Dear friends: 

The following proyect can be considered as a result of the First
Continental Gathering in Berlin. Nearly the whole of it base on the
ideas worked out in several papers people brought to Berlin.  We would
like you to discuss it in your group, with your friends, your kids,
etc.  And we'll be keen on receiving all kinds of comments, critique,
worked out positions, proposals, ideas, moods and fantasy.  An the
beginning of september a new circular will be send out which resumes
all the reaccions and which will have a complete list of all papers
and texts (languages, number of pages, authors, adress, etc.)

Brigitte, Nicolas, Olivier (all from Geneve), Stefan (Frankfurt)


Project issued from the discussion on "Neoliberalism - Ideology,
economic theory or social project", Berlin, May 31, 1996.

I.	Proposal for a theoretical and practical co-operation against
Neoliberalism in Europe

A.	Reflection:

We want to contribute to an analysis of neoliberalism which could help
bring together the different localized struggles. We need to
understand the general characteristics of our epoch : both the limits
of our present defensive struggles, and the emerging new
possibilities. The first is this contribution for the intergalactic
Meeting at the end of July, which clarifies the aspects we want to
tackle in the future. Practically : this text was sent to the some 70
interested people and groups who signed up as interested in the
project in Berlin. Everyone can now contribute to the document
according to her/his personal experiences and ideas. Also, add
questions, which should be discussed and aspects of the analysis that
are missing or unclear.  (It is now clear that there will not be time
to make any sort of synthesis before the Intergalactic. However, we
can still try to take with us any comments and contributions that
reach us. These must necessarily be at least summarised in Spanish. We
won't have time to do any translation ourselves.)

B.	Action:

We think that it is important that these efforts of reflection to
surpass the limits of our local visions and the horizon of
neoliberalism, be accompanied by actions. These will give us the
courage to think better and further, and direct our reflections away
from abstract considerations towards real political perspectives.  And
they will be good occasions to verify the pertinence of our analysis,
people's reactions, etc. For years the more radical opposition has
deserted the most difficult terrain such as work and general economic
policies. Our struggles have in general been limited to more
particular issues : ecology, housing, women's struggles, anti-racism,
etc. The proposed actions would signal our will to now relate these
struggles to the central and crucial issues, where neoliberal
doctrines go practically unchallenged.  We propose simultaneous
actions against certain symbolic targets: on the same day in several
European cities (for example every third month beginning with a
Saturday in autumn). The targets would be chosen so as to highlight
the importance of local or global objectives (e.g. the stock exchange,
the university, the problem of marginalisation, the situation of
refugees and immigrants) or general aspects of the neoliberal
offensive (.competition/, .freedom of markets/, etc.) Each time it
would be an opportunity to make a point in our analysis and to show
how the victims suffer world-wide under the global logic of
neoliberalism. The co-ordination of actions across Europe would permit
even small groups to participate with actions which would seem
insignificant if they were isolated. At the same time, these actions
would be the opportunity to get in contact with the groups active in a
particular sector (students, minorities, etc.). Each group, of course,
can decide for itself about the way their action is carried out, the
artistic dimension, etc.  The actions would be supported by our
analysis and also by a common and recurrent symbol (maybe something
like the "Superbarrio" figure in Mexico City). We must confront the
ruling myth of neoliberalism with our own. We need clear ideas, but
also striking images to break the imposed "consensus". For example, we
could have a common mythical hero: "Durito and Felicita, the terrors
of neoliberalism, attacked again today in ....[Stockholm, Marseilles,
etc.]..to oppose the neoliberal plan for ... (education, unemployment,
or privatisation, etc.)!"  For example, in Geneva, a small group of
persons - accompanied by some journalists and TV - occupied the Geneva
Stock Exchange in order to announce their participation in the
"Intergalactic" and their commitment to mobilisations against
neoliberalism in Switzerland. The violent reaction of the Stock
Exchange security people turned the event into a spectacular battle
with the meat and bones that we had brought to "decorate" the
entrance. The event is still provoking reactions, and very clearly
sent the message that there are people who want to start intervening
on this kind of subject to say "Ya Basta!"  Simultaneously another
group of "zapatistas" demonstrated in front of the main bank in Bern.
Imagine if we could do that in cities all across Europe.  II.	A
first outline of the dossier "Neoliberalism: Resistance and
Perspectives in Europe"

