case in the whole western world), under the burden of increased unemployment/casual employment and debt (loans which they are now unable to repay, which is aggravated by the fact that those who have mortgages cannot always claim benefits to cover their housing costs) or restriction of access to credit. Even more, though, it produces the increased lumpenisation of the proletariat itself—a lumpenisation that does not appear as external in relation to wage labour but as its defining element.’ ‘The Feral Underclass Hits the Streets’. Sic no. 2 (2014).

[22] The suggestion that the dynamic of the surplus proletariat expresses itself through relations of gender, race and generation remains an open question to be pursued in further discussions. Nevertheless, some preliminary remarks might be offered to propel the theorization of the surplus proletariat along said lines: (1) Regarding gender, it might be posited that the surplus proletariat, in its essential entirety, is feminine insofar as ‘the general tendency towards ‘feminisation’ is not the gendering of the sex-blind market, but rather the movement by capital towards the utilization of cheap short-term flexibilised labour-power under post-Fordist, globalized conditions of accumulation, increasingly deskilled and ‘just-in-time’. ‘The Logic of Gender.’ Endnotes no. 3 (2013). Here, it can be said that the production of the surplus proletariat is the feminization of the proletariat itself. Such a line of thought must also examine the re-privatization of reproduction and the actualization of traditional family roles implied by current developments since the crisis. (2) Similarly, processes of racialization can be understood from the antagonistic relations of the surplus proletariat. Through the condition of the surplus proletariat, labor-power is taunted by the limits of its own exchangeability and is left with an unrealized use-value for capital, a hollow materiality meagerly grasping for the social validity of the exchange relation and instead finding recourse in the naturalization of phenotypic differences. Further, it might be said that immigrants and migrant labor are constitutive of informal labor markets themselves and therefore structurally necessary personifications of total labor-power devaluation. As such, a racialized labor force does not refer to a particular segmentation of the proletariat, but is the resulting social instantiation of the dynamic of the surplus proletariat expressed through ethnic, national and phenotypic attributes. C.f. R.L. ‘Inextinguishable Fire: Ferguson and Beyond’ and ‘Burning and/or Demanding. On the Riots in Sweden’. Sic no. 3 (forthcoming). (3) In accordance with the ways in which the essence of the surplus proletariat appears through generational disparity, see R.L. ‘Inextinguishable Fire: Ferguson and Beyond’. Sic no. 3 (forthcoming) and ‘‘Old People are Not Revolutionaries!’ Labor Struggles Between Precarity and Istiqrar in a Factory Occupation in Egypt’. <http://www.focaalblog.com/2014/11/14/dina-makram-ebeid-labor-struggles-and-the-politics-of-value-and-stability-in-a-factory-occupation-in-egypt/>. Marx’s description of the floating surplus population specifically pivots along the ageing process of the labor force. In his time, once workers’ reached a certain age, they were no longer vital enough to carry out the demands of the production process. Today, the situation has changed considerably insofar as capital is now capable of accommodating the elderly within a vast service sector for low-pay and part-time jobs without social benefits or pensions, most notably within the fast-food industries. C.f. ‘Low-Wage Workers Are Older Than You Think’. <http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-older-88-percent-workers-benefit>. ‘In Tough Economy, Fast Food Workers Grow Old’. <http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/tough-economy-fast-food-workers-grow-old-v17719586>.

[23] The rising cost of state welfare expenditure, and its use by proletarians which aimed at decoupling income from wages, was another manifestation of proletarian defiance at the time.

[24] Robert Kurz. ‘Double Devalorization’. <https://libcom.org/library/double-devalorization-robert-kurz>.

[25] On the connection between the depreciating currencies and the migration patterns of the surplus proletariat from the former Eastern Bloc, see ‘Russian Rouble Crisis Poses Threat to Nine Countries Relying on Remittances’. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/18/russia-rouble-threat-nine-countries-remittances>.

[26] A most striking example concerns those instances in which employers propagate policies of connecting wage rates to profit under the laughable rubric of combatting inequality. C.f. ‘Fiat Chrysler CEO Takes Aim at Two-Tier Wages for UAW Workers’. <http://www.wsj.com/articles/fiat-chrysler-ceo-takes-aim-at-two-tier-wages-for-uaw-workers-1421080693>. ‘Fiat Chrysler Sets Bonus Scheme for Italian Workers’. <http://www.thelocal.it/20150417/fiat-chrysler-sets-bonus-scheme-for-italian-workers>.

[27] For a discussion of this issue in relation to the historical obsolescence of the party-form of workers’ organization, see Benanav, Aaron and Clover, Joshua. ‘Can Dialectics Break BRICS?’. South Atlantic Quarterly (2014).

[28] World Bank. ‘Labor force participation rate, total (% of total population ages 15+) (modeled ILO estimate)’.

[29] ‘Misery and Debt’. Endnotes no. 2: Misery and the Value Form (2010).

[30] For a good summary on the origins of the contemporary latent surplus proletariat in China, see ‘Land Grabs in Contemporary China’. <http://libcom.org/blog/china-land-grabs>.

[31] It is also important to remember that the global division of labor, or segmentation of capital accumulation, is naturally also transforming the internal capital-labor dynamics of individual countries. For a long time, China played the role of a country with a low organic composition with great labor-intensive industries. While this is now changing, the industrialization of China in the last decades also expresses the production of surplus proletariat in the rest of the world. Popular narratives about the global economy in the 2000s consistently lamented the capital flight of core country manufacturing jobs eastward, towards areas of greater labor devaluation. The result produced a devaluation of labor-power within manufacturing industries in Western Europe and the US. As such, the proletarianization of the Chinese population – which is at the same time a production of its own the surplus proletariat – is the expression of production of surplus populations in other parts of the globe.

[32] This historical moment produced – in exchange for the immense growth in productivity and the cheapening of commodities deriving from the massive devalorization of capital through the war – increased purchasing power and greater integration of the proletariat into the spheres of consumption. While this was reflected as a relative decrease in the value of labor-power to the total social value produced, it nonetheless occasioned an absolute increase in the real value of wages. This tendency was additionally accompanied by direct subsidies to the productive sphere as well as an increase in the indirect wage of the proletariat, which thereby obtained the luxuries of a slight increase in the price of its labor above the minimum necessary for the reproduction of that labor, as well as various supplements such as loans, credit, and welfare and retirement benefits.

[33] For a useful reflection on the prospects of Syriza in Greece, see Cognord. ‘Is it Possible to Win the War After Losing All the Battles?’. <http://www.brooklynrail.org/2015/02/field-notes/is-it-possible-to-win-the-war-after-losing-all-the-battles>.

[34] As a most recent example in Spain, see ‘Spanish government prepares new National Security Law’. <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/11/spai-f11.html>.

