#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, Contier 9 - WE DEMAND UTOPIA - by Alternativa Libertaria / FdCA (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The coronavirus pandemic, which has dramatically marked the lives of millions of

people around the world and from which we still struggle to get out, has
developed in the last two years a vast literature also in scientific circles,
which has tended to represent the near future profoundly influenced by this
event, hoping for a profound modification of priorities, both in personal choices
and in relationships between people, and in the choices of public authorities.
---- A narrative that is not without charm, which also contains an undeniable
reality made up of selfless commitment, help and mutual aid. ---- In issue eight
of "il CANTIERE" we have accounted for this aspect in Simon Springer's article
"Geography of care: the Covid-19 interregnum and a return to mutual support".

As for the hypocritical representation of "nothing will be the same as before",
it was swept away by events with the raging war in the heart of Europe. An event
that brings us back with our feet firmly embedded in the reality that once again
has to deal with the production of profit, its hoarding and the need, on the part
of imperialism, to consolidate and extend its areas of control and influence. .

These are two very different episodes, around which the rhetoric of good
intentions has developed. In both cases the relationship between causes and
effects is constantly reversed.

For Coronavirus-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, as is notoriously known,
the jump of species is traced back to intensive farming and to these the cause of
the spread of the disease is attributed.

Hence all that ejaculation of lifestyles that every single person should take to
reverse and block these phenomena. In essence, the solution, and therefore the
faults, are all the responsibility of the individuals.

"Ilaria Capua has identified, among the causes of the pandemic, the fact that our
biological rhythm is unable to keep up with the speed of action and connection of
the technological one. We have to slow down, travel less, find a relationship
with nature. If we continue to have large animal farms, to cement the
countryside, to concentrate pollution and people, to invade the terrain of wild
nature, we will soon be in trouble again. " (1).

Ilaria Capua's statements can be widely shared, but they do not allow us to take
a concrete step forward in the direction of change. We have to slow down! Who?
How? Because? Is this running inherent in human nature or is it the fruit of an
economic-social structure?

If it is not the first hypothesis, in which case all that remains is to rely on
chance or for those who believe in divine providence, it is necessary to clearly
declare that the goal is the change of the economic and social structure that now
characterizes the entire globe, that is the capitalist market in the phase of the
imperialist confrontation.

And again "I am starting once again from myself. I will prefer the small center
to the city that must be defused in the phenomena of concentration and reduced in
its economic role. I will prefer to use a proximity agriculture, which combines
the quality of soils (less chemical) to goodness If that means eating less meat,
that's okay

a great territorial rebalancing. Many of our valleys can welcome many thousands
of new inhabitants without damage to sustainability, who will be able to reach
workplaces in an hour, while enjoying a quiet and healthy life. ). It's a utopia
we've been talking about for decades, but don't we need some utopia to start
walking in some direction? "(2).

A projection on what to do that does not question why we are at this point, which
assumes that cities are the product of the free choice of men who culpably build
megametropoles and who could just as freely build others with a "human
dimension", admitted that we can define a priori what the human dimension is: yet
it would be enough to observe even superficially the historical development of
cities to understand how they were necessarily conditioned by the productive
contexts in which they were and are inserted.

We report these statements because in their simple exposition they condense a
thought that has passed through Christian culture since its birth, for which evil
flows from the hearts of men:

"There is nothing outside man that, entering into him, can contaminate him; but
it is what comes out of man that contaminates man." (Gospel according to St. Mark
7:15).

And again: "What comes out of man, on the other hand, is what contaminates man.
In fact, from within, from the hearts of men, evil thoughts come out:
fornication, thievery, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, fraud, shamelessness,
envy, defamation, pride, foolishness. " (St. Mark 7,20,21).

In a nutshell, it is stated that to change the world we need to change ourselves.
That is, the impossibility of changing the world is affirmed because if evil is
perpetuated in the heart of every unborn child, humanity is condemned to the
tragic effort of the labors of Sisyphus, a perennial beginning to which we are
condemned and which would give reason to those who support the uselessness of any
commitment to social transformation.