The fact that we chose to analyse our oppression in terms of
capitalism and neoliberalism does not mean that we consider them to be
the origin of all relations of domination. However, capitalism uses
and functionalizes all of them. Movements of emancipation can also
spring up from struggles against patriarchal domination, the
destruction of nature or militarism.  Choosing to start with the focus
on capitalism can be justified by the fact that in our society all of
these emancipatory movements must confront the iron law of the
accumulation of capital. Capital instrumentalises all of society, not
just monetary relationships (we have only to think of female work
outside wage relations, for example).  Used in this way, the critique
of capital is not .abstract/ theory, it isn't unidimensional.
Liberation from the constraints of capitalist logic can give a new
dynamism to the struggles against all kinds of oppression.  Finally,
we want to emphasise that we hope to receive contributions that can
enlarge, criticise and enrich this first text.  Fortunately, society
and the world are much more colourful than our concepts.



A)	A Necessary analysis: What is new in neoliberalism?

1)	Neoliberalism the modern face of the old capitalism.  We don't
use the word "neoliberalism" to avoid the taboo word "capitalism", but
in order to better analyse and resist its modern form. It is a
specific form of capitalism, corresponding first to the wave of
globalisation which progressively disabled social-democratic
capitalism in the seventies and eighties. In the beginning of the
nineties, the collapse of the "socialist" bloc allowed the new system
to announce itself as the "end of history". The Gulf War consecrated
politically the New World Order. Later, the GATT, Maastricht and NAFTA
treaties radicalised the process.  2)	New economic realities The
extraordinary development of automation and intelligent technology has
created a radically new situation in which new investment eliminates
jobs instead of creating them.  Globalisation has brought an enormous
increase in the mobility of capital; its concentration at a world
level in multinational monopolies; and the growth of a monstrous
financial bubble, speculation totally dominating the real, productive
economy.  Capital increases its profits by cutting wages but is
incapable of stimulating enough growth to overcome tendencies to
economic recession.  The world market has practically reached its
limits (no more colonies in the South to expand into). They still hope
to sell corn flakes and cars to the privileged elites of the South,
but that will also reach its limits rapidly.  Etc.

3)	The attack on the State National politics are reduced to the
unique function of subordinating the national economies to the
necessities of international competition: austerity programs dictated
by the IMF, etc. The traditional role of states as regulators of
capitalism (control of credit, of exchange rates, investment, etc.) is
drastically weakened.  Capital has the avowed intention of seizing and
privatising all the public services, because it needs to find new
"markets" to invest in, eliminating all other types of social activity
in favour of merchant relationships. There is a general
de-politisation.  There is no political discussion, no project for
society. The very idea of the citizen, with its universal horizon is
emptied of all content.

4)	Neoliberalism and women Men control 90 % of world-wide
monetary income and 99 % of all money fortune. But most of the work on
world-scale is made gratis by women.  Recession and cuts of social
spending hit especially women; Concentration of power and
privatisation mean even more power in the hands of men. There is
rarely a women in a multinational board room, but the .maquiladoras/
and other delocalisations make an especially massive use of women in
conditions of quasi-slavery.  Neoliberal theory, like other social
theories, has abstract and general social categories referring above
all to male realities.  Measures oriented to female necessities are
seen as "additional" programs and costs. On the other hand, expenses
like the military budget are not seen as "additional" costs.  Negative
consequences of neoliberalism hit world-wide especially women: -
violence (at home, in the cities, at war, etc.); - reduced economic
power means even more reduced political power, less rights granted and
more personal dependence on men; - increased discrimination
(education, salaries, unemployment, etc.)  - a boom of prostitution
and traffic of women on a global scale; - world-wide the majority of
refugees are women; - etc.

5)	Centralisation of power Neoliberalism is, at least in part, an
answer to the popular struggles of the sixties and seventies that made
accumulation of capital more and more difficult under the social
democratic system in the North. It was also an effective manner to
re-impose colonial rule on people of the South and East who had fought
to liberate themselves and made some progress towards independent
development. It is at present a highly planned and centralised system.
The WTO can invalidate national laws.  The austerity programs, North
and South, follow precise directives of the IMF, OECD, etc. These go
into such detail, for example, as the restriction of higher education
by massive increases of tuition, how to sabotage public health
services, reduce the rights of unemployed, etc..  Members of this
informal world government are also explicitly anticipating the
violence such policies will create, and no doubt (more discreetly) how
to canalise it away from them, towards ethnic and racial issues
particularly. (This is a general phenomena, particularly obvious in
the USA, in ex-Yugoslavia or in France.)

