“Home care workers in Rotterdam who will lose their jobs in 2014 will be partly replaced by benefit recipients. The municipality will oblige those on benefits to do volunteer work”, De Volkskrant newspaper wrote towards the end of 2013. “This is substitution pure and simple”, according to Wim van der Hoorn, a union leader of the FNV labour union. “The municipality tries to patch up the holes in its budget by using the free labour of benefit claimants to get work done that previously was paid work. In this way employment is lost”. But the PvdA (Social Democratic party) elderman Marco Florijn tries to keep up appearances and “wishes to underline that the absolute precondition is that no regular jobs are lost”. His political associate Jan Hamming, mayor of Heusden and chairman of the advisory committee “Work and Income” of the association of Dutch municipalities VNG, is a lot more honest on this issue. He admits that the use of benefit claimants can threaten existing jobs. “There is a financial side to this story. We are confronted with substantial budget cuts. That also impacts on the work in municipalities: it does not get done. So it is only logical that we are also considering putting people who are on benefits to work.” Rotterdam is not a unique case for that matter: thousands, possibly tens of thousands and who knows in future hundreds of thousands of benefit claimants are being forced to do unpaid labour.

Sticky fingers

The question is who profits from forced labour and job substitution, and what the amounts are that we are talking about. It is difficult for us to get this information. The implementation is far from transparent. Many municipalities have already introduced forced labour but they all have their own approach, often through structures that differ only slightly. In some instances the benefit claimants have to do forced labour in municipal reintegration centres and sheltered workplaces, in other places they have to work in home care or with ‘volunteer’ organisations, and other municipalities put them to work in commercial reintegration agencies, temp agencies and commercial businesses.

Obviously any commercial business will only want to be involved in such projects if these are financially attractive. In principle forced labourers are cheaper than regular employees because they do not receive wages and have no entitlements regarding better (and thus more expensive) working conditions. But it is usually unclear how much money is involved, and where exactly it disappears into the deep pockets along the way in the outplacement chain. In most cases it will be financially attractive for the municipalities to force benefit claimants into compulsory unpaid labour. After all, their benefits are being paid by the national government, although in practice quite a few municipalities have already been obliged to pay a share of these costs. With or without municipal deficit: all extra income from forced labour is probably welcome. The downside is that an entire system of repression has to be set up to continuously monitor the forced labourers, and this is costly: the minimum that is necessary would be the monitoring infrastructure plus the wages for the guards and ‘coordinators’. But this in a way is employment and can probably be paid out of the so-called ‘employment budget’ which is part of the social benefits budget that the municipalities receive from the government. In addition there have to be employees who bring in customers and orders, and this should not be too difficult with the obviously low labour cost that can be guaranteed through forced labour. Companies and municipalities try to sell forced labour with all sorts of explanations about ‘social return’, ‘gaining experience’, and ‘giving people guidance and support’, as they do for low paid and unpaid internships and other types of worktraining programmes. Usually it is just empty words but not always: sometimes they really do invest some time into explaining the work to people and training them. And in some cases new workers do indeed produce less in the beginning than their experienced colleagues. In short there would have to be an in depth national research with full cooperation from civil servants, businesses, unions and economists to get to the bottom of who really benefits from forced labour and to what extent.

Substitution

The question is: how useful would such research be for the bottom-up activists, for the workers themselves? And what do we mean by ‘substitution’, how would we describe it? If we look at it from the bottom up it is really very simple: any form of labour that is paid less than the minimum wage or the collective labour agreement wage for adults, in whatever way and with whatever excuse possible, in fact means that regular paid jobs are being replaced. This applies to forced labour in the same way it applies to unpaid internships, worktraining programmes, youth minimum wage jobs, and so on. After all the existing work is turned into a lower paid or even unpaid job.

For alderman Florijn ‘substitution’ probably only applies when a regular paid job is replaced one-on-one by ‘voluntary work’. From the position of the forced labourer however it does not matter at all whether or not the work was a decently paid job earlier on. The issue is that work that is done by a forced labourer cannot be done by a regular paid worker any more. To put it bluntly: every forced labourer is made to substitute the paid job that he or she could have had without forced labour. And this also goes for work that has never, or not for years, been paid work. The fact is that this work obviously needs to be done, otherwise no one would be forced to do it, or be recruited for it, and no internships would be established to do it. The authorities and bosses would simply have to pay to get this work done if forced labour and all sorts of vague internship constructions had not been created. In that case the labourers would have had their wages and rights. Basically there is only one exception to this rule and this is the work that was simply made up to keep benefit claimants busy, to discipline them and bully them out of the benefits scheme. You know the type of work: one man digs a hole and the other one fills it up again. Or the type of forced labour where the benefit claimants just have to show up at the workplace but there is nothing to be done except hang around and wait. This is not substitution of course, but out of principle even in those cases people ought to be properly paid for this. Let alone the fact that benefit claimants are being humiliated by this, and that for that reason alone forced labour should be abolished immediately.

But there is more to substitution than this. Forced labour and obligatory ‘volunteer work’ are not only substituting regular paid jobs, but also important unpaid work such as for example first-line care by family or others, political activism, and also a lot of real volunteer work that the government does not approve of. This means that the existing volunteer economy is losing its autonomy and gets to be more and more controlled by municipalities. In this way forced labour harms community and volunteer work, and other activities outside of the capitalist logic that make life worthwhile for many people.