[35] The permanent feeling of being potentially disregarded by the exploitation process expresses the plight of proletarians who understand themselves as middle class. This is expressed as a political problem and is often construed under the rubric of a global citizenry. Such was a central dynamic of the movement of square occupations in 2011, themselves stimulated by issues of urbanization, state infrastructure and repression. On one hand, the state loses its integrating force, and on the other hand, a need for a new form of political mediation is formulated in the social movements. More generally, it can be said that the wave of struggles from 2008-2012 were distinctly characterized by an encounter with the state as their primary antagonist.

[36] It is for this reason, amongst others, that Marx’s occasional apprehension towards the reactionary character of what he referred to as the lumpen proletariat should be reexamined.

[37] Of course it can be said that there is a normative understanding of the proletariat as always already fragmented by its very nature. This refers to general condition of separated from the means of production and reproduction, as well as the various mediations of value which render the proletariat’s activity an alienated force ‘over and against it’. However, as fundamental as these conditions might be as prerequisites to the exchange relation, these separations tell us nothing about the historical development of the proletariat’s fragmentation within capitalism at the present moment.

[38] This does not of course mean that struggles within the sphere of production are no longer important, but only that they attain a new meaning within a changed historical and social context of class composition. They cannot therefore be understood as a return of the old workers movement. The more important question concerning such struggles is whether or not they entail a moment of negation of the existence of the class relation in all of its mediations.

Cognord, “Changing of the Guards”1

It appeared that the endless saga of the negotiations between the Syriza government and the European lenders had come to an end. After five months of ferocious zigzags, suspense, and fear, a certain deal had been reached. A sense of relief was radiating from the world press, the technocrats, and government bureaucrats. Whether the deal would be a success or not, however, seemed to depend on whom you ask. For those who wanted to ensure that austerity would continue, the deal was certainly to their liking. Curiously, for those who claimed to be on a mission to end austerity, the deal was also favorable. For those who will be immediately affected by the proposed measures, it seemed that not much had changed. The devil is in the details, some say, and many would have preferred those details to get lost amidst the obscure technicalities. Unfortunately for them, however, even Lorca knew that “ […] under the multiplications, the divisions, and the additions […] there is a river of blood.” The relief and satisfaction that the deal brought about could only have been short-lived. In fact, it could only have provided some gratification to the extent that it remained on paper. For as soon as its measures would have been implemented, the party would have been over.

Gentlemen, we don’t need your organization

In the February 2015 issue of the Brooklyn Rail, I described Syriza’s infamous Thessaloniki Program(its veritable pre-election box of promises) as a minimal Keynesian program, with no real chance of reversing the catastrophic consequences of five years of violent devaluation. Back then, to say this was nothing short of blasphemy. An enthusiastic left was roaming around the globe speaking of a radical left, proclaiming an end to austerity, blowing a wind of change. Criticisms of Syriza and its economic program were cast aside as indications of an unrealistic and arrogant ultra-leftist dogmatism.

Today, the very people who supported Syriza in widely read articles and interviews are forced to admit a certain “moderate Keynesianism”2 in the initial program as well as a real distance between that program and today’s agreement. The happy chorus has stopped singing about the “end of austerity/Troika/etc.,” and has made a hard landing onto the desert of the real.3

It seems it took five months to openly admit what was already clear from the February 20th agreement. And while for those who put their trust in Syriza it is somewhat understandable that hope dies last, for those close to the decision-making process of the Greek government, such naiveté is, to say the least, suspicious. For if something has become crystal clear in the last few months, it is that Syriza was not negotiating with European officials; it was actually negotiating the ways through which the continuation of austerity will be accepted by its own members and by those who will be forced to endure its consequences.

Decline and fall of the spectacle of negotiations

From the February 20th agreement in the Eurogroup onwards, it had become clear that Syriza was in no position to implement its Thessaloniki Program. After it became clear that they had no leverage to impose a discussion on debt reduction and an admission of Greece into the Qualitative Easing program of the ECB (European Central Bank),4 Syriza’s last chance was to rely on a show of good will from the Troika (which was kind enough to accept a ridiculous name change into “Brussels Group”), in exchange for social and political stability in Greece’s troubled territory. A clearly misunderstood version of the “extend and pretend” policy that the Eurozone has been following since the beginning of the crisis was seen by Syriza as a possible win-win for everyone: both the Troika and Syriza would pretend that austerity is minimized, while its essential character would remain unchanged.

However, a combination of the orchestrated irritation caused by Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and his inconsistencies, and the more substantial fact that any lenience towards Greece might spiral down towards Eurozone countries with more significant GDPs, meant that this sort of divergence from austerity was out of the question.

The only remaining way to salvage the spectacle of “negotiations” was to engage in a PR campaign which would offer different narratives to different audiences. In this process, what was a series of humiliating compromises in the Eurozone meetings was constantly transformed into a “harsh negotiation” for the Greek audience. Varoufakis became a cause célèbre, whose ability to annoy German Finance Minister Schäuble became a source of national pride in Greece. A mixture of hope beyond proof, disbelief, and the non-existence of political opposition made the task even easier for Syriza’s think-tanks. To top it up, one only needed to throw in a series of incomprehensible figures and decimal points. The self-evident truth of the abandonment of any prospect of minimizing austerity consequences was mystified through a steady production of numbers and statistics which left even experienced “experts” baffled.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

In the last few weeks, the “drama” of the negotiations reached its zenith. Back and forth in Brussels, during meetings upon meetings, technical details and strong words were exchanged. It seemed like both sides did their best to uphold a continuously climactic situation, offering cliffhanger after cliffhanger to the addicted spectators. Will a deal be reached? Will we see a Grexit? Is austerity going to continue, or will the “radical left” government of Syriza restore democracy in Europe? How will the markets, these guardians of truth, react?

As soon as one took a closer look at the negotiations, the disagreements and the actual source of this endless conflict, a cloud of boredom descended. Will the fiscal surplus be 0.6%, 0.8%, or 1%? Will Value Added Tax (VAT) be raised by 2% or 3%, and which exact commodities will these increases affect? Will parametric measures equal 2% or 2.5% of GDP? And what about administrative measures? Will there be an ESM-ECB debt swap?

The ease with which both Syriza and the Troika threw around these numbers was nothing but an indication of their contempt for their actual meaning. For what was there to see behind these numbers but imaginative variations which denoted tax increases, direct and indirect wage and pension cuts, and privatizations? How could one possibly miss the accord between the “radical left” and “neoliberal Europe” in their discussions about the need to modernize, to make the economy competitive, to perform a series of structural reforms that, as we were informed by Mr. Varoufakis, are essential for Greece to “stand once again on its own feet”? Can someone really remain confused after the announcement that paying the (hated and formerly to be abolished by Syriza) property tax of ENFIA was “the patriotic duty of Greek citizens”?