Utopia, which in the imagination refers to the concept of balance, harmony and
happiness, in this type of approach instead sounds like an unpleasant cacophony.

The needs that are enunciated to define a virtuous path of change violently
collide with the tools that are identified: the good intentions of man, or the
one who by definition has evil in his heart.

If the concept of utopia takes on a negative, desperate meaning of a moment and
place that can never be approached, all this lies precisely in the elaboration of
those who in these tragic days of war have rediscovered and re-proposes that "if
you want peace prepares war ", or of those who rely on charitable support to
solve the problems of poverty, a widespread phenomenon also in the so-called
developed West: and once again we return to the relationship between causes and
effects.

War is not the cause of evil, but the fruit of an economic system that bases its
social organization on competition and competition, on the hoarding of markets
and on the exploitation not only of workers and

of workers, but also on the robbery of raw materials in the areas of control and
influence of economic and military powers.

The cause is capitalism, with its war logic, and war and weapons are the
nefarious effects of this system of production. In this context, the request to
stop with the production of weapons that comes from various religious and
scientific spheres reveals the absolute powerlessness of such appeals which,
failing to deal with the real causes that lead to armament, contribute to
creating further confusion and, at best, put the heart at peace to those who
promote such appeals.

Here then is that the utopia of which they accuse us of being the bearers just
when we argue that another world is possible, assumes all its capacity to
constitute an illuminating reference on the path to the liberation of and from
work, as the only credible project of a a society that truly knows how to combine
freedom with equality.

Our utopia is not based on a naive vision of the goodness of human beings: with
awareness and determination we reject every narrative that leads every problem
that characterizes social life to the wickedness of individuals: from delinquency
to war. We note that behind every drama that afflicts existing social systems,
there is a clash that leads back to the hierarchical structure that characterizes
our societies and to the hoarding by a privileged few of a very large part of
social production. War is the most dramatic event that lays bare this reality.

The role that all more or less sane self-styled democratic dictators and
presidents play represents, in these contexts of essentially economic conflict, a
further barbarism, involving presumed ethical values, national histories and
traditions, religious affiliations in the conflict.

An overlapping of elements that often hides, with very shrewd ways of concealment
and omission, the true nature of the war due to the exploitation of man "

on man and man on nature ", to increase profit and its accumulation. The good
intentions of our rulers are those that at the dawn of the third millennium
brought us to the threshold of the third world war, a war that even if it will
not involve the entire globe will lead to the destruction and death of millions
of people in the dramatic framework of the probable and definitive destruction of
the ecological balance.

In war, as we know or as it is easy to guess, there is no room for the
confrontation of ideas, the right to disobedience is not recognized: time beats
at a rhythm

faster. The hierarchy, the rigid division of roles, the unified commands are the
nefarious and necessary consequence of the logic of war. Politics understood
positively as management of public affairs, if it were to really play its role by
assuming human beings and their needs in the framework of the defense of the
natural environment as the fulcrum of its actions, could and should equip itself
with instruments of large mass participation for decisions involving communities
and these structures, not having to compete with other communities for the
hoarding of wealth, they could play, allowing themselves all the time needed,
their role of mediation between the different options that arise.

Democracy, which for us is social and economic self-management, requires patience
and tenacity, confrontation, serene evaluation of the facts, respect for those
who do not share the choices made, the possibility even for small minorities to
propose and test their own solutions.

This presupposes two conditions: the absence of economic and legal mechanisms
that allow the exploitation of man by man and the absence of economic and social
mechanisms that put the different communities in conflict. Both of these
conditions are not contemplated in our societies. The private ownership of the
means of production sanctifies the capitalist exploitation of the manual and
intellectual labor force with the harmful consequences on the natural environment
that surrounds us; the market, with the corollary of profit, is the viaticum of
every war.

Note:

1) Fabrizio Mangoni associate professor of Urban Planning at the Federico II
University of Naples. People and territory. https://www.genteeterritorio.it/ancor
a-unutopia-per-restart /

2) Idem

Taken from the magazine "Il Cantiere" Materials of the Communists-Anarchists for
the class struggle n. June 9

ilcantiere@autistici.org - Alternativa Libertaria / Fdca (Italy)
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