Profit and loss

When we start looking at the financial question from bottom-up things actually become quite simple. The extra revenues that this substitution generates for bosses and municipalities equals exactly the amount that all forced labourers, interns and work experience placements together lose compared to when they would receive a regular (collective labour agreement or adult) minimum wage. This is the amount that the working class as a whole is being deprived of, on top of the added value they produce and that is always appropriated by the capitalist class anyway. These calculations can also easily be made for individual cases: how much money does a benefit claimant who works, receive less compared to when he or she would be paid a regular wage. And if we would add these sums for the by now estimated tens of thousands of forced labourers we quickly end up with huge amounts. In Leiden the forced labourers officially have to work 26 hours a week, and as a result the minimum wage for the hours worked would be exactly the same as their benefits. This would be a financial-technical way to prevent substitution, but in practice most forced labourers work far more than 26 hours. In addition the forced labour placements continue to substitute regular jobs with regular labour rights.

If you look at it from the bottom up it is a false argument used by employers and municipalities, that forced labourers, interns and youth work placements have to learn the work and produce less so should get paid less. Not only is their production not always lower, in some cases it is even higher. The point is that this growing group of underpaid or not paid labourers have to pay for their housing, food, clothing and insurances just like anyone else. It is not about productivity as it is with old-fashioned piece rate, but about the time that workers give to their bosses. The workers can only make use of their time once, and this is a problem when due to these forms of underpayment more and more people working during all the working hours they have only receive an income that is not even a living wage. The issue should be a decent living wage for everyone.

Eric Krebbers

Source of Article: http://www.doorbraak.eu/job-substitution/

Source of Featured Image: http://simplepimple.com/2012/08/are-internships-a-form-of-modern-slavery/

We are extremely concerned by the response of the international community to the popular protests that have erupted against almost two decades of misrule in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Editorial, 17 February). Western media and politicians have argued that now is not the time for the western powers to disengage from Bosnia.

In fact, it is time to recognise that external rule in Bosnia has failed. The Dayton agreement in 1995 set up an undemocratic “protectorate”, giving the high representative of the western powers neocolonial authority over a political system that has institutionalised ethnic divisions, while neoliberal economic policies have impoverished ordinary Bosnians regardless of ethnicity.

Do the western powers have any answers to this crisis? The high representative, Valentin Inzko, can think only of threatening military intervention. Periodic threats by the US and the EU to revise the Dayton agreement by recentralising Bosnia have only made matters worse, raising the spectre of secession as Serbs and Croats look to Serbia and Croatia for support. And neither Brussels nor Washington will contemplate reversing the neoliberal economic policies that have impoverished so many.

It is therefore time to terminate the office of the high representative and end outside meddling in Bosnian affairs.

The popular protests have made clear that there is widespread rejection of ethnic divisions and neoliberal policies imposed from above. Free from external economic, political and military pressure, we are confident that the peoples of Bosnia will come together to establish a society based on social justice and national equality.
Samir Amin Economist, Senegal
Cédric Durand Economist, Paris 13 University, France
Emin EminagićActivist, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Lindsey German Stop the War Coalition (p/c), United Kingdom
Grigoris Gerotziafas Associate professor of hematology-hemostasis, Université Pierre et Maris Curis (Paris VI), militant of Antarsya in France/Greece
Anna Grodzka Member of parliament of the Republic of Poland
Costas Isihos Member of the political secretariat and head of the foreign policy department of Syriza
Mariya Ivancheva Independent scholar and member of the editorial board of LeftEast, Bulgaria
Stathis Kouvelakis Reader in political theory, King’s College, London, and Syriza central committee, United Kingdom and Greece
Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski Researcher and editor, Poland
Aleksandra Lakić Researcher, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ken Loach Film director, United Kingdom
James Meadway Economist, United Kingdom
Matija Medenica Solidarnost editor, Serbia
China Miéville Author, United Kingdom
Tijana Morača Independent researcher, Serbia
Goran Musić Historian, Austria
Jelena Petrović Red Min(e)d, Slovenia
Dragan Plavšić Lawyer and author, United Kingdom
Florin Poenaru Anthropologist, Romania
Srećko Pulig Aktiv editor, Croatia
Marija Ratković The Culture of Memory, Serbia
James Robertson Graduate student, history, New York University, United States
Catherine Samary Economist, France
Richard Seymour Author and columnist, United Kingdom
GM Tamás Philosopher, CEU, Budapest, Hungary
Mary Taylor CUNY Graduate Center, USA
Vladimir Unkovski-Korica Historian, United Kingdom
Ana Vilenica Uz)bu))na))) editor, Serbia
Andreja Živković Author, United Kingdom

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/03/end-western-meddling-bosnia

Noam Chomsky: The term neoliberal is a bit misleading. The doctrines are neither new, nor liberal. As you say, big business and the rich rely extensively on what economist Dean Baker calls “the conservative nanny state” that they nourish. That is dramatically true of financial institutions. A recent IMF study attributes the profits of the big banks almost entirely to the implicit government insurance policy (“too big to fail”), not just the widely publicized bailouts, but access to cheap credit, favorable ratings because of the state guarantee and much else. The same is true of the productive economy. The IT revolution, now its driving force, relied very heavily on state-based R&D, procurement and other devices. That pattern goes back to early English industrialization.

However, neither “neoliberalism,” nor its earlier versions as “liberalism,” have been myths, certainly not for their victims. Economic historian Paul Bairoch is only one of many who have shown that “the Third World’s compulsory economic liberalism in the 19th century is a major element in explaining the delay in its industrialization,” in fact, its “de-industrialization,” a story that continues to the present under various guises.