The narrative chosen for the internal audience of Greece in order to transform apples into oranges was not only based on the “creative ambiguity” of the Finance Minister. On the side, the PR hacks of Syriza started cultivating the idea that the lenders were treating them so unfairly that not a single unilateral law can be passed by Greek parliament without the approval of the Brussels Group. And thus, in a simple twist, collective bargaining, the increase of the minimum wage, and other measures aimed at tackling the “humanitarian crisis” were put on ice and delegated to a distant future.

To a certain extent, this intransigence of the Troika was, of course, evident. But it was also clear that Syriza selectively used this fact as a useful alibi. For a lot of people failed to understand how, while any measure that was supposed to relieve impoverished proletarians was blocked by the Troika’s intransigence, this never stopped Syriza from making long-term economic deals with Greece’s most important capitalists.

How can Syriza’s members and fervent supporters explain, for example, the recent handing out of lucrative public works like waste management to Bobolas’s company Ellaktor?5 Or maybe offer some reasonable justification why Bobolas’s contract to financially exploit the highway tolls was extended to forty-five years? Are we really meant to swallow the idea that the reason behind the new agreement between the Attica local municipality and Siemens (a company under investigation by Syriza’s government for money laundering and corruption) was simply that the deal was “already at an advanced level” and could not be stopped? Last but not least, we would be really interested to hear someone explain (in radical-left fashion, please) the statement by deputy Finance Minister Nantia Valavani that any increase in the taxation of wealthy ship-owners runs against the Greek Constitution.

What was initially only felt as a glitch in the screen of the “first-ever-left-government” soon became a inevitable conclusion. Syriza’s government had decided that its allegiance rested not with those who believed that austerity would stop, but with those (inside Greece and in Europe) who were afraid that a left-wing government might prove unable to implement the “necessary” restructuring that austerity is meant to deliver.

A brief look at the language chosen by Greek officials in the course of the “negotiation” reveals as much. Moving away from the abolition of the Troika, the reduction of debt, the series of immediate measures to deal with the “humanitarian crisis,” the Newspeak of Varoufakis was indicative of their self-understanding and selling point:

A common fallacy pervades coverage by the world’s media of the negotiations between the Greek government and its creditors. The fallacy, exemplified in a recent commentary by Philip Stephens of the Financial Times, is that “Athens is unable or unwilling—or both—to implement an economic reform program.” Once this fallacy is presented as fact, it is only natural that coverage highlights how our government is, in Stephens’s words, “squandering the trust and goodwill of its Eurozone partners.

But the reality of the talks is very different. Our government is keen to implement an agenda that includes all of the economic reforms emphasized by European economic think tanks. Moreover, we are uniquely able to maintain the Greek public’s support for a sound economic program.

Consider what that means: an independent tax agency; reasonable primary fiscal surpluses forever; a sensible and ambitious privatization program, combined with a development agency that harnesses public assets to create investment flows; genuine pension reform that ensures the social-security system’s long-term sustainability; liberalization of markets for goods and services, etc.

So, if our government is willing to embrace the reforms that our partners expect, why have the negotiations not produced an agreement?6

Inside Greece, however, the narrative was strangely different. Syriza was proclaiming that it would never cross its “red lines” and would not agree to a program that ignores its mandate, while it started circulating the notion that the aim of the Troika was to bring down the government. This spectacle of a government strongly committed to fulfilling its pre-electoral promises (repeated extensively by the foreign press) was in stark contradiction with the fact that that government had entirely abandoned them, but it did serve a purpose: Syriza’s support increased, while it skilfully pre-empted any ridicule of the “negotiation” process. Interestingly, the Brussels Group and interested parties played along with this narrative. Article after article and statement after statement highlighted the unwillingness of the Syriza government to fulfill its obligations to the lenders, its fragile commitment to the “necessary” reforms, its denial of restructuring.7 When these explanations appeared to lose their effectiveness, the go-to-villain was ready at hand: Syriza’s internal opposition.

There is really no other way to explain the latest stage of “negotiations” than as a veritable piece of theatre, meant to convince both sides (and the public glued to the screens) that there is such a thing as a “negotiation”—even though its exact characteristics are somewhat slippery. The roles were interchangeable: sometimes it was Syriza who raised the flag of no-compromise; in another case, the “negotiations” were torpedoed by the IMF, which curiously echoed Syriza’s (long-abandoned) demand for a debt restructuring as a prerequisite for any deal. And when in May Syriza came up with a forty-seven page proposal officially declaring their will to continue with austerity, the negotiations collapsed after Eurogroup counter-proposals demanded further cuts at a level not ever demanded in the last five years of non-negotiated austerity.8 Notions like irrationality and absurdity were hard to keep contained.

Post mortem ante facto

For the past weeks, spectators found themselves trapped in a “groundhog day” experiment: every Eurogroup meeting was announced as “the meeting to end all meetings,” every inability to reach a conclusion was seen as a straight path to Grexit, every time the “markets” reacted negatively to the continued instability … and every single time, the conclusion was a pre-recorded message which proclaimed that “progress has been made, but a lot of work is still needed.”

In this race to the finish, and despite the nonsensical comments, it became clear that what was at stake was merely the ability of Syriza to pass further austerity measures as either a victory or an inevitability. Or both. When it started to surface that Syriza’s own proposal would not be easily accepted by all its members (and, perhaps more importantly, by those who would pay for it), stronger means were employed. The ECB joined the dance, threatening a cut of ELA funds, a move that would force the Greek government to impose capital controls (and essentially pave the way for Grexit), while a variety of European officials started proclaiming that a possible Grexit would not have the devastating results that people think.9

Whether this was a conscious decision or not is slightly beyond the point. But the result of this spectacle of absurd intransigence on behalf of the Troika produced a very specific outcome: Syriza found itself in a position to present the basis of its forty-seven-page proposal as the “only realistic ground for any negotiation,” while violently rejecting the (absurd) counter-proposals. This portrayal of Syriza as actually defending “red lines” (both internally and externally), while accepting further austerity, seems to have broken the spell. For the first time, all interested parties seem to agree that a deal has been reached and can be signed by all.

At the moment (this was written on June 28th), all eyes are now on the question whether Syriza will manage to pass this proposal in parliament. Some of Syriza’s own ministers and MPs, have publicly declared that the latest deal is in fact worse than the one the previous government rejected, and proclaim that they will refrain from voting it in. It is debatable whether Syriza will actually manage to convince its “rebels” that the deal is a victory and an inevitable outcome of the “negotiations,” let alone make them adopt an approach that says that this deal “buys Syriza time to focus on the defeat of neoliberal policies.” But here is the catch: this does not change much.

If Tsipras believes that the agreement will not pass in parliament, it is very likely that he will call for elections. At the moment, reasonable polls put Syriza well ahead of any other party, and obviously in a position to gain an overwhelming majority. As a result, elections at the moment would only help Syriza consolidate its position and, more importantly, form a government with the explicit and democratically verified mandate to[…] sign the previous agreement. And this time without any internal opposition.

