Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

The E-pass system, that was brought in the restrict and control the flow of traffic, could be abolished on Monday. In its first phase the E-Pass system meant that citizens wishing to travel from one borough to the next had to apply for a special pass. This first phase was then relaxed as citizens could then travel within their county, in most cases, without having to first obtain the pass. And that second phase is the one that is under consideration as the possibility of the whole country opening up is being considered. The Minister of the Interior, Davor Boinovi, said at todays press conference of the Civil Protection Directorate that the E-Pass system would be considered by May 11.

"Depending on the epidemiological trend, we will make an appropriate decision that could go in the direction of complete abolition," commented Boinovic on E-passes.

In the third phase of the relaxation of COVID-19 measures for Croatia air transport will once again open up through Croatia with flights from Croatia Airlines already scheduled from Dubrovnik to Zagreb and Split to Zagreb. However, under the current regulations every passenger on these internal flights would have to have a special E-pass before boarding the plane because their flight would end in a different county. Although the acquirement of these E-passes has been made easier, by moving to an online system, the whole concept of an E-pass could well be redundant.

One of the first moves and indeed wishes of the tourism sector is concentrated on the domestic market. This would therefore seem another compelling reason to abolish the E-passes, to inject some much needed capital into the tourism industry. However, as always the final decision will be made by the experts and the Civil Protection Directorate. And after the great work they have done so far in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the country it is only fitting that they continue to guide the nation through the difficult times ahead.

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Will the E-passes in Croatia be abolished on Monday - The Dubrovnik Times

The authors have done well in providing the substance for a critique of Jordan Peterson, but they need someone to spice up their style, which is precisely what Jordan Peterson, himself, did in his own career.

After Jim Posers Savage Messiah: How Jordan Peterson is Saving Western Civilization (a ridiculously laudatory portrayal of Jordan Peterson), some critical engagement with Petersons ideas is urgently needed. (See my review of Prosers book here.) Authors Ben Burgis, Conrad Hamilton, Matthew McManus, and Marion Trejo provide just that with Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson.

They acknowledge Peterson has some interesting things to say, but they are quick to raise objections. Unfortunately, the book amounts to a long collection of disagreements with Peterson, sometimes in dry academic style. That is simply no match for Posers engaging prose, who knows very well how to hook readers to the lives of saints, just as Medieval hagiographists did. The authors of Myth and Mayhem are preaching to the converted; it is unlikely that they will be able to persuade the disgruntled young men, who are so fascinated by Peterson to think more critically about their gurus claims. This is simply because halfway through the book, these readers will likely become bored.

The authors have done well in providing the substance for a critique of Jordan Peterson, but they need someone to spice up their style, which is precisely what Jordan Peterson, himself, did in his own career. Peterson had written academic books, and few people took notice; he then changed his style to resemble more the self-help gurus and, bang!, the professor morphed into a rock star. Like it or not, if the authors of Myth and Mayhem want their message to be heard, they have to play this game.

Be that as it may, the authors do sensibly point out some of the problems with Petersons claims. However, in doing so, sometimes they have problems of their own. Consider McManus criticism of Petersons views on lobsters. As most readers will know by now, Peterson is very enthusiastic about these creatures social hierarchies. McManus makes the obvious point that lobsters are not exactly close to humans in terms of evolutionary history, so why are they relevant to understand human nature? If anything, I might add, comparisons should be made with bonobos or chimpanzees (species that, as it turns out, are far more egalitarian than crustaceans).

But, in his critique of Peterson on this point, McManus goes out of his way to claim that the Left is not as radically egalitarian as Peterson thinks. In McManus words, despite Petersons denunciation of figures who blame all dominance hierarchies on culture and politicsno one I am familiar with has ever blamed all dominance hierarchies on culture and politics. This includes even the most egalitarian thinkers on the Left. Well, Rousseau certainly comes to mind. Yes, he acknowledged there were natural inequalities, but he believed they were inconsequential because they were not truly based on dominance. For Rousseau, all dominance hierarchies could indeed be blamed on culture and politics, as in his famous quotation, the first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. We should come to terms with the fact that, after the Soviet collapse, Rousseau and his navet are becoming more influential than Marxs more rational approach. So, while Peterson may be off in many of his critiques of the Left, he is onto something when he worries about Antifa and similar agitators. After all, these radicals owe more to Rousseau and utopian socialists, than to Marxs more down-to-Earth views.