In brief, the doctrines are, to a substantial extent, a “myth” for the rich and powerful, who craft many ways to protect themselves from market forces, but not for the poor and weak, who are subjected to their ravages.

What explains the supremacy of market-centric rule and predatory finance in an era that has experienced the most destructive crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression?

The basic explanation is the usual one: It is all working quite well for the rich and powerful. In the US, for example, tens of millions are unemployed, unknown millions have dropped out of the workforce in despair, and incomes as well as conditions of life have largely stagnated or declined. But the big banks, which were responsible for the latest crisis, are bigger and richer than ever, corporate profits are breaking records, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice is accumulating among those who count, labor is severely weakened by union busting and “growing worker insecurity,” to borrow the term Alan Greenspan used in explaining the grand success of the economy he managed, when he was still “St. Alan,” perhaps the greatest economist since Adam Smith, before the collapse of the structure he had administered, along with its intellectual foundations. So what is there to complain about?

The growth of financial capital is related to the decline in the rate of profit in industry and the new opportunities to distribute production more widely to places where labor is more readily exploited and constraints on capital are weakest – while profits are distributed to places with lowest [tax] rates (“globalization”). The process has been abetted by technological developments that facilitate the growth of an “out-of-control financial sector,” which “is eating out the modern market economy [that is, the productive economy] from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid,” to borrow the evocative phrase of Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, probably the most respected financial correspondent in the English-speaking world.

That aside, as noted, the “market-centric rule” imposes harsh discipline on the many, but the few who count protect themselves from it effectively.

What do you make of the argument about the dominance of a transnational elite and the end of the nation-state, especially since its proponents claim that this New World Order is already upon us? 

There’s something to it, but it shouldn’t be exaggerated. Multinationals continue to rely on the home state for protection, economic and military, and substantially for innovation as well. The international institutions remain largely under the control of the most powerful states, and in general the state-centric global order remains reasonably stable.

Europe is moving ever closer to the end of the “social contract.” Is this a surprising development for you?

In an interview, Mario Draghi informed The Wall Street Journal that “the Continent’s traditional social contract” – perhaps its major contribution to contemporary civilization – “is obsolete” and must be dismantled. And he is one of the international bureaucrats who is doing most to protect its remnants. Business has always disliked the social contract. Recall the euphoria in the business press when the fall of “Communism” offered a new work force – educated, trained, healthy and even blond and blue-eyed – that could be used to undercut the “luxurious lifestyle” of western workers. It is not the result of inexorable forces, economic or other, but a policy design based on the interests of the designers, who are rather more likely to be bankers and CEOs than the janitors who clean their offices.

One of the biggest problems facing many parts of the advanced capitalist world today is the debt burden, public and private. In the peripheral nations of the eurozone, in particular, debt is having catastrophic social effects as the “people always pay,” as you have pointedly argued in the past. For the benefit of today’s activists, would you explain in what sense debt is “a social and ideological construct?” 

There are many reasons. One was captured well by a phrase of the US executive director of the IMF, Karen Lissakers, who described the institution as “the credit community’s enforcer.” In a capitalist economy, if you lend me money and I can’t pay you back, it’s your problem: You cannot demand that my neighbors pay the debt. But since the rich and powerful protect themselves from market discipline, matters work differently when a big bank lends money to risky borrowers, hence at high interest and profit, and at some point they cannot pay. Then the “the credit community’s enforcer” rides to the rescue, ensuring that the debt is paid, with liability transferred to the general public by structural adjustment programs, austerity and the like. When the rich don’t like to pay such debts, they can declare them to be “odious,” hence invalid: imposed on the weak by unfair means. A huge amount of debt is “odious” in this sense, but few can appeal to powerful institutions to rescue them from the rigors of capitalism.

There are plenty of other devices. J.P. Morgan Chase has just been fined $13 billion (half of it tax-deductible) for what should be regarded as criminal behavior in fraudulent mortgage schemes, from which the usual victims suffer under hopeless burdens of debt.

The inspector-general of the US government bailout program, Neil Barofsky, pointed out that it was officially a legislative bargain: the banks that were the culprits were to be bailed out, and their victims, people losing their homes, were to be given some limited protection and support. As he explains, only the first part of the bargain was seriously honored, and the plan became a “giveaway to Wall Street executives” – to the surprise of no one who understands “really existing capitalism.”

The list goes on.

In the course of the crisis, Greeks have been portrayed around the globe as lazy and corrupt tax evaders who merely like to demonstrate. This view has become mainstream. What are the mechanisms used to persuade public opinion? Can they be tackled?

The portrayals are presented by those with the wealth and power to frame the prevailing discourse. The distortion and deceit can be confronted only by undermining their power and creating organs of popular power, as in all other cases of oppression and domination.

What is your view about what is happening in Greece, particularly with regard to the constant demands by the “troika” and Germany’s unyielding desire to advance the cause of austerity?

It appears that the ultimate aim of the German demands from Athens, under the management of the debt crisis, is the capture of whatever is of value in Greece. Some people in Germany appear to be intent on imposing conditions of virtual economic slavery on the Greeks.

It is rather likely that the next government in Greece will be a government of the Coalition of the Radical Left. What should be its approach toward the European Union and Greece’s creditors? Also, should a left government be reassuring toward the most productive sectors of the capitalist class, or should it adopt the core components of a traditional workerist-populist ideology?  

