legitimising criticism

I've slowly started writing my paper on the anthropological assumptions in the discourse on solidary economy. Writing papers is a funny thing, especially in philosophy/ theory. I usually have the feelings that my brain is not powerful enough to organise the concepts and levels of analysis in any meaningful way - which is why it took me so long to eventually get down to writing. At the same time though, yesterday as I was formulating my thesis, I experienced again this strange impression that what needs to be written exists somewhere outside of me, and I simply need to fight with the disorder in my head to find IT. Obviously, there is no such objective universal text that everybody would have access to and write if she/he strained herself enough - no transcendental text available to higher thinkers. All the same, as I wrote and realised what I wanted to write, I felt like a sculptor discovering as his hands move what he was meant to sculpt. And ignore the kitschiness of this metaphore. Or rather, ignore the whole metaphore and that I ever said anything.

The anthropological assumptions in solidary economy... You may be wondering what by jove may hide behind such a topic. And rightly so.
Solidary economy has emerged over the past year in part of the German altermondialist movement as a term to oppose to capitalism, without using terms such as socialism or communism, whose meaning the mainstream think they know but don't, and thus associate with entirely different concepts (Totalitarianism, stalinism, control...) than originally meant (equality, freedom, respect, fair repartition of wealth...). So there's a linguistic fight linked to the term, but it also fits in with a more general mood in altermondialist movements; a desire to SHOW, to make visible, that there are alternatives to capitalism, and that we do not have to follow the logic of profits and destruction. Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis' The Take is another example of these efforts to answer the question "if not capitalism, what then?" (which in a way seems as absurd as the question "if not an economic system based on slavery, what then?").

What I find interesting in any attempt to defend or criticise a world vision and a way of organising society are the basic assumptions, the premises that stand at the root of the vision. And anthropological assumptions - i.e. assumptions on what humans are, what motivates their actions, what their needs are - are at the root of all premises. These premises are usually not discussed, they only float in the background. It's unclear where they exactly come from, how they evolve in a person. If you happen to share the unsaid premises of a text, you will find that its content resonates within you. Critics of capitalism for instance will often point out among other its "inhumane" character. This immediately opens up the field for a series of questions: what is inhumane about it, how could a man-made system be inhumane, what would a humane system look like? More broadly: what does the author think human needs are, and which system would cover them? And also: What are the anthropological assumptions made in relation to the present system and to the better system, and how do these fit? I.e. is the Man we have in capitalism the same we have in a solidary system?

Before I even get that far, I first have to identify what the discourse around solidary economy is based on as regards
1- the anthropological assumptions related to the present system
2- what universal human needs are and how they can be covered
3- the anthropological assumptions used to justify the possibility and credibility of another system

And this is what I am trying to do. Except instead I'm writing an entry about it, which isn't entirely a waste of time as it helps me clarify my ideas - although I do find it difficult to express these in anything other than German.

Special K

K is moving out this weekend to another WG. It's good in some ways, but also saddening. We've spent the last two months implicitely redefining the relationship, and I was hoping to lay the ground for our future ties and friendship. I sometimes have the feeling this failed completely, as miscommunications sometimes left both of us, I guess, or me for sure, feeling like this was a pointless effort.
I wonder how often we will meet once he's moved out.
In those moments of miscommunication, I feel a certain sense of failure, in that after all those years, we still haven't found an easy way to discuss certain issues that are important to us, we will still sometimes say things in a hurtful way, as if respect for one another had to go away with the deconstruction of the couple identity. But there are also pleasant moments, and the feeling goes away.
I think I am drawing one important lesson from all this - At last - which is not to lay the source of my own strength outside of myself. Nor to think that I am carrying part of somebody else's strength.