6)	The Future?  They are creating global monopolies that make
extraordinary profits. Their proportion of the global market is
exploding, even if the number of people who can buy is shrinking. They
have no reason to stop, and couldn't if they wanted to. Historically
capital has never moderated itself. Only resistance civilises capital.
If it cannot be organised there will be, as in the past, mounting
violence, destruction and war.  The model seems more and more
universal. Even the German/Swedish model of high productivity and high
wages, presented as an "alternative" until recently, is faltering.  On
the short term, neoliberalism appears to have the situation under
control, as three examples of financial crises show: The crisis that
shook the European community's first agenda for a common currency, was
quite clearly engineered by the United States, which would prefer that
the dollar remain without rival. The unprecedented size of the loan to
Mexico, which "stabilised" its crisis, seems to show that they are in
a position to "invent" unlimited amounts of credit to meet such
emergencies. There is no one else on hand to call their bluff !
Finally, the fact that the French currency was practically not
attacked during the December strike, shows once again that the market
is not as uncontrolled as they would have us believe.  There must have
been political motivations to the amazing restraint showed by "the
markets" on this occasion.  On the other hand it could all collapse,
in fact it seems obliged to do so on the long term for three reasons
at least : 1) It is based on unlimited growth (accumulation), which is
impossible in a finite world. 2) It gives all power to institutions
which are as blind to the needs of the eco-system as they are to those
of humans without purchasing power. 3) It systematically destroys
elaborate cultures and social links to make room for an unstable magma
of commercial products and relations. For this reason, some people,
who are not certain that it is possible to transform our society,
think in terms of survival after a collapse. They therefor consider
preserving and developing alternative and autonomous social links to
be very important, and see the Zapatista communities as fortunate in
this respect at least (see contribution of Pierre Lehmann). "Socialism
or Barbarity !" is more timely a slogan than ever.

B) Forms of resistance, perspectives

We must understand not only how neoliberalism organises the economy,
but also how it affects our own social relations: our submissions and
resistance, in order to develop perspectives for struggle under the
conditions of neoliberalism.  a) We must recognise the necessity of
defensive mobilisations to preserve certain advantages won in the
past, but without generating illusions on the possibility or
desirability of a return to social democratic capitalism. As long as
we are living under capitalism we must defend political "interference"
in the economy: regulation, redistribution and protection. But in
these struggles we must know and say clearly that we can't go back to
the old model of full employment through growth, etc.  For example,
re-training or stimulating investment will not cure unemployment. How
can re-training be effective when there are simply not enough jobs to
go round? As for investment, it doesn't create more jobs anymore, it
reduces them through automation.  b) Our perspectives must radically
oppose the no-libral vision, even if through struggles that are in
themselves necessarily partial and local.

Seven possible perspectives:

Neoliberalism and globalisation have outflanked our old forms of struggle of and resistance, particularly in the workplace and
created new menaces. But simultaneously new possibilities are created by the new situation, which we must learn to grasp.
They are the other side of the coin on which we must act. We have defined some possible perspectives (to please the "sub", we
found 7!), seven hypotheses to be discussed and explored:

