Theses On Europe

Spazi Sociali in Reggio Emilia and Municipi Sociali in Bologna for Journal Issue 14 of European Alternatives

The original text of this article has been written by the comrades of Spazi Sociali in Reggio Emilia and Municipi Sociali in Bologna, two political organizations rooted in urban contexts in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The genealogy of struggles and concepts that we reconstruct in this reflection emerges from a specific perspective: our own, situated within the movements that have developed in Italy, in a broader European and global context. We therefore do not claim to represent a universal history, and we recognize that this reconstruction will not necessarily correspond to the struggles that have emerged elsewhere, including within the European space itself. We nevertheless hope that these theses may stimulate further reflections, perhaps grounded in different perspectives and histories, while contributing to the construction of a shared imaginary of our Europe. This text is an edited version that is part of issue 14 of the Journal of European Alternatives.

One thing is for certain: if the forms of liberal democracy are in crisis, if authoritarian forms are legitimized as tools for managing contemporary capitalism, and if what we seek is a real form of democracy, then we cannot remain stuck between the collapse of an old world and the emergence of a new one; instead, We must enter the fray to envision our democracy in the age of beyond human capitalism, our beyond  democracy, and confront the challenge of building a new political and social framework, more radical than the relation between municipalism and globalization developed in the early 2000s.

If reality has once again become a battlefield, and the latter has entirely different characteristics from those of the past. What we are witnessing, from Palestine to Kurdistan, from Ukraine to the latest moves by Trump, must be read within this general redefinition: who is in charge? Who has the capacity of being, at least for a phase, the leading force within human capitalism? Which combination of subsystems will succeed in organizing it?

The fight for leadership beyond human capitalism involves many actors. At one point it seemed that the Trump Musk combination would become a winning form, but that combination already entered into crisis. Is the Chinese political form the one that will prevail? It may be. The truth is that we are caught up in a never ending quest, one that produces chaos, war, and permanent civil war.

However, as we have seen, all of this is today called into question and no longer has a place within the new phase, that is, within the contestation among subsystems seeking to position themselves beyond human capitalism. At this point, this phase that we call constituent emerges, constituent for a set of reasons that are not revolutionary in the classical sense, nor driven by immediate social uprisings. The general mechanism we have described has broken Europe as it evolved from the postwar period until today.

A discussion on Europe inevitably opens for everyone.

Sooner or later, the question arises: if the foundations on which this particular business based union of states was built were to crumble, what other Europe would emerge? On what basis will it be shaped and built? Within what relations will it position itself in the global context? It is evident that Europe still has weight within global supply chains, but it is equally evident that the path it has followed so far is no longer sustainable.

If the actions and reactions of European countries will proceed in a fragmented way, if they will fail to come to terms with the European social fabric, made up of cultural diversity, rights, and freedoms, if they continue to evade the dependencies imposed on them and endured over years of neoliberalism and selective border control, if European nation states will keep acting as the primary actors, then the consequences will be severe, first and foremost for us. And no one will then be able to prevent new wars from breaking out even among European countries themselves. At the same time, it is evident that in the contestation with reactionary and fascist forces over the future of Europe, the outcomes are far from predetermined, and whether or not we are present within this process will play a crucial role.

In a global scenario in which all previous forms are being questioned and every actor plays its own game, we have to find our own space. If it is not the global space, if it is not the nation state, if it is not the old 20th century internationalism, then there must be a space in which to contest and reclaim something, a space in which to matter and exert influence: from cities and territories all the way to the immediate class struggle against post human capitalism.

Acting the constituent phase of Europe: alliance between rebels and democrats

If that is true, we must understand what it means in terms of action.

We are not able to determine the constituent process on our own: if something broader does not emerge, if a wider field is not redefined, we will not succeed. But we can be a part of this constituent phase: a part capable of reading it, traversing it, forcing it, and orienting it. In this sense, we can reuse a formulation that we had begun to use years ago and that has recently re-emerged: an alliance between rebels and democrats.

Being a rebel today cannot mean returning to the nation state or taking refuge in the dream of a model of communism that no longer exists, by adopting ‘red brown’ positions and mistaking every enemy of the West for an ally. This is not rebellion, but reaction and conservatism. Being a rebel means being against something and, at the same time, for something that has meaning in the present. The terrain of contestation today is Europe — not Europe as it is, but Europe as a space of rupture, of new material and formal constitution.

There is a major difference between rebels who address the issue of force and power dynamics within the broader framework of building a constituent process, and those who think that everything boils down to doing the “hard and pure” thing, often only in words, while caring little about everything else or, worse, attacking it. If everything remains confined to rebels alone, if one believes that the truth of one’s radical perspective cannot be connected with other subjects, other histories, other forms of life, even other species, then rebellion reduces itself to solipsism. It becomes language for those who are already convinced, and it does not affect the level of contestation beyond human capitalism, and therefore it is not adequate to the class struggle underway.

