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1. What we’ve been living through is novel. It is definitely not just another “social movement.” “Social movements” have a cadre whom define all that escapes them as outbreaks. Since March 9th we’ve been living through a continued series of outbreaks. A series which the old forms of politics have been chasing after. The call to demonstrate on March 9th was an outbreak from the unions by the YouTubers. The demonstrations since then have been a constant outbreak of marches led by the “youths”: instead of the traditional image of union marches headed by the various bosses of different unions, there was the systematic replacement by hooded youths defying the police. The initiative of Nuit debout is itself an outbreak from all known political groupings. The wild demonstrations eminating from Place de la République were also a further outbreak from Nuit debout. We must continue to begin, or in other words to continue to outbreak; to continue to be on the move; to continue to surprise.

2. The attempt to bring the already-known into the novel is part of the arsenal of neutralization. Just as the demonstrations against the Labor law have had very little to do with the struggle against the CPE, Nuit debout bears very little relation to the Indignados of Puerta del Sol [Madrid, Spain]. Whereas [the occupation at] Puerta del Sol declared itself pacifist, [the occupation at] Place de la République had, last Friday, hours-long clashes with the police. “Everyone hates the police” has become a noted chant hit. Whereas [the occupation at] Puerta del Sol called itself “apolitical,” we have lost count of the calls by unions and the speeches by unionists at Place de la République. However, Puerta del Sol was was really occupied which is not the case with Place de la République. At Puerta del Sol food was made for thousands; people stayed day and night; the police were not making daily evictions, nor ordered to takedown this or that, or to stop cooking. This last difference shows a path to follow: if we want to make Place de la République more than just an interminable general assembly where curious on-lookers are giving a first-hand look at its powerlessness and the inconsistency of its “decisions,” then we must truly occupy the Place; which means we will have to build real spaces and defend them from the police.

3. What Place de la République really constitutes is a public counter-space. Since existing public, political and media space has been thoroughly deceitful, we have no other choice than to desert it, but not to simply fall into mutism, but rather positively desert it by constructing another. And speech is like freedom, wherein when you first take hold of it you start to say or do some dumb shit; but that’s not what’s important. What matters is to not to dwell on that first fuck-up. We must say that we have a long way to go: we have only taken our first few breaths these past weeks. It’s been years now that a coalition of forces have made the situation unbreathable, between the “threat of the National Front,” “war on terrorism,” “crises”of all kinds, the State of Emergency, climatic apocalypse and the permanent campaign for the next presidency. That which characterizes the current dominant public space is that only offers a space for contemplation: what we witness, what we hear, what we learn never becomes an act or bears any consequence because we are all there alone. It was made exemplarily made evident the night of drinks at Vall’s place that that which is vibrant and formidable about a counter-space is the capacity for acts to follow speech. Consciousness and the capacity to act are not disjointed. This is the way that a counter-space can positively destitute the existing public space. Hence the great curiosity and jealousy of the media.

4. The conflict around the El Khomri law is not just a conflict around the El Khomri law, it extends into a conflict around the possibility or not [for the French gov’t to continue] to govern; in other words, a real political conflict in the truest sense of the word. No one can stand to be governed any more by the puppets in the [French] government and Assembly and that’s why, in our point of view, the law must not pass; the government itself cannot afford to pass this law, which means it has been destituted and no longer can govern. This refusal is even seen in a union like the CGT, where its member-base no longer can stand to be governed as it always has been by its management. If one follows the interventions at Place de la République, we can see that most of the speeches fall into either two camps on the question of destitution [of the gov’t]: some would want this destitution to be followed by a constitutive moment where they would be open to write a new constitution and found a new society, where as the others think the destitution should continue without end because it is a process of building, that we must substitute the fiction of a single society with the reality that there exists a plurality of worlds, each expressing and embodying their own idea of the good life. Those of us writing here share the last position.

5. Let’s be pragmatic: no one’s going to be able to write a constitution until this regime has been overthrown. And being that you do not overthrow a democratic regime democratically, in other words the anti-riot police will defend it to the very end, the only path leading to a new constitution is an insurrectional path. However to lead a successful insurrection, like that of Maidan for example, then Place de la République must be really occupied, barricaded, guarded, etc.; also all the political and existential sensibilities favorable to insurrection must be able to find each other there; to this end, we must substitute the desperate search for a consensus never to be found in the middle of Paris, a consensus of a more or less frightened metropolitan petit-bourgeoisie, for the material existence of a plurality of spaces, of “houses,” where each of the sensibilities of the insurrection could come aggregate themselves and enter into a fusion.  Those who are passionate about writing a constitution would also be welcome to build their own house where they could write up as many drafts as they like. And as for those who want to to put the constitution into place, well we’ll discuss this when Valls and Hollande will have already taken their jet to take refuge in the USA, Africa or in Algeria.

6. A poster in the Parisian metro a few years ago proclaimed,”Is master of the place, he who organizes them”; it was decorated with a majestic lion supposedly representing the sovereignty of the RATP Group [management of Parisian state-owned transport]. What is the power to be found in Place de la République? Well, the power in the place is the management of the place itself, and the forces of order who there demand respect. Power is thus this grand empty esplanade; the flux of cars and their din; and the anti-police vans posted on all sides. How could an assembly pretend to be seriously sovereign and then lower itself to respect the real sovereignty which dictates their every move? No matter. We would not have gathered together, been as numerous and determined, but under the condition that we were quite serious. By serious, here we mean that we have taken it upon ourselves to manage this place; to construct rigidly to express our intention to persist; our refusal to present ourselves to media except by way of sweeping them out of our space. We must be able to welcome comrades from all over, flee the precarity which the prescribed management of the place puts us in and to manage it as we see fit – be constructive, in other words.

7. We are in the middle of a ford, at the heart of peril: there are too many of us to simply return home and not enough of us to throw ourselves into an insurrectional assault. We must “shift into second gear” as some say. To pass up the rest of April would be a bad move. We cannot count on the union bosses, because even if a few strikes that can be re-directed spring up here and there, by nature these strikes will be against their will. However we know how dangerous the situation can be if things start to close in on themselves, a dangerous situation which we already are in the struggle against. This danger is the electoral system: to find ourselves in a year before the democratic blackmail of having to choose between the plague and cholera, between Alain Juppé and Marine Le Pen. Those who are apt to join us are precisely those whom are disgusted by such a reality, those who cannot stand politics be reduced to the insignificant process of voting. Politics is in what we plan, in what we build, in what we attack and in what we destroy. Shifting into second gear means: build the hacienda, burn down the places.

Construction Commission

Source: https://edicioneschafa.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/build-the-hacienda-burn-...