The European periphery as a political laboratory

Our situation demands instead that we look at the periphery of Europe as a political laboratory where a different narrative of social conflict can be developed, looking beyond the demand for more democracy and questioning the entire capitalist mode of production. Against the nation and beyond Europe, refusing any form of cooptation and integration as a radical identity, the main prerequisite for such a political grammar is to pose itself as a constituent practice that departs from the present situation, acknowledging the correlation of forces from a strategic point of view. The growing mobility of labor, along with low-cost flights and all sorts of communication tools provided by the internet can help us forge a new internationalism. In a situation of mass unemployment and precariousness, the ongoing experiment and development of effective tactics of class struggle such as blockades, occupations, wildcat strikes, sabotage, expropriation and riots can exploit the system’s vulnerability to widespread illegality, acting as a point of political recomposition of the working class, overcoming its fragmentation and taking the initiative away from the ruling class.

Ricardo Campos in The European periphery as a political laboratory (Roarmag)