These are hard practical questions. It would be easy for me to sketch what I would like to happen, but given existing realities, any course followed has risks and costs. Even if I were in a position to assess them properly – I am not – it would be irresponsible to urge policy without serious analysis and evidence.

Capitalism’s appetite for destruction was never in doubt, but in your recent writings you pay increasing attention to environmental destruction. Do you really think human civilization is at stake?

I think decent human survival is at stake. The earliest victims are, as usual, the weakest and most vulnerable. That much has been evident even in the global summit on climate change that just concluded in Warsaw, with little outcome. And there is every reason to expect that to continue. A future historian – if there is one – will observe the current spectacle with amazement. In the lead in trying to avert likely catastrophe are the so-called “primitive societies”: First Nations in Canada, indigenous people in South America and so on throughout the world. We see the struggle for environmental salvage and protection taking place today in Greece, where the residents of Skouries in Chalkidiki are putting up a heroic resistance both against the predatory aims of Eldorado Gold and the police forces that have been mobilized by the Greek state in support of the multinational company.

Those enthusiastically leading the race to fall off the cliff are the richest and most powerful societies, with incomparable advantages, like the US and Canada. Just the opposite of what rationality would predict – apart from the lunatic rationality of “really existing capitalist democracy.”

The US remains a world empire and, by your account, operates under the “Mafia principle,” meaning that the godfather does not tolerate “successful defiance.” Is the American empire in decline, and, if so, does it pose yet a greater threat to global peace and security? 

US global hegemony reached a historically unparalleled peak in 1945, and has been declining steadily since, though it still remains very great and though power is becoming more diversified, there is no single competitor in sight. The traditional Mafia principle is constantly invoked, but ability to implement it is more constrained. The threat to peace and security is very real. To take just one example, President Obama’s drone campaign is by far the most vast and destructive terrorist operation now under way. The US and its Israeli client violate international law with complete impunity, for example, by threats to attack Iran (“all options are open”) in violation of core principles of the UN Charter. The most recent US Nuclear Posture Review (2010), is more aggressive in tone than its predecessors, a warning not to be ignored. Concentration of power rather generally poses dangers, in this domain as well.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you have said all along that the one-state/two-state debate is irrelevant.

The one-state/two-state debate is irrelevant because one state is not an option. It is worse than irrelevant: It is a distraction from the reality.

The actual options are either (1) two states or (2) a continuation of what Israel is now doing with US support: keeping Gaza under a crushing siege, separated from the West Bank; and systematically taking over what it finds of value in the West Bank while integrating it more closely to Israel, taking over areas with not many Palestinians; and those who are there are being quietly expelled. The contours are quite clear from the development and expulsion programs.

Given option (2), there’s no reason why Israel or the US should agree to the one-state proposal, which also has no international support anywhere else. Unless the reality of the evolving situation is recognized, talk about one state (civil rights/anti-apartheid struggle, “demographic problem”, etc.) is just a diversion, implicitly lending support to option (2). That’s the essential logic of the situation, like it or not.

You have said that elite intellectuals are the ones that mainly tick you off. Is this because you fuse politics with morality? 

Elite intellectuals, by definition, have a good deal of privilege. Privilege provides options and confers responsibility. Those more privileged are in a better position to obtain information and to act in ways that will affect policy decisions. Assessment of their role follows at once.

It’s true that I think that people should live up to their elementary moral responsibilities, a position that should need no defense. And the responsibilities of someone in a more free and open society are, again obviously, greater than those who may pay some cost for honesty and integrity. If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.

Michel Gondry’s animated documentary Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? has just been released in selected theaters in New York City and other major cities in the US after having received rave reviews. Did you see the movie? Were you pleased with it? 

I saw it. Gondry is really a great artist. The movie is delicately and cleverly done and manages to capture some important ideas (often not understood even in the field) in a very simple and clear way, also with personal touches that seemed to me very sensitive and thoughtful.

Source: http://www.zcommunications.org/chomsky-it-is-all-working-quite-well-for-the-rich-powerful-by-noam-chomsky.html

Source Link allegralaboratory

ALLEGRA: Dimitris, you are a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex. In the past you have studied highways and infrastructures and currently you are carrying out a research project entitled « The City at the Time of Crisis », funded by an ESRC Future Research Leaders grant. Can you briefly introduce yourself to those who are not familiar with your work and describe your projects?

DIMITRIS: For my PhD I studied anthropologically political transition via infrastructures and vice versa. More precisely I studied the main cross-border motorway between Albania and Greece and via that peculiar -at the time- ethnographic site I studied in a new way -via the road and its flows- the postsocialist conditions in the Balkans. By extension this study of infrastructure provided an insight into the materiality of the wider European neoliberalisation project.

We have to understand that the project of European neoliberalisation of the 1990s and 2000s passed precisely via a mass development of built environment in the continent. Moreover an additional element of that process was the re-determination of European boundaries and a related inter-European movement of populations which crossed these re-determined borders. Indeed, the replacement of State-run economies by market-based capitalism in half of the continent and the parallel expansion of Western European capitalist interests in Eastern Europe had a crucial role in this neoliberalisation project. So given this context the cross-border road between postsocialist and non-socialist peripheral European states looked like an ideal ethnographic locus for analysing such process anthropologically.

Today we are seeing one more stage of that neoliberalisation process with a capitalist crisis centered on the periphery of Western Europe.