The only problem with this whole saga lies elsewhere. The agreement signed (either now or after a new election) will impose crippling taxation; it will reduce pensions; it will proceed with privatizations; in short, it will aggravate the very reasons why Greece has been in turmoil (in one way or another) for the last five years. Looking beyond the insignificance of political games and spectacular “negotiations,” the agreement that Syriza wishes to implement might make its European counterparts happy, but does nothing to stop or even minimise the actual crisis and its social consequences. What the last five months have shown is only that the “extend and pretend” policy works well inside the Eurozone. But its troubled times are far, very far from being over.

Update (July 2 [2015])

Just when a deal seemed finally to have been reached between Syriza’s government and the Troika, all hell broke loose. Negotiations broke down, Greece defiantly rejected the Troika’s latest proposal and on June 27th Tsipras announced that a referendum is to be held on July 5th, which many have (mis)interpreted as a referendum on whether Greece will remain in the Eurozone or not. To top it all, banks were closed (until the referendum) and capital controls were put in place forbidding money transfers abroad and limiting daily withdrawals to €60 per day.

As I explained in the article, a deal of this sort would have been very difficult to pass. And this is exactly what Merkel herself hinted to on June 25th, just before everyone was about to sign, when she proclaimed that the real problem is whether it will be signed off on by the Greek parliament (i.e. whether Tsipras can guarantee the compliance of his own party). At the moment, it became quite clear that this was not very likely.

In what can only be explained as the troika giving a (risky yet) helping hand to Tsipras, the signing of this deal was sabotaged by the last-minute addition of a number of inexplicable measures that Syriza had already rejected (while incorporating a series of harsh austerity measures in its own forty-seven-point proposal). Suddenly, Syriza landed back in the seat of a defiant, left-wing government and the Troika appeared once again as an intransigent, neoliberal evil lender.

On the morning of June 27th people woke up to meet a Syriza reminiscent of its pre-election bravado: defiant, drawing red lines that will-not-be-crossed, denouncing European anti-democratic procedures. Only difference, for those who cared to notice, was that this time round, Syriza’s “red lines” included an explicit continuation of austerity with pension cuts, new taxes, and privatizations. Varoufakis had used Syriza’s continued public support as an important selling point. But it looked like this was not entirely ensured.

The announcement of the referendum seems to have the purpose of ensuring this “public support.” And though everyone appeared to be taken by surprise by this development, a closer look at what is at stake reveals quite a lot. The question of the referendum is whether Greek citizens approve of or reject the proposal of the Institutions (Troika) made on June 25th. Not Syriza’s counter-proposal, not a previous Troika proposal (there have been many), nothing of the last five months. Now this means very specific things.

A “yes” vote is quite clear-cut. It essentially means that the majority of the Greek population is willing to allow the Troika to continue shaping its economic policies, with the government reduced to its previous role of simply and hastily ratifying the already-made decisions. A “no” vote, on the other hand (which is what Syriza is propagating), is not as clear. It includes those who wish a Grexit; those who want to continue negotiations; those who would accept an “honorable compromise” with slightly less austerity, and a whole number of others that fall somewhere in between these categories.

Now if a “yes” answer prevails, Syriza will resign (they have already announced that much), since while they will respect the democratic decision of the referendum, they are unwilling to be the ones to implement its consequences. Thus, and most probably, a temporary coalition government will be formed (most likely with the participation of New Democracy, PASOK, and Potami) who will then be charged with implementing the harsh austerity that the Troika’s latest deal included. In the meantime, Syriza can enjoy a position of a very sizeable official opposition, eat popcorn, and wait for the temporary government to announce elections a few months down the road (with Syriza’s victory a most probable outcome). If a “no” answer prevails, Syriza is more or less given a free hand to interpret the result as it sees fit. It can push for a Grexit and a return to the drachma (though they have explicitly said this is not what they want), it can restart negotiations (either from their own forty-seven-point program or from scratch), it can make use of “creative ambiguity” to reach some other deal.

In short, the situation seems to be a win-win scenario for Syriza, something that has not escaped the attention of the main opposition parties which, after trying (and failing) to get the referendum cancelled, are now engaged in a vicious (and mostly hyperbolic) propaganda war which results in stark polarization of Greek society and the adding of votes to the “no” side.

One might chose to believe that European counterparts were genuinely surprised by these developments or not. In any case, their reaction has so far been rather conciliatory: the non-payment of the IMF was officially not treated as a sovereign default, capital controls were not interpreted as a direct path to Grexit, and they seem awfully pre-occupied to ensure everyone that they will do their best for Greece to remain in the Eurozone. The only exception seems to be Germany, whose go-to narrative in relation to the Greek crisis seems to have backfired on them. The constant propaganda that lazy Greeks are being fed German hard-earned money, without committing to any of the reforms and their obligations, has led many in Germany to wish for Greece to be kicked out of the Eurozone. Useful as this fairy-tale might have been in the past, it now appears to have the opposite effect. And Merkel might soon have to come clean and explain that, in fact, Germany will lose its money and start paying for this crisis only if Greece exits the Eurozone.

Cognord

13 July 2015

TH, Remarks on “Changing of the Guards”

1. The insufficiency of the notion of a purely spectacular negotiation.

If we are to follow the machiavelian understanding of a staged negotiation, we are unable to understand what our comrade describes:

And when in May Syriza came up with a forty-seven page proposal officially declaring their will to continue with austerity, the negotiations collapsed after Eurogroup counter-proposals demanded further cuts at a level not ever demanded in the last five years of non-negotiated austerity.10

If the continuation of austerity in Greece was the aim, then why was this proposal rejected? Syriza had already capitulated, and this was just a proposal, the 47-pages document could have become a 55-pages one without problem. European capital, and German capital in particular, would have never been able to even dream of such a chance to apply austerity in a ravaged country with a maximum of popular tolerance.

2. The specificity of the current Greek situation.

Understanding Syriza as just another Left to do the dirty job as usual is underestimating both the global crisis and the destruction of the Greek economy and society. Of course, a Jedi has to do what a Jedi has to do, and we are in a position to know a thing or two about any would-be manager of a piece of world capitalism with some traces of a human face. But radical critique has to understand what is new, different, specific, and how all this fits in the local and global inter-class and intra-class configuration. It cannot risk to be understood as leftist denunciation as usual.

3. What motivates the different capitalist forces in their attitude towards Greece?

In such times, globalization does not warrant that every disagreement and every confrontation is fake. There’s some real history going on, not everything is a staging. Radical critique cannot accept to rest on conspiracy theories, although some “conspiracies” do exist. History is not the deployment of a given script.

a.

The explanation by a German greed to reap as much as possible and as quickly as possible from a battered Greek economy is rather out of the question. Everybody, including the IMF and any even remotely respectable economist, knew from the very start that the Greek debt was unsustainable and was never going to be repaid in full. As for real assets, German or other capitalists could easily get what they wanted if they put a somehow decent price.

b.

