Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Urban conricerca 2008: inside the Culture of Capital

Leo (with introduction by Adam) | 02.04.2008 21:39 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements | Liverpool

Starting this Friday, 4th April, a 'conricerca' or workers' inquiry into the class composition of Liverpool will begin. More details will be posted on Indymedia, but here is a short analysis from one of the founding members of the group, who has recently moved to the UK from Slovakia.

My personal rationale behind the project is to engage in an activity which makes sense to me from a class point of view. When I came to this city I found people active in many groups, who do various things which they perceive as alternative, radical, anti-capitalist, etc. I think these groups and their activities are good but somehow insufficient. They are fragmented and they don't challenge this fragmentation. The political thinking behind them is one-sided too. They are no doubt nice people! But just joining their things would not help me nor them in the situation when something essential is missing.

I think what is missing here is an initiative with openly integrating goals and with an openly integrating thinking and approach. What I mean by 'integrating'? It is not an attempt for unification of existing perspectives. It is not an attempt at coordination of existing groups and activities either. My understanding of an 'integrating' approach means challenging several spheres of our everyday lives and enabling a plastic expression to emerge from our actions. It is an attempt to find a sense of direction, to connect with history and the city. It is about trying to portray the presence in its flow and with its contradictions. Last but not least it is about sensing where the antagonisms of class are located and how they manifest themselves in the former dockers' city.

During this year Liverpool - Capital of Culture 08 - will be submerged in an avalanche of discourses dealing with our everyday lives. Most of them are ideologically coming from various sections of the ruling class. Especially the more 'creative' industries (e.g. FACT, BBC Radio Merseyside) are and will be active in this field of ideological production. They have been commissioned to 'deliver' various cross-class messages to city residents, e.g. answers to questions like "where are 'we' going?", "who are 'we?'", "are 'we' more free than 'we' think?", "where are the boundaries of 'our' bodies?", "what is the identity of this city?", etc. Discourses on the new, post-industrial and cosmopolitan 'community' will abound making an easy target of the out-dated 'Boys From The Black Stuff'-like traditions and labour sources of identities (sorry, 'nostalgies'!). And of course, the always handy and servile 'creatives' will take care that the ideological production of the ruling class is sold to suspicious and skeptical Scousers in a nice, non-intrusive and 'cool' way, through various dialogical/ participatory/experiential platforms, venues and projects. The methods of fucking up working class people are getting more and more subtle (the subtleness doesn't apply to workplaces of course!).

In such a time of ideological triumphalism of the capitalist dictatorship, for a communist to stay at home would be a shame. What a class conscious opponent should not do either is to gather exclusively with the like-minded, turn their backs to the noisy Capital of Culture, close themselves in safe spaces such as The Casa or Next to Nowhere and watch films about how great it was when 'we were strong and marching...!' I think on the contrary, we should face the city and engage in what is rather than in what was ('Facing reality', CLR James' book in the 50s!). I like the phrase 'exit forward', a strategy developed by British regeneration managers. Yes, capitalism is running along this strategy. Like the ancient Proteus, capital is using its own crises for its transformation and further expansion. Strangely enough the self-proclaimed leaders of the working classes (or the oppressed) are not interested in the presence as it is, they either look to the past or to the future (when they look at what 'is', they usually do it with theoretical categories inherited from the past).

I think an anti-capitalist should be more curious and going with open eyes. Of course we should remind the people the working class history of this place. But on top of that a really alternative project to Capital of Culture should be about the Culture of Capital. Through confronting the everyday culture (relationships between us mediated through commodities), not just the high art venues, we can become aware of complexity of contradictions. Then we will be able to appeal not only to the Left or people who identify themselves with the working class but to all people who feel being commodified and facing an alien and/or crazy world. (As a woman recently said in the discussion on 'Are we more free than we think?' at FACT, she lives in a material affluence but she is not happy, she feels isolated and would like to reconnect with a community, to feel control over food she eats, things she consumes...and the time she lives!... Or a young man in a Campaign for a New Workers Party meeting in The Casa: he is pissed off with the Capital of Culture and wants to do something but he wouldn't call himself 'working class'...)

