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The Kilburn Manifesto, neoliberal crisis and new political frontiers / El Manifesto Kilburn, crisis neoliberal y nuevas fronteras políticas
Monica Farias, University of Washington, Department of Geography
Doreen Massey’s simple but provocative way of talking about complex and important things has always been an inspiration to geographers concerned with questions about the relation between space, politics and social change. The talk organized by Environment and Planning about the Kilburn Manifesto during the most recent AAG meeting provides hope that ‘we’ – geographers, social scientists in general – may still have something to say and do in order to reinvent the world into a different kind of ‘good society’.
Massey touched upon key points from the Manifesto, which pushes academics and non-academics to think differently about politics and the economy. “Why has another possible world not happened?” Her answer was that ‘common sense’, in the Gramscian understanding, has been dominated by a financialized ideology. That is, the marketization of relationships, roles and subjectivities which paved the way for a resolution of the ‘economic’ crisis that implies more neoliberal measures. In England, the Left was left unable to think and propose alternatives. And that is why Massey – and the co-editors of the Manifesto – believe that a new political frontier might come from outside this ‘common sense’, a popular imagination ‘from outside’.
It is evident that the Manifesto and Massey’s talk drew on her work on Latin America, particularly on Venezuela and the concept of ‘geometries of power’. Venezuela’s ‘communal councils’ project is an attempt to implement a different democracy that combines representation and participation to create new relations of power in the country. This, for Massey, represents a new political frontier, one that brings the state and horizontal forms of democracy together. It is through these spaces of democracy that work within, rather than outside, the structures of the state that Massey sees hope.
Crises provide the opportunity for rearranging the ideological, the political, the social and the economic into new settlements. Change is possible because there is not hegemonic closure and therefore, neoliberal ideology is open to contestation. Massey suggests that we begin by rejecting the economic determinism and the marketization of every realm of life. The assumption that we achieve freedom and pleasure in the market through consumption reduces temporality into a constant present. It seems we live in a permanent ‘now’ that shuts the possibility of a radical future to happen.
Kathy Gibson’s contribution was geared precisely towards this point. The core of her work with Julie Graham has been to critique current conceptions of the capitalist economy and to think about new economic representations based on the acknowledgment of interdependence and ethical imperatives. To think ethically about the economy means to question well-established beliefs about the importance of economic growth and the value of private enterprises. At the same time, thinking ethically expands the realm of the possible and allows us to ‘take back’ the economy by acting in ways that would not be considered ‘rational’ in the economy we are used to. Alternative economic organizations enact a reframing of the economy. They are ways of ‘thinking outside the system’ as Massey would put it.
One example of what Gibson calls ‘alternative economies’ are the ‘occupied’ or ‘recovered’ factories in Argentina. Even before the crisis of 2001, emptied factories driven to bankruptcy by their owners were taken over and put back to work by the workers. During the 2000s the number of recovered enterprises ascended to over three hundred and the number of employed workers to nearly fourteen thousand. The Bauen Hotel – today B.A.U.E.N. Cooperative – became a symbol of this movement and today is facing eviction. It has been facing eviction for many years but thanks to the support of academics, workers of other recovered enterprises and the public in general, they have managed to prevent it. (For more on the B.A.U.E.N. workers’ struggle and the expropriation law project, see http://www.expropiabauen.com.ar/?page_id=360)
Of course, taking over a factory and running it without a boss is not free of problems or contradictions. As one of the B.A.U.E.N. workers put it, “we want to show that the hotel was not only a way out of the crisis but an alternative to private capital. This is a movement. However, we are conscious that the market we are producing for is still capitalist” (B.A.U.E.N., Feria del Libro Social y Político, April 15th, 2014). The case of B.A.U.E.N. as well as other emblematic recovered enterprises have inspired and encouraged many to retake their work places and also to create cooperatives from scratch. All together, these movements challenge the economy as we know it and propose and enact different ways of producing and distributing surplus, create more democratic labor relationships, and relate to the community on the acknowledgment of the interdependence that ties them together.
