Saturday, March 15, 2014
Empire (Omni Shoreham)
We can recall thirty years ago Andre Gorz reflecting on the 1968 Paris movement for social self-management in his book Farewell to the Working Class; and then ponder the post-2008 15-M Indignados movement in Madrid. This is the indignation that most recent generations "had it so great, while ruining it for us." Whereas 1968 Paris witnessed a challenge to a technocratic social democratizing state, post-2008 Madrid involves a growing Precariat and 50 percent youth unemployment in the Eurozone's fourth largest economy, where the state deflects social problems back on society. A generation born after 1985 has no expectation of mobility or their parents' values of embourgeoisement and a secured future. This generation finds itself cut off from circuits of capital accumulation; from institutions of collective bargaining; from workplaces as pillars of 20th century social democracy; and from working class parties allied to welfare state policies. The paper resurrects Gorz's theorizing in the wake of the eclipse of the once bright future of Spain's fledgling democracy: (1) by making use of survey data on Spanish attitudes toward politics and economy from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas in Madrid; and (2) Gorz's last writings in 2007 promoting networks of cooperatives and of repair workshops which would benefit from the emergence of "peer production," for instance using 3D printing.