In 2012, together with a team of colleagues, we started the ‘City at the time of Crisis’ project funded by ESRC. In this project we study the new forms of governance implemented in that periphery of Western (as political determination rather than geographic) Europe. A basic idea is that one of the most important parts of this new form of governance is the transformations of the notions of public. So ethnographically we study political transitions and social change in the form of socio-spatial changes in the public urban and infrastructural materialities of Athens.

ALLEGRA: You seem to suggest that Athens is the ideal ‘laboratory’ from which to observe the global financial crisis. In their recent book, Theories from the South, the Comaroffs argue that it is rather the global South that is best placed to help us understand contemporary world transformations. The obvious fact that you are Greek put aside, can you tell us why you chose Athens as your primary site of inquiry?

DIMITRIS: The Commaroffs are right, but they are also wrong. The reality is that we first saw extreme capitalism being applied in the global South. Gradually, more advanced and elaborated versions of capitalism were applied there. However, a very similar version of extreme neoliberalism -like the one that emerged in the 1970s in the South- was then applied in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Now it is the turn of the Western European periphery to experience a similar regime.

The anthropologists who happen to have ethnographic knowledge of both the postsocialist and non-socialist European periphery would be able to confirm the similarity between e.g. the loan and “aid” agreements between EU and postsocialist states and the current agreements between e.g. the Greek or Spanish governments and EU institutions.

So in the current historical stage it is not only organisations like the IMF:  there are other institutions involved in the shaping of the world political economy. For instance the EU leadership and especially the European Central Bank along with several other European banks play a crucial historical role in the expansion of an extreme neoliberalist form of governance that is applied in the crisis-ridden euro-zone countries. More and more populations are subjected to that regime and what we used to call Global South governance extends well beyond the South. So the category itself is a bit problematic.

As I mentioned in the previous question Greece is centrally located in a process of global proportions that is unravelling at this very moment. Greece’s centrality in this project starts from the re-definition of Greek borders which changed radically after 1990, given that it was surrounded by socialist European countries. Phenomena like migratory flows, big construction projects and capitalist expansion of Greek capitalist entreprises in Eastern Europe just complete this picture.

Under such circumstances the anthropology of Europe and European politics keep asking the same questions since the 1990s: How did the continent change after the collapse of socialism? What will come next? These questions are very similar to the ones we ask about e.g. China or India and especially North African countries.

The end of the cold war has led to radical transformations globally and we are still seeing them in front of our eyes. If European communism had really been the point of reference for the Left everywhere we would not have the squares movements occuring around the Mediterranean. So it is not a process that is detached from what is happening in the so-called Global South. Overall I think that unless anthropology starts including more substantially Europe and the West in its own perception of the world we will end up running behind change.

ALLEGRA: A few weeks ago, ALLEGRA launched a discussion on the future of universities, and tried to define the nature of the ‘space’ that current movements against cuts are seeking to preserve. Some of our conclusions were relatively optimistic, in the sense that we also tried to highlight the regenerative potential of the public to achieve positive change. In the past when ASA asked you to write a text on the crisis of higher education you jumped to similar conclusions. However, seeing your more recent work you seem to suggest that the current global crisis has deeply transformed notions of ‘public space’, ‘public good’, ‘public interest’ and so on…to the extent that the public as we used to know (or fantasize?) it seems to be slowly disappearing. To a certain extent, one is left with an impression of Athens as a city under a permanent state of exception, to use an Agambian expression. What has changed?

DIMITRIS: Since you used the term of a political philosopher I will respond with a political answer. In that ASA article I concluded that higher education in Britain does not deserve to be defended for what it is or what it was, but for what it may potentially become. I guess this applies in the case of Athens and Greece as well.

In the last two decades, as  European neoliberalisation reached a more intensified form,  we saw some of the resistance movements in the Western world romanticise or imagine a capitalism with better public social provisions. Much of the Occupy movement in the US had such demands, while many of the European movements suggest a return to a recent past of better social provisions. While I see the value of these benefits for the better quality of life of many, as a political proposition I think that implies a crucial mistake. If the middle classes of the Western World had a better life during the recent past, the majority of the world, the poor in the West or globally had very bad time.

The issue is that the current crisis is quite crucial for the evolution of capitalism in Europe and probably globally, and as we know in anthropology crises signify a transition while they also provide a window for anti-structural events to take place. This is our case at the moment and unless societies come up with a radical alternative (way forward from just better social policy) the future of European people will look very bad.

I think that the potentialities of the crisis are visible to economic elites and state authorities who are trying to make sure that no anti-structural events will occur. This is the reason why they employ some of the most violent apparatuses, like e.g. extreme police violence or armed neo-Nazi groups.

For example when the large anti-austerity and anti-governmental movement in Greece appeared in the summer of 2011 the police brutality was profound. Soon the neo-Nazis were funded with huge amounts of money and were activated on the streets of Athens but also electorally.

Neoliberal governance since its birth was ready to employ fascists such as Pinochet or go to fascistic extremes such as declaring national wars out of the blue like e.g. Margaret Thatcher did in the case of the UK or her social democratic offsprings did with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Researching the use of extreme violent apparatuses in Greece these days might make you pessimistic. In order for the austerity experiment to work, in order for the bankers’ interests to be protected, the current form of governance in Greece is ready to spill a lot of blood. A similar escalation in state’s violence has been seen in Britain in the last couple of years when the student movement emerged: police brutality against the protesters has been profound in recent British history. We even saw the police being invited on campus to arrest protesting students:  I personally saw it twice in my university, Sussex, and I have worked there only for only five years!