Victoria Lawson’s response to the Manifesto was also framed by the question ‘what can we do?, engaging with Massey’s claim that class conversations have been obscured from current debates about the crisis. Lawson argued that ‘the middle class’ has been used as a strategy of governance. That is, the middle class has been framed as the aspirational class, the embodiment of the neoliberal subject who normalizes the neoliberal project. However, Lawson points out that the crisis has shaken that belief in the US, as well as in other countries whose national identities have been built on the assumption of the existence of a widespread modern middle class. Lawson argues that moments of crisis cause us to question the foundations over which the middle class identity and its rhetoric is built, and therefore they weaken its power as a strategy of governance.
Thus, crises represent openings for the emergence of common political work among different sectors of society. Lawson argues that unemployment, vulnerability and the contestation of social categories during moments of economic crisis can bring some sectors of the middle classes closer to the poor and promote new forms of class alliances. Far from idealizing the progressive potential of the middle class Lawson choses to focus on class border crossing that is already happening, spaces in which identities are being troubled and hegemonic neoliberal ideas about poverty and who the poor are being questioned.
Finally, Lawson believes that one key element that holds a great potential to reframe the economy and challenge the marketization of life is ‘care’. The crisis of care brought about by the extension of markets, the withdrawal of the state from key areas of social life as well as discourses of personal responsibility crosses all class divides. Most of the care work is unpaid, however care is essential for the production and reproduction of life – and capital. That tension might point to the ‘outside’ from where we can shift the focus of the crisis from ‘the economy’ to the social and political fields.
In sum, the talk delved on the possibility of and for change that is happening already in ways we yet have to further explore. Massey remembers things were different in the past. For her this does not mean to go back to the past, it means that things can be different again. As Stuart Hall said elsewhere, “we must admit that the old forms of the welfare state proved insufficient. But we must stubbornly defend the principles on which it was founded – redistribution, egalitarianism, collective provision, democratic accountability and participation, the right to education and healthcare – and find new ways in which they can be institutionalised and expressed.”
(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/kilburn-manifesto-challenge-neoliberal-victory).
Crises are a good starting point for that change. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. I believe Doreen Massey would agree that this sentence in Leonard Cohen’s song describes best the programmatic part of the Manifesto.
Con su forma simple y al mismo tiempo provocadora para referirse a cosas complejas e importantes, Doreen Massey ha sido siempre una inspiración para los geógrafos preocupados con preguntas acerca de la relación entre espacio, política y cambio social. La charla que organizó Environment and Planning sobre el Manifesto Kilburn durante la última conferencia de la AAG, de alguna manera refuerza el optimismo en que ‘nosotros’ – los geógrafos y científicos sociales en general – todavía tengamos algo para decir y hacer en la tarea de reinventar el mundo y de crear una ‘buena sociedad’ diferente a la que conocemos.
En la charla, Massey se refirió a los puntos centrales del Manifesto que pretende alentar a académicos y no-académicos a cambiar la forma de pensar la política y la economía. “¿Por qué no se dio el ‘otro mundo es posible’?” Según Massey el ‘sentido común’, en su acepción gramsciana, ha estado dominado por una ideología financializada. Esto quiere decir que la comodificación de las relaciones, los roles y las subjetividades, ha llevado a que la salida a la crisis económica consistiera en aplicar más medidas neoliberales. La izquierda en Inglaterra ya no tiene alternativas para proponer, y por eso es que Massey – y los co-editores del Manifesto – creen que una nueva frontera política debe venir de afuera de ese ‘sentido común’. Tiene que ser una imaginación popular que venga de ‘afuera’.
Es evidente que tanto el Manifesto como la charla de Massey se inspiraron en el trabajo que Massey viene realizando sobre América Latina, en particular sobre Venezuela y el concepto de las ‘geometrías de poder”. El proyecto sobre los ‘consejos comunales’ en Venezuela es un intento de implementar una democracia diferente. Una democracia que combine la representación y la participación para poder así crear nuevas relaciones de poder en el país. Para Massey, esto significa una nueva frontera política que acerca al estado y a formas de democracia horizontales trabajando dentro y no fuera de la estructura del estado. Es allí donde ella ve esperanza para un cambio.