The explanation by the need to impose German discipline on the rest of the Eurozone is much more plausible, but one should also see what it means. The lesson was already harsh, and the spreads on Italian, Spanish, etc., bonds were bound to rise in case of a Grexit. Did Germany intend to be more generous in such a case? Sheer sizes make this very relative. There can be no doubt that Germany intended to firmly impose its domination in Europe. However, there is also strong evidence that it has also methodically pushed for a Grexit. These last days it was revealed that Schäuble had already proposed a consensual Grexit to the then Greek Minister of Finance Venizelos back in 2011, and even after the ‘agreekment’ he is continuing to do so. A final agreement is not that certain.

c.

A possible explanation could be that Syriza had to be utterly crushed, so that any thought of deviating from the one and only German TINA (or German-European, but let’s say German to make things easier) would be banished for ever. This is true, but the scenario of a ‘very brief passage in time’ for an anti-austerity Left had already been thwarted, as Syriza retained an immense popularity, much stronger than their election score. Why not sit back and watch Syriza dwindle through the application of the very austerity it had been elected to fight? An answer to this question has pointed to the imminent Spanish elections, but the acceptance of austerity by Syriza would have been a sufficient sign to any Spanish anti-austerity manager of capitalism.

d.

The German push for a Grexit contained of course an element of propaganda. The bailout of, especially, German and French banks exposed to Greek debt through the public debt of Greece in 2010, presented the advantage of being able to blame everything on lazy Greeks, not on financial speculation. The same could be conveniently said about rising spreads in Southern Europe or about the recapitalization of Northern European (especially German and Swiss) banks through the draining of Southern European deposits. It is however to be noted that propaganda is never the decisive element. What Germany was pushing for was a compact Eurozone under its sway (I am told that recently there has been much talk in Germany about such a ‘compact’ Eurozone). Which means, among others, a stronger euro than in the case of a loose Eurozone. Some years ago German employers were pushing cries of alarm when the euro was rising compared to the dollar. This year their association declared themselves in favour of a Grexit. The core question is no more a weak euro to boost German exports. A strong and stable euro seems to be more desirable. This makes it cheaper to buy real assets in ailing countries (now Greece, tomorrow Italy, Spain, and so on). But it also means a strengthening of the position of the euro as an international reserve currency. Who controls this, can attract financial placements from all over the world, pay minimal to negative rates of interest on their bonds and, if need be, create money at will to dominate the world and impose a large part of global capital’s devalorization on others. Not bad, except that there is an incumbent.

e.

How can one possibly explain repeated, and continuing, interventions by the US administration in favour of some German leniency for a Greece run by Syriza’s government? This came as a surprise to everybody in Greece, and the Greek Vice-Premier Dragasakis admitted yesterday that there would probably have been no agreement without US pressure. This also seems to fit well with an ever bolder attitude by France and Italy during the crucial last week of negotiations (not to mention the spectacular U-turn by Sarkozy in just one week – from Grexit, yes, absolutely, to Grexit, no way). An explanation for the American attitude, popularized by the media, is geopolitics. True, but the US could have insisted on Greece’s continuing membership in the EU and NATO and not bother much about the Eurozone. Another explanation, is American nervousness about the bursting of the [global] financial bubble. Also true, but not enough in itself. On the one hand, the Greek problem was known to everybody and discounted in the markets by the day. This is not usually the way bubbles burst. On the other hand, the financial size of the Greek problem was quite big, but not much compared to a similar situation in, say, Italy, not to mention the colossal size of the world market for derivatives. I think that one has to take account of what I mentioned about international reserve currencies. It is improbable that the US would refrain from fighting the emergence of a compact Europe under German control.

4. How are class relations reconfigured at the level of politics and ideology?

What is the mass behind Syriza in Greece, at least up to the agreement? Sociological insight will not do, whereas [Zaschia Bouzarri]’s remarks about the concrete forms of the decomposition of workers’ identity are more than relevant. Greece is of course not representative of the situation in other countries, but, being an extreme case of a ravaged ex-advanced country, it is useful in showing the shape of things to come. Partisan discourse has been eroded to an unprecedented extent. You can talk to almost anybody, including traditional right-wing voters, about almost anything. You can hardly tell a public servant from a (waged, semi-waged, unwaged, would-be waged or unemployed) worker or a pensioner or a shopkeeper, all united by a sense of a common situation, a common precarity, a common ruin. Voices are low, faces are serious, there is much discussion, confusion, schizophrenia, despair, and much, much anger. The surprising result of the referendum had little to do with hope or conviction; it was essentially anger against fear, and anger largely dominated. “The bastards are ruining our lives, we are not going to say thank you”.

I am seriously tempted to term this a meta-people. Little to do with what we used to call ‘people’, petty existences going after a petty survival, little to do with citizenism, with the affirmation of rights; it’s all about survival, about a community of distress, about an anger against the corrupted, the plunderers of public wealth, the tax-evading plutocrats, and what else. It is impossible to foresee anything, not least because of the actual globalization into the mega-capitalist crushing-pot. However, I cannot stop thinking of this meta-people as a possible foreshadowing of the proletariat to come: not in itself, not for itself, but against ‘them’.

TH

16 July 2015

A Preliminary Response to TH’s Remarks

The article “Changing of the Guards” was written for Brooklyn Rail, after the request of Paul Mattick, and was the third part of a series on articles on Syriza. It does not stand on its own, but is a continuation – and thus quite often an expansion or addition – of points made in previous articles. So, some of the incompleteness that TH. identifies is addressed in previous articles. But, more importantly and beyond that, these are newspaper articles and not theoretical texts. I never claimed that any of them are complete, or that they aim at providing a consistent analysis of the current state of the capitalist crisis – in Greece or elsewhere. In the best of cases, my aim was to provide an expose of what is contradictory, non-sensical, illusory and false in Syriza’s proclamations and policies, in a more or less journalistic way.

Having said that.

The overall argument (in all these articles) is not that the “confrontation” between Syriza’s government and the Troika is “fake”. Rather, I asserted that the “conflict” between Syriza and the Troika was and remains at a spectacular level, which mystifies and politicises their differences in such a way as to present them as substantial. I stand by the assertion that opposing versions of capitalist restructuring are not essentially contradictory, or at least, they represent a contradiction at a level which is spectacular. From the point of view of proletarian subversion, the content of the disagreements, conflicts and breaking points of the “negotiations” is insignificant. As I wrote,

The ease with which both Syriza and the troika threw around these numbers was nothing but an indication of their contempt for their actual meaning. For what was there to see behind these numbers but imaginative variations which denoted tax increases, direct and indirect wage and pension cuts, and privatizations?

