through europe - de-growth

The Ghost Dance of the Economy

Federico Campagna — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:32:58 +0000

(music: ‘Stress’ by Justice)

As a matter of fact, economy is the religion of the current era. It is through the economy that the inhabitants of today’s world are given the possibility to achieve a better life (once the afterlife has disappeared), to enter the Olympus of glamour, and to be today’s equivalent of a good believer: that is, a winner. Like every religion, the economy also has its churches, its priests and its wars.

The main religious war ended just twenty years ago, when the crusaders of Western Capitalism defeated the infidels of Soviet Marxism. A few years of jubilee followed, through the 1990s, when the gods of growth, credit and liquidity (the holy trinity of GDP) cast their benevolent gaze all over the chosen people of the West. But then, inevitably, as soon as the golden age ended, a new wave of war took over.

Sceptici oggi

Franco Berardi Bifo — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Come Socrate, anche Pirrone di Elide non ci ha lasciato alcun testo.

Sappiamo che visse a cavallo del quarto secolo avanti Cristo, e partecipò alla spedizione verso l’India al seguito di Alessandro. Diogene Lerzio ci riferisce di lui che fu dapprima pittore, udì le lezioni di Brisone, poi ebbe contatti con i Gimnosofisti in India. Quel che sappiamo della sua dottrina e del suo insegnamento ci viene da Timone, e ci permette di vedere in Pirrone il precursore di Sesto Empirico, Saturnino e altri vissuti in epoca ellenistica, che si definirono scettici.

Skeptics today

Franco Berardi Bifo — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Like Socrates, Pyrrho of Elis left us no text.

We know that he lived between the 4^th and 3^rd centuries BC, and that he joined Alexander the Great’s expedition to India. Diogenes Laertius tells that he was a painter at first, that he then heard the lessons of Bryson and had contacts with the Gymnosophists in India. What we know of his teachings comes from Timon and makes Pyrrho the precursor of Sextus Empiricus, Saturninus and others who between 150 and 250 BC defined themselves as skeptics in the Hellenistic period.

European decline as therapeutic paradox

Franco Berardi Bifo — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:00:00 +0000

For years European intellectuals like Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, among many others, have stressed the refrain: “We need to develop an ability of common political decision at the level of the Union.”

The euro version of the Neoliberal Dogma, namely the Maastricht monetarist engine has been producing effects on social life: reduction of wages, cuts of social spending, but the only seemed to be a Big Leap in the creation of the political Union.