Las crisis son oportunidades para reacomodar los acuerdos entre lo ideológico, lo político, lo social y lo económico. Siempre hay posibilidades de cambio ya que la hegemonía no está asegurada, de lo que se desprende que la ideología neoliberal puede ser disputada. Massey propone que comencemos mediante el rechazo al determinismo económico y a la comodificación de cada aspecto de la vida que equiparan libertad y placer con la posibilidad de elegir qué consumir. En este hecho, la temporalidad se reduce a un presente constante que impide pensar la posibilidad de un futuro diferente.
El aporte de Kathy Gibson apuntó precisamente en esta dirección. Su trabajo con Julie Graham se ha centrado en criticar las concepciones actuales acerca de la economía capitalista y pensar en nuevas representaciones económicas basadas en el reconocimiento de la interdependencia y en imperativos éticos. Pensar de modo ético acerca de la economía implica cuestionar las creencias establecidas acerca de la importancia del crecimiento económico y del valor de la iniciativa privada. Al mismo tiempo, pensar éticamente facilita ampliar el horizonte de lo posible y nos permite ‘recuperar’ la economía mediante acciones que en principio no serían consideradas ‘racionales’. Así, las economías alternativas representan un modo diferente de entender la economía, de ‘pensar desde afuera del sistema’, en palabras de Massey.
Un ejemplo de lo que Gibson llama ‘economías alternativas’ son las fábricas ‘ocupadas’ o ‘recuperadas’ en Argentina. Aún antes de la crisis de 2001 hubo fábricas que habiendo sido vaciadas y llevadas a la bancarrota por sus dueños, fueron ocupadas y puestas a trabajar nuevamente por los trabajadores. Durante los 2000, el número de empresas recuperas superó las trescientas con cerca de catorce mil trabajadores empleados. El Hotel Bauen – actualmente Cooperativa B.A.U.E.N. – se convirtió en un símbolo de este movimiento y al día de hoy se enfrenta a la posibilidad del desalojo. De hecho la amenaza de desalojo ha sido una constante en estos años pero gracias al apoyo de académicos, trabajadores de otras empresas recuperadas, artistas y la gente en general, han podido evitarlo. (Para más información sobre la lucha de los trabajadores de B.A.U.E.N. y el proyecto de ley de expropiación, consultar: http://www.expropiabauen.com.ar/?page_id=360).
Sin embargo, tomar una fábrica y ponerla a trabajar sin un jefe no está exento de problemas y contradicciones. En palabras de uno de los trabajadores de B.A.U.E.N., “queremos mostrar que el hotel no fue sólo una salida a la crisis sino que puede disputarle a empresas de capital privado. Esto es un movimiento. Además se es consciente que el mercado para el que se produce sigue siendo capitalista” (B.A.U.E.N., Feria del Libro Social y Político, 15 de abril de 2014.). El caso de B.A.U.E.N. así como el de otras empresas recuperadas ha alentado a muchos trabajadores a recuperar sus lugares de trabajo así como también ha inspirado a muchos a crear cooperativas desde cero. En su conjunto, estos movimientos desafían la economía tal cual la conocemos y proponen llevar a cabo formas diferentes de producir y distribuir el excedente, crear relaciones laborales más democráticas y relacionarse con sus comunidades siendo conscientes de la interdependencia que existe entre estos emprendimientos y la comunidad.
Por su parte, la respuesta de Victoria Lawon al Manifesto también estuvo enmarcada por la pregunta ‘¿qué podemos hacer?’ pero poniendo el foco en la afirmación hecha por Massey de que las discusiones sobre clase han estado ausentes en los debates sobre la crisis. Lawson afirma que ‘la clase media’ ha sido utilizada como una estrategia de gobernanza. Quiere decir que la clase media ha sido entendida como la clase con aspiraciones, como la personificación del sujeto neoliberal que normaliza el proyecto neoliberal. Sin embargo, Lawson afirma que la crisis ha sacudido dicha creencia en Estados Unidos así como en otros países cuyas identidades nacionales se han construido en el supuesto de la existencia de una homogénea y generalizada clase media. Lawson sostiene que los momentos de crisis nos llevan a cuestionar los fundamentos sobre los cuales se ha construido dicha identidad y que por lo tanto debilita su fuerza como estrategia de gobernanza.