For me, this was the content of the “negotiations”. The percentage of VAT, the exact fiscal surplus, the specific amount to be gained from privatisations. In other words, austerity as the common ground, its extent and scope being the point of divergence. Did Syriza and the Troika disagree at this level? It seems so. Does it matter? Only if someone decides to prioritise certain forms of austerity over others.

For this reason, my claim was that the only real content of the “negotiations” between Syriza and the Troika (since February 20th), and since the option of Grexit was rejected by Syriza, was the way in which further austerity would be accepted in Greece without causing a social explosion. This became the essential selling point of Syriza, mirrored in Varoufakis’ quoted passage that Syriza is “uniquely able to maintain the public’s support for a sound economic program”. It does not take much to understand what a “sound economic program” was for Syriza.

The forms through which I expressed this, and the language used, could possibly be misunderstood as the expose of a “given script”, and as such, a “conspiracy theory”. This might well be the case (my English writing skills are limited), but sometimes this interpretation is simply a matter of perspective. Claiming that Syriza is in chorus with an aim of capitalist restructuring could be interpreted as implying a “conspiracy”. Or, it could be seen as a way of rejecting the notion that different understandings of capitalist restructuring are in fact actual contradictions.

TH. claims that “radical critique has to understand what is new, different, specific, and how all this fits in the local and global inter-class and intra-class configuration. It cannot risk to be understood as leftist denunciation as usual.” From the very first text on the Brooklyn Rail, I attempted to stir clear of the typical leftist denunciations of Syriza and tried instead to take Syriza’s proclamations at face value and then explain their inconsistencies. Maybe this was not successful, but this was the aim. In contrast to other radical left texts that I read (which more or less rejected Syriza merely for being part of the State, for being social-democratic etc), I avoided ideological denunciations. I accept that I did not write texts which explained “what is new, different, specific and how all this fits in the local and global inter-class and intra-class configuration”; I admit that this certainly sounds like a worthy undertaking, but – as was once said – “I don’t feel I am up to the task”. Nor do I see my role in this moment to do such a thing. But I don’t think that any analysis which does not live up to these standards is reduced to leftist denunciation.

In reference to the concrete example that TH mentions in relation to Nantia Valavani’s statement it is, I think, again misunderstood. The question (“I would be interested to hear someone explain …”) is clearly addressed to supporters of Syriza, who kept proclaiming that – at least – Syriza is interested in a certain amount of “social justice”. Taxing the ship owners in Greece was part of Syriza’s pre-election campaign. The abandonment of this “promise” with the excuse that it runs against the Constitution is mere nonsense. But what is the key point here? Do I care if ship owners are taxed or not? Not in the slightest. Do I find this abandonment of a pre-election promise scandalous? That is also nonsense. If anything it is a simple indication that Syriza’s strategy was to promise everything to everyone, a strategy that was abandoned as soon as they became government and got busy establishing and normalising relations with representatives of capitalist accumulation in Greece. There was no hint in my article that Valavani is “on the payroll of ship owners”. That, I grant you, would be a “leftist denunciation”. And though I would not deny such a possibility, I would deny any interest in it. I also fail to see in what way my article gives the impression that the Greek mess is a “nice little crisis as usual”.

TH. points at a supposed contradiction between claiming that the “negotiations” between Syriza and Troika were “staged” (see second paragraph of my response for that) and the fact that Syriza’s 47 page proposal was rejected. But what he is ignoring in this case is what I provide as the undercurrent of these negotiations: the difficulty of making austerity acceptable in Greek Parliament (and by extension, to the Greek public). When the 47 page proposal was made, and it looked that a deal could be reached on its basis, Merkel’s response to the widespread enthusiasm on all sides was indicative: “First, this deal has to be passed by Greek Parliament”. This was the problem of the 47 page proposal. To maintain a spectacle of “harsh negotiations” (which was Syriza’s only selling point internally), the intransigence of the Troika had to be constantly re-asserted. And it was.

This was in effect the aim of the referendum too. It has become pretty obvious that Tsipras was actually expecting (and hoping) that the “Yes” vote would win in the referendum, as this would clear them from being responsible for imposing austerity. The stage was set: the mass media in Greece were clear in their proclamations that a “No” vote would mean that Satan would take charge, and there was not a single European official who did not add that a “No” vote would directly mean Grexit. But the result surprised everyone (Tsipras and the Troika) and their actions after were clearly to pretend like it never happened. This – and the signing of the eventual deal – has brought Syriza into a very fragile position, but given that neither Syriza nor Europeans see any credible opposition at the moment, this fragile position (with a possible coalition in the horizon if Syriza’s “rebels” gain momentum) is translated as a stable scenario. And this could well be the case.

The overall question on what exactly is the aim behind the treatment of the Greek economy by Eurozone officials is probably the key question, but at the same time the most difficult to answer. The most possible scenario that I can come up with is that a process of harsh devaluation will reduce labour costs to such a degree that the Greek economy might become competitive vis a vis other Balkan economies and not other Euro countries. This does not explain everything that has happened, but I have to admit that I find other explanations (such as “Germany’s need to discipline” or the notion of an attempt to “humiliate Syriza”) as vague and very problematic. To say the least, they “psychologise” the actions of centres of capital accumulation.

I agree that Germany’s quasi-open call for Grexit is partly propaganda and partly realistic. But I would explain this divergence between the two as an expression of the internal contradictions of Germany’s self-understanding. I have failed to find any credible account on how a Grexit (and its consequences) can be contained, and in this respect, I find the statement of the head of the Bundesbank (that a Grexit will have tremendous economic consequences for the German economy) more credible than the war cries of Schauble.

My concluding remark in the article is pointing at the same process. The underlying argument is that parts of the German political and economic class have fallen for the propaganda that they have created in relation to Greeks (“German taxpayers have been paying too much for those lazy Greeks”), to the extent that they end up believing it. The reality however (and I am convinced that key players are well aware of that) is that German taxpayers have not paid a single cent so far and they would only be forced to pay something in the event of a Grexit. The logic is quite simple: Germany’s gives loans (not gifts) to Greece that are repaid with considerable interest rates. Furthermore, the continuing crisis and instability means that German (and other) bond yields and borrowing costs are extremely low, something that allows them to save billions of euros (“One study, by German insurance giant Allianz, has calculated that Berlin saved 10.2 billion euros in 2010-2012 because of lower borrowing costs, as yields on its 10-year bonds fell from 3.39 percent to 1.18 percent now.”). On the other hand, it is also pretty clear that a Grexit would mean an immediate non-payment of Greece’s obligations, something that would mean the immediate loss of billions of euros, an amount far beyond the ridiculous 14.4 billion euros that Germany has already put aside in provisions linked to the euro zone debt crisis.

