faust in late capitalism

The area next to London's City Airport called Silvertown or North Woolwich is an area of the former docklands which is waiting for regeneration since the early 80s. Again and again it is marketed by the LDA as London’s biggest development opportunity. Vast areas previously occupied by dire docks and dirty large scale industrial plants are fenced off and home to shrubs.

Thousands of new apartments and a colossal aquarium on an anyway derelict site with a view offices and shops, as a regeneration project, that sounds all too marvellous to me to be true. Not only because it reminds me of Dubai's gigantism. From Goethe’s Faust we learned, there is always the old couple. Well, where is it, if there is no one left to get rid off/decant or nothing to dynamite? In this case, it won’t be science killing humanity. The proposals put forward (some of them got planning permission already) show no relation to their surrounding. No wonder they don't because when the whole strategy for the docklands was set up under the Thatcher administration no one looked into the existing spaces of the royal docks. According to their neoliberal doctrines they got rid of everything old, especially the state controlled port because the market will do the job most efficiently if it's not disturbed. But the market acts to different rules than space. Lefebvres bible was published roughly at the same time when London Dockland Development Council was conceiving their strategy. Whereas space “subsumes things produced, and encompasses their relative interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity...” - hence it is something incredible complex and hard to define, investment needs security in terms of definition. Space includes the individual and is subjective, pretty hard things to control. Investment can't do without control. In terms of planning, in Silvertown there is no control, no defined perimeter, just 'wild west' do whatever you want. Naturally the proposed developments create their own controlled patches. They are all oriented inwards trying to minimise contact with the undefined context. Secured by design policies and gated communities finalise the scenarios: complete exclusion. It is the local community with is specific needs that is deprived of a real opportunity for overcoming the problems of the second industrial revolution. It's neoliberal thinking and capitalism killing humanity.

about the difficulties of cutting clouds

Earlier I wrote about the toothless tigers of todays theorists who still struggle with the justification of an epic failure called communism. But what is the problem? Why are we not able to address todays problems in a way that we can generate ideas that suggest how to tackle todays crisis?

For example gentrification. No one I know likes gentrification – naturally. Because the only point from where you can observe it, is from the point of the victim. I was always curious how you could stop gentrification. Having street festivals with lots of banners arguing against investment? Causes just the opposite. Shitting on your doorstep would help, but honestly who wants that? The point is, and thats whats Terry Eagleton makes clear, we are fighting against the most abstract thing one can imagine: Money. Fighting money is like trying to fight a cloud. Since money became pure information in the 1970s with no real value behind it, it is probably the most fluid thing we know. At the moment we do not have the right means to control it, because once we think we have it, the cloud changed already. In gentrification one can't stop the money from flowing in, on the other hand it's also impossible to keep it if you want it as a society. Last year I lived together with a computer programmer who scripts software for high speed trading. I asked him about the Tobin Tax. He just laughed at me. A tax that tries to stop high speed trading will just create new and probably even more controversial forms of money making or just move to some countries with doubtful moral principles who grant free flow of capital and low taxation, probably some African dictatorships.

The same situation appears when it comes to social understanding of postmodernity. After the thinking in strict categories, nowadays everything has to be inclusive, pluralistic and the multitude. Because of the dominance of neoliberal thinking the cloud expanded to the last corner of our small world. Everything is possible anywhere and at any time (at least in thought). The cloud has become a foggy soup and for my part I have little orientation at the moment. Of course Mr. Eagleton promises guide me out of the fog. I am curious.

about doorhandles

Before the start of this academic year, I had to find a new place to stay. A situation in which I cautiously put myself into. I could as well have stayed in my previous place in a grand georgian terrace facing Regents Park, where I stayed in a students hall. OK, it had it's downsides. I had to share a room and despite the weekly room service, it was kind of filthy. On top of that Marylebone sucks, it is the second most boring place on earth. However I wanted to experience the real London situation. After looking into other options within my budged (I came across shoebox sized rooms in totally overrated East End and flea holes in miles away New Cross), I found a rather decently sized room in a 1950 red brick council estate. I really loved all the still original details. A little built in wardrobe, wooden sash windows and the carefully designed bathroom fittings of the time. The whole package included also included layers of grime and the debris of the past decades which I had to get rid of first and that is not rocket science either. I just liked the idea of living in a rather real utopia. The 50s created housing which still today is very attractive: Decently sized rooms, functional bathroom and separate toilet, everything well lit (even the toilet got a window: a luxury) and with all the necessary amenities and transport in close proximity. Not to speak of the successful social structures that were created, which today thanks to Thatcher and Blair don't exist anymore.

Their policies created an economic environment which on one side created cheap labour and on the other side changed from council housing to private sector housing. Council housing became social housing. And the houses became capitalist investment rather than social investment. The house I am living in still had copper(!) encased electrical wiring and the real wood doors with top lights and enamelled cast iron door handles. All you get today is cheap plastic. Looks good on the glossy brochures the developers produce. Not so good, if you have to use it daily. But that doesn't count – as long as the investment is successful i.e. creates the expected yield. 

the future is beginning to become a project again

The latest crisis, which this time happens to threaten our high octane and high protein lifestyle, is now dragging on since summer 2008. In New York, Madrid, Athens and next Saturday all around the world people are protesting against something quite accurately described as 'capitalist-parliamentarianism' by Alain Badiou. This crisis is possibly more challenging then earlier ones, but it certainly is nothing exceptional in the current system. Although it took a while, it starts to remind more and more of us that in capitalism everything is always in crisis (by definition of the term). Despite the current notion, capitalism itself is a quite stable system. 

Yesterday, Slavoj Zizek gave a speech on Liberty Plaza to the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement. He, who is supposed to be one of our current intellectual ellite, apart from picturing metaphoric anecdotes, and giving some encouragement to the protesters not to give up, is not telling us much. The same applies to Alain Badious text 'What is the Reality to Which this Crisis is Specatacle?' Rather than describing or speculating about such an alternative reality, he again provides us with a spot on and well illustrated description of the crisis. Really quite unsatisfying. Instead, they still seem to digest the eternal failure of such an alternative reality, when they seek to redefine the term communism or distinguish themselves from the so called existing communism. For me the real debate has to be about speculations on the role of the state. But at the moment there seems to be no broad propositional culture about future models (apart from some eco-fashistoid sustainability debates). 

Maybe it is capitalisms ability to incorporate any idea, even revolutionary ideas that aim to turn over capitalism (greenwashing), that prevents such a needed culture of utopian manifestos. Badiou therefore  suggests the only authors of a true alternative system can only be those who are and remain outside of the economic system. A couple of month ago (after 2005 in Paris) in Tottenham a bunch of kids showed us their take on the system as outsiders. In Middle and South America a whole culture of violence emerged among those excluded from the system. I hope for some reason those tendencies still belong to the end of the capitalist system and are not the dawn of a new era. Bearing that in mind and the fact, that we (students) are the bourgeoisie upper and middle class well integrated into the capitalist system, the badge on this years AA Prospectus 'The future is beginning to become a project again' offers quite a challenge.