The authors are concerned that Peterson makes a big strawman out of the Left. So, throughout much of this book, there is a great effort to deradicalize Marx and other leftist authors. The authors of Myth and Mayhem are effective enough in setting the record straight and correcting some of Petersons distortions regarding Marx. As such, Conrad Hamilton is quick to remind readers that Marx did not think that all hierarchical structures are due to capitalism; he did acknowledge the existence of nature; he did not see History as a simplistic class struggle; he did not assume all good was on the side of the proletariat and all evil is on the side of capitalists.

These are good clarifications, but the arguments do come across as sugarcoating Marx. It seems as if the authors are embarrassed by Marxs more radical sayings, so they go to great lengths in order to make Marx appear less extreme. For example, McManus writes:

Marx mostly mentions equality only to make the point that it is an exclusively political notion, and, as a political value, that it is a distinctively bourgeois value. Far from being a value that can be used to thwart class oppression, Marx thinks the idea of equality is actually a vehicle for bourgeois class oppression, and something quite distinct from the communist goal of the abolition of classes. Marx even makes the standard argument that equal right can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only.

McManus does not tell us where that quotation comes from. However, I looked it up, and it comes from Marxs 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. Yet, MacManus leaves out a far more relevant passage in that particular text, further discussing equality:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but lifes prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantlyonly then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

This is undiluted Marxism, and it is radical in the extreme. It goes beyond equality of outcome (equal pay for everyone). It advances wealth distributionnot on the basis of effort or contributionbut on the basis of need. As the Soviet Union and every single communist country (including my own, Venezuela) has learned the hard way, this is a recipe for disaster, inasmuch as it takes away any incentive to work: If you get paid according to your need (and not according to your own efforts or qualifications), there is no point in going the extra mile. Everyone sits at home waiting for the paycheck to come to satisfy their needs, until there are no more paychecks to be delivered.

So, McManus quotes Marx from this 1875 text, as if to prove that Marx is not the radical egalitarian that Peterson makes him to be. However, in fact, Marxs views are so extreme that they even go beyond equality of outcome and embrace the removal of any distinction between mental and physical labor. It goes to the point of arguing that if the factory worker has more children than the manager, the former should earn more than the latter, simply because wealth should be allocated on the basis of need, not merit.

Despite these shortcomings, Myth and Mayhem is a valuable book, and the authors are to be commended for deeply engaging with Petersons work. Yet, I am afraid that, ultimately, this book will be a further confirmation of the well-known maxim, There is no such thing as bad publicity. Perhaps because the authors have chosen not to write in a more engaging style, this book will only serve the purpose of giving Peterson even more publicity. I worry that it will not reach those who need to read it most: youngsters who have been satisfied with Petersons self-help sound bites but who are not aware that Petersons views have problems of their own.

Dr. Gabriel Andrade is a university professor. His twitter is @gandrade80

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The Book-Length Critique of Jordan Peterson Isn't Perfect, Either - Merion West

WORKERS across the world pressed demands for the protection of those on the front line as May Day celebrations were scaled back as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic today.

General secretary of Frances CGT trade union federation Philippe Martinez said: This is an opportunity to bear the social demands that we have been defending for a long time and that the crisis has highlighted.

The country remains on lockdown and the rally traditionally held in Paris was cancelled with people urged to flood social media and join solidarity actions on their balconies.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen was condemned for defying the emergency measures to lay a wreath for Joan of Arc, whom the fascists have tried to co-opt as a nationalist symbol.

Around 24,000 people have died from the coronavirus in France with unions warning that workers should not pay the price of the crisis generated by the political choices of a deadly capitalist system.

The Greek government called for the traditional May Day marches and rallies to be suspended for a week. But demonstrations took place in most major cities in Greece, including the capital Athens with trade unionists respecting social distancing measures in Syntagma Square.

