On work, theft and the age of automation through a reading of Johnny Cash’s classic song Johnny Cash’s One Piece at a Time is a song about how he makes his own dream Cadillac by smuggling out all the parts from the factory over twenty years. It’s essentially about stealing from work but that’s not…
SYRIZA is calling for a ‘true democracy’ that simultaneously gives rise to an image or a dream of how a polity could look once the State withers away. All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. — E. A. Poe In an interview that Alexis Tsipras gave to the journalist…
The collective aspirations of the people of Buckfastleigh were protected and recognised in a familiar David and Goliath-like battle. On Thursday 17 October the community of Buckfastleigh, South Devon, heard the fate of their town, their livelihoods, the protection of their immediate environment and surrounding ecosystems, presented to them in the much awaited decision of…
In my last article I was looking at the Left’s current return to communism and that, while the thinkers most often associated with this return are adamant that this is a new and more fluid communism than the communist projects of the 20th century, there are three problematic commonalities that most of them share that…
Occupiers will win their struggle only when, in the collective imaginary, an occupied space becomes one that cannot be ‘dis-occupied’ This short reflection stems from my recent experience at the Ex Colorificio Liberato (Ex Paint Factory Liberated) in Pisa, a 14,000 square meter factory which had been abandoned for eight years before being occupied eleven…
We use law when it proves useful; we break the law when it prevents the realization of a more just common life (Teatro Valle Occupato, my trans.) The financial crisis and the subsequent series of austerity measures have prompted fierce resistance in the streets and squares across Southern Europe. As the crisis exploded, shattering the…
Spain has been the theatre of a prolonged speculative wave that ended abruptly in 2007, having been one of the world leaders in the cycle of real estate-financial accumulation. Spanish capitalism took advantage of an intensive use of the territory that guaranteed strong profit rates, with the support of large masses of capital acquired on…