Democrats, on the other hand, does not mean moderates. It does not mean liberals in the narrow sense. It means a field of selection that excludes fascists, racists, sexists, authoritarians, obscurantists, but that does not pretend to reduce everything to our identity. It is within this context that the possibility lies for many people to see Europe not merely as a distant entity, but as a necessary horizon for constitutional and revolutionary transformation.

If we are not open to this, it would not even be possible to understand why we choose to engage in broader struggles in certain instances, such as voting in referendums. When we vote NO in a referendum, it is not to defend the existing democracy. We do this because that struggle opens up a broader field, where millions of people can identify a common problem: who decides, where decisions are made, with what tools, and what relationship is between institutions and society. In some way, one can see a shared impulse with the Hungarian vote and with many bottom up tendencies that do not find immediate political expression, but that may prefigure a radical transformation of the European material and formal constitution.

For this reason, we use the term alliance rather than recomposition; the latter, in fact, is more closely linked to movements, social subjects, and segments of class that recognize each other and attempt to fit back together. Alliance denotes a political operation. It involves building relations between different actors, shaping direction, influencing common sense, and opening a perspective that does not belong only to those who first formulated it.

The alliance between rebels and democrats, in this European constituent phase, is fundamental. To understand it and to act on it does not mean watering down our perspective, nor does it mean renouncing key themes such as radical welfare, redistribution, self government, and freedom of movement. To form alliances means recognizing that the question of Europe requires us to operate within a broader complexity, including with those who today speak of a common defence, European sovereignty, energy independence. Each of these dimensions reflects the crisis of the previous order; therefore, the issue cannot be reduced to mere symbolic gestures, such as planting flags. Rather, it must create broad spaces which, even around these key issues, can point toward the prospect of a radical transformation of Europe: a new constitution, accompanied by a renewed capacity for broad mobilization. The NO KINGS movement in Italy is an example of this.

Finally, as rebels, the crucial point for us remains to define the relationship between cities, territories, and Europe. During the years of globalization, municipalism allowed us not to have to choose between global capital and the nation state. Today, that line of reasoning must be brought to a new level: cities and territories remain the place where practices, conflicts, welfare, mutualism, and self government are produced. The question is how can municipalism, communalism, and grassroots activism in short, the primary arena of action for many comrades relate with everything else today? We cannot answer this question on our own, and we certainly do not want to do so within the confines of the nation state.

Acting the alliance between rebels and democrats therefore means rearticulating such relationships: cities and Europe, self government and government, conflict and institution, material constitution and formal constitution.

Not to defend the Europe that exists, but to contest and shape the one that is yet to come. Not on our own, on a European island cut off from the rest of the world, but within the forces of transformation that especially at this historic moment we must seek out in global upheavals and in global networks of comrades, starting with the Kurdish confederal project.

European beyond democracy

All that we have described produces, in terms of governance, what we have defined as the quest for beyond democracy, which is irreversibly affecting liberal democracies. In an effort to reflect on these dynamics, we have sought to adopt new lenses, forged from some of the most heretical reflections within beyond communism from Abdullah Öcalan to Donna Haraway, from autonomist thought to radical municipalism, from cyborg and technological activist networks to the multitude against Empire and we have sought to apply them to our own context. Within the constituent space, we are convinced, new lenses will be combined to free us from the past and engage with the problems of the transition in a way that is even more suited to shifting the balance of power.

While in Italy, especially at this time, we may still rely on the shield of anti fascist resistance and the defence of the Constitution against attempts to change it, when it comes to Europe we must not only figure out how to bring together those who stand up resolutely against fascists, that is the Antifa, but also how to free ourselves from the rhetorical constraints of resistance in order to imagine the beyond. Precisely because there is no fully established European constitution to defend, we must address the question of what lies ahead.

It is in Europe that we can advance beyond democracy and begin to articulate it.

For example: what does it mean today to say ‘No to NATO’, ‘Enough with the United States’? The significance of these statements today is very different from what it was in the past. These are issues that can be championed by rebels, with conviction and a spirit of resistance, knowing that they are far more concrete than in the past and possess a much greater intrinsic power. These are indeed struggles that must be waged with radical determination, yet they are part of a broader European context.

This would also allow us to find new, concrete terms to define and effectively counter colonialism and imperialism for what they are: from Israeli to Russian forms, to American and Chinese ones, thereby ceasing to refer to a generic Western colonialism but instead identifying in detail the responsibilities of individual European countries and EU institutions as a whole.

Finally, we should continuously investigate how European networks, industrial and technological networks driven by new digital services and cutting edge scientific knowledge move within these upheavals, and how class struggle will unfold.

Spazi Sociali di Reggio Emilia and Municipi Sociali di Bologna are grassroots political communities rooted in Emilia-Romagna’s social movements. Through collectively managed spaces, they combine mutual aid, culture, education, housing and migrant struggles, ecological and social justice, and political organising. Moving beyond the traditional social-centre model, they experiment with forms of self-organisation and social infrastructure that connect everyday solidarity with broader struggles for the right to the city and the commons.