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Podcast on Neo-liberalism and sustainability.
I especially found the definition on neo-liberalism very useful.
http://www.sustainababble.fish/?tag=neoliberalism

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This weekend the Climate Parliament was held in Stockholm. It was inspired by the People's Parliaments of the 1890s and organizes people all over Sweden to collectively discuss issues related to the climate. Proposals for dealing with today's climate challenges are then considered and voted on, and then handed over to the Swedish Parliament. A good example I think of creating collective agency!
http://klimatriksdagen.se/om/?sprak=eng

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Don’t blame neoliberalism, blame the state

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Don’t blame neoliberalism, blame the state

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https://mg.co.za/article/2016-11-17-dont-blame-neoliberalism-blame-the-state

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Calling a spade a spade - Varoufakis on class war

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Calling a spade a spade - Varoufakis on class war

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''The only prospect for civilizing society and detoxifying politics is a new political movement that harnesses on behalf of a new humanism the burning injustice that class war manufactures. Judging by its callous treatment of US Senator Bernie Sanders and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the [neo_]liberal establishment seems to fear such a movement more than it does Trump and Brexit.'' - Yannis Varoufakis

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The rise of populism on both sides of the Atlantic is being investigated psychoanalytically, culturally, anthropologically, aesthetically, and of course in terms of identity politics. The only angle left unexplored is the one that holds the key to understanding what is going on: the unceasing class war waged against the poor since the late 1970s.

Featured

Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

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The High Cost of Denying Class War, by Yanis Varoufakis

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The rise of populism on both sides of the Atlantic is being investigated psychoanalytically, culturally, anthropologically, aesthetically, and of course in terms of identity politics. The only angle left unexplored is the one that holds the key to understanding what is going on: the unceasing class war waged against the poor since the late 1970s.

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Combine an immigrant population with a collectivist society that fosters individual creativity and you have the foundation for a startup nation.

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Combine an immigrant population with a collectivist society that fosters individual creativity and you have the foundation for a startup nation.

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https://www.israel21c.org/in-israel-individualism-and-collectivism-happily-coexist/

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How Lagos waged a war against water privatisation - and turned the tide 

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How Lagos waged a war against water privatisation - and turned the tide 

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Water rights campaigners joined together with Environmental Rights Action (ERA) Nigeria and other groups to successfully stop the privatisation water infrastructure

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"In my almost seven years of living there, I don't think we've experienced any government water," Funmi Ajayi said. "An elder who has been living there since 1979 has told me he has never seen water."

Ajayi had to raise her voice to be heard over the din of maintenance work going on outside the building where she was meeting with other water rights campaigners brought together by Environmental Rights Action (ERA) Nigeria.

The anti-water privatisation activist lives in Adebari-Ilobu, a high-density suburb in Lagos with limited access to public services. Although it is only a few minutes' drive from one of the water treatment and processing plants, it has never been connected to the grid.

Ajayi and several others engaged in efforts to prevent the privatisation of water supply in Lagos State gathered together to lay out the problem. According to A. K. Edema, a regional manager and union member at the Lagos State Water Corporation (LSWC), the gap between demand and supply is immense.

"In my almost seven years of living there, I don't think we've experienced any government water."

"We've been developing the first phase of the grid, the Sakamuri phase, since the 1990s, and many neighbourhoods are not even served by the mains that were originally laid," Edema said. "Meanwhile, the second phase is only about 60% constructed - maybe by 2020 we will finish."

Ajayi's neighbourhood slots into the second category: the second phase of water distribution where communal solutions have been the only recourse. A borehole donated in the early 2000s by a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly was the community's main source of water until it stopped functioning in 2016.

After its collapse, private citizens started to sink their own boreholes; depending on the topography, this can cost between N150,000 and N300,000 (approximately 417 to 834 USD). These days, Ajayi and her neighbours mostly buy water from those who can afford this investment.

Unfortunately for Ajayi and other Lagosians, the model that the Lagos State government is pursuing for water provision operates on profit and loss. And this caught ERA's attention. The 25-year-old non-governmental organisation and the Nigerian chapter of Friends of the Earth International created the campaign 'Our Water Our Right' to counter the trend.
Water management in Lagos: a slippery slope
It is ironic that Lagos State, a coastal city named for its many inland waterways, has a water problem. The growing metropolis has a demand of close to 600 million gallons a day (MGD), but the LSWC produces less than half of that.

Citizens bear the brunt of this inadequacy, with the poorest being the hardest hit. For example, one 20 litre keg of water used to be worth N20 before the fuel price hike in 2016; by the end of that same year, the unit price hovered in the N50-N70 range. In many neighbourhoods, families of 6 spend more than N1500 every day on water.

Government-led efforts to privatise the state's under-resourced and under-performing water supply services began to take shape with the creation of the Lagos Water Law in 2004, which touted private investment in the water sector as the only solution.

In 2014, ERA discovered that the state government was about to enter into a partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the arm of the World Bank which operates to maximise profit - to privatise the Lagos water supply. Led by the Executive Director of ERA, Akinbode Oluwafemi, and two staff members, Philip Jakpor and Veronica Ivoke, the team began their investigations in a bid to uncover evidence.

"We knew the people we spoke to were misdirecting us and trying to waste our time," said Oluwafemi. "But in synergy with our international partners, we got some World Bank documents that mentioned Lagos and privatisation. [...] We discovered that World Bank was advising the Lagos State Government on privatisation and had even come to the stage of an advisory contract with specific focus on public-private partnership (PPP)."

Once ERA had this information, they began efforts to resist the move. Their reasons were multiple: the government's historical inability to be accountable for loans taken from the World Bank; the billions of dollars already spent to boost water supply in Lagos with no tangible results; and the corruption and scandals which have mired privatisation efforts across the state.

Oluwafemi criticised the state government's model of using public resources to fund the development of infrastructure, only to hand over those assets to private corporations to operate. "They don't declare the value of these assets acquired with public funds; they just hand them over to private corporations. So we the citizens end up paying twice!"
The launch of 'Our Water Our Right'
The 'Our Water Our Right' campaign kicked off in October 2014. From the onset, ERA was determined to partner with local and international civil society organisations, communities and trade unions within the water sector.

"If the campaign is not owned by the people, our goal will not be achieved. In a city of 21 million people, one NGO alone cannot do much," Phillip Jakpor, the campaign leader, explained. "We knew the importance of pressure from the communities from the beginning."

The campaign team visited at least one community within each of the 20 local government areas in Lagos. "It was an opportunity for us to learn and better understand the problems. Some of these engagements enabled us to discover scenarios in which people were sourcing water from burst pipes in gutters, for example," Jakpor shared. Once they explained what was really going on, "the communities decided to be part of the Lagos Communities Against Water Privatisation."

"If the campaign is not owned by the people, our goal will not be achieved."

To better structure community participation and sustain civic engagement across various communities, ERA instituted water parliaments where ideas and alternative solutions could be debated.

A network of women within the movement also created the African Women Water Sanitation and Hygiene Network (AWWASHNET). Coordinated by ERA staffer Veronica Ivoke, AWWASHNET was born out of the recognition that women are most impacted by water problems.

"Who washes clothes or cooks food? Who has to trek and trek to fetch water from wherever?" asked Ajayi, one of AWWASHNET's early members.

The campaign also reached out to the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service, Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE), which is affiliated with the Nigerian Labour Congress.

AUPCTRE, the largest union in the LSWC, represents about 75% of all unionised workers within the agency. AUPCTRE's leadership recognised their twofold interest in ensuring that water supply remains in the public domain: as government workers, privatisation puts their jobs at risk, and, as tax payers, they deserve accountability from their government.

"The government tried to undermine us by going to other factions and assuring them of job security if they agreed to the privatisation effort," said Comrade Biodun Bakare, the State Secretary for AUPCTRE's Lagos State Council.

"They even tried to intimidate us, tried to induce us with all sorts of incentives. But they were wasting their time. I have lost many workplace benefits. My name has been struck off lists it should have been on, for international trainings and other things. But that just makes me more determined."

Many protesting workers were laid off after a 2016 rally. ERA stepped in to petition the LSWC and demand the reinstatement of those who had lost their jobs. Within a week, their letters of termination were invalidated.
Fighting the government - and winning
In Nigeria, given the prevailing feeling of powerlessness in the face of a government that is often self-serving and rarely averse to abuses of power, the ability of the 'Our Water Our Right' campaign to produce results is even more remarkable.

When Shayo Holloway, the then-head of the LSWC who had presided over hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into the water sector with no results, was forced to resign, the campaign knew they had won their first victory.

Subsequently, the government allocated about USD185 million to the water sector, despite previous claims that there were no available public funds. By 2016, the IFC was forced to pull out of the proposed partnership with Lagos State due to local and international scrutiny and pressure.

This loss of potential funding slowed down the government but didn't stop them. Not long after the IFC pulled out, campaign leaders discovered that the Lagos State Environmental Bill had begun to quietly move through the State House.

This proposed Environmental Bill was an attempt to legislate various forms of public utility privatisation, including water provision. It contained clauses that criminalised any kind of citizen efforts to secure water, including things as simple as transporting water from one house to another.

What we need is affordable, accessible, and democratically accountable water provision. [...] After all, is water not a human right?

"I left Ife [a university town 6 hours outside of Lagos] at 3AM the day I heard of this bill," Oluwafemi said. "They tried to make sure we would not be able to attend the public hearing; they did everything in a rush."

Despite that, Oluwafemi still made it to the hearing. Following his intervention, ERA and their partners at AUPCTRE kept a close watch on the legislators, corresponding and meeting with them. "They had to expunge the parts of the bill that criminalised how people source water," Oluwafemi said, satisfied.

When the state government realised it was struggling to justify the privatisation bid, they challenged ERA to produce an alternative solution to privatisation. They gladly took up the task and responded with 'Lagos Water Crisis: Alternative Roadmap for Water Sector.'

The document highlights the failures of the current water system and proposes a comprehensive strategy for collaborative, citizen-directed, publicly funded water supply. This includes the Water Trust, which analysed the water usage rates of large corporations like Coca Cola as a framework for a water tax.

"It makes no sense for us to start pursuing partnerships with the same corporations that are being booted out and investigated elsewhere," Jakpor said. "We still use Lagos Water Crisis as an advocacy tool when engaging government."

Bolstered by the successes of their campaign, the ERA-led coalitaon continues to defend the rights of those few Lagosians who currently enjoy state-supplied water and to strive to keep the government accountable.

"The determination of the Lagos State government to push through PPP secretly is a major challenge," Jakpor sighed. "We shot down the anti-people sections of the Lagos environment law; now, they are handing Lagos water to three multinationals that have a global track record of human rights abuses. But we are determined to stop that from happening."