ALLEGRA: Your work brings an important contribution to the scholarship on statehood, by documenting changing everyday experiences in public spaces. With the mass privatization of public infrastructures, it seems like the only means left for the state to manifest itself is through violence, symbolic or real. What do you think is remaining of the state in Greece today?

DIMITRIS: Well, violence is a crucial part of statecraft anyway. Even the most democratic socialist or mild state mechanisms have used and/or use apparatuses of death and pain. For example, one of the most quoted of such examples: the Swedish state was force sterilising women until the 1970s. For another example, we have to remember that every state apparatus discriminates against people: citizens and non-citizens alike.

As the history of Europe shows in the best case scenario such division just implies less rights for the non-citizens and in the worst case scenario it implies exterminating non-citizens massively.

Even the most democratic states are still states and have the monopoly of legal violence, so potentially the state authorities or their agents can crash, kill, torture, and imprison any of us at any moment they will decide. They do not have necessarily to do it, but the fact that apparatuses are ready to do so is violent enough. And indeed these days they have a nice army of journalists, academics and so on who will provide good excuses about public order and social peace that need to be restored.

When the revolt of 2008 happened in Greece you had people like Greek Yale professors up to famous journalists supporting the government and indirectly excusing the police assassination of a teenager, and this is precisely what triggered the revolt.

Within this barbaric mechanism modern states provided various things to their citizens and selected citizens from other states to become part of the national body. That happened for many reasons, which I do not have the time to analyse at the moment. However, such provisions maintained some kind of social peace and consent between the State (or what we imagine to be the state) and a critical mass of state residents.

So in our case, EU citizens and migrants with visas probably had a better life at some point, but a substantial part of the population was faced with a state that did not even give them the right to exist, that arrested them, deported them and killed them. The same dynamics stands for the new poor, for example: many young people in Europe mainly experience the state as an apparatus that deregulates labour and that makes sure that the majority will work like slaves for small salaries, will have no job or social security etc. If they protest, the state will beat them up or in some cases may even kill them just for being around a protest, as Metropolitan Police did with Ian Tomlinson a few year ago. It is just that today we see this state of exception expanding towards social groups who have not had direct experience of state as violence before.

And certainly we are in a very difficult position, because the state and the capitalist market have ended up being the main controllers of social provisions, so now that state policies enforce poverty and austerity and fewer and fewer can afford private provisions, we see suffering of important proportions of the European population. This has been a usual phenomenon outside Europe though and among the non-citizens within Europe!

What one should stress is that the last few decades when the state has been as social provider have been nothing more than a happy break in the history of capitalism, based on the fear of social unrest.

Today that states have achieved so advanced repression and silencing mechanisms, is probably what allows them not to find it necessary anymore to provide social provisions. Anyhow, Western European middle classes as consumers of the products of global capitalism lose their significance given that we have new consuming classes emerging in other places of the planet. So their future is that of most Eastern Europeans: lots of work for peanuts, extreme inequalities etc. When it was happening there very few Western Europeans complained or protested against the barbaric form of postsocialist capitalism.

Indeed while European states decrease social provisions to the citizens in a drastic manner and provide only violence for non-citizens, simultaneously great proportions of state’s wealth is chanelled to global financial institutions and other corporations through various paths.

To end this answer with a final note though. I think that when the elites start busting their cards one after the other, namely when the police violence is not anymore enough to control social disappointment and rage and they have to use the para-state neo-Nazis apparatuses, we are in a situation where they are running out of legal responses, running out of cards, while running towards a potential dead end.

ALLEGRA: Michael Herzfeld, in his now famous books The Social Production of Indifference, argues that Greeks have always maintained some kind of indifference or at least, some kind of distance towards the state. In which ways does your work confirm or contradict this argument? How has the current crisis transformed citizens relationship towards the state? Is this pattern illustrative of broader transformations taking place in European/Western democracies?

DIMITRIS: Herzfeld’s question was phrased in the right way, one could summarise it like this perhaps: If Greeks are generally polite and welcoming people how comes when they become civil servants they are so unhelpful? My take on that phenomenon can be summarised like this: generally people are polite and nice until State and other power apparatuses intervene. For example when the civil servant’s role provides them with e.g. three options to the way s/he will treat a citizen and all three are nasty options, going for the least nasty one is actually a good option. At the same time remember that the official state does its best to create obedient people who will follow the rules.

It is like the banality of the evil argument of Hannah Arendt who suggested that some of the people who carried out the Holocaust were just civil servants who saw the mass extermination of people as just doing their job, like they would do any other job. They were good civil servants.

Back in 2011 when the people in Greece rose against the government, more than 500 people were hospitalised only in Athens due to police brutality.

Last summer when I was in Gezi park in Istanbul, I saw how Turkish policemen attacked the camp beating up people while, in the meantime, they were chatting and having cigarette breaks. Similarly in London, when Occupy London started in front of St Paul, the riot cops brutally attacked peaceful demonstrators without any reason, when 10 minutes before they were queuing next to each other in front of the same toilet in a nearby cafe. While I do not consider police or Nazi officials as simple civil servants, the reality is that the modern state apparatus filters and fractures its violence so much that the actual state’s employees/attackers often feel that they are merely serving the state and the government that feeds them. Indeed the state makes sure that they can do whatever they want, that they are fully potected and that they will never have to face the consequences. Most Nazi officials never paid for their crimes and quite a few of them were happily integrated in capitalist post-war state apparatuses. This does not imply that police officers who beat up demonstrators or shoot migrants are innocent. Only certain kinds of people can remain silent under such circumstances or blindly obey orders. So this is not an excuse: it is just an analysis of the production of indifference.