In relation to the US involvement, I fail to see where TH. bases his claim that the US has been lenient towards the Greek government. First of all, signing the deal yesterday (with the help of the Americans, as Dragasakis said) indicates no leniency whatsoever, as the deal signed is far worse than anything signed so far in Greece. Secondly, the position of the IMF (as a key representative of US interests in the eurozone) might appear as rather puzzling, but only at first sight. IMF involvement in the Troika has a clear deadline (March 2016). The continuation of its involvement might well be in the IMF’s interests, but in order to ensure that, they need to impose some debt haircut, not because they align themselves with Syriza, but simply because IMF rules forbid intervention and bailout agreements in countries that have unsustainable debts. The recent DSA of the IMF makes it clear that Greek debt is uviable and that if it is not cut, it will remain unsustainable and would thus preclude IMF continued participation in the program. And it is only through continued participation that the IMF (or else, the US) can ensure their involvement in Eurozone politics.

Last point concerning the mass that supports Syriza. While I would not deny the “decomposition of the workers’ identity”, I would refrain from reaching concrete conclusions of its implications at the moment, let alone come up with a narrative that sees a unification “by a sense of a common situation, a common precarity, a common ruin”. At the moment, the only thing we can say with some certainty is that a very large percentage of the Greek population (I would claim around 60%, in accordance to the referendum results) has simply had enough of austerity and can no longer tolerate it. This does not tell us what they would like instead, but it does point –negatively – at what they cannot live with anymore. For me, the overall situation in Greece indicates that what we should expect in the immediate future is an attempt by political parties (new or old) to take advantage of this huge, un-represented, gap. But it is clear that this (attempt at) representation will take the form of an open support for Grexit and a return to the drachma. The illusion that people’s lives can improve in any way within the eurozone has received its final blows with Syriza’s agreement. So the next “cycle of struggles” in Greece will most definitely take the form of a struggle between those will try to represent the “drachma party” and the rest. What proletarians will do in this context, however, remains to be seen.

Cognord

17 July 2015

Some Thoughts on Cognord’s Text and TH’s Response

[…] How can a ‘people’ avoid being national and citizenist? I have not been in Greece in recent years to be able to clearly know what you mean.11 When I go back I notice a lot of destitution, physical and mental poor health and of course anger, which is, however, very often mis-directed (racism, frantic attempts to recover from ‘national humiliation’)… What has changed in ‘people’s’ discourse since the squares? That’s a very interesting question and I would like to know more.

Some more thoughts:

Having read Cognord’s texts, as well as his response to TH, I think his reassertion of his approach (to expose Syriza’s inconsistencies or manipulations) clarifies what I have a problem with. While his texts point out inconsistencies that should alarm any ‘believer’, I feel like this approach reduces things to the level of personalities and decision-making. Tsipras said this, Varoufakis said X and did Y, they gave in and they did not live up to their programme, and then they wanted to implement reforms anyway. But why did they do that? Would everything have been different if Syriza were real defenders of the interests of workers? There are certain limits once a self-proclaimed radical finds oneself as head of state, and these are the limits of capitalist reproduction. This is not because people’s personalities become corrupt by power, but because the state plays this very specific role. Example: the state has to manage the pension system, when there are no funds because they were spent on haircuts and debts, and because unemployment is 30%, so they decide to raise the pension age. Perhaps some expected Syriza to turn Greece into Cuba or to print money without currency reserves. The left wing of Syriza would indeed want Greece to become something like Cuba. But would that make life easier for proletarians or would it be even more disastrous? I am pretty sure I am not saying something new here that Cognord would not have thought about already, so then, what is then the point of this criticism? What are its implications and what conclusions does it draw? I feel as if Cognord is more angered by Syriza politicians than he is angered by the fact that it is now clearer than ever that the suffering for workers, unemployed, poorer pensioners in Greece has no hope of abating even slightly, regardless of what any Greek politician will do, and also, which is worse, regardless of how much they struggle. Yes, we knew that demands were asystemic, but I think things are even worse. Even the most defensive and modest of demands are asystemic, which means a relentless and very rapid worsening of life, the scale of which is unprecedented. We imagined communisation as destructive, but now it seems that even the slightest struggle has a ‘scorched earth’ scenario hanging over its head.

There is also one inaccuracy, by the way, in the introductory paragraph of Cognord’s recent text with the reference to the ‘minimal Keynesian’ programme: Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP, called the Syriza programme ‘mild Keynesianism’ ever since before the elections (check out his BBC interview). It is pretty clear that Syriza is an inconsistent party anyhow, but I don’t think it helps the analysis to depict all of them as self-interested cynics who colluded with EZ politicians to impose more austerity on purpose. This is not because I am convinced they are good people, but because a personalising analysis would suggest that, if they were more honest, then better things would come. But this is blatantly not the case. If they were more honest, they would either not have gained power at all, or they would simply resign because their programme is impossible, and Samaras would be back in power. These were the options. You can call me ‘reformist’, but I would not want a return of the ND govt, until perhaps Syriza manages to become absolutely identical to it, i.e., a government of outspoken racists. And I think that the passing of the laws to grant citizenship to 2nd generation immigrants, and of civil partnership for gay couples, however measly and limited, have practical and symbolic importance for these groups in a context where racism and homophobia, including the scale of abuse, have been on the rise. Yes, all the options are really dark, but some are downright hellish. That is why I see no point in either cheering for and excusing Syriza or vilifying them.

The real question is, in my view, what are the options now for class struggle in Greece? Because it is now clear that no matter what struggles do they will be crushed by a combination of heavy policing and currency blackmail, which was already the case, but now it has all become far more blatant. It’s easy to vote ‘no’, but total economic collapse is frightening in reality, and not only for those in power. The response to the absence of money is mass looting, of course, but can this really go further, especially if it only takes place in one country? We have seen again and again how quickly and violently social order is restored after such outbreaks. The other response to lack of money is alternative currencies and solidarity economies. We know the limits of these also. The most depressing thing for me though is the lack of significant mobilisations anywhere else in Europe except Spain (and these under the Podemos banner, which might mean they are about to be weakened).

Ady Amatia

17 July 2015

Second Response by Cognord

In my response to TH, I tried to make it clear that I wrote the 3 articles for Brooklyn Rail with a specific aim in mind: to counteract the enthusiasm of the Left about Syriza, to address an audience (as I understood it) in the US and the level of debates around Syriza over there, and to spell out the inconsistencies of presenting Syriza as the “radical left” party that will “end austerity” in Greece and, why not, the eurozone. In this (clearly limited) scope, I dealt with Syriza’s own proclamations, its economic strategy and proposed policies and tried to explain what was problematic about it.