1. The subversive potential of exclusion One thing is sure. Exclusion
(of individuals, regions, and even countries) will grow, because
neoliberalism is incapable of exploiting everybody full-time. We must
make the awareness that the system must be changed grow with
exclusion; make apparent that this is the beginning of the end of the
work society; that the increases in productivity must serve to let us
all work less. What can we do to make exclusion an opportunity to
develop other kinds of relations, further the idea of another society?
The Zapatistas are also excluded, their struggle simply defends a
subsistence economy in the margins of neo-liberalism. But there is
nothing miserable about it, because they have made their struggle at
the same time one of the most pointed attacks on neoliberalism, simply
by demonstrating its incapacity of satisfying the most basic demands
of a human society.  In the North, many people are living on
unemployment benefits or minimum revenue payments, squatting unrented
houses, trying to organise "alternative" forms of activity and
exchange. How can such people transform their situation and struggles
for survival into a menace for the capitalist model ? The guaranteed
minimum revenue, for example, is just a way of assuring the survival
of the "reserve industrial army" of unemployed, if it is capital which
organises it. But if it is won and developed through struggle, it
could be the beginning of something new: the affirmation that we have
a right to live without having to sell our labour to a boss. (Capital
has already seen this danger, and is starting to make such payments
only in return for some kind of work. People who get unemployment
benefits are now often obliged to work as servants for the rich, for
example.) A text submitted from Barcelona, reflecting on the atomised
nature of neoliberal capitalism (the relatively less important role of
big plants, the multiplication of precarious forms of employment,
etc.) proposes an unconditional guaranteed minimum income as a
unifying struggle for wage earners and excluded alike.  In Berlin
itself we found an extraordinary example of a new form of unified
struggle against exclusion : Realising that there was an ever greater
proportion of the population that was not defended by the traditional
unions (the unemployed, the precariously and self-employed, women
engaged in reproductive household work "paid" by welfare, students,
handicapped, cultural groups and social workers, etc.), a group
launched the initiative of a "Social Alliance" which has now regrouped
more than a hundred organisations representing all kinds of persons
menaced by the new "austerity" budget cuts. Within a few months this
new form of social "recomposition" was capable of organising a
demonstration of 35 000 people, and imposing its presence on the local
political arena. It is really important that we exchange experiences
of this kind of struggle across Europe (for example, we would like to
know more about Action Contre le Chmage in France.)  An interesting
text from Madrid also insists on exclusion, showing that the workplace
is no longer the central social link.  Exploitation is multiform and
diffused world-wide. A more sinister note: capital no longer has a
direct interest in the health - or even survival - of its workers, who
are all more or less precarious and expendable.  Among the unemployed
there are more and more well trained people. That will offer
extraordinary opportunities to develop better understanding of the
situation, new forms of resistance, etc. Since 1968 there have perhaps
never been so many young, qualified people waiting in the wings. What
will bring them on stage?

2.	Emergence of new solidarities Competition pits us all against
each other, but that also means an objective convergence of interests
and struggles which we must make apparent. In the past workers of the
North could profit indirectly from the colonial exploitation that
reduced prices of raw materials for the North. But when they are in
direct competition with delocalised industries, they have a real
interest in supporting southern workers. The same kind of necessary
solidarity must be developed between employed and unemployed in each
country (For example with the struggle for a minimum guaranteed
income) .

3.	A political renewal?  The weakening of the Welfare State can
also be the chance to reinforce autonomy and self-organisation of
civil society, outside traditional parties, bureaucracies and
institutions which have less and less to offer.

4.	Politics as human dignity The brutal affirmation of money and
self-interest as the only means of regulating society is terrorising,
but leaves the terrain of values to us. A text by Holloway shows how
the Zapatistas propose a revolutionary approach to power and politics;
by affirming human values and dignity as the original source of
popular power, and thus reducing economy and its "necessities" to
their real, subordinate place; by considering truth to be more
powerful than state power or guns; by betting on the fact that in a
society based on alienation and injustice everyone has a "ya basta" of
some kind simmering beneath the surface.  The meaning which we give to
a struggle is perhaps more important than the thing in itself. A
limited objective can be important if it carries a radical critique
with it. The Zapatistas have reminded us that politics is above all
concerned with values and myths concerning how society should be
organised. If our values and myths triumph over theirs, they will
become as real as, for example, interest rates are today (If money
bears interest it is simply because people have been made to accept
the fetishistic belief that money can "work" all by itself.).
Neoliberalism dreams of liberating itself from all forms of political
control (Paris text) - even roads, prisons, and oceans could be
privatised. This extremism sets the stage for a renewal and a
radicalisation of political values.

But many won't be willing to fight for another utopian future world as
people did for "socialism". They can only be mobilised if the quality
of how the struggle is organised is already its own reward. The
struggle is so terrifically unequal, its final success so improbable,
that it is only worth trying if it allows us to participate
immediately in a bit of human society worthy of the name, if it can
give us back our dignity as complete human beings. That is why the
Zapatistas attract us. Because their desperate struggle gives them
extraordinary dignity.