Por eso las crisis son momentos de apertura de los que puede surgir un trabajo político común entre diferentes sectores de la sociedad. Lawson afirma que el desempleo, la vulnerabilidad y el desafío a las categorías sociales que se dan en momentos de crisis económica puede de hecho acercar a algunos sectores de la clase media a los pobres y promover nuevas formas de alianza de clases. Lejos de idealizar el potencial progresista de la clase media, Lawson se detiene en aquellos cruces de límites de clase que están sucediendo actualmente, espacios en los cuales las identidades son problematizadas y el pensamiento hegemónico neoliberal sobre la pobreza y los pobres es cuestionado.
Por último, Lawson sostiene que un elemento clave que puede ayudar a re-conceptualizar la economía y desafiar la comodificación de la vida es el ‘cuidado’ (care). La crisis que atraviesa el cuidado gracias a la expansión de los mercados, al retiro del estado de áreas clave de la sociedad y a los discursos acerca de la responsabilidad individual compete a todos los sectores sociales. La mayor parte del trabajo de cuidado no está remunerado, sin embargo, el mismo es fundamental para la producción y reproducción de la vida – y del capital. Esta tensión apunta a un ‘afuera’ desde donde podemos, cuando nos referimos a la crisis, mover el foco desde ‘la economía’ hacia los campos social y político.
En síntesis, la charla ahondó en la posibilidad de y para un cambio que ya está pasando en variadas formas que aún debemos que explorar. Massey recuerda que las cosas fueron diferentes en el pasado, lo cual no significa que haya que volver a él, sino que las cosas pueden ser diferentes otra vez. Esto resuena con lo que en otro lugar dijo Stuart Hall, “tenemos que admitir que las viejas formas de estado benefactor resultaron insuficientes. Pero debemos defender obstinadamente los principios en las que se fundaron – redistribución, igualitarismo, provisión colectiva, transparencia democrática y participación, el derecho a la educación y a la salud – y buscar nuevas formas en las que se pueden institucionalizar y expresar”
(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/kilburn-manifesto-challenge-neoliberal-victory).
Las crisis son un buen punto de partida para el cambio. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. Seguramente Doreen Massey estaría de acuerdo con que esta frase de Leonard Cohen describe acertadamente la intención programática del Manifesto.
Radical Vulnerability: Towards Stronger Alliances
Elyse Gordon, University of Washington, Department of Geography
Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. Brene Brown
Alliance work means building trust through radical vulnerability. It is compiling the fragments of our journeys. Paraphrased from Richa Nagar, Keynote Address at the 2014 Critical Geography Conference in Boulder, CO.
—
What does it mean to be in alliance?
A simple question, you might say. Alliances are partnerships, relationships between two or more parties that share a common goal. They work together to achieve that goal.
Let me paint a scene of one such possible alliance:
A local tenant’s union is organizing a campaign to raise awareness of the violence of gentrification. A university professor has worked on gentrification for 15 years, and is eager to ally with the union to provide resources. A local middle-income resident who has felt threatened by creeping rents finds out about the union and decides to start attending meetings and organizing efforts, but doesn’t join the union.
The university professor might think they have some expert knowledge to share on this issue, given that they have researched it and written extensively about gentrification for a third of their life. Yet, have they experienced the processual nature of these practices? The creeping in of bourgeois businesses? The escalating rents? The ubiquity of white folks where once there were few? Have they worried about their ability to pay rent as developers and landlords continue the pursuit of capital? Have they feared their 4-unit apartment building being torn down to make way for a new urbanist condo complex? Likely not. It is possible, but likely not.
The unaffiliated neighborhood resident is familiar with the processes listed above, but they have not felt compelled to join the union. Better to test the waters first before committing to a more radical organizing strategy. But, this resident has been sparking conversation with their neighbors and colleagues, bringing the topic of gentrification to audiences who might otherwise cast it as an inevitable process.