"What we need is affordable, accessible, and democratically accountable water provision. And that is what we will continue to fight for. After all, is water not a human right?"
What lessons can we learn from these particular projects? Have you been involved in something similar that you could tell us about? Do you know someone who has? Do please join us in comments space below, and help us build and network the knowledge.

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How Lagos waged a war against water privatisation - and turned the tide

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"In my almost seven years of living there, I don't think we've experienced any government water," Funmi Ajayi said. "An elder who has been living there since 1979 has told me he has never seen water."

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"We propose that social movements are absolutely integral to how our societies are made and unmade across time."   Across the globe people coming together to protest the consequences of neoliberal policies on their livelihoods and standards of living (e.g., the privatization of water in Detroit).

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Laurence Cox (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and Alf Gunvald Nilsen (University of Bergen)
"Fight, fight! Water is a human right!" This was one of the many slogans heard on the streets of downtown Detroit on 18 July, when angry citizens staged a march to protest the decision by the city's Water and Sewerage Department to shut off the water supply of some 15,000 households with overdue water bills. Labelled a human rights violation by the United Nations, this draconian move occurs in a context which can arguably be thought of as the Ground Zero of US neoliberalism: Detroit's declaration of bankruptcy in July 2013 followed decades of industrial decline, and the city is currently plagued by the country's highest rates of poverty and a 14.6% unemployment rate. The water shut-offs are widely believed to herald the privatization of Detroit's water supply.

By taking to the streets this July, Detroit's citizens joined a growing tide of people across the globe coming together to protest the consequences of neoliberal policies on their livelihoods and standards of living. A recent report published by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has documented a steep increase in collective protests in the wake of the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, with economic justice and anti-austerity being a key grievance for those mobilizing. A comprehensive study of the link between austerity policies and political protests between 1919 and 2009 across 28 European countries and 11 Latin American countries has revealed what its authors call "a clear and positive statistical association between expenditure cuts and the level of unrest." Ours is a time in which the obvious links between deepening inequalities and the intensification of collective protests are increasingly causing global elites to be concerned about the future prospects of political stability. "Widening gaps between the richest and poorest citizens", states the World Economic Forum's most recent report on global risk scenarios, "threaten social and political stability as well as economic development".
What are social movements - and how would we know if we saw one?
Academic commentators often present waves of protest such as the one that we are currently witnessing and the mobilizing work that energizes them as exceptional aberrations from the steady flow of normal politics. As a consequence of this, social movements tend to be thought of and studied in very narrow terms, as relatively marginal and rare eruptions of extra-parliamentary collective action, that for limited periods of time push agendas and demands in relation to public authorities through what the American sociologist Charles Tilly referred to as WUNC - worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment.

In our new book We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014) we argue that social movements should be thought of as much more than sporadic cases of mobilization outside the parliamentary parameters of the state. Instead, we propose that social movements are absolutely integral to how our societies are made and unmade across time.

This might seem like a tall statement, but let's take a moment to think about some of the most fundamental rights and entitlements that many of us hold as citizens of democratic nation-states. Most obviously, the right to vote in elections was won as a result of determined struggles against barriers based on class, gender, and race that were imposed by elite groups that sought to monopolize political power for themselves. Similarly, those forms of social protection that are supposed to shield us from market vagaries and equalize life chances - including in different countries unemployment benefits or free public healthcare - have been won through labour struggles that forced capital to make concessions to radical demands for the redistribution of wealth and income. And crucially, the states within which we exercise these rights and claim these entitlements are themselves the outcome of revolutionary transformations propelled by social movements - in some cases deposing aristocratic ruling classes, in other cases overthrowing colonial overlords or defeating dictators.

Social movements of course shape the way we live our lives in other ways too - and not necessarily in ways that are related to formal rights and entitlements. The global movement wave of 1968 ushered in struggles for a "democratization of everyday life" in areas ranging from families and schools to prisons and mental hospitals, not forgetting the battles which placed nuclear power, the unquestioned rule of the car, consumerism or top-down "development" in question. Fundamentally, then, social movements are how we make societies - from the level of historical structures such as states via institutions such as alternative media and self-organised education projects to the level of everyday routines such as the weekend and limits to the length of the working day.

This also means that when we look for social movements, we are not just looking for the WUNC-displaying campaign that champions a single issue by levying pressure on extant parliamentary institutions. As we propose in We Make Our Own History, social movements encompass a whole range of collective practices, ranging from the day-to-day methods that less powerful groups develop to cope with and ward off the claims and demands of those who dominate them - for example, small scale acts of sabotage in the workplace - via the eruption of particular struggles in particular places over particular grievances - for example, wildcat strikes in Chinese factories - and coordinated campaigns that bring together different groups around issues of common concern - for example, the mobilization against large dam projects in India's North-Eastern states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh - to oppositional projects that seek to fundamentally change the way in which social, economic and political power is organized and distributed in society - for example, the ongoing uprising of the Zapatistas in Mexico's southeastern state of Chiapas.

These are all forms of practice that in different ways shape the ways in which we organize our societies, and, crucially, they are not watertight compartments. Rather, when we witness moments such as the present, which are rife with large-scale public protests that seek to bring about systemic changes, we are - in all likelihood - witnessing the crest of a wave that has built up over a long period time as a result of marginalized groups articulating their grievances, forging connections with other marginalized groups elsewhere, and constructing organizational infrastructures that enable claims to be made and alternatives to be envisioned and enacted.
Making new societies in neoliberal times
Our tumultuous present has a long lineage. The neoliberal project emerged as an elite response to economic crisis and the rise of a new wave of social movements as the golden age of post-war capitalism came to an end in the early 1970s. And the progress of neoliberalism over the past 35 years has reversed key victories and concessions won by labour movements and through anti-colonial struggles during the first half of the twentieth century. This is manifest, above all, in a dramatic expansion of the reach of market forces - for example, through the privatization of public goods such as water, which is currently being touted by the World Bank as a key policy initiative to shrink state involvement in infrastructure provision.

Resistance to this project emerged first in the form of protest against the austerity regime imposed by the World Bank and the IMF in collaboration with domestic elites throughout the global South in the 1980s and early 1990s. These were struggles that - not unlike labour unrest in the global North in the same period - sought to defend the gains that had been made and the victories that had been won by past movements. The mid-1990s - marked, above all, by the outbreak of the Zapatista revolt in Chiapas - witnessed the gradual crystallization of a new form of resistance in which single-issue campaigns converged around radical demands for systemic change - and the identification of neoliberal capitalism as a common enemy. The insistence that "another world is possible!" - a rallying cry for the summit protests of the late nineties and early 2000s - was the immediate outcome of this process, and the anti-austerity protests that we are witnessing today build on this foundation.

It is not just specific policies and their consequences - whether it is a question of water cut-offs in Detroit or free trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region - that are at stake in these protests. Most fundamentally, the social movements that energize these protests are challenging the way in which global elites have sought to make society over the past thirty-five years by widening the domain of the market. Indeed, in slogans such as "We live in a society, not an economy" and "We are not commodities in the hands of bankers and politicians" and in the activist demand for a thoroughgoing deepening of democracy - but also in the day-to-day practices of self-organisation by movements and communities in struggle - we can start to discern the contours of what it means to make new societies in neoliberal times.

is Lecturer in Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen. He blogs (mostly in English) at Shadows of Tender Fury. Their most recent joint publication is We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014).

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Viewpoint: Social Movements and Neoliberalism

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Laurence Cox (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and Alf Gunvald Nilsen (University of Bergen) "Fight, fight! Water is a human right! " This was one of the many slogans heard on the streets of downtown Detroit on 18 July, when angry citizens staged a march to protest the decision by the city's Water and Sewerage Department to shut off the water supply of some 15,000 households with overdue water bills.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/07/rohingya-refugees-monsoon-myanmar-bangladesh

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Hi everyone, in another of my CEMUS class, a book we need to read is Outlier, by Malcom Gladwell where he discusses about individual success. He proves throughout the book that individual efforts are only a mere fraction of what is needed to achieve greatness, alongside luck, societal movements and demographics. I think it relates to the idea that collective movements have a great impact on what we perceive as a successful society and that no one can truly achieve its full potential based on pure individualism.

A member from my class shared the pdf version of the book with our group. Here it is

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Malcolm Gladwell-Outliers_ The Story of Success-Little, Brown Young Readers (2008).pdf

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http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2378023116656847
Interesting scholarly article about the challenges unions face in the current neoliberal system.

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The State of Western International development 

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The State of Western International development 

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"It is time to accept that the neoliberal development regime is, and always has been, a tool for spreading and legitimising neocolonial empire"

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-State-of-Western-International-Development-20180410-0038.html

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The essence of neoliberalism - by Pierre Bourdieu

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The essence of neoliberalism - by Pierre Bourdieu

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Interesting essay on the topic by Pierre Bourdieu (written in 1998)

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the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its predictable consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that it inflicts, either automatically or -more unusually - through the intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing public expenditures and making work more flexible. Is the dominant discourse right? What if, in reality, this economic order were no more than the implementation of a utopia - the utopia of neoliberalism - thus converted into a political problem? One that, with the aid of the economic theory that it proclaims, succeeds in conceiving of itself as the scientific description of reality?

This tutelary theory is a pure mathematical fiction. From the start it has been founded on a formidable abstraction. For, in the name of a narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality, it brackets the economic and social conditions of rational orientations and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their application.

To give the measure of this omission, it is enough to think just of the educational system. Education is never taken account of as such at a time when it plays a determining role in the production of goods and services as in the production of the producers themselves. From this sort of original sin, inscribed in the Walrasian myth of "pure theory", flow all of the deficiencies and faults of the discipline of economics and the fatal obstinacy with which it attaches itself to the arbitrary opposition which it induces, through its mere existence, between a properly economic logic, based on competition and efficiency, and social logic, which is subject to the rule of fairness.

That said, this "theory" that is desocialised and dehistoricised at its roots has, today more than ever, the means of making itself true and empirically verifiable. In effect, neoliberal discourse is not just one discourse among many. Rather, it is a "strong discourse" - the way psychiatric discourse is in an asylum, in Erving Goffman's analysis. It is so strong and so hard to combat only because it has on its side all of the forces of a world of relations of forces, a world that it contributes to making what it is. It does this most notably by orienting the economic choices of those who dominate economic relationships. It thus adds its own symbolic force to these relations of forces. In the name of this scientific programme, converted into a plan of political action, an immense political project is underway, although its status as such is denied because it appears to be purely negative. This project aims to create the conditions under which the "theory" can be realised and can function: a programme of the methodical destruction of collectives.