The reality is that civil servants (with the exception of riot police!) are on the forefront of salary and personnel cuts in Greece these days. The same mechanism that was programming them to misbehave, by e.g. giving them few resources, poor training, unjust promotion or employment system, poor and misleading explanation of tasks and roles etc. is the same mechanism that now blames them for doing what they were told to do. In other words everyone, even the cops are just consumable for the political and financial elites. So people do come to a realisation with great potentialities, as far as insecurity and state violence reaches one of the most secure social class such as permanent civil servants, there is a discontinuity in the continuums that have made the system sustainable so far.

BRUSSELS - One of the worrying issues that emerged from last week’s European Council in Brussels is the ‘cut red tape’ initiative promoted by UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

The proposal, which was welcomed by other EU leaders, is cause for alarm and threatens the protection of European citizens and the environment.

The initiative is based on a report prepared by a UK Business Task Force specifically appointed by Cameron to advise him on identifying burdensome EU regulations.

Red tape, by definition, refers to regulations and policies that are unnecessary and do not serve society’s interests. The recommendations of the Business Task Force to withdraw, change, or weaken EU regulations have very little to do with addressing red tape.

The measures targeted include important pieces of regulation such as food labelling, safeguards against chemical poisoning, rules on greenhouse gas emissions from engine fuels, the rights of communities to be informed about industry activities affecting their environment, and rights to be able to take a company to court when it violates the rules.

What is under attack are essential measures to protect people and the environment in areas such as health and safety, data protection, climate change and labour and consumer rights.

We should be alarmed that European leaders do not recognise the social and environmental benefits of the safeguards business is trying to undermine, nor that these are an essential component of a positive economic environment.

Few businesses stand to benefit long-term from a world of depleted resources, environmental damage, and an unhealthy workforce.

A consultant report commissioned by the European Commission High-Level Group on reducing administrative burdens already found that more than 80 percent of EU red tape originates from a couple of policy areas – taxation and company law.

Only 1 percent of the burden relates to environmental rules such as the ones that ‘Cut EU Red Tape’ would like to get rid of.

This is revealing of the real agenda behind this initiative. When regulation serves the direct profits of big business, it is welcomed. When not, it is labelled red tape.

A real reform agenda would initiate an urgent transition away from the drive for short-term profits that has led us into the current crisis situation and towards a new economy based on sustainability principles.

Plunging Greek Wages Crater Q2 Disposable Income By 9.3%, Government Borrowing Rises To Record

by zerohedge

Can someone please explain this whole “Grecovery” concept to use because neither we, nor apparently the people of Greece which are not only unemployed and broke, but have negative savings, and collapsing wages, social benefits and disposable income, seem able to understand it.

Here is the latest absolutely disastrous news from Elstat, reporting on Q2 Greek Non-financial sector accounts

During the second quarter of 2013, disposable income of the households and non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH) sector (S.1M) decreased by 9.3% in comparison with the same quarter of the previous year, from 33.2 billion euro to 30.1 billion euro. This was mainly on account of a decrease of 13.9% in the compensation of employees and a decrease of 12.4% in social benefits received by households.

This was the biggest drop in household disposable income since Q3 2012. Is this part of the Grecovery?

Next, the savings rate of the households and NPISH sector, defined as gross savings divided by gross disposable income, was -8.7% in the second quarter of 2013, compared with -6.7% in the second quarter of 2012.

So, households are broke, unemployed, and have negative savings. But at least the stock market is up. Is this, too, part of the Grecovery?

Finally, remember that myth about the suddenly accountable and responsible Greek government, which has a primary surplus, and is living within its means? Then please explain the following:

Net borrowing of general government (S.13) during the second quarter of 2013 amounted to 14.0 billion euro, compared with 3.8 billion euro in the second quarter of 2012. The increase in the General Government deficit in the second quarter of 2013 is due to capital transfers in the context of the program of state aid to specific banks. Net borrowing of general government excluding the impact of the support to financial institutions in the second quarter 2012 amounted to 2.6 billion euro.

This was the biggest quarterly government borrowqing in well… ever. Is this the final component of the Grecovery?

And some other independent data poinst:

• Greek 2Q Govt Deficit Widens to 16.6% of GDP From 11.0% in 1Q – obviously, this spells Grecovery
• Greek Debt Swells to 169.1% of GDP in 2Q, Nearing Pre-PSI Levels – this definitely must be the Grecovery, right?

The good news for all the broke, unemployment, incomeless Greeks: you still have your precious Euro.

Source: Elstat

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-22/plunging-greek-wages-crater-q2-disposable-income-93-government-borrowing-rises-recor

Of course no weapons or ammunition have been found in their possession, nor have they been laundering money and blackmailing for cash as the Nazi gang. Without any specific action being linked with specific persons in the prosecutor’s call, the activists are accused for “through illegal means aiming to prevent or postpone mining or other activity by the company Hellas Gold [a subsidiary of Canadian company Eldorado] in the area of Skouries”.

Without documenting the first, the accent is put on the latter, thus entering the waters of criminalising a political position which is the opposition to the gold mine. There’s no “evidence” on these 27 individuals other than having participated in anti-mine rallies and having publicly expressed their opinion against the mines.