Which probably all sounds like esoteric-sociologic abstract bullocks.

my teapot

at the risk of sounding absolutely bizarre and possessed by the devil of property, I would like to express once again my utter satisfaction about the teapot I purchased. It does, in a way, remind me of my father, who makes remarkable impersonations of teapots.

berlin-on-sea

The building across from my window was bathed in sunlight, the sky shiny-blue. A gorgeous Sunday to take the bike and wizz up to the fleamarket on Boxi. I was hoping to get
- sunshine
- fresh air
- a tea pot
- a milk foamer
- and perhaps a scarf for my unruly growing hair.
I arrived at boxi a little sweaty and parked the bike. There was music, there were people everywhere, on the square and around, sitting at coffee tables on the side walk having brunch and lazy social coffees, big people, small people, punks and fashion-freaks, young families, gay couples, hispanos, french, anglophones. It was good to see that F'hain (the neighbourhood) hadn't yet lost its main quality - its ability to offer a complete random mix of people. I walked around, looked at a pile of clothes and picked two tops. I hesitated on taking a scarf as well. I wanted to give no more than five euros and calculated internally what was acceptable for me and what the owner of the stand would accept. I went up to him and said I'd take the two tops for 5. He accepted without discussion. I should have at least tried to take the scarf.
Further on, there were 70s lamps and furniture, old vinyls, CDs, books, hats and army head protection, toys, bad artwork, better artwork, and there, shiny and pristine, a milk foamer. K had instructed me to get either a milk foamer or another, bigger coffee pot. The expresso coffee pot we have in the flat is minuscule, posing all sorts of ethical and practical difficulties: Either one has a tiny dose of coffee with a tiny dose of cold milk, in which case coffee addicts like K remain unhappy. Or one has a tiny dose of coffee with a larger dose of milk, to fill a bigger cup - but then the coffee is tepid, and the afore-mentioned people are equally unhappy. OR one uses a whole pan to warm up milk, thus consuming more electricity (as a bigger burner is needed for both pan and expresso maker), and there's more washing up to do. My personal favourite to exit this unbearable crisis was the milk foamer which would go on the same burner as the small expresso maker and give lovely foam to all foam lovers around.
So here I was, standing in front of a stand which provided a larger expresso coffee maker, a milk foamer, and two tea pots to choose from. I picked the foamer and a tea pot and asked how much the stand owner wanted for that. The first guy said 10 per item, the second one said 8 for one and 6 for the other. I remained silent for a second then offered to take both for 10, which the second accepted immediately, although he seemed to regret it as he realised he had said yes.
I wrapped the teapot in one of the tops and packed everything in my large bag. Mission accomplished. I then sent an sms to A, my flatmate from three years ago who now lives in the area, to see whether she'd be up for coffee. She wrote back saying she was putting her little daughter to bed and she'd be happy if I came by a little later. Which I did. Her little daughter is absolutely cute - I'd only seen her sleeping or on photos before - one encounter in the flesh excepted, when she was but a tiny little few-month-old baby who refused to be in my arms without screaming and crying, but loved being in K's arms as he told her loads of absurd stories. I hardly took it personally. In any case, she's lovely now but not yet very talkative. She enjoyed playing with my milk foamer and generally spilling milk all over the table while transvasing milk from one cup into another and then back into the foamer, occasionally wiping the table with paper tishues.

A's mother came by to pick up the little girl, and A and I took our bikes to the Volkspark, where we walked around for a long while, sat in the sun, talked a lot [about intercultural dialogue, and more generally afro-european communication difficulties, expectations, visions of society, her future and mine, her flying to Sudan this summer to get married etc.], observed people playing beachvolley and frisbee, and enjoyed berlin's special mood when the sun is out. A city where everyone is outside, smiling and enjoying times of leisure. She said she was particularly pleased to have a conversation that wasn't centred on children for once.
I was then instructed that we'd switched to summer time and that it was much later than originally thought - and pedalled along the streets still filled with leisurly sociable coffee drinkers, back home where an anxious K was eager to taste the results provided by the milk foamer. I also immediately put my new teapot to good use and felt my quality of life had reached a whole new dimension now that I can carry the equivalent of three cups into my room. The joys of modern life.

my food coop

I walked off in the rain and cold (winter DID come after all, and we even got a little bit of snow, although it melted immediately) to the food coop to meet up with F, who vouches for me so I can be taken up in the coop. F reminds me v. much of K's old flatmate D, our favourite gay choirmaster. He has the same straightforward, honest and direct yet respectuous way of speaking, moderating and taking responsibility for all sorts of things - linked with the particular type of scatterbrain that D is also well known for having. (it was never a surprise to find an unpaid phone bill and a reminder or two for that same bill - plus threats to cut the phone line - under a pile of paper on his desk. As for F, he told me and another person that the plenum would take place in Körtestr, when in face it was in a parallel street. Which didn't matter for me, as I met up with him earlier, but was rather inconvenient for the other person.)

F and I are both in the group of coop people trying to set up alternative structures for direct cooperation with farmers, but F is going away to India for two months and coming back right when I'll be going away. It's a shame, because I instinctively like F and would have liked to work with him and the rest of the group. That will wait for autumn.

In any case, we eventually went to the plenum. At first not quite ten people were there, and gradually more arrived, some a half hour later, others an hour and a half. On my right, people in their forties and fifties. On my left, people in their twenties and thirties. The right side kept making side comments, talking while somebody else was explaining something, having conversations with their neighbours and generally being undisciplined and unruly. The left side was peaceful and bathed in a different plenum culture - the plenum culture I instinctively apply in such a context (or try to), implicitely demanding that each wait for their turn to speak, wait for the other person to finish talking before jumping in the conversation, try to include everyone in the debate, and listen respectfully. F did his best to disciplin the older fraction. There are a few difficult cases, but one gets used to every personality, I suppose.
What's more important for me is the gradual discovery of the number of details and organisational difficulties that exist. I still imagined that the whole business of organising one's food supplies would be pretty straight forward. Miss A wants to order her vegetables from farmer family W and does so. But in reality, Farmer family W only delivers the food on saturdays, and the rest of the food coop wants the delivery during the week. Farmer family delivers the produce if the order is for 50 euros at least - but the food coop people don't know the produce that W can deliver and wouldn't buy them. etc etc.
We'll see how it goes. All is possible, but it's a long educational process... In any case, in the mean time, I have my food coop. Hurray.

solidary agriculture

I've discovered an exciting concept for solidary agriculture that has, as far as I could find, three living examples in Germany (although I tend to be better informed about Northern and Eastern Germany, so they may be other similar projects in the south). In English, the concept is called Community Supported Agriculture, CSA. What's funny is that, if you look this up on American sites (it's pretty well implanted in the US), they say the concept originally comes from Germany and Japan, and was then imported to the US. On German websites however, they say the concept comes from the US and Japan - and they thus keep the english term and speak of CSA-hof and and CSA Landwirtschaft. Wonder what it's called in Japanese and why there term never caught on.

In any case, the idea is dead simple and very cool. You take a farm, you make the land and farm common property, you find a bunch of city-people who care about their food, and together they cover the costs of running the farm, on the basis of what they consider solidary organic agriculture to be worth for them or how much they can pay, and these people then get the production, which, thus, doesn't need to have a price anymore. And everybody's happy:
- The people on the farm, because their existence is secured. No need to worry about income, or about selling their production, about retailers pushing the prices down or about volatile prices in general, about having to give up the farm because the market is too tough.
- The people who eat the food, as they get very good food, they know where it comes from, they can see how it's produced on "their" farm, they can go there to enjoy the place, they feel they're supporting a good project. And solidarity makes happy, as psychology studies have shown time and again.

Both groups sacrifice what they don't need - option to have a higher income for the farmers, option to get all vegetables all year round for the consumers.

I spent a while talking to a woman from the oldest CSA farm I could find, Buschberghof. She sounded very nice and told me lots about the way the community functions. The farm has about 80 ha, and the costs for last year amounted to 300.000 Euros, divided up between the 385+ people who are in the economic community, i.e about 65 Euro per person per month for all sorts of vegetables, meat, cheese, milk and variations thereof. Which is probably actually less than what I pay for my food, except that I don't get any meat.

I spent two hours very early this morning on the market to talk with people who work there and see whether they have any interest in co-operating with food-coops. They were generally not as thrilled by the idea as my favourite farmer-woman on my regular market, but it was good to get an idea of how producers distribute their goods, what advantages and disadvantages each form has (Market vs. farmer's basket vs. large retailer vs. food-coop), generally be a bit more informed about what farms and cooperatives are around Berlin.

Perhaps I will write my final thesis on solidary agriculture.

Update on Project 07

Ok, I won't necessarily constantly write in French. Only when I talk about the elections. Perhaps.
In the mean time, an up-date on my sssssllllow progress as regards my various projects for 2007:

• Repair bike

Still haven't done that. My flatmate left for the class-free period and said his bike was in the cellar, and here's the key to the bike lock. Although I still haven't taken the bike out of the cellar, the incentive to immediately repair my bike is much reduced, in spite of spring's violent arrival, with hot temperatures and sunny days.

• Found food-coop

Ok, here's another miss so far. I've decided to postpone this project until after I come back from my four months of freedom (soon to be universally referred to as FMF?). In the mean time, I'm joining an existing Food coop, and I'll work together with people from other food coops to establish more direct relationships with farmers around Berlin.

• Prepare and give seminar on theoretical and empirical political utopia

This I will start in May.

• Prepare a research concept for my final thesis

This I will do in April, and probably constantly until I finally register to start writing.

• Read and learn more about qualitative research/ Grounded theory

This goes together with the research concept, so starts in April.

• Get back into photography

Ah yes.... I remember that. I wonder if I'll manage to squeeze this in.

• Work with Project Class professors on the publication of some of the Project papers

This is planned for April/ May.

• Get butter and milk

Success! Victory! At last one item of the list I have been actively taking care of!

• Organise and enjoy Four Months of Liberty (June - September)

And another one! I've taken care of the financial basis for my freedom. I still need to figure out where I want to go and whether the people I want to see will also want to see me. There WHERE will be sorted out with the research design in April, the WHETHER will hopefully follow...

• Decide on meaning and purpose of the solidarity economy working group

Ah, and this was also taken care of. We had one meeting a few weeks back where nobody but two other guys came, during which I interviewed them to find out what exactly they were hoping from continued student meetings on the topic of solidary economy. From then on, we established what our common ground was, and I sent out a text formulating this basis to all the other students who were originally in the solidary economy seminar. A bunch reacted positively, and since then, a dynamic has taken its own course, so that I don't need to think about the working group anymore. It isn't quite developing in the way I want it, but what's important is that the bunch of people remains linked and that I can "use" it for discussing my own project later on if I want to - rather than us all just giving up and, for the most part, not having any explicit reasons to meet up again.

So, well, that's not too too bad. Now I have new items for the list though, such as the food-coop / farmer ties. SOME progress. But not enough.

En attendant le 22 avril

en voilà une nouveauté, je vais essayer de me plonger dans le bain français en attendant les élections. Donc, et comme mon français s'est largement détérioré au cours des dernières années, et pour des raisons plus aléatoires et instinctives qu'explicites et logiques, je vais, en attendant le 22 avril, et surtout le 6 mai, écrire en français.
Doux jesus sainte mère. Quelle folie. Elle s'en repentira. Et elle ne tiendra sûrement pas le coup, de toute façon. On va bien rigoler.

presidential dilemma

The French election system is horrible, unfair and absolutely one-hundred-percent frustrating. Voting in the majority, two-round system as it has developped has more to do with betting, calculating and hoping than expressing political convictions. Betting on which candidate other voters will massively vote for, calculating which two candidates are thus likely to make it to the second round, and hoping that your calculations are right.

Over the past weeks and months, I had come to the conclusion that considering the present candidate constellation, and the experience made with the 2002 presidential elections, I had to vote for Royal. 2002 was the first time I was allowed to vote. I voted green - which as a choice in itself I'd rather not judge at present - and contributed to Jospin's weakening so that I HAD to vote right wing in the second round. HAD to vote right wing for my first presidential elections. I remember waking up all sweaty after a nightmare in which Le Pen had won the elections. (The good side-effect of this was the sllllowww beginning of my politisation). If this time, once again, no social-liberal-democrat candidate (debatably a lesser evil) made it to the second round, and if the choice then were between one-eyed-evil and two-eyed-evil, I would be totally and absolutely incapable of voting. So to avoid this type of second round, I had accepted that I had to vote Royal.