The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market is made possible by the politics of financial deregulation. And it is achieved through the transformative and, it must be said, destructive action of all of the political measures (of which the most recent is the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), designed to protect foreign corporations and their investments from national states) that aim to call into question any and all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market: the nation, whose space to manoeuvre continually decreases; work groups, for example through the individualisation of salaries and of careers as a function of individual competences, with the consequent atomisation of workers; collectives for the defence of the rights of workers, unions, associations, cooperatives; even the family, which loses part of its control over consumption through the constitution of markets by age groups.

The neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic politicians who have been converted to the reassuring layoffs of laisser-faire, high-level financial officials eager to impose policies advocating their own extinction because, unlike the managers of firms, they run no risk of having eventually to pay the consequences. Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming to its description in pure theory, that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents.

The globalisation of financial markets, when joined with the progress of information technology, ensures an unprecedented mobility of capital. It gives investors concerned with the short-term profitability of their investments the possibility of permanently comparing the profitability of the largest corporations and, in consequence, penalising these firms' relative setbacks. Subjected to this permanent threat, the corporations themselves have to adjust more and more rapidly to the exigencies of the markets, under penalty of "losing the market's confidence", as they say, as well as the support of their stockholders. The latter, anxious to obtain short-term profits, are more and more able to impose their will on managers, using financial directorates to establish the rules under which managers operate and to shape their policies regarding hiring, employment, and wages.

Thus the absolute reign of flexibility is established, with employees being hiring on fixed-term contracts or on a temporary basis and repeated corporate restructurings and, within the firm itself, competition among autonomous divisions as well as among teams forced to perform multiple functions. Finally, this competition is extended to individuals themselves, through the individualisation of the wage relationship: establishment of individual performance objectives, individual performance evaluations, permanent evaluation, individual salary increases or granting of bonuses as a function of competence and of individual merit; individualised career paths; strategies of "delegating responsibility" tending to ensure the self-exploitation of staff who, simple wage labourers in relations of strong hierarchical dependence, are at the same time held responsible for their sales, their products, their branch, their store, etc. as though they were independent contractors. This pressure toward "self-control" extends workers' "involvement" according to the techniques of "participative management" considerably beyond management level. All of these are techniques of rational domination that impose over-involvement in work (and not only among management) and work under emergency or high-stress conditions. And they converge to weaken or abolish collective standards or solidarities.

In this way, a Darwinian world emerges - it is the struggle of all against all at all levels of the hierarchy, which finds support through everyone clinging to their job and organisation under conditions of insecurity, suffering, and stress. Without a doubt, the practical establishment of this world of struggle would not succeed so completely without the complicity of all of the precarious arrangements that produce insecurity and of the existence of a reserve army of employees rendered docile by these social processes that make their situations precarious, as well as by the permanent threat of unemployment. This reserve army exists at all levels of the hierarchy, even at the higher levels, especially among managers. The ultimate foundation of this entire economic order placed under the sign of freedom is in effect the structural violence of unemployment, of the insecurity of job tenure and the menace of layoff that it implies. The condition of the "harmonious" functioning of the individualist micro-economic model is a mass phenomenon, the existence of a reserve army of the unemployed.

This structural violence also weighs on what is called the labour contract (wisely rationalised and rendered unreal by the "theory of contracts"). Organisational discourse has never talked as much of trust, co-operation, loyalty, and organisational culture as in an era when adherence to the organisation is obtained at each moment by eliminating all temporal guarantees of employment (three-quarters of hires are for fixed duration, the proportion of temporary employees keeps rising, employment "at will" and the right to fire an individual tend to be freed from any restriction).

Thus we see how the neoliberal utopia tends to embody itself in the reality of a kind of infernal machine, whose necessity imposes itself even upon the rulers. Like the Marxism of an earlier time, with which, in this regard, it has much in common, this utopia evokes powerful belief - the free trade faith - not only among those who live off it, such as financiers, the owners and managers of large corporations, etc., but also among those, such as high-level government officials and politicians, who derive their justification for existing from it. For they sanctify the power of markets in the name of economic efficiency, which requires the elimination of administrative or political barriers capable of inconveniencing the owners of capital in their individual quest for the maximisation of individual profit, which has been turned into a model of rationality. They want independent central banks. And they preach the subordination of nation-states to the requirements of economic freedom for the masters of the economy, with the suppression of any regulation of any market, beginning with the labour market, the prohibition of deficits and inflation, the general privatisation of public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses.

Economists may not necessarily share the economic and social interests of the true believers and may have a variety of individual psychic states regarding the economic and social effects of the utopia which they cloak with mathematical reason. Nevertheless, they have enough specific interests in the field of economic science to contribute decisively to the production and reproduction of belief in the neoliberal utopia. Separated from the realities of the economic and social world by their existence and above all by their intellectual formation, which is most frequently purely abstract, bookish, and theoretical, they are particularly inclined to confuse the things of logic with the logic of things.

These economists trust models that they almost never have occasion to submit to the test of experimental verification and are led to look down upon the results of the other historical sciences, in which they do not recognise the purity and crystalline transparency of their mathematical games, whose true necessity and profound complexity they are often incapable of understanding. They participate and collaborate in a formidable economic and social change. Even if some of its consequences horrify them (they can join the socialist party and give learned counsel to its representatives in the power structure), it cannot displease them because, at the risk of a few failures, imputable to what they sometimes call "speculative bubbles", it tends to give reality to the ultra-logical utopia (ultra-logical like certain forms of insanity) to which they consecrate their lives.

And yet the world is there, with the immediately visible effects of the implementation of the great neoliberal utopia: not only the poverty of an increasingly large segment of the most economically advanced societies, the extraordinary growth in income differences, the progressive disappearance of autonomous universes of cultural production, such as film, publishing, etc. through the intrusive imposition of commercial values, but also and above all two major trends. First is the destruction of all the collective institutions capable of counteracting the effects of the infernal machine, primarily those of the state, repository of all of the universal values associated with the idea of the public realm. Second is the imposition everywhere, in the upper spheres of the economy and the state as at the heart of corporations, of that sort of moral Darwinism that, with the cult of the winner, schooled in higher mathematics and bungee jumping, institutes the struggle of all against all and cynicism as the norm of all action and behaviour.

Can it be expected that the extraordinary mass of suffering produced by this sort of political-economic regime will one day serve as the starting point of a movement capable of stopping the race to the abyss? Indeed, we are faced here with an extraordinary paradox. The obstacles encountered on the way to realising the new order of the lone, but free individual are held today to be imputable to rigidities and vestiges. All direct and conscious intervention of whatever kind, at least when it comes from the state, is discredited in advance and thus condemned to efface itself for the benefit of a pure and anonymous mechanism, the market, whose nature as a site where interests are exercised is forgotten. But in reality, what keeps the social order from dissolving into chaos, despite the growing volume of the endangered population, is the continuity or survival of those very institutions and representatives of the old order that is in the process of being dismantled, and all the work of all of the categories of social workers, as well as all the forms of social solidarity, familial or otherwise.

The transition to "liberalism" takes place in an imperceptible manner, like continental drift, thus hiding its effects from view. Its most terrible consequences are those of the long term. These effects themselves are concealed, paradoxically, by the resistance to which this transition is currently giving rise among those who defend the old order by drawing on the resources it contained, on old solidarities, on reserves of social capital that protect an entire portion of the present social order from falling into anomie. This social capital is fated to wither away - although not in the short run - if it is not renewed and reproduced.

But these same forces of "conservation", which it is too easy to treat as conservative, are also, from another point of view, forces of resistance to the establishment of the new order and can become subversive forces. If there is still cause for some hope, it is that forces still exist, both in state institutions and in the orientations of social actors (notably individuals and groups most attached to these institutions, those with a tradition of civil and public service) that, under the appearance of simply defending an order that has disappeared and its corresponding "privileges" (which is what they will immediately be accused of), will be able to resist the challenge only by working to invent and construct a new social order. One that will not have as its only law the pursuit of egoistic interests and the individual passion for profit and that will make room for collectives oriented toward the rational pursuit of ends collectively arrived at and collectively ratified.

How could we not make a special place among these collectives, associations, unions, and parties for the state: the nation-state, or better yet the supranational state - a European state on the way toward a world state - capable of effectively controlling and taxing the profits earned in the financial markets and, above of all, of counteracting the destructive impact that the latter have on the labour market. This could be done with the aid of labour unions by organising the elaboration and defence of the public interest. Like it or not, the public interest will never emerge, even at the cost of a few mathematical errors, from the vision of accountants (in an earlier period one would have said of "shopkeepers") that the new belief system presents as the supreme form of human accomplishment.

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the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its predictable consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that it inflicts, either automatically or -more unusually - through the intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing public expenditures and making work more flexible.

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We are living through a golden age of protest | LA Kauffman

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We are seeing a level of organizing with little precedent - but it's time for stronger forms of demonstration, such as sit-ins and street blockades

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Collective agency ahead of the Mexican elections - for the better or worse?

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Collective agency ahead of the Mexican elections - for the better or worse?

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On Sunday 1st of July 2018, Mexico finds itself at a crossroads. It faces different scenarios:

1) A continuation of the status quo and the metastasizing of the neoliberal capitalist logic in all areas of public and private life. This would entail the bleak, gradual demise of all forms of political community which are necessary for the survival of democracy.

2) A violent disorganized, disoriented and fragmented collective outburst, lacking any sound progressive ideological vision, which would be confronted by an increasingly militarized corporate State.

This would engender a cataclysmic situation: the complete failure of Mexican institutions and/or civil war.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/alejandra-gait-n-barrera/mexico-on-edge-of-dystopian-cliff

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Individualism is the belief that personal needs are more important than the needs of society as a whole

It is said to have first developed among Baby Boomers, born after WWII

Ex perts studied baby names and birth rates over the past 150 years

They also studied the changing use of 'individualistic' words in books

Research said individualist behaviours began at the turn of 20th century

And this was blamed on a shift from manual labour to office jobs

Selfies and self-indulgent Facebook statuses suggest we are more narcissistic than ever.

But researchers have found we actually started to become increasingly self-centred more than 100 years ago.

By studying unique baby names, birth and divorce rates and the use of words like 'I' and 'me' in books, the experts said individualism began rising at the turn of the 20th century.

And this rise is blamed on a shift from manual labour to office jobs as people became wealthier and better educated.

Individualism is the belief that personal needs are more important than the needs of society as a whole. It is said to have first developed among Baby Boomers, born after WWII.

The study covered a 150-year period and was carried out by researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo and Arizona State University.

Led by Professor Igor Grossmann, the researchers examined factors commonly linked with cultural individualism.

These included the use of so-called individualist words in books taken from the Google Ngram database.

They studied the percentage of single-child families, how many adults now live alone, and divorce rates using US Census data.

And they looked at the prevalence of unique baby names by studying Social Security Administration data.

All of these factors, especially uniqueness, are deemed to be key drivers of individualism.

The team additionally studied changes in infectious disease and disasters, rates of urbanisation, changes in secularism, and job trends.

'Across many markers of individualism, social class was the only factor that systematically preceded changes in individualism over time, tentatively suggesting a causal relationship between them,' explained Professor Grossmann.

Across all cultural indicators, the researchers found evidence that individualism has been rising steadily for more than a century.

For example, family size has decreased since 1860 and the number of households with multiple generations living under the same roof has declined since the 1880s.

The frequency of individualist words used in published texts has risen since the 1860s, and the frequency of 'collectivist' words, such as 'we', has declined over the same period.

Plus, the uniqueness of baby names has risen for both boys and girls since the 1880s, with the percentage of children receiving one of the 20 most popular names declining over time.

The prevalence of infectious disease, job trends, and secularism were all linked with individualism over time, but the researchers found that only changes in occupational status appeared to precede these changes.

'We were surprised that only one of the six tested cultural psychological theories was any good for statistically predicting changes in US individualism over time,' said Professor Grossmann.

'As demands of American society shifted from manual labour to office jobs, Americans gained education and wealth, both of which promote self-direction and ultimately facilitate individualism.'

'The data show that changes in individualism were present way before the Generation X and the Millennium generation, indicating that the magnitude of change in individualism was comparable in the late 19th and early 20th century as it is now.

'This insight puts some of the pop-science claims about current youth in a historical perspective: Yes, current youth are different from older generations, but this seems to be a consistent phenomenon over time.'

The researchers are currently working on expanding this research outside the US.

Their findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.

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Study finds society shifted towards individualism a CENTURY ago

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Individualism is the belief that personal needs are more important than the needs of society as a whole It is said to have first developed among Baby Boomers, born after WWII Ex perts studied baby names and birth rates over the past 150 years They also studied the changing use of 'individualistic' words in books Research said individualist behaviours began at the turn of 20th century And this was blamed on a shift from manual labour to office jobs Selfies and self-indulgent Facebook statuses suggest we are more narcissistic than ever.

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A humane solution to inmigration in the USA

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A humane solution to inmigration in the USA

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Sponsorship would be a community-building approach to integrating immigrants that treats them with dignity and makes citizens part of the solution.

While the debate over immigration rages on the national stage, a key piece of the solution may actually be much more American, reflecting the best of the American spirit.

Proposals have been put forward that call for securing the borders and modernizing the legal immigration process - both good steps - but the biggest point of contention remains over what to do with the millions of illegal immigrants and undocumented workers currently in the country.

Ultimately, this problem is of our own making. For decades, the U.S. government has been inconsistent, disingenuous and insincere in enforcing its immigration laws - threatening deportation one minute, offering free health care and education the next.

Some propose, therefore, that we simply grant blanket amnesty to millions people who are in the country illegally. Yet not only does this approach ignore the rule of law and undermine efforts to deter future illegal immigration, it's also insensitive and unjust to those who have waited in line to immigrate legally.

More: Trump likes Canada's merit-based immigration, but it's not what he thinks

More: Despite Trump's bigotry, America needs more African immigrants

All can agree, that we want to end both inconsistent law enforcement and the "shadow communities" of isolated immigrants living in fear. We all want those who have immigrated to our country to be warmly welcomed and assimilated into our country in an orderly and just manner. This is why it makes sense to put red, white and blue Americans in charge of who gets to stay. In keeping with the American spirit, Americans will embrace, encourage and empower those who make our communities better.

Fortunately, America already has practice with a system designed to produce exactly that.

For years, businesses, learning institutions, and families have all relied on a form of sponsorship to integrate their workforce, to help students achieve, to encourage law-abiding behavior, or to help organizations grow.

Under a sponsorship plan, current law-abiding U.S. citizens would agree to sponsor undocumented individuals currently living in the U.S. through a formal process.

Lawmakers might also negotiate the stipulations of completing the program, such as English language proficiency or restitution payments, or keeping a clean criminal record.

Ultimately, however, sponsorship could be an effective solution because it is a local, community-building approach to integrating immigrants into society. It treats undocumented immigrants with dignity, involves U.S. citizens in becoming part of the solution, and helps build bridges within the communities where immigrants already live, work, shop and send their children to school.

More: Trump's DACA demands don't show his 'love' for immigrants, or America's
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
Instead of the federal government issuing a blanket decree on the status of all undocumented individuals, the sponsorship proposal would empower Americans themselves to solve one of the most perplexing and historic dilemmas of our time. And not only would such a program encourage undocumented Americans to come out of the shadows, but it would also strengthen our communities and enhance our culture like the immigration boom in the early 1900s.

Of course, a sponsorship program can only be implemented as part of systemic immigration reform. Unless our borders are secured and our visa process updated to meet 21st century needs, a sponsorship program would only encourage additional illegal immigration. And any solution's effectiveness requires that immigration laws no longer be wildly inconsistent, but strictly enforced in all jurisdictions.

America's politicians have to stop pretending that granting amnesty or mass deportation will solve the problem of having tens of millions of people living in the country illegally. Instead, we must look for solutions that allow these individuals to come out of the shadows and welcomed into our communities. A community-based sponsorship or mentoring program may be the most effective way of actually accomplishing that goal.

For people of faith, this presents an opportunity of biblical proportions. Just as this is an opportunity for Americans to display the best of America, it also is an opportunity for the church to be the church. Either way, it's a win/win that relies on the fabric of America, her people, versus the bureaucracy of government.
Bob Vander Plaats is the president and CEO of The FAMiLY LEADER.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2Hju2d1

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Here's a new, compassionate idea for dealing with illegal immigration

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Sponsorship would be a community-building approach to integrating immigrants that treats them with dignity and makes citizens part of the solution. While the debate over immigration rages on the national stage, a key piece of the solution may actually be much more American, reflecting the best of the American spirit.

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Refugees and immigrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to live in Spain. These refugees helped by illegal smugglers whose business is booming because of a huge number of refugees and economic immigrant crossing into Europe. According to the Refugees and economic immigrants were coming from Africa.   It goes on to say that the Refugees and immigrants were coming from Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, Eritrea and Senegal rescued in the overcrowded rubber boat.  However, I failed to understand if Pakistan and Bangladesh are African countries.

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Refugees and immigrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to live in Spain. These refugees helped by illegal smugglers whose business is booming because of a huge number of refugees and economic immigrant crossing into Europe. According to the Refugees and economic immigrants were coming from Africa.   It goes on to say that the Refugees and immigrants were coming from Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, Eritrea and Senegal rescued in the overcrowded rubber boat.  However, I failed to understand if Pakistan and Bangladesh are African countries.

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By Narice
https://www.mail.com/int/news/europe/8467870-spain-rescues-476-migrants-crossing-mediterranean.html#.1258-stage-hero1-3

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Social entrepreneurs in collaboration with big pharma to tackle major health challenges

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Social entrepreneurs in collaboration with big pharma to tackle major health challenges

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Leaps by Bayer and Norrsken join forces to solve global challenges related to health and nutrition. The partnership involves collaboration locally in Sweden as well as globally, including a potential expansion of Norrsken's global presence to support social impact entrepreneurs.
"The collaboration with Norrsken opens up a great opportunity to bring the amazing individuals on both sides together to share ideas and potentially create new businesses together" says Dr. Axel Bouchon, Head of Leaps by Bayer.

Norrsken and Leaps by Bayer share the ambition to tackle the biggest challenges facing humanity. An aging and growing population needs disruptive innovations to heal and feed the world. With a more than 150-year history in innovation and a clear mission, Science for a better life, from its mother company Bayer, Leaps is committed to spearhead a movement to make paradigm-shifting advances in the life sciences - targeting the breakthroughs that could fundamentally change the world for the better.

"When we met with Leaps by Bayer for the first time, we immediately saw the significant overlap in values and ambition level between Norrsken and Leaps. Therefore we believe there is tremendous opportunity for us and all the Norrsken companies with this partnership. True to their vision, Leaps is taking a big bet on Norrsken to help enable an impact unicorn, a company positively affecting one billion people", says Erik Engellau-Nilsson, the CEO of Norrsken Foundation.

Bayer and Norrsken will jointly strive for Norrsken House entrepreneurs and Bayer employees to collaborate and develop new business models and ideas. Norrsken and Bayer will work together on events and Mashup seminars hosted at Norrsken House throughout the year.
About Norrsken
Norrsken Foundation is a Swedish non-profit organization founded in 2016 with the purpose of solving some of the world's most pressing challenges. The Foundation runs the award winning co-working hub Norrsken House, an impact VC fund of €30M and two in-house initiatives, Klarity & 29k. The Foundation has secured €200M in funding from the co-founder of the Swedish fin-tech unicorn Klarna.
About Leaps by Bayer
Leaps by Bayer is a unique approach to addressing breakthrough innovation. It is designed for the specific purpose of tackling fundamental innovations in the fields of health and nutrition with the help of new technologies. The ideas and challenges are all outstandingly ambitious and the operating model is to build new companies in collaboration with third parties such as biotech companies, venture capital funds or hedge funds to foster technology combination and know-how amplification.

Contact Bayer
Joseffa Moritz, Communications and Public and Governmental Affairs, Bayer AB, joseffa.moritz@bayer.com, 073 301 75 52

Contact Norrsken
Funda Sezgi, Chief House Officer, funda@norrskenfoundation.org, 072 962 39 29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFlYU_pAud8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7t-qZjKLI4&t=47s
Om Bayer
Bayer är en global koncern med kärnkompetens inom life science-områdena hälsa och jordbruk. Våra produkter och tjänster syftar till att förbättra livskvaliteten hos såväl människor som djur. Bayer har som målsättning att skapa värde genom innovation, tillväxt och hög intjäningsförmåga. Bayer har förbundit sig att följa principerna för hållbar utveckling och att agera som ett socialt och etiskt ansvarstagande företag. 2016 hade Bayer cirka 99 800 anställda och en omsättning på 35 miljarder euro. Kapitalkostnaderna uppgick till 2,4 miljarder euro och investeringarna i forskning och utveckling till 4,5 miljarder euro. För mer information, besök www.bayer.se.

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Bayer and Norrsken in partnership to conquer hugest challenges facing humanity

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Leaps by Bayer and Norrsken join forces to solve global challenges related to health and nutrition. The partnership involves collaboration locally in Sweden as well as globally, including a potential expansion of Norrsken's global presence to support social impact entrepreneurs.

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Into Unity: A Journey into Ecovillage Living

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Into Unity: A Journey into Ecovillage Living

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Into Unity: A Journey into Ecovillage Living

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6 minutes | "Together with others, I know I can get much further." INTO UNITY tells a story that is both personal and universal: that of our deep sense of longing for a truer way of living. In this...

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Human Rights Watch investigates the ICC's practices on preliminary examinations which decides on opening a case or not. This article describes some interesting barriers and findings that illuminates a part of the inner-workings of this transnational network.

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© 2009 Mauricio Duenas/AFP/Getty Images

(The Hague) - The prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has important leverage to encourage countries to investigate and prosecute grave international crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 181-page report, " Pressure Point: The ICC's Impact on National Justice," examines aspects of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor's practices in its preliminary examinations, which determine whether the court's criteria to open a full investigation are met. Human Rights Watch found serious obstacles to justice in national courts, and mixed success in spurring progress in domestic prosecutions through the office's interactions with authorities in Guinea, Colombia, Georgia, and the United Kingdom. But Human Rights Watch concluded that the office's engagement can help make an important contribution.

"Twenty years after the Rome treaty, the ICC's burgeoning caseload and limited resources underscore the need for fair and effective domestic prosecutions," said Elizabeth Evenson, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch. "More ICC member countries should support the prosecutor's efforts to encourage successful local proceedings."

The report draws heavily on Human Rights Watch interviews with more than 140 government officials, representatives of nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations, and ICC officials.

The ICC is a court of last resort, stepping in only where national authorities are unwilling or unable to genuinely prosecute serious international crimes. The ICC's limited resources mean that even where the court opens investigations, it should work with national authorities to bolster domestic cases to promote a comprehensive approach to justice.

The ICC prosecutor can have particular influence during preliminary examinations, a step before the opening of a formal ICC investigation. These examinations can propel countries to pursue their own investigations and prosecutions, eliminating the need for the ICC to step in, Human Rights Watch said.

The ICC prosecutor engages with national authorities to encourage domestic trials only in certain circumstances that meet specific criteria, including whether national efforts already exist, or the government has made a commitment to carry out national efforts. Of the four countries reviewed, the ICC prosecutor's office has had the most significant role in Guinea, followed by Colombia, and a far more limited role in Georgia. In the United Kingdom, where the examination concerns alleged war crimes by UK armed forces in Iraq against detainees in its custody, the office, consistent with its policies, had not yet sought to encourage national proceedings during the period covered by the Human Rights Watch research.

In December 2017, a panel of judges in Guinea concluded its domestic investigation of a September 2009 attack by security forces on opposition supporters and referred the case for trial. Progress in the seven-year-long investigation was halting, and the trial has yet to be scheduled. But the ICC prosecutor's intense engagement with Guinean authorities - including more than a dozen visits to the country and identifying specific investigative steps needed, like interviewing key witnesses - has helped motivate progress. Other actors, including victims' associations and UN experts, have also played a key role.

Such efforts should be replicated to a greater degree in the office's other preliminary examinations, Human Rights Watch said. In Colombia, the ICC prosecutor's office pressed the government on the need for accountability for "false positive" killings, the thousands of unlawful killings between 2002 and 2008 that military personnel officially reported as lawful killings in combat. Hundreds of cases were brought nationally against low and mid-level soldiers.

But the ICC prosecution's broad statements in public and in meetings with government officials did not set out specific findings and benchmarks, providing insufficient pressure on authorities to act more decisively in cases against high-level officials, Human Rights Watch said. There are signs this approach is changing, including when the current ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, was in Colombia in 2017. During that visit, she publicly identified gaps in the information authorities provided about national prosecutions.

"The ICC prosecutor's office should tailor its approaches in each preliminary examination," Evenson said. "But to avoid the appearance of double standards, the office needs to be clear about its activities. It also needs the financial resources to adapt its work through frequent engagement in these countries with officials and civil society."

Expectations for the prosecutor's office need to be realistic, Human Rights Watch said. Across all four countries, the absence of sufficient political will to deliver justice domestically posed a steep obstacle. While there are national investigations in all four countries, for the most part, only Colombia has carried out relevant prosecutions. Leaving enough space to national authorities to act, while being prepared to step in if they do not go forward, is a difficult balancing act.

The ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary examination just after the August 2008 armed conflict between Georgia and Russia over the South Ossetia region, but only opened a full-blown investigation in January 2016, after authorities in Georgia abandoned their investigations. Stronger engagement with nongovernmental groups and more pressure on the Georgian authorities to be transparent about the status of their investigation may have helped the ICC prosecutor conclude sooner that its own investigations were warranted, limiting delays in victims' access to justice, Human Rights Watch said.

Greater transparency about national proceedings is also needed to strengthen partnerships with local groups, which can be key allies. The ICC prosecutor could also press government authorities to provide more information about the status of investigations to these organizations. It would strengthen their advocacy and help the ICC verify government claims about its progress. In some cases, involvement by victims in proceedings and media coverage can also help mount pressure on authorities.

"The ICC prosecutor cannot go it alone when it comes to sparking progress toward national justice efforts," Evenson said. "Effective relationships between the ICC and activist groups, UN agencies, national authorities, and donor governments are needed to mobilize justice at the national level."

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ICC Prosecutor Can Spur National Justice

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(The Hague) - The prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has important leverage to encourage countries to investigate and prosecute grave international crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

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The Culture of Individualism and Collectivism in Balancing Accountability and Innovation in Education

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228322260_The_Culture_of_Individualism_and_Collectivism_in_Balancing_Accountability_and_Innovation_in_Education_An_Islamic_Perspective

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228322260_The_Culture_of_Individualism_and_Collectivism_in_Balancing_Accountability_and_Innovation_in_Education_An_Islamic_Perspective

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This article discusses how collective agency can support the implementation of sustainability policies. It uncovers how individual and collective levels are linked. It also includes a framework that helps to analyse how grassroot organizations emerge.

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A big area where a new airport is planned close to Nantes in France has been squatted by people including locals, farmers and others for 10 years. They have built up an autonomous, almost self sufficient community but are always fighting with the state and police. Now, they are struggeling to defend this area from eviction again.

Some background: https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/dec/28/end-of-la-zad-frances-utopian-anti-airport-community-faces-bitter-last-stand

Great story from last months big battle with the French police:
https://zadforever.blog/2018/04/24/the-revenge-against-the-commons/

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Movements and Refugees In Israel

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As government rhetoric regarding mass deportation continues to unnerve Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers - as well as many Israelis - Rabbis for Human Rights launched an Anne Frank-inspired campaign last week to protect them.

And on Saturday, 470 university professors from across the nation wrote an open letter to President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of Knesset, also demanding deportation efforts cease immediately.

"We, academic staff at universities and colleges in Israel, call upon the prime minister, the president and the members of Knesset to take a courageous moral stand on the issue of asylum-seekers from Sudan and Eritrea," the letter states.

"We urge you to reverse the government's decision to arrest and forcibly expel asylum-seekers who are in Israel."

The letter and the Rabbis for Human Rights campaign come amid reports that Netanyahu's coalition intends to either incarcerate or deport the majority of the nation's 38,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers to a third country, believed to be Rwanda, beginning on April 1.

Although the Interior Ministry has not confirmed the reports, the government is offering African migrants $3,500 each to leave the country voluntarily. Those who refuse to self-deport will reportedly be imprisoned indefinitely, or sent to Rwanda, whose government will reportedly be paid $5,000 a head to accept them.

The Israeli rabbis behind the movement to protect the migrants include Susan Silverman, the sister of US comedienne Sarah Silverman, Haaretz reported.

"Who here would be willing to house [asylum-seekers]?" Silverman asked last week during a gathering of rabbis and educators in Jerusalem upon announcing the campaign, the newspaper reported.

"Anne Frank is the most well-known hidden person, and she was hidden so she would not be sent to her death, and we have documentation that these people are facing possible death," she said.

Indeed, several human rights NGOs and refugees have called deportation to Rwanda effectively a death sentence, saying its government is autocratic and has a record of torture.

The professors in their letter noted that Jewish history has been plagued by persecution necessitating refugee status, and said the government must remember and honor the past by showing the humanity Jews were denied.

"The history of our people obligates the State of Israel to serve as a model for children and adults seeking refuge from ethnic cleansing, persecution and political violence, human trafficking, rape and torture," the letter continues.

"The State of Israel is large and strong enough to provide temporary shelter for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from East Africa, up until the time they will be able to return home freely and safely."

Citing the government's refusal to review thousands of pending asylum applications - despite Israel's signing of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees - the professors demanded five steps be taken before incarceration or deportations are approved.

"I. We must discuss all requests for asylum submitted to the authorities fairly and with compassion," the letter states.

"II. We must not forcibly expel asylum-seekers to Africa, Rwanda or any other country.

"III. We must immediately cease the detention policy of asylum-seekers.

"IV. We must immediately desist from the separate taxation policy and the economic damage focused on the income of asylum-seekers.

"V. We must grant asylum-seekers their rights... in accordance with international law."

In the interim, the signatories demanded that all refugees be given access to housing, food, health- and mental healthcare services, kindergartens, schools, daycare centers, education and employment.

The letter concludes by asking the government how it will explain its current deportation policy to future generations.

"Prime minister, president, members of Knesset: What will we tell our children and grandchildren when they ask us, 'What have you done to the asylum-seekers from Sudan and Eritrea? How did you protect them? Have you done the right thing? What was their fate?" the letter asks. "Do the right thing. Do what the world had to do for us."

THE CALLS to action also follow a recent letter from prominent leaders of the North American Jewish community to Netanyahu urging him not to follow through on threats of imprisonment and deportation.

The leaders, who sent an initial letter regarding the issue to the prime minister in November, urged him to allow North American Jews to help resolve the matter humanely.

"The government of Israel recently announced its plans to imprison or potentially deport tens of thousands of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers unless they leave voluntarily before April," the recent letter states.

"The ultimatum follows a mounting campaign of escalation on the part of the Israeli government to pressure the roughly 38,000 African asylum-seekers remaining in Israel to self-deport.

"While Israeli authorities contend that the population in question - most of whom entered Israel between 2007 and 2012 - are economic migrants, HIAS and other rights groups argue that they are asylum-seekers and refugees deserving of protection."

