Tick tock?

GREECE: THE END OF AUSTERITY? from Theopi Skarlatos on Vimeo.

Syriza’s victory in Greece is potentially a huge turning point.

Anti-austerity, pro-democracy and justice movements are rising in Spain, where tens of thousands marched yesterday chanting “Tick tock” to count down the time that could be remaining for the dominance of the country’s traditional ruling parties, and it seems also in Belgium.

We shouldn’t forget that these movements represent only the most recent wave of opposition to austerity programs. These protests have been going on around the world, receiving even less attention and respect from the corporate media than those in Europe, for literally decades. Their success in Europe will hopefully contribute to the renewal or construction of links of solidarity with the millions of people in countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean who’ve been defending their rights against Structural Adjustment for so long, often at great cost.

It’s also important to remember that these struggles are not just about policies and statistics but people’s lives, their pain and their possibilities. As Paul Mason reports from Greece:

The organiser [of a Syriza food bank] tells me: “This is the opposite of charity. We’re supporting 120 families in one area, and a lot of the work we do is about isolation, mental health and shame.” You cannot get more micro-political than sitting in a small room with desperate people and talking them out of suicide. Spin becomes impossible, the trust built hard to destroy.

Austerity policies everywhere create suffering, despair, fear, and hopelessness,* and opposing them can mean healing and health. Reading about the refugees of the Spanish Civil War in Los últimos españoles de Mauthausen is a harsh reminder of what’s at stake. Victories of the Left don’t inevitably lead to perfect solutions, but victories of capital and the far Right lead to the ruin of everything good.

* And I’ll reiterate once more for the record: these are NOT failed policies. No reasonable person could possibly believe, given decades of evidence of their effects, that they represent anything other than successful attempts to achieve the real goals of finance capital and the IMF, and no one promoting or implementing them can claim otherwise in good faith.

“…venomous journalists, goitrous academics, wreathed in dollars and stupidity,…”

Aimé Césaire’s 1955 Discourse on Colonialism should be required reading/listening for…the planet.* It’s a brief, lyrical indictment of the entire colonial apparatus. At one point, Césaire tells his anticapitalist-anticolonialist comrades that they should

hold as enemies – loftily, lucidly, consistently – not only sadistic governors and greedy bankers, not only prefects who torture and colonists who flog, not only corrupt, check-licking politicians and subservient judges, but likewise and for the same reason, venomous journalists, goitrous academics, wreathed in dollars and stupidity, ethnographers who go in for metaphysics, presumptuous Belgian theologians, chattering intellectuals born stinking out of the thigh of Nietzsche, the paternalists, the embracers, the corrupters, the back-slappers, the lovers of exoticism, the dividers, the agrarian sociologists, the hoodwinkers, the hoaxers, the hot-air artists, the humbugs, and in general, all those who, performing their functions in the sordid division of labor for the defense of Western bourgeois society, try in diverse ways and by infamous diversions to split up the forces of Progress – even if it means denying the very possibility of Progress – all of them tools of capitalism, all of them, openly or secretly, supporters of plundering colonialism, all of them responsible, all hateful, all slave-traders,…

And sweep out all the obscurers, all the inventors of subterfuges, the charlatans and tricksters, the dealers in gobbledygook. And do not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions. Whether personally – that is, in the private conscience of Peter or Paul – they are or are not colonialists, because the essential thing is that their highly problematical subjective good faith is entirely irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism. [my emphasis]

The list would look much the same today, with a few additions and updated details that change nothing substantive.

* Whatever its problems, and there are problems.

Magritte and the animals

I spent a weekend in New York recently, and had a swell time. Hung out with friends. Enjoyed lovely weather. Had another delicious lunch at Candle Café. (They have frozen entrees now, available at Whole Foods. I tried the tofu and spinach ravioli, and it was quite nice as frozen food goes. They’re pretty pricey, but I would get some more if they were on sale.) Finally got to Moo Shoes and picked up some desperately needed boots. (I’ve been fortunate the weather in the northeast has been unseasonably warm, but I was beginning to feel chilly, and would be starting to look silly, continuing to wear flip flops.) Stayed in the lap of luxury in a suite in a midtown hotel, which I was pained to have to leave after such a short stay.

A highlight was a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. I’d planned to go for the “American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe” show, which was well worth a visit, but was over the moon to learn that the exhibit “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938” had opened that weekend. Magritte has been one of my favorite artists for pretty much ever, and I enjoyed the exhibit immensely. It was a reasonable size, and the period featured is when he did what I consider his best work. I just love his style – the clarity of design, the sophistication of color, the blend of seriousness and play. And everything is so neat and crisp and contained. (…But then I’m probably the only one who actually liked Monk’s paintings.)

Of course, I took special notice of animal themes. I hadn’t been familiar with many of Magritte’s animal-related paintings before, but there were several on display and I found more later online.*

One featured in the exhibit was Pleasure (1927):

One I found online (and I’m surprised I hadn’t come across it before) is Collective Invention (1935):

Another example is Homesickness (1940):

But my favorite work in the show by far, to which I kept returning, was Hunters at the Edge of Night (1928):

It’s not that I believe Magritte was trying in these works to say something about other animals or humans’ relationships with them – that seems very unlikely - but that his use of animal and animal-related imagery in these poetic juxtapositions can evoke feelings and ideas about them that transcend his original intent. These ideas remain consistent, though, with his interest in subverting ordinary understandings.

*The colors in these are terribly distorted, which is unfortunate.