Disrupting European authoritarianism Grassroots organizing, collective action and participatory democracy during the Eurozone crisis

Many critical scholars have tended to analyse the recent development of the European Union (EU) and its member states as a one-way street towards authoritarianism. European crisis management and disciplinary pressures resulting from global capitalism, they argue, have constricted the room for democratic decisions and significantly increased existing tendencies to erode liberal democracy. Drawing on activist experience[i] (and in an attempt to avoid the ‘left melancholy’ that characterizes a number of critical analyses), we try here to provide a more nuanced picture. In doing so, we argue that activists’ experiences during the European crisis have highlighted the increasingly exclusionary nature of the institutions, procedures, and limitations of liberal democracy under capitalism. In addition, they have allowed us to identify new – albeit fragile – forms of social organization that have challenged this growing authoritarianism. In particular, grassroots organizing around daily social problems, alongside efforts to achieve collective self-help, inclusive solidarities, and a feminization of politics – as well as first-person and new forms of participatory democracy (presentist democracy) beyond state institutions – have all been able to partially disturb and disrupt new forms of authoritarian governance. The political turn towards authoritarianism, we conclude, not only largely fails to oppress contradictory movements, but may even – at least for a certain period – produce ‘a veritable explosion of democratic demands’.[ii] The trend towards authoritarianism in the EU thus produces, and is confronted by, undercurrents that challenge it

Challenging the age of austerity: Disruptive agency after the global economic crisis

This article explores the different forms of disruptive subjectivity that have developed in the context of the post-2008 global and European crises. The article traces developments both before and after 2008, with a specific focus on events in Spain and the UK. These country contexts are chosen due to their considerable differences in terms of the impact that the crisis had; yet we witness notable similarities with regard to the instances of refusal and resistance observed, especially in terms of the motives held and forms adopted, albeit with differences in scale. The paper presents the results of qualitative research, including 65 in-depth interviews, to highlight the way in which disaffection, the search for voice, and the threat of withdrawal from relations of exploitation have each become problematic as means of dissent following 2008. As a result, we have seen a merging of these more conventional forms of dissent with a number of more radical prefigurative practices that had been developing prior to 2008. As a result, the stagnation of neoliberal capitalism from 2008 onwards has witnessed the development of a new form of pragmatically prefigurative disruptive subjectivity, responsible for some of the more important and interesting political developments in contemporary advanced industrial democracies

Organització i combat: sindicalisme contra el neoliberalisme autoritari

Venen temps de lluita. La pandèmia ha accelerat processos disciplinadors del treball i el capital mai deixa perdre les oportunitats que cada crisi obre. Però les crisis son també escletxes, moments de debilitat en la capacitat del capital de dominar-nos

Trading solidarity: dockworkers and the EU liberalization of port services Mònica Clua-Losada Trading solidarity: dockworkers and the EU liberalisation of port services

Abstract: This paper discusses the implications that the free trading of labour can have on workers solidarity. The idea of the free trading of labour is introduced as a way to explore the implications of new modes of neoliberal governance within the EU which are increasingly focusing on the free trading of services, therefore, having direct implications on how labour is understood and, more importantly, regulated. To do so, it focuses on European dockworkers and their struggle during the 2000s against the two EU directives designed to liberalise port services (EU directives on Market Access to Port Services). Considering that European dockworkers have, so far, successfully challenged the liberalising attempts of the Commission, the paper contributes to our understanding of successful transnational trade union action

Trump’s authoritarian neoliberal governance and the US-Mexican border

This article considers how US border policy and the rhetorical use of the construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico expands our understanding of the authoritarian neoliberal reorganization of the state and processes of capitalist accumulation during the Trump Presidency. Our argument makes an important contribution to the literature by examining how Trump\u27s Border Wall project is an advanced mode of authoritarian neoliberalism. To do so, the article focuses on how the border wall, as an unfinished project that has resulted in the Trump administration invoking eminent domain to take property for dubious “public good” uses related to border wall construction, expands, deepens and reinforces notions of political and economic disciplining of border populations including migrants and refugees in particular ways such as through the use of child separation and “Remain in Mexico” policies. The article situates the border wall project within a continuum of using border imaginary not just as a frontier but as a key node within the global economy. This article argues that the construction of the border wall, as a key issue in the political agenda combined with an aggressive anti-immigration policy, has been an effective populist mechanism to further insulate the deepening of a neoliberal agenda