Fortunately it seems that the few 'creatives' in our movement in the past had been developing some really useful practices which treated their historical presence with respect, sense of continuity and imagination. One of their tools was the workers' inquiry (conricerca).

Workers' inquiry - to sense the time and initiate change?

The project of workers' inquiry can be the missing thing I mentioned at the beginning. Of course anything like 'initiating change' is a very big goal, an ultimate goal or rather aspiration.

We don't know what the change might be like, who would be its protagonists nor which direction it might take... The change itself is outside control of the people starting the conricerca process. However what should be under our control is our very intervention. The goal of the conricerca intervention is political in a strategical sense. Political, because it aims to offer to working class people in this city a picture of their situation as a class. And strategical, because it aims to find and make people aware of the rips in the system where the weak links of capital production are, which can be transformed into struggles against capital. I think if we do not want to limit ourselves to a radical academic research (e.g. the book Merseyside in Crisis, 1980), we have to keep in mind not only the political content but at the same time the strategic spin of the whole process. This might be the hardest task in the inquiry because we are in a situation where there are no radical workers' or oppressed people's movements around and any strategic thinking is dismissed as 'extremist' even by the Left people. A lot of people are politically tired, feel defeated and/or are skeptical.

Despite this I think it is always possible to 'face reality' in a non-reductionist way, embracing the present contradictions and through balancing between them to move towards the 'in, against and beyond'. Even if we will not succeed to get 'beyond' for a second, we have a very real opportunity to find out and articulate how it feels to be 'in and against' in the time of Capital of Culture 08...

Workers inquiry – ideas on what to do...
- to start a study group on conricerca, theory of class composition, theory of value, global political economy/ capital flow, 'what's behind regenerations?'
- history of regeneration programmes in Liverpool and what is different now
- is there a relationship between the defeat of dockers' movement in 1998 and the start of corporate regeneration? what is the relationship?
- to gather information and research on regeneration from official sources
- to build a profile of employment structure in the city (selected areas): character and quality of work, related patterns of life
- to evaluate systems of social services and community development: mapping their integration into the commodified system, how the production of value spread across the 'public' sector in the city
- arts and regeneration: commodification, the role and limits of 'autonomous' spaces
- interviews/talks with working class people and the oppressed and their involvement into the inquiry: mapping potential spaces of rupture and conflict (so that the picture we will be offering will be their picture too, not just product of nights spent at our computers :-))
- existing fightbacks, new possibilities? (local communities and social networks, workplaces, minorities' issues, cultural and net spaces, reappropriations of public space/ creative interventions into street life... but beware not to fall into a single-issue activism)
- the everyday culture of 'apolitical' working class people (questions like: is the situation around Liverpool FC situation political? opportunities for action, supporters networks...?)
- to look at the new organisation of space from the point of view of power and control
- regeneration and the price of land – the impact on rents
- discourse analysis of regeneration: what the vocal critics have to say (e.g. artists, campaigning residents, the Left...?)

Leo (with introduction by Adam)

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

Really?!

03.04.2008 15:45

I can see the people of Liverpool responding fantastically to that and not just saying "yeah, a'right mate, whatever".

Sorry but it is things like this that give the left a bad name. Why do something when you can pretend to be a stereotypical 1960s/70s student? I mean, Liverpool was crying out for this wasn't it? Only the other day in Bold Street a tracksuit clad young ruffian bounded up to me to enquire why no "conricerca" had been conducted as this was surely his way out of poverty!

The words "a**e" "up" "stuck" and "own", rearranged, spring to mind.

Jerry


Wow!

04.04.2008 14:17

Is this the introduction to your PhD thesis? It fits the typical description of one: "a dense jumble of words that no ordinary person can understand and which, when broken down, turns out to be saying nothing of any use."
Yes, I know I'm being rude. But it really is incomprehensible.

pinkolady


reply

05.04.2008 22:19


Ok, I accept its not an easy text, as a non-native speaker its hard for me to be always clear and comprehensible.
But if something is incomprehensible, does it automatically mean that it says nothing? Hang on please, lets see how the 'research' will go and if it will be of any use... And thanks for your comment and participation in the research just before it actually started (I am serious, not ironical!)

leo


Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech