New and Alternative Social Movements in Spain: The Left, Identity and Globalizing Processes by John Karamichas

Author:John Karamichas [Karamichas, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781138791848
Google: 93EVnwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 20789484
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-15T11:28:23+00:00

Joaquin’s picture of the movement in Madrid, like Xurxo’s, is historically grounded. Like Adela, he highlights an important generational divide, but also stresses the heterogeneity of actors, and the spectre of personalismos (political differences based on personal allegiances and confrontations rather than on political beliefs), which plague Madrileño politics. After offering a detailed exposition of three different configurations of institutional and/or orthodox/radical leftist nodes, Joaquin pointed to the newer autonomous sphere, which he called the ‘fourth node’ and which encompassed the European Social Consulta, RCADE, the Disobedience Lab, occupied social centres like Eskalera Karakola and the Labo3, the Youth Commission of the Regional Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Madrid (dóvenes de la FRAVM), and other collectives like the Anti-capitalist Network and the Nomad University:

[The fourth node] is more the classical autonomous environment with actors who range from anarchists to Marxists but who are really rooted in a concept of radical democracy, direct action and civil disobedience. This is more embryonic here in Madrid, but it picks up from the disobedience tradition in the rest of Europe like the Tutte Bianche and projects like the PGA [People’s Global Action] which aren’t more leftist necessarily, but which are more radical.

Joaquin’s comments show the ideological heterogeneity in the movement, but he also draws a sharp distinction between ‘a radical difference between different forms of doing politics’ between the more institutional traditional actors which are mostly represented by the older generation, and the open democratic assembly, which is the trend the youth tend to favour. His comment that these groups are not necessarily more leftist but more radical demonstrates a shift away from an ideologically based definition of politics to a politics of disobedience and a radical rupture with institutional left forms of practice.

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