TOPICS

Change the World with out taking Power?

One of the foundations of the State is the will of the peoples translated into institutionalize power to decide over the future of the State. This is a bourgeoisie political construction in which power is a fetishism, Maquiavelo and Hobbes take some of this ideas about the State. Weber mention that political power is the capability to impose an action even against the will of who is interacting with power. From this point of view, power is understand as domination, control and social regulation: as the power to dominate.

Power should also be understood as the capability of someone to act and to make. This means the power to protest or reclaim. This is the power to make, which its foundation is the constant recomposition of men who are against the power to dominate, a re-organization of interaction between social classes.

The capability of the power to make modify the social composition reformulating the organization inside and outside the State. This generate proposals of self management which deny traditional forms of domination power, the result of the power to make is autonomy understood as the capabilities of a society to decide over their future and their social relations. Moreover, this power to make could also be translated into institutional power, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brasil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay are some examples of this. In which social networks are reinforced through new constitutional pacts and perspectives beyond traditional Western foundations. Sumak Kawsay or Sumak Qamaña (good living) are essential components of this new forms of social relations.

In this sense, power is obediential and relocated to the people. Latin American societies are getting closer to this reality, by govern obeying social relations are being transformed into a new logic over the roll of the State and its institutions. And sometimes even this concepts are being transformed into new social organization which don't give place to domination relations.


Greece: example and resistance


What is an example? The established order dynamic uses example as a paradigm and model to the institution of norms and rules that we all should follow. We don´t use the word in this particular sense. We think "example" should be understood as an invitation to debate models, social action and rebellion today. What happens when rebellion experience show to us the knots and mazes of the problems we want to solve? In this respect we think in Greece.

"We live isolated in box-homes constantly assaulted by the "examples" of what supposedly we should be. We live and die freeze , without chance of change the regulations of the established order. Our doubts and desires of freedom are criminalized, our search is labeled as sick or a waste of time, because there is no productive contribution to the system. Nonetheless we insist in the rejection of obedience to the business logic of the world, that exclude and murder us or treat us as human merchandise."

The example that capitalism is imposing in Greece try to destroy social relations by forcing a pathological individualism. A reconstruction of social life in function of optimization and efficiency of all aspects of human life. The discipline and example of money are creating a world without humans, are creating a world of consumers. A commercial apartheid is being imposed through economic regulatory frames that undermine peoples security by privatizing all aspects of human life. The struggles in Greece are prove of human resistance and hope for those excluded from the "examples".

There are no heroes, nor ideal models nor autonomous fortresses. There is just resistance to protect wishes, thoughts, memories, dreams, pains and hopes about themselves, them that will resist against the mercantilization of life. Resistance to dominant models are examples of indignation against injustice. Greece present us two parallel processes: immediate anger and discomfort and the search path to new emancipatory  alternatives. Greece is not the only one, is part of the humanity´s heart beating to live in a better and more human world.
JB and KN


The State as a struggle field

The foundation process of the State starts with the agreement of those committed with it to accept right and duties. From this moment onward the historic, social, political and economical reality of a society is ordered to give form and content to the participation of the individuals. In this sense, the State create regulatory structures for the territory, the resources and most important to human activity. This create a collective imaginary which ultimately will be transform into institutions.

However, is impossible to think the State´s construction process without the political, social and economic influence of the Colonial order and the dominance structures created trough out the historic development process. Domination appears on the roots of the State.

More than two centuries after the french revolution, original communities and urban societies around the world question this imaginary social construction call State and with this also the forms of being, think and understand the reality that has been impose through the productive relations of dominant capitalism. This questioning is result of the displacement, robbery and destruction of cultures that XXI century is still observing.

From 1989 onward with the end of the so call real socialism the capitalists structures of the world had reinforced their extraction system under the formulations of neoliberal speech. However, societies all over the world are starting to struggle against exploitation through their own political models of participation. They search the reconfiguration of social order by questing establishment, resulting in a original social inter subjective relations capable of give indigenous their place on society.

Under this logic the State results to be not the regulator but the exploitation structure sustained by capitalist progress logic. Nonetheless indigenous understanding of the world is sustained on their relation of the community with the earth and with the need of their own. Not with the exploitation of their resources for consumption purposes only but with the spiritual and collective relation with resources.

This raise the question of power. How power is seen? And more important, does we can live under different forms of collective responsibility beyond the structures of the State? Are we capable of create new forms of social interaction through our knowledge and commitment with the others?



Autonomy

The last 17 years have seen different moments of rupture between the relations of State and capital and societies all over our globe. The uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the dolarization of Ecuador, the water´s war, the crisis of el corralito, the gas war and the Popular People Association of Oaxaca, just to say in Latin America. But we could argue the same for the Arab Spring, the American Autumn, the Acampada del Sol at Spain, the social resistance to economic adjustments in Greece, and many more are responses to the same systemic contradictions. All of these are negations to economic and politic proposals that are far from develop the well being of our population, instead this policies reproduce exploitation and internal colonialism, displacing entire communities under the economic progress discourse. With this, vital inter subjective relations are being broken, destroying the knowledge created through centuries of social interaction, excluding the very same people the discourse supposed to integrate.

However, what is the meaning of excluding and what does it imply? Exclude means the negation and nonrecognition or something or someone. Is the action of negation: deny  a reality. Many movements around the world are denying the system that we have build and the labor relations that have been generated because of the social fragmentation and natural disconnection that comes with it. We deny the perpetuation of power concentration and dominance of capital over humanity. This negation comes from individuality but get strengthened with the collective participation of all of those outraged by the incoherence of our system.

What happens when negation comes collective? Are this collective negation is local or global? Whats the path for this social and political recomposition? The energy deployed by all social movements give new meanings to politics; on particular forms of participatory economics like labor rotation and in general Bolivian´s Constitutional Assembly could exemplify this energy. Exist a reconfiguration from power to dominate to power to work as fundamental essence of social interaction.

What comes after this deployment of energy? From a macro perspective, is this energy isolated or is actually a new inter subjectivity? Are we seeing a new recomposition of social order established since French revolution? Are these practices reform patriarchal social relations inherited since Colonialism? And finally, what happen with the State? What is the role of the State?

Nonetheless, what we have seen is that this energy leave a clear fingerprint on the political stage, as well as in the collective imaginary. Egypt, Spain, Greece, England, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Iceland, Palestine, South Africa, India, and many more places all over our globe are prove of this energy. Many systemic changes have been done through this energy. These movements are creating history and changing paradigms. We all start with negation of reality, we condemn injustice through out the world. This is what we observe all over the world: resistance to internal colonialism and emancipation of capital logic. All this in 17 years.