The union is wary of the professor, but eager to have access to the resources that come with a university affiliation. They have been leveraging a large organizing campaign, and being able to reach the university setting more directly is a huge asset. They value the copy-editing and organizational skills of the professor, but dislike the idea of being a staging ground for research. They have work to do on the ground, and are more interested in having local residents buy in and support the work. But, then again, more bodies in the room means more interest and traction around the gentrification concern. They’re not going to turn anyone away.
—
Alliances are fragile, in negotiation. They are not static relationships, but rather ones built on trust and circumstances. Rather than an alliance perhaps we can think of the process of developing and negotiating ally-ship. This suggests that the experiences of risk and the shared goals will inevitably shift over time.
Let’s revisit the example listed above.
Our middle-income neighborhood resident has been enthralled in the work, and eager to spend time organizing and contributing with the tenant’s union. They feel inspired, and they’ve been learning an enormous amount about community organizing principles, and about the lived experiences of gentrification.
But then, our resident recently got a hefty promotion at work. They now make enough money that the concern for paying rent is rendered minimal. And the new expectations at their office meant they had less time to commit to the gentrification awareness campaign.
This is an excellent example of the constant negotiation of ally-ship. The resident’s availability diminished, as did their incentive. Most importantly, so did their risk.
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Ally-ship is built on the sharing of risk. This risk will always be uneven, because it reflects the same uneven power geometries in which we already exist. Tenants at high risk of losing their apartments due to gentrification have more at stake than a university professor who is intrigued by the organizing campaign. However, the professor is not free from risk. Their work might be devalued in the academy. Perhaps the politics of the organization make them question their own privileged position, thus opening them up to the risk of letting go of privilege. Maybe the time they commit to the organizing work means less time on teaching and administrative requirements, or perhaps less time with family. Either way, there is risk involved, even if it is not the same.
It is in the admittance of this risk that alliances build trust. It is in saying, “I have something to lose, but I choose to be here, anyway.” It is in saying, “I know you have something to lose, and I know my stakes aren’t the same, but I’m here with you.” It is in saying, “I have no idea how to do this work, and I am ok with failure. I am here to learn, not prescribe.” It is in saying, “I just made a mistake. I’m sorry. How can we move forward?” It is in saying, “I have doubts. Don’t you? Can we make that productive, rather than cynical?” It is in saying, “How is your family? Here is a story about mine.” It is in saying, “I recognize that my job makes me complicit with oppressive power relations. But I don’t want that to prevent me from also acting. Will you have me at the table to work alongside you in a common struggle to diminish those power relations as best we know how?” It is in saying, “I’m here. I’m showing up. I’m flawed, but I’m here.”
Richa Nagar, a feminist scholar at the University of Minnesota, calls this radical vulnerability. She argues that this is the only way to do the work of alliance politics. It is to reflect deeply on one’s own flaws and shortcomings, accept that these are part of what makes us human and whole, and then being able to articulate and share these.
Too often, those of us in positions of relative power, say, embedded in universities, might fear sharing our vulnerabilities because we know our stakes in the game, our risk, are often less than those with whom we seek ally-ship and how dare we try to compare our risk to that of a tenant facing possible eviction?
However, if we silence this awareness, we also diminish the potential to empathically connect with our allies. Nagar would urge us that regardless of the stakes, it is important to share the fragments of our own journeys that illustrate our humanity. The connection fueled by this shared humanity, the inherent messiness, is the basis for trust. It is the basis for alliance.
An ethic of care helps illustrate how to engage such a conversation. She recognizes that, “individuals act politically, then, not only on the basis of their self-interests, but as a result of the particular constellation of caring relationships and institutions in which they find themselves” (1995, 142). As a relatively privileged participant in the academy, how might I share my own stories of caring relationships as fragments of the journey that shaped my interest and commitment to my current alliances?
As Brene Brown, a social work scholar and unofficial life coach, has shared, it is in vulnerability that we allow for great creativity and change. If our ally-ships are inspired by visions for more just power relations, for less oppression, for a greater awareness of intersectional identities, for recognizing the ways poverty is produced and sustained, then we must embrace our own vulnerability, and practice the uncomfortable art of sharing that, to lay a strong foundation for trust, ally-ship, and change.
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