Signatory Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees, added that a "line has been crossed."

"Forcing asylum-seekers to choose between imprisonment and self-deportation violates the international protections Israel helped create after the Holocaust to ensure that individuals fleeing war and genocide have the opportunity to find safety," he said.

"In the United States, Israel and around the world, HIAS and our supporters remain committed to addressing the global refugee crisis in a compassionate, humane and legal way," Hetfield continued.

Outside of Israel, an average of 84% of Eritrean asylum-seekers and 56% of Sudanese nationals are granted legal status, the US Jewish leaders noted - adding that in Israel, less than 1% of asylum claims have been accepted.

Since 2013, only 11 Africans - 10 Eritreans and one Sudanese national - have been granted asylum, despite thousands of applications.

"Israel has both a responsibility and a capacity to do the right thing and not put refugees' lives in jeopardy," the letter continued.

"They came to us to seek protection, and we cannot turn our backs on them. We cannot turn our backs on our own heritage."

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Rabbis launch movement to protect African migrants from deportation

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As government rhetoric regarding mass deportation continues to unnerve Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers - as well as many Israelis - Rabbis for Human Rights launched an Anne Frank-inspired campaign last week to protect them. And on Saturday, 470 university professors from across the nation wrote an open letter to President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of Knesset, also demanding deportation efforts cease immediately.

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International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

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International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

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ICAN composes of volunteers from all over the globe, with some joining at just 10 years old, to advocate for non-nuclear-armed states negotiate a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

http://www.icanw.org

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Since its founding in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007, ICAN has encouraged and accepted contributions from every person of every age. "ICAN is not a youth organization," explains Tim Wright, ICAN's very first volunteer. "We're an intergenerational campaign. Indeed, that's one of our greatest strengths. We have octogenarians working alongside school students. No one is too young or too old to contribute to a world free of nuclear weapons."

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For Thea Katrin Mjelstad, from Norway, this was part of what drew her to ICAN. "For us new ones with no experience, only with a lot of enthusiasm and engagement for this cause, ICAN was really a place were we were allowed to be a part, contribute with what we could and learn, and develop a lot," she explains. "It didn't matter if you had done this work for six months or 60 years, everyone was welcome."

The power of social justice

Both Tim and Thea joined ICAN in their early 20s. But Tim was only 10 years old when he first became an antinuclear activist. "I remember learning about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and being horrified. How could such acts be committed?"

Injustice is a powerful motivator for youth engagement in political causes. In large part, this is because of the context in which today's youth are growing up. Globalization, neoliberal capitalism, rising costs of education, and increasingly precarious employment conditions make having time for activism more difficult, but also make it easier to see global and local connections and inequalities. This is certainly part of what is driving young people and students to protest gun violence today in the United States. Nuclear weapons can and have had the same effect.

It was when Clare Conboy moved to the United Kingdom from Ireland, at the age of 25, that she got involved in ICAN. It was the injustice of nuclear weapons that drove her to action. "When I moved to the UK, suddenly it was impossible for me not to have an opinion on nuclear weapons," remarks Clare. "They were in the news, reference to 'our deterrent' was constant; at the same time, the UK was continuing a policy of austerity measures, where the levels of inequality were growing rapidly. In the same news program, they would cover the exponential growth of people needing food banks and then the hundreds of millions of pounds that the government was, at that time, hoping to put into Trident."

Similarly, three medical students in the United States from one of ICAN's partner organizations have recently been compelled to antinuclear activism, seeing it as "part of our generation's progressive movement for an equitable, livable future." They argue that efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons are "enmeshed in a larger international movement for racial, economic, and social justice."

It's clear from student and youth activism against both guns and nuclear weapons, as well as climate change and other critical issues, that young people care about the world they're growing up in and want to do something about it. But many don't feel they have a way to change things. Young people around the world often view their current political systems as broken. In some cases, these systems are set up to discount young people's experiences and contributions.

In this context, it's not easy to figure out how to get involved or make change. But many youth do anyway-particularly when there are alternatives available to them, such as organizations or campaigns that will welcome and even encourage their contributions and give them a chance to challenge the structures and attitudes that prevent their involvement in more traditional spheres of political action.

It took a while, Clare says, but she eventually realized that "if I was willing to contribute and could figure out how best to do that, then my contribution would actually make a difference." Clare was involved in ICAN's digital campaigning, and remembers as a highlight of her work filming Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow deliver ICAN's closing statement after the nuclear-ban treaty was adopted on July 7, 2017.

Valuing lived experience and creative contributions

The participation of survivors and others with lived experiences of the bomb was a crucial, life-changing experience for many young people engaging with ICAN. The campaign included survivors from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as well as of nuclear testing in Australia, the Pacific, and Kazakhstan, as part of its delegation to the nuclear-ban negotiations.

Hibakusha Stories, an ICAN partner in New York, has for years brought atomic-bomb survivors into New York City high schools. Hearing the testimony of those who have suffered because of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has had an impact on many students' lives. A student from Queens said that before hearing from a survivor, the atomic bombings were just something that happened in World War II. "They didn't really mean anything to me. When you can put a face to the story, it really changes your perspective."

The prominence of lived experience in antinuclear activism has been one of the virtues of the movement, long before ICAN. But the combination of youth and survivor participation has been important for opening up space for new strategies as well as new styles of engagement. "Young people...engage in political participation and learn about and practice citizenship through a variety of creative, informal practices in their everyday lives," argues Lesley Pruitt in a study of young people, citizenship, and political participation. Many of these practices involve new technologies, or new ways of connecting with people across borders and experiences.

Leo Hoffmann-Axthelm, raised in Venice and Berlin, got involved in antinuclear work in his early 20s. A friend of his in Germany, Jacob Romer, had started a project to educate young people about nuclear weapons through video interviews. "We prepped each other on nuclear policy via DIY workshops on the weekends," Leo recollects. Once he had a taste of the issue, he wanted to get further involved, and was drawn to ICAN's demand for a ban on nuclear weapons, seeing it as a "refreshing" idea.

Creativity and accessibility were always a big part of the campaign, together with relentless hope and optimism. From its beginning, ICAN has sought to stigmatize nuclear weapons using " humor, horror, and hope ". While the horror of nuclear weapons is important to convey the urgency of the situation, hope is essential to drive people to action.

Community and collective action

The promise of collective action in a supportive, relatively flat structure has also brought many young people to ICAN. Building community and interconnectedness are a big part of engaging youth in activism, suggest several studies of youth participation. With the pressures of school and even work at an earlier age, most young people engaging in political work do so because it is part of their social life.

Building community and networks across borders is something that antinuclear activism has always offered. In the 1980s, protesters in Western Europe and North America were connected in their opposition and even in many of their actions. ICAN has sought to reinforce the transnational character of this work-and to include activists from countries that traditionally hadn't been very active in antinuclear work.

Linnet Ngayu, from Kenya, says she was drawn to the "synergy and complementarity among campaigners" in ICAN. She was encouraged by the "unity in diversity and accord amongst campaigners of different ages, nationalities, religious or political affiliations," to which she attributes keeping "the momentum of the campaign alive."

Similarly, Willem Staes, from Belgium, highlights the "amazing experience" of working closely with fellow ICAN campaigners from around the world. "The level of energy, passion, friendship, and knowledge in the ICAN family is something I've never experienced before. Being able to establish such close relationships and knowing that you can always fall back on others if you need some particular is really great."

Making information accessible

Though drawn to the same culture of community within the campaign, Willem and Linnet had different entry points to antinuclear activism. Willem was 23 when he organized a direct action against the US nuclear weapons stationed in Belgium. It marked the 30th anniversary of 400,000 Belgians marching against the deployment of US cruise missiles in their country, he explains. "Learning about this past, but at the same time realizing that not much has really changed since, triggered my involvement in the antinukes movement."

Linnet got involved when she was 29 years old, after she read for the first time about the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in preparation for a project at her new job at the African Council of Religious Leaders-Religions for Peace. "It made a lasting impression," she says.

Their experiences indicate that the challenge to becoming engaged in antinuclear work isn't lack of interest but lack of exposure to information. The same can be said about US students today. What information are they receiving about nuclear weapons? What kind of access do they have to media that contextualizes within their lives the current arsenal buildups or threats to use these weapons?

The level of knowledge and experience of gun violence, and of the influence of the NRA as the key obstacle to changing gun laws, vastly outweighs the knowledge or experience of nuclear violence and of the structures and systems sustaining nuclear weapons. Even when students are active on related issues-such as gun control or climate change-they do not necessarily have a context to relate those issues to nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons cultures.

There is great potential for alliance and learning between the antinuclear and the climate-change movements in particular. The environmental impacts of nuclear weapons, including nuclear winter and global famine, should be a mutual issue of grave concern. But we need to do much more to ensure that young activists can connect with the information, and that it resonates with their lives, provides community, and allows their creative agency to flourish.

Making activism accessible

In addition to making information about nuclear weapons accessible, interesting, and engaging, we also need to make activism itself more accessible.

ICAN has done well as a transnational, intergenerational advocacy network, but it cannot claim to have mobilized millions for the cause. To sustain and grow this network will require careful attention to the gender, race, class, and age dimensions of activism.

This means creating spaces that are safe from sexual harassment, assault, and abuse and developing reliable mechanisms to safely report and confront any such behavior.

It means making sure that youth from lower-income situations can participate actively. Whether it's attending meetings or participating in direct actions, all activism has financial costs. Arrests can affect employment. Advocacy can require nice clothes or travel or time off work. How can we ensure that activism is accessible for all?

It means ensuring that everyone's contributions are respected equally, regardless of race, religion, or background. There is a rich history of black organizing against nuclear weapons in the United States, just as there has been against gun violence. But these contributions have not been recognized in the same way. Unlike the students of Parkland, the teenagers protesting against gun violence in Ferguson or other sites of police violence against black youth were not given the same positive coverage by the mainstream media

These are challenges for any movement, not just the antinuclear one. But in movements against weapons and for peace, it's crucial that we reflect the principles for which we're campaigning. Otherwise, we are just a bunch of hypocrites- and we know what the youth think about that.

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Since its founding in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007, ICAN has encouraged and accepted contributions from every person of every age. "ICAN is not a youth organization," explains Tim Wright, ICAN's very first volunteer. "We're an intergenerational campaign. Indeed, that's one of our greatest strengths. We have octogenarians working alongside school students.