In the first article, I dealt with issues such as:

the relationship between Syriza and the movement against austerity; the main reasons behind Syriza’s election results in the context of the dissappearance of this movement and of continued austerity; the material reasons why debt restructuring and the inclusion of the Greek economy in the quantitative easing program of the ECB (which formed an important part of Syriza’s solutions to the crisis) were mere illusions; the lack of any leverage on behalf of the Greek government to impose their semi-Keynesian program;

Following up, the second article, I addressed issues such as:

the historical inability of Keynesian economic policies to be presented as a viable project to save the eurozone; the way in which Syriza tried (and failed) to take advantage of political contradictions within the Eurozone; the intransigence of eurozone officials towards Syriza’s minimal program; the essence of the February 20th signed agreement as a clear indication of Syriza’s acceptance of the continuation of austerity; the fact that a lack of an active proletarian movement means that all discussions are reduced to different forms of capitalist restructuring; Syriza’s continued ability to achieve consensus from the majority of the Greek population, as well as its success in creating national unity far beyond what the previous governments’ had achieved; some of the implications of what the emergence of national politics and patriotism means for the future of the eurozone;

I am guessing that most people have read the 3d article, so I see no reason for summing up its points.

I fail to understand how the 3 articles consist of a “leftist denunciation” of Syriza (as TH argued), or in what way they constitute an approach that “…reduces things to the level of personalities and decision-making” (as Ady Amatia claims). I am more than willing to accept that, in itself, the 3d part of the article (“Changing of the Guards”) might appear as deserving the above-mentioned criticisms. And if I had not mentioned that the 3 articles should be read together, or if there was no mention of the previous articles in the last one, this criticism might make more sense. Given that I did explicitly say those things, I am afraid that the criticisms do not make a lot of sense.

In my response to TH I clarified that I never claimed that the articles were complete. And I also clarified that my articles were very far from an analysis that explains “what is new, different, specific and how all this fits in the local and global inter-class and intra-class configuration”, an approach that I would greatly welcome when and if someone (maybe SIC comrades?) would decide to produce one. But ignoring the easily accessible previous 2 articles and their content in order to provide a caricature of the latest one is more difficult to swallow.

For example, I honestly fail to understand how one could read the 3 articles as complaining about the fact that Syriza proved that they are not “real defenders of the interests of workers”, as Ady Amatia argues. And I have to admit that the explanatory sentence that follows (“There are certain limits once a self-proclaimed radical finds oneself as head of state, and these are the limits of capitalist reproduction. This is not because people’s personalities become corrupt by power, but because the state plays this very specific role”) sounds exactly like a “leftist denunciation” that I am being accused of endorsing. For if one takes the implications of this sentence to their logical conclusion, it seems that it would have been enough to say that Syriza is concerned with capitalist restructuring and as such nothing more needs to be said about it.

When attempting to write about a given situation, there is always the danger to either focus too much on the political expressions of underlying material contradictions or to ignore political developments altogether because, for example, “decisions are already made at the level of production”. I find both tendencies problematic, and though I tried to refrain from giving too much importance to the political level of high-level summits, I thought that it would also be problematic to ignore how the management of the crisis in this specific case was also expressed in those meetings. Especially since there was no worthy proletarian movement putting (direct or indirect) pressure on these discussions. But to conclude that I am more “angered” by Syriza politicians than by the suffering of proletarians and their inability to (or the irrelevance of their) struggle is, to put it politely, quite absurd.

If someone asked me, I would say that I strongly believe that those who decide to engage with the management of capitalism and the State, and thus with the maintenance and continuation of its relations, are scum. And that they are, at varying levels, responsible for the imposition of exploitation and for the emmiseration of our lives. The historical ability of the Left to achieve greater consensus in this context makes them slightly more despicable. Does that render them “self-interested cynics”? That I do not know. What I do know is that I did not use such a characterisation (or my above-mentioned belief) as an analytical tool in the 3 articles. At best, what is clear in my 3 articles is that whoever takes the job of managing capitalist relations and the State is by definition forced to engage with their reproduction. As I recall, Ady Amatia makes the same point.

For many people in Greece, the implementation of the new agreement (and the following one in September) already constitute a “total economic collapse”. It is absolutely clear, for example, that the changes concerning farmers will immediately devastate massive sections of this sector; it is also painfully clear that when banks re-open, a massive haircut on deposits will be applied (given that almost 90% of bank deposits in Greece are below €4,000, the supposed European law of protection on deposits below €100,000 is non-sensical). Furthermore, the new agreement opens up the way for the forced expropriation of houses, something that was desperately avoided in the last 5 years in direct relation to the devastating social consequences it will produce. These are only a small part of the measures that we will see in the immediate future, and it is in this very real, and very frightening context that the passing of the laws concerning 2nd generation immigrants and civil partnership lose their symbolic and practical value. And, in my mind, they render the comparison between Syriza and New Democracy meaningless.

Cognord, 25 July 2015

• 1Editor’s note: initially published in The Brooklyn Rail, Field Notes, July 13 2015, [last visited July 2015].
• 2C. Lapavitsas, “The Looming Austerity Package,” Jacobin, June 12, 2015.
• 3It is peculiar to note that those on the left of Syriza (like Lapavitsas), only recently re-discovered their opposition to the euro and the EU. In their new role as Syriza’s MPs and internal opposition, they urge (whom exactly, is not very clear) a fresh examination of alternatives. As far as we have seen, this anti-EU alternative is precisely what they have been propagating for the last five years. So, in reality, they have a five-year-long background in this quest for the holy grail, giving them a decent head-start and the opportunity to finally present their [Libcom note - this footnote cuts short here]
• 4 Any debt reduction, or any ability of the Greek state to issue bonds and finance itself, would single-handedly eliminate the Troika’s leverage for imposing austerity.
• 5Bobolas, one of the best-known capitalists of Greece, was recently “arrested” by Syriza’s government on tax evasion charges of approximately €.4 million. He immediately paid less than half of that (€1.8million) and was released with all charges dropped.
• 6Y. Varoufakis, “Austerity is the only deal-breaker,” Project Syndicate, May 25, 2015.
• 7Within Germany, Greece’s primary opponent during the negotiations, many members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) party of Angela Merkel openly called Syriza a “communist” government.
• 8 One of those newly added demands was an abolition of the Pensioners’ Social Solidarity Benefit (EKAS) benefit, which amounts to a minuscule financial assistance (between €100-€150) for those who receive pensions of less than €300 a month.
• 9 It has become a common absurdity to claim that a Grexit would have minimal consequences. As Frances Coppola correctly put it recently, “If Greece were to leave, others would be likely to follow, either because of speculative attacks as in 1992, or because of popular unrest and political change. This would threaten the very existence of the Euro. The oft-expressed view that the rest of the Eurozone is “firewalled” from contagion was never credible and is now evidently false: bond yields are already spiking in other Eurozone periphery countries. The ECB cannot be seen to force out one country while protecting the rest from contagion. That would destroy its credibility as an independent body immune from political influence.” (F. Coppola, “The Greek Negotiations: Many Angry Words And No Way Forward,” Forbes, June 19, 2015).
• 10Editor’s note: the excerpt is from “Changing of the Guards”.
• 11Editor’s note: this is a reference to TH’s last remarks on the social climate in Greece.