PAME said: May 1 is a symbolic day in the struggle for the abolition of exploitation. We honour the martyrs of our class. The dead of Chicago, in Greece the dead of May Day 1924, of May 1936, the 200 communists of Kesariani who were executed by the nazis on May Day 1944.

It called for increased solidarity with health workers and all those on the front line of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic but insisted that the current crisis was a reminder of the undeniable truth that the deadliest virus is capitalism.

At least three people were arrested in the Philippines as small groups of protesters banged on empty pots and held up placards demanding government aid and safe working conditions, defying a ban on public gatherings.

May First Movement labour federation spokesman Jerome Adonis explained that around 23 million people nearly a quarter of the countrys population face hunger due to no work, no payprovisions in their employment contracts but face arrest for violating quarantine restrictions.

Scores of arrests were made in Turkey, with trade union leaders, including Disk president Arzu Cerkezoglu, violently detained as they made their way to Istanbuls Taksim Square for a symbolic protest.

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Workers across the world demand protections for key workers in scaled back May Day celebrations - Morning Star Online

Zo Whitleys beaming face was exactly the warmth I needed on afreezing winters day in February, when the curatortook me to see aCameron Rowland exhibition atLondons Institute of Contemporary Arts.

After we wound our way through the showa conceptually dense presentation linking the history of the transatlantic slave trade to present-day systems of incarcerationwe madea pitstop at the ICA caf, where Whitley ordered a tea and, as she navigated our tray to a table, explained that she used to work in the service industry as a waitress.

I dont come from money, Whitley, who was namedthe head of the nonprofit Chisenhale Gallery in London in January,told me at one point. Gender and race and their attendant poweror lack thereofare never going to be purely academic to me. Its always part of the way that I am received or perceived.

Waiting tables, she added, wasdeeply unsatisfying labor: no matter how hard you work, you often end up getting shortchanged.

Its another cultural vestige linked to indentured servitude, and to the history of not paying black people equally for their work.

Romuald Hazoume with his work in Uncomfortable Truths, a show Whitley organized at Londons V&A Museum. Photo by Fiona Hanson PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images.

Whitley doesnt shy away from these kinds of discussions. In one room of the Rowland exhibition,a branding iron was positioned in a chilling face-off with a contemporary ankle monitor. It reminded me ofUncomfortable Truths, a show she curated in 2007 at theVictoria & Albert Museum to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade, and to examine its traces in contemporary art and design.The curator does not want to let history become too cosy.

She understands exactly what is going down but wears her wisdom lightly, said artist Lubaina Himid, who first met Whitley when she showed her work in that exhibition, a decade before she would go on to win the Turner Prize. Himid, who later became Whitleys doctoral supervisor, said that each conversation between the two stretched us both in different ways.

Since then, in the span of just a few short years, the 40-year-old curator has played an important role in facilitating conversations about diversity in the art world as museums across the UK are reconsidering the canon.

In a rare opportunity for a mid-career curator, she organized the Cathy Wilkes exhibition at the British Pavilion at last years Venice Biennale.Before that, she was best known as one half of the curatorial duo behind the groundbreaking exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,a survey of mid-century works by African American artists illustrating their vital contributions to American art history.The extraordinary outing showcased 20 years of black art during the Civil Rights era, and included works by Frank Bowling, Betye Saar, and Barkley Hendricks.Three years after its debut at Tate Modern, it is still touring, and Whitley has just been recognized for her work on the show with an award from the Association of Art Museum Curators.

Zo has a very rich understanding of many of the key artists from the past 50 years whose work is only recently being collected by major art museums or receiving more widespread critical acknowledgement, said Ralph Rugoff, the director of the Hayward Gallery, where Whitley was previouslyand brieflya curator.She has a very keen grasp of the contemporary scene and a sharp eye for recognizing young artists who are doing truly innovative work.