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It’s interesting to consider the ‘collective agency’ of the nations involved in the COP 23 agreement in Bonn. We know there’s difficulties with allocation of responsibility in such a large scale demonstration of collaboration...

https://theconversation.com/amp/cop-23-three-ways-cities-are-leading-the-fight-against-climate-change-87277

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"Documents show ties between university, conservative donors"

https://apnews.com/0c87e4318bcc4eb9b8e69f9f54c7b889

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A New Wave Against the Rock: New social movements in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear meltdown

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A New Wave Against the Rock: New social movements in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear meltdown

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A New Wave Against the Rock: New social movements in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear meltdown | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

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This article seeks to grasp the character of the new social movements that appeared around the world in the decade beginning in 2010, using the antinuclear movement in Japan after the Fukushima disaster as a case study. It examines why these movements have not had a direct effect on elections.

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“...The transformation of the state from a provider of public welfare to a promoter of markets and competition helps to enable this shift.”
https://theconversation.com/amp/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755

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"Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals"

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"Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals"

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/jul/17/neoliberalism-has-conned-us-into-fighting-climate-change-as-individuals

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"Competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity"

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"Competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity"

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An interesting and in-depth analysis of how neoliberalism was legitimized and what it really means for world citizens.

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Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over "neoliberalism": they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called out a "neoliberal agenda" for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality.

Neoliberalism is an old term, dating back to the 1930s, but it has been revived as a way of describing our current politics - or more precisely, the range of thought allowed by our politics. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, it was a way of assigning responsibility for the debacle, not to a political party per se, but to an establishment that had conceded its authority to the market. For the Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK, this concession was depicted as a grotesque betrayal of principle. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it was said, had abandoned the left's traditional commitments, especially to workers, in favour of a global financial elite and the self-serving policies that enriched them; and in doing so, had enabled a sickening rise in inequality.

Over the past few years, as debates have turned uglier, the word has become a rhetorical weapon, a way for anyone left of centre to incriminate those even an inch to their right. (No wonder centrists say it's a meaningless insult: they're the ones most meaningfully insulted by it.) But "neoliberalism" is more than a gratifyingly righteous jibe. It is also, in its way, a pair of eyeglasses.

Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market (and not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as profit-and-loss calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). Of course the goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and - always - to cut taxes and deregulate. But "neoliberalism" indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list. It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals.

Still peering through the lens, you see how, no less than the welfare state, the free market is a human invention. You see how pervasively we are now urged to think of ourselves as proprietors of our own talents and initiative, how glibly we are told to compete and adapt. You see the extent to which a language formerly confined to chalkboard simplifications describing commodity markets (competition, perfect information, rational behaviour) has been applied to all of society, until it has invaded the grit of our personal lives, and how the attitude of the salesman has become enmeshed in all modes of self-expression.

In short, "neoliberalism" is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises with finance capitalism made by failing social democratic parties. It is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity.

No sooner had neoliberalism been certified as real, and no sooner had it made clear the universal hypocrisy of the market, than the populists and authoritarians came to power. In the US, Hillary Clinton, the neoliberal arch-villain, lost - and to a man who knew just enough to pretend he hated free trade. So are the eyeglasses now useless? Can they do anything to help us understand what is broken about British and American politics? Against the forces of global integration, national identity is being reasserted, and in the crudest possible terms. What could the militant parochialism of Brexit Britain and Trumpist America have to do with neoliberal rationality? What possible connection is there between the president - a freewheeling boob - and the bloodless paragon of efficiency known as the free market?

It isn't only that the free market produces a tiny cadre of winners and an enormous army of losers - and the losers, looking for revenge, have turned to Brexit and Trump. There was, from the beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present in which we find ourselves; between the market as unique discloser of value and guardian of liberty, and our current descent into post-truth and illiberalism.

Moving the stale debate about neoliberalism forward begins, I think, with taking seriously the measure of its cumulative effect on all of us, regardless of affiliation. And this requires returning to its origins, which have nothing to do with Bill or Hillary Clinton. There once was a group of people who did call themselves neoliberals, and did so proudly, and their ambition was a total revolution in thought. The most prominent among them, Friedrich Hayek, did not think he was staking out a position on the political spectrum, or making excuses for the fatuous rich, or tinkering along the edges of microeconomics.

He thought he was solving the problem of modernity: the problem of objective knowledge. For Hayek, the market didn't just facilitate trade in goods and services; it revealed truth. How did his ambition collapse into its opposite - the mind-bending possibility that, thanks to our thoughtless veneration of the free market, truth might be driven from public life altogether?

hen the idea occurred to Friedrich Hayekin 1936, he knew, with the conviction of a "sudden illumination", that he had struck upon something new. "How can the combination of fragments of knowledge existing in different minds," he wrote, "bring about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess?"

This was not a technical point about interest rates or deflationary slumps. This was not a reactionary polemic against collectivism or the welfare state. This was a way of birthing a new world. To his mounting excitement, Hayek understood that the market could be thought of as a kind of mind.

Adam Smith's "invisible hand" had already given us the modern conception of the market: as an autonomous sphere of human activity and therefore, potentially, a valid object of scientific knowledge. But Smith was, until the end of his life, an 18th-century moralist. He thought the market could be justified only in light of individual virtue, and he was anxious that a society governed by nothing but transactional self-interest was no society at all. Neoliberalism is Adam Smith without the anxiety.

That Hayek is considered the grandfather of neoliberalism - a style of thought that reduces everything to economics - is a little ironic given that he was such a mediocre economist. He was just a young, obscure Viennese technocrat when he was recruited to the London School of Economics to compete with, or possibly even dim, the rising star of John Maynard Keynes at Cambridge.

The plan backfired, and Hayek lost out to Keynes in a rout. Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, was greeted as a masterpiece. It dominated the public discussion, especially among young English economists in training, for whom the brilliant, dashing, socially connected Keynes was a beau idéal. By the end of the second world war, many prominent free-marketers had come around to Keynes's way of thinking, conceding that government might play a role in managing a modern economy. The initial excitement over Hayek had dissipated. His peculiar notion that doing nothing could cure an economic depression had been discredited in theory and practice. He later admitted that he wished his work criticising Keynes would simply be forgotten.

Hayek cut a silly figure: a tall, erect, thickly accented professor in high-cut tweed, insisting on the formal "Von Hayek" but cruelly nicknamed "Mr Fluctooations" behind his back. In 1936, he was an academic without a portfolio and with no obvious future. Yet we now live in Hayek's world, as we once lived in Keynes's. Lawrence Summers, the Clinton adviser and former president of Harvard University, has said that Hayek's conception of the price system as a mind is "as penetrating and original an idea as microeconomics produced in the 20th century" and "the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today". This undersells it. Keynes did not make or predict the cold war, but his thinking wended its way into every aspect of the cold-war world; so too has Hayek's thinking woven itself into every aspect of the post-1989 world.

Hayek's was a total worldview: a way of structuring all reality on the model of economic competition. He begins by assuming that nearly all (if not all) human activity is a form of economic calculation, and so can be assimilated to the master concepts of wealth, value, exchange, cost - and especially price. Prices are a means of allocating scarce resources efficiently, according to need and utility, as governed by supply and demand. For the price system to function efficiently, markets must be free and competitive. Ever since Smith imagined the economy as an autonomous sphere, the possibility existed that the market might not just be one piece of society, but society as a whole. Within such a society, men and women need only follow their own self-interest and compete for scarce rewards. Through competition, "it becomes possible", as the sociologist Will Davies has written, "to discern who and what is valuable".

What any person acquainted with history sees as the necessary bulwarks against tyranny and exploitation - a thriving middle class and civil sphere; free institutions; universal suffrage; freedom of conscience, congregation, religion and press; a basic recognition that the individual is a bearer of dignity - held no special place in Hayek's thought. Hayek built into neoliberalism the assumption that the market provides all necessary protection against the one real political danger: totalitarianism. To prevent this, the state need only keep the market free.

This last is what makes neoliberalism "neo". It is a crucial modification of the older belief in a free market and a minimal state, known as "classical liberalism". In classical liberalism, merchants simply asked the state to "leave us alone" - to laissez-nous faire. Neoliberalism recognised that the state must be active in the organisation of a market economy. The conditions allowing for a free market must be won politically, and the state must be re-engineered to support the free market on an ongoing basis.

That isn't all: every aspect of democratic politics, from the choices of voters to the decisions of politicians, must be submitted to a purely economic analysis. The lawmaker is obliged to leave well enough alone - to not distort the natural actions of the marketplace - and so, ideally, the state provides a fixed, neutral, universal legal framework within which market forces operate spontaneously. The conscious direction of government is never preferable to the "automatic mechanism of adjustment" - ie the price system, which is not only efficient but maximises liberty, or the opportunity for men and women to make free choices about their own lives.

As Keynes jetted between London and Washington, creating the postwar order, Hayek sat pouting in Cambridge. He had been sent there during the wartime evacuations; and he complained that he was surrounded by "foreigners" and "no lack of orientals of all kinds" and "Europeans of practically all nationalities, but very few of real intelligence".

Stuck in England, without influence or respect, Hayek had only his idea to console him; an idea so grand it would one day dissolve the ground beneath the feet of Keynes and every other intellectual. Left to its own devices, the price system functions as a kind of mind. And not just any mind, but an omniscient one: the market computes what individuals cannot grasp. Reaching out to him as an intellectual comrade-in-arms, the American journalist Walter Lippmann wrote to Hayek, saying: "No human mind has ever understood the whole scheme of a society ... At best a mind can understand its own version of the scheme, something much thinner, which bears to reality some such relation as a silhouette to a man."

It is a grand epistemological claim - that the market is a way of knowing, one that radically exceeds the capacity of any individual mind. Such a market is less a human contrivance, to be manipulated like any other, than a force to be studied and placated. Economics ceases to be a technique - as Keynes believed it to be - for achieving desirable social ends, such as growth or stable money. The only social end is the maintenance of the market itself. In its omniscience, the market constitutes the only legitimate form of knowledge, next to which all other modes of reflection are partial, in both senses of the word: they comprehend only a fragment of a whole and they plead on behalf of a special interest. Individually, our values are personal ones, or mere opinions; collectively, the market converts them into prices, or objective facts.

After washing out at LSE, Hayek never held a permanent appointment that was not paid for by corporate sponsors. Even his conservative colleagues at the University of Chicago - the global epicentre of libertarian dissent in the 1950s - regarded Hayek as a reactionary mouthpiece, a "stock rightwing man" with a "stock rightwing sponsor", as one put it. As late as 1972, a friend could visit Hayek, now in Salzburg, only to find an elderly man prostrate with self-pity, believing his life's work was in vain. No one cared what he had written!