The problem is, I dislike being blackmailed and voting AGAINST what I don't want rather than FOR what I want. I dislike being put in a position where I'm told there is no alternative. So it is that I've started looking more into the whole situation. I've looked at what the candidates say, I've looked at their websites, I've downloaded programmes which I haven't started reading, and I've started asking other people what they were thinking of voting. The candidate that has a vision that most resembles my ideal is little Olivier Besancenot of the LCR. He is an excellent talker and debater, and has the rare ability to explain in simple terms what the cause of socio-economic problems are. He is probably the most powerful orator when it comes to countering both racist and neo-liberal ideologies. This is one of my favourite interventions of his, debating with businessman Charles Beigbeder.

The main obstacles I have for voting for the LCR are
1) that obviously, left-wing vote is once again going to be scattered and thus the ominous Evil 1 vs. Evil 2 second round would be unavoidable.
2) that it's unclear what the meaning, significance and purpose of an idealistic vote is.

The aspects to keep in mind when considering these two obstacles are
- Would having more moderate Royal or even Bayrou as president actually be in any way better than the Big Evils? And, connected to this,
- What would the socialist party learn from an election process in which voters gather on one candidate out of fear, not expressing the way in which they really want left wing politics to go?

I'm surprised that so many people have started considering voting for Bayrou - people I've talked to. Well, mainly two people. I need to read his programme, but instinctively I would say that the difference to the socialist party programme is minimal, seeing as the socialist party is already very centre. So why go for him? I would expect that Royal has the woman bonus for her, that people would be curious and excited by the novelty of trying to have a woman president.

In any case, I'm thinking. There's more to it, but I'm going to make cheese scones.

Music for the revolution

Cie Jolie Mome is a theater-music group located in St Denis. They have a few nice political songs on their site (under MP3), including the very catchy Ta colère est légitime, which is an attempt at getting proletarian extreme-right voters back into the left. Check the links, there are some really nice things there - including, for more political music, Secouez.org.

the devil is round the corner

On Tuesday I had a lovely afternoon with my friend M. whom I hadn't seen in a few weeks as we had both been busy with other things. We talked a lot, had an early afternoon brunch, went for a walk in the sun, sat along the canal talking some more, and started trying to make our card for the Ulenkrug people much too late, so that we didn't finish it.
Talking with M. is always so comfortable - she is a very good listener as well as talker, she encourages people to talk, and we share a lot of common conceptions. I can imagine us two part of a life-project, an intentional community, one day. In the mean time however, one thing she said got me thinking on a track I don't like at all. She said she'd started calculating how much life cost once you're not a student anymore, and whether she would manage with a part-time job. The part-time job is where everything goes click. I decided for myself that I would not seek wage labour after my studies, nor freelance for that matter. And the solution for that is to move into an political intentional community.
M. on the other hand hasn't completely abandonned the idea of a Normal Job, although obviously she would prefer not being forced into these structures. The difference there is that she wants to stay in Berlin, and the structures for emancipating one's self from the wage system are not in place in the city. Not yet. And I started to realise that there are several projects I would like to contribute to organising, among others the ever attempted and for now abandonned "City-countryside-river project" (Stadt-Land-Fluss) - an intentional community with the river Spree linking a part in Berlin and a part in the countryside, the countryside community being in charge of producing food.

The group that was originally trying to implement the Stadt Land Fluss project eventually split up shortly after a suitable piece of land had been found and acquired north of Berlin. This piece of land is now used for another similar project producing non-commercial agricultural products (for now only potatoes and seed-oil, the project is still very new), i.e. agricultural goods that are not sold but shared and given in exchange of e.g. work on the farm or donations.

With our present Food Coop project to try and strengthen rural life in the region, I came to several ideas, including that of founding a non-commercial food-coop next year. And I just started appreciating the political energy and activity there is in Berlin, and how good it would be to contribute to the setting up of structures allowing people to live without having to separate their political principles from their private (i.e. non political) life.

And so it was that the devil promptly jumped on my right shoulder. What if I decided to stay in the city and set up such structures with M and other people? I would need a part-time job too. Part time, because full-time only robs one of precious time in exchange of unnecessary money. I don't like this idea.

Midnight

aaaaaaaargh. Another two paragraphs of Indian electricity market and I'm DONE.

With the first draft, that is. It still needs to be checked for consistency, checked with the original, and proofread one last time. And then, off it will go on its digital travel to West Germany.

Two paragraphs. Hop hop. Feasible. Hop, back to work.

(sigh)