5.	Violent times The wage-earner of the North, integrated before
by consumption and security, obeys now out of fear. But fear engenders
rage and violence - will it be repressive (racism, fascism, integrism,
hooliganism, against women) or emancipatory?  Let us not be taken by
surprise by a sudden change of the social "mood". Developing the
awareness and struggle against neoliberalism is the only way to stop
frustrated populations from seizing upon scapegoats.

6.	They are weaker than they look...  The reign of the neoliberal
consensus is absolute but totalitarian ideologies have often proved
fragile on the long term, because they cannot integrate the opposition
they give rise to. We may soon be living in something like the Poland
of the seventies, where sympathies with resistance were hidden but
widespread (the French strike showed that).

7.	... and we are stronger Faced with a global enemy we feel
powerless, but we don't need to construct a global organisation in
order to resist. A contagion of local resistances (Chiapas, the French
strike, talking back to your boss), a multitude of grains of sand in
the global machine, can do for a start. And these local resistances
could become powerful if they learned to recognise a common enemy.
Neoliberalism must subdue all sorts of struggles: or workers and
peasants North and South, of women, minorities, ecologists,
unemployed... As a global project it runs the risk of creating a
global awareness, solidarity and opposition. The Intergalactic is a
first step in that direction.  The balance of forces is crushing. We
will be still losing ground for a long time to come. Our objective in
these first skirmishes must primarily be to make the situation
intelligible to all, break the consensus on economic "necessities".
Behind economic laws there is always a political balance of force, and
generally the law of the most powerful. There is nothing natural or
objective about the . laws / of their economy. Things are so because
they manage to make us believe that they are so and have to be so. We
are prisoners of their myths : the myths of money, credit and
interest; of the "invisible hand" that reigns over "free" markets ; of
a society reduced to a quantity of individuals pitted one against the
other in blind competition ; etc. It is essential to attack the reign
of their myths, to break the spell of their "consensus". To do this,
we consider essential that the analysis and critique of neoliberalism
take concrete form in specific political actions attacking the symbols
of their ideology and power in a striking and imaginative way.

Better understanding will help us act, and acting will help us
understand how to advance.

THE EXAMPLE OF THE FRENCH STRIKE

A contribution from Lyon analysed the meanings more or less explicitly
attributed to the December strike. It illustrates several of the
proposed perspectives Positive aspects:- A French "Ya Basta!"  The
strike revealed a massive rejection of the neoliberal program among
strikers and support in the general public.  The great popularity of
the movement, despite the inconveniences caused by the paralysis of
public transport, was no doubt the outstanding aspect. This is
evidence of massive opposition to the attack on social security and
public services, seen as symbols of the principle of solidarity. Human
and political values against the laws of the market. The strike was an
act of resistance against the domination of the economic over the
social, against the growth of inequalities (the struggle of the
Marseilles public transport workers against pay differences was
exemplary in this respect), and against the disorder generated by
unregulated markets.  Concretely, solidarity was linked to the
struggle for equality : equality in pay and in the defence of equal
public services for all. There was implicitly the dream of a society
where the social would have priority over the economic. In the strike
itself the chief slogan (All together !) expressed the desire for
another kind of social relations than those offered by our society.
Limits : It involved only the workers of the reproductive, public
service sector, among the last whose work security and conditions
allow them to strike in this way. In the private, productive sector
and in the rest of society, the pressure was too strong. They remained
sympathetic spectators.  Probably many strikers were simply defending
the old social-democratic deal, without realising the new situation,
and the fact that Jupp and the French State are just agents of
something much bigger.  The movement, democratic at its base, remained
controlled by the union apparatus at a national level. It also
revealed the total absence of political organisations on the left
capable of relaying the strike and its content. The strike did not
last long enough to develop a political organisation or consciousness.
Everything is thus still to be done, but the strike revealed a
tremendous potential.  One can ask oneself what would happen if this
"traditional" kind of movement could converge with the new kind of
movement of "precarious" workers which seems to be taking form with
the Berlin "Social alliance". (The unemployed were in fact important
supporters of the strike.)  The main force of the strike was that the
transport strikes practically paralysed the rest of the economy. The
reduction and restructuring of the labour force has so weakened it
that one can wonder if the essential weapon that remains to the
opposition is not the capacity to create such general social
disruption: a generalised form of resistance corresponding to the
generalised and diffuse forms of modern exploitation. The excluded or
marginal, in particular, can perhaps only intervene in a global
manner.