There had, however, been hopeful signs: Hayek was Barry Goldwater 's favourite political philosopher and was said to be Ronald Reagan's, too. Then there was Margaret Thatcher. To anyone who would listen, Thatcher lionised Hayek, promising to bring together his free-market philosophy with a revival of Victorian values: family, community, hard work.

Hayek met privately with Thatcher in 1975, at the very moment that she, having been named leader of the opposition in the UK, was preparing to bring his Big Idea off the shelf and into history. They huddled for 30 minutes on Lord North Street in London, at the Institute for Economic Affairs. Afterwards, Thatcher's staff anxiously asked Hayek what he had thought. What could he say? For the first time in 40 years, power was mirroring back to Friedrich von Hayek his own cherished self-image, a man who might vanquish Keynes and remake the world.

He replied: "She's so beautiful."

ayek's Big Idea isn't much of an idea - until you supersize it. Organic, spontaneous, elegant processes that, like a million fingers on a Ouija board, coordinate to create outcomes that are otherwise unplanned. Applied to an actual market - one for pork bellies or corn futures - this description is little more than a truism. It can be expanded to describe how various markets, in commodities and labour and even money itself, form that part of a society known as "the economy". This is less banal, but still inconsequential; a Keynesian accepts this description happily. But what if we bump it up one more step? What if we reconceive all of society as a kind of market?

The more Hayek's idea expands, the more reactionary it gets, the more it hides behind its pretence of scientific neutrality - and the more it allows economics to link up with the major intellectual trend of the west since the 17th century. The rise of modern science generated a problem: if the world is universally obedient to natural laws, what does it mean to be human? Is a human being simply an object in the world, like any other? There appears to be no way to assimilate the subjective, interior human experience into nature as science conceives it - as something objective whose rules we discover by observation.

Everything about the postwar political culture lay in favour of John Maynard Keynes, and an expanded role for the state in managing the economy. But everything about the postwar academic culture lay in favour of Hayek's Big Idea. Before the war, even the most rightwing economist thought of the market as a means to a limited end, to the efficient allocation of scarce resources. From the time of Adam Smith in the mid-1700s, and up to that of the founding members of the Chicago school in the postwar years, it was commonplace to believe that the ultimate ends of society and of life, were established in the non-economic sphere.

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John Maynard Keynes, circa 1940. Photograph: Tim Gidal/Getty

On this view, questions of value are resolved politically and democratically, not economically - through moral reflection and public deliberation. The classic modern expression of this belief is found in a 1922 essay called Ethics and the Economic Interpretation by Frank Knight, who arrived at Chicago two decades before Hayek. "The rational economic criticism of values gives results repugnant to common sense," Knight wrote. "Economic man is the selfish, ruthless object of moral condemnation."

Economists had struggled for 200 years with the question of how to place the values on which an otherwise commercial society is organised beyond mere self-interest and calculation. Knight, along with his colleagues Henry Simons and Jacob Viner, were holdouts against Franklin D Roosevelt and the market interventions of the New Deal, and they established the University of Chicago as the intellectually rigorous home of free-market economics that it remains to this day. However, Simons, Viner and Knight all started their careers before the unrivalled prestige of atomic physicists drew enormous sums of money into the university system and kicked off a postwar vogue for "hard" science. They did not worship equations or models, and they worried about non-scientific questions. Most explicitly, they worried about questions of value, where value was absolutely distinct from price.

It is not just that Simons, Viner and Knight were less dogmatic than Hayek, or more willing to pardon the state for taxing and spending. It is not the case that Hayek was their intellectual superior. But they acknowledged as a first principle that society was not the same thing as the market, and that price was not the same thing as value. This set them up to be swallowed whole by history.

It was Hayek who showed us how to get from the hopeless condition of human partiality to the majestic objectivity of science. Hayek's Big Idea acts as the missing link between our subjective human nature, and nature itself. In so doing, it puts any value that cannot be expressed as a price - as the verdict of a market - on an equally unsure footing, as nothing more than opinion, preference, folklore or superstition.

More than anyone, even Hayek himself, it was the great postwar Chicago economist Milton Friedman who helped convert governments and politicians to the power of Hayek's Big Idea. But first he broke with two centuries of precedent and declared that economics is "in principle independent of any particular ethical position or normative judgments" and is "an 'objective' science, in precisely the same sense as any of the physical sciences". Values of the old, mental, normative kind were defective, they were "differences about which men can ultimately only fight". There is the market, in other words, and there is relativism.

arkets may be human facsimiles of natural systems, and like the universe itself, they may be authorless and valueless. But the application of Hayek's Big Idea to every aspect of our lives negates what is most distinctive about us. That is, it assigns what is most human about human beings - our minds and our volition - to algorithms and markets, leaving us to mimic, zombie-like, the shrunken idealisations of economic models. Supersizing Hayek's idea and radically upgrading the price system into a kind of social omniscience means radically downgrading the importance of our individual capacity to reason - our ability to provide and evaluate justifications for our actions and beliefs.

As a result, the public sphere - the space where we offer up reasons, and contest the reasons of others - ceases to be a space for deliberation, and becomes a market in clicks, likes and retweets. The internet is personal preference magnified by algorithm; a pseudo-public space that echoes the voice already inside our head. Rather than a space of debate in which we make our way, as a society, toward consensus, now there is a mutual-affirmation apparatus banally referred to as a "marketplace of ideas". What looks like something public and lucid is only an extension of our own pre-existing opinions, prejudices and beliefs, while the authority of institutions and experts has been displaced by the aggregative logic of big data. When we access the world through a search engine, its results are ranked, as the founder of Google puts it, "recursively" - by an infinity of individual users functioning as a market, continuously and in real time.

The awesome utilities of digital technology aside, an earlier and more humanist tradition, which was dominant for centuries, had always distinguished between our tastes and preferences - the desires that find expression in the market - and our capacity for reflection on those preferences, which allows us to form and express values.

"A taste is almost defined as a preference about which you do not argue," the philosopher and economist Albert O Hirschman once wrote. "A taste about which you argue, with others or yourself, ceases ipso facto being a taste - it turns into a value."

Hirschman drew a distinction between that part of one's self that is a consumer, and that part of one's self that is a supplier of reasons. The market reflects what Hirschman called the preferences that are "revealed by agents as they buy goods and services". But, as he puts it, men and women also "have the ability to step back from their 'revealed' wants, volition and preferences, to ask themselves whether they really want these wants and prefer these preferences". We fashion our selves and identities on the basis of this capacity for reflection. The use of one's individual reflective powers is reason; the collective use of these reflective powers is public reason; the use of public reason to make law and policy is democracy. When we provide reasons for our actions and beliefs, we bring ourselves into being: individually and collectively, we decide who and what we are.

According to the logic of Hayek's Big Idea, these expressions of human subjectivity are meaningless without ratification by the market - as Friedman said, they are nothing but relativism, each as good as any other. When the only objective truth is determined by the market, all other values have the status of mere opinions; everything else is relativist hot air. But Friedman's "relativism" is a charge that can be thrown at any claim based on human reason. It is a nonsense insult, as all humanistic pursuits are "relative" in a way the sciences are not. They are relative to the (private) condition of having a mind, and the (public) need to reason and understand even when we can't expect scientific proof. When our debates are no longer resolved by deliberation over reasons, then the whimsies of power will determine the outcome.

This is where the triumph of neoliberalism meets the political nightmare we are living through now. "You had one job," the old joke goes, and Hayek's grand project, as originally conceived in 30s and 40s, was explicitly designed to prevent a backslide into political chaos and fascism. But the Big Idea was always this abomination waiting to happen. It was, from the beginning, pregnant with the thing it was said to protect against. Society reconceived as a giant market leads to a public life lost to bickering over mere opinions; until the public turns, finally, in frustration to a strongman as a last resort for solving its otherwise intractable problems.

n 1989, an American reporterknocked on the 90-year-old Hayek's door. He was living in Freiburg, West Germany, in a third-floor apartment in a stucco house on Urachstrasse. The two men sat in a sunroom whose windows looked out on the mountains, and Hayek, who was recovering from pneumonia, pulled a blanket over his legs as they spoke.

This was no longer the man who had once wallowed in his own defeat at the hands of Keynes. Thatcher had just written to Hayek in a tone of millennial triumph. None of what she and Reagan had accomplished "would have been possible without the values and beliefs to set us on the right road and provide the right sense of direction". Hayek was now cheerful on his own account, and optimistic about the future of capitalism. As the journalist wrote, "In particular, Hayek sees a greater appreciation for the market among the younger generation. Today unemployed youth in Algiers and Rangoon riot not for centrally planned welfare state but for opportunity: the freedom to buy and sell - jeans, cars, whatever - at whatever prices the market will bear."

Thirty years on, and it can fairly be said that Hayek's victory is unrivalled. We live in a paradise built by his Big Idea. The more closely the world can be made to resemble an ideal market governed only by perfect competition, the more law-like and "scientific" human behaviour, in the aggregate, becomes. Every day we ourselves - no one has to tell us to anymore! - strive to become more perfectly like scattered, discrete, anonymous buyers and sellers; and every day we treat the residual desire to be something more than a consumer as nostalgia, or elitism.

How statistics lost their power - and why we should fear what comes next | William Davies

What began as a new form of intellectual authority, rooted in a devoutly apolitical worldview, nudged easily into an ultra-reactionary politics. What can't be quantified must not be real, says the economist, and how do you measure the benefits of the core faiths of the enlightenment - namely, critical reasoning, personal autonomy and democratic self-government? When we abandoned, for its embarrassing residue of subjectivity, reason as a form of truth, and made science the sole arbiter of both the real and the true, we created a void that pseudo-science was happy to fill.

The authority of the professor, the reformer, the legislator or the jurist does not derive from the market, but from humanistic values such as public spiritedness, conscience or the longing for justice. Long before the Trump administration started demeaning them, such figures had been drained of salience by an explanatory scheme that can't explain them. Surely there is a connection between their growing irrelevance and the election of Trump, a creature of pure whim, a man without the principles or conviction to make for a coherent self. A man without a mind, who represents the total absence of reason, is running the world; or at least ruining it. As a Manhattan real estate wiseguy, though, Trump, hey - he knows what he knows: that his sins have yet to be punished in the marketplace.
Main illustration by Bratislav Milenkovic
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Topics

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Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world

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Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over "neoliberalism": they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism.

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What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory 

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What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory 

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I read this article for another class, and thought it could be related, the most intersting part for me would be the "complication" it explains a bit what being an individual in a collective means

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Russia's conflict between Individualism and Collectivism 

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Russia's conflict between Individualism and Collectivism 

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https://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/the-post-obama-world/only-connect-russia-between-individualism-and-collectivism/