The 3,500 pages of the case file contain recorded phone conversations of the activists containing encouragement to other individuals to join the anti-mine movement.

Golden Dawn leaders were interrogated in the courts.

The activists will be interrogated in the Thessaloniki police Headquarters as if they were dangerous criminals.

No investigation has been called on well documented police abuses against the inhabitants in the area, or on the security of the company illegally fencing public land. Four activists are already imprisoned before trial for several months.

Text translated by Yiorgos Va from Greek report:

http://soshalkidiki.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/τα-χρυσά-και-τα-συμφέροντα/

 If left unchecked, austerity policies could put between 15 and 25 million more Europeans at risk of poverty by 2025 – nearing the population of the Netherlands and Austria combined. This would bring the number of people at risk of poverty in Europe up to 146 million, over a quarter of the population, warns international agency Oxfam as EU Finance Ministers meet in Vilnius tomorrow.

Oxfam’s new report, A Cautionary Tale, finds that austerity measures introduced to balance the books following the €4.5 trillion bank bail-out are instead causing more poverty and inequality that could last for the next two decades.

Meanwhile, austerity is failing to cut debt ratios, as it was supposed to, or trigger inclusive economic growth.

Oxfam says that there are alternatives to austerity policies by drawing lessons from the calamitous periods of austerity cuts to social spending in Latin America, South East Asia and Africa throughout the 1980s and 90s. Some countries in these regions took two decades to claw their way back to square one.

Natalia Alonso, Head of Oxfam’s EU Office, said: “Europe’s handling of the economic crisis threatens to roll-back decades of social rights. Aggressive cuts to social security, health and education, fewer rights for workers and unfair taxation are trapping millions of Europeans in a circle of poverty that could last for generations. It is moral and economic nonsense.”

Living standards down, inequality up

It could take Europeans up to 25 years to regain the living standards they enjoyed five years ago.

“The only people benefiting from austerity are the richest 10% of Europeans who alone have seen their wealth rise. Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK – countries that are most aggressively pursuing austerity measures – will soon rank amongst the most unequal in the world if their leaders don’t change course. For example, the gap between rich and poor in the UK and Spain could become the same as in South Sudan or Paraguay,” added Alonso.

Three years on, leading proponents of austerity such as the International Monetary Fund and many respected economists are starting to recognise that these measures have not only failed to achieve their objective to shrink government debt and budget deficits, but have also increased inequality and stunted economic growth.

Unemployment in many European countries is hitting record highs. Women and young people are being hit hardest. In the UK, more than 1 million public sector jobs will be cut by 2018, and twice as many women than men will lose their jobs. Wages are falling fastest in countries facing the harshest austerity prescriptions. Almost one in ten working households in Europe now live in poverty and it could get much worse. For example, tough mortgage laws in Spain let banks to evict 115 families from their homes every working day. Even those in work will be significantly poorer than their parents. Child poverty across Europe is set to rise.

Lessons from the past

“History is repeating itself. Our leaders are ignoring the profound pain that austerity cutbacks had for many years on people in Latin America, South East Asia and Africa in the 1980s and 90s. Their economies shattered and the poor continued getting poorer even when growth made a come-back,” Alonso said. Basic services, such as education and health, were cut or privatized, excluding the poorest and hitting women hardest. As a result, the gap between rich and poor widened.

In Indonesia, it took 10 years for poverty to return to 1997 levels, while in some Latin American countries it took 25 years to bring levels of poverty back down to where they were before their crises began in 1981. “Europe is heading in this direction now,” Alonso said.

Alternatives to austerity

“There are alternatives to austerity. Ahead of tomorrow’s EU Finance Ministers’ meeting, we’re calling on European governments to champion a new economic and social model that invests in people, strengthens democracy and pursues fair taxation. Governments could raise billions for public services, such as health and education, by taxing the wealthiest and cracking down on tax dodging.”

“A new model of prosperity is possible. Investing in schools, hospitals, housing, research and technology, millions of Europeans could be put back to work and support a sustainable economy,” Alonso said.

Impossible Biographies from Ross Domoney on Vimeo.

For them, the crisis has by now come of age. Yet despite and against shallow journalistic interpretations, there is nothing humanitarian about it. This is because for them the crisis was from the upstart orchestrated politically, socially and militarily. In this way, the discourse about racism in crisis-ridden Greece merely obfuscates and comes in handy. For it obscures exactly how structural this devaluation had been for the development of the Greek state in itself, as well as for the self-perception of Greek society. Yet the crisis knows how to twist meanings too. Today, migrants are accused of the very decline of the Greek edifice. And within this twisted world, their devaluation takes on a more offensive and, at the same time, a more legitimate form. Impossible Biographies, as part of the research project The City at a Time of Crisis, bears witness to this offensive. Today, just like yesterday, the devalued lives of migrants shall remind us how it is to live and die within an enforced anonymity and invisibility. How it is to live a life whose biography is impossible.

The City at a Time of Crisis is mapping racist attacks in Athens. To view or contribute information please visit: map.crisis-scape.net

Produced by Ross Domoney and Christos Filippidis

Filmed and edited by Ross Domoney

Research by Christos Filippidis

Additional footage by Yannis Tsakiridis

Special thanks to Clemont

Paloma Yáñez

Klara Jaya Brekke

Dimitris Dalakoglou

Antonis Vradis