Whitleys firstand, as it turns out, lastshow at the Hayward, titledReverb, which looks at sound artists includingChristine Sun Kim, Kahlil Joseph, and Oliver Beer, will be her introduction and swansong rolled into one, Whitley said. (Slated to open in June, it has been postponed until at least the fall.)

Benny Andrewss Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree (1969) at Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern. Estate of Benny Andrews/DACS, London/VAGA, NY.

Whitley was born in Washington, DC, and raised byafather with a keen interest in film and a mother who studied art history with the late David Driskell at the University of Maryland. Her familymoved to Los Angeles when she was a teenager. In the summer of 1999, while she was an art history undergraduate atSwarthmore College, she got a summer internship inLACMAs costume and textiles department under the supervision of Sharon Takeda, who still runs the department today.

She was an LA kid and came in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and was obviously extremely bright and energetic, Takeda recalled, noting that she still has the feathered and beaded bookmark (an odeto Tom Fords iconic jeans for Gucci) thatWhitley made for her as a thank-you that summer. By the end of the internship, Takeda and her colleague,Kaye Spilker,suggested that Whitley consider curating as a career.

Theres something special about being seen, even at a young age, Whitley told me. On their advice,she applied forthe Royal College of Arts design history program and later graduated with amasters thesis looking at representations of blackness in Vogue magazine.Soon after, shetook a job as an assistant curator at the V&A, and has now lived in South London for 20 years.London continues to appeal to me for the way that it is able to welcome and absorb so many different cultures, Whitley said.

But it was still a few years after she took the V&A job that Whitley made the pivot to working with contemporary artists. She vividly recalls attending the opening of a David Adjaye and Faisal AbduAllah exhibition at the Chisenhale in 2003. Before that, I didnt really have the sense that it was possible to know artists and to actually talk with them, Whitley said.

Ima-Abasi Okon,Infinite Slippage: nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of Ms HardLovedFlesh [IM irreducibly-undone because] Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub(2019). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2019. Photo: Andy Keate.

As head of theChisenhale, an institution known for itsambitious projects,Whitley plans to commission works from a wide range of artists.

Productively, weve moved beyond a kind of YBA model, Whitley said. An artist doesnt have to be young to be making excellent work, and to be at that pivotal point in their career when a Chisenhale commission might be exactly the thing to help ignite wider public interest.

Whitley started in the role at the beginning of April, as the coronavirus crisis put unprecedented pressure on museums and galleries.

I think the art world gets caricatured as being hyper-competitive, with everybody wanting to be first, or for something to be exclusive or original.But one thing Ive seen is a huge amount of generosity, because everybody is facing the same thing, she said, noting that she has witnessed productive, healthy dialoguebetween directors of smaller institutions.

And despite what appears to be a grim outlook for small institutions amid the crisis, Whitley has reasons for optimism.

This forced reset is giving everyone time to think, she said. We cant do what weve been doing. So people are asking: what might the alternatives look like?

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She Wears Her Wisdom Lightly: How American Curator Zo Whitley Became One of the UKs Most Influential Arts Leaders - artnet News

By Oscar Grenfell 1 May 2020

State and territory leaders are rushing to overturn lockdown measures introduced in response to the pandemic, even though their own modelling indicates that this will result in the more rapid spread of the coronavirus.

The Northern Territory is today lifting a raft of restrictions, while South Australia and other states have outlined roadmaps out of the crisis. This is despite continuing deaths and illness linked to at least four active COVID-19 clusters across the country, and ongoing community transmission.

The aim of all the governments is to create the conditions for broad sections of the working class to be herded back onto the job, so as to resume the flow of corporate profits.

The dangerous implications of this policy have already been demonstrated in sectors that have remained open throughout the crisis. In the construction industry, for instance, the unions and property developers have forced tens of thousands of workers to continue production despite the impossibility of social distancing and have refused to shut sites even when infections have occurred.

The state and territory announcements have been timed to coincide with a meeting today of the expanded national cabinet, composed of the federal government, along with premiers and chief ministers. Each of these gatherings, followed by a press conference of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy have been markers in the escalating back to work campaign.

In the lead-up to the meeting, Morrison has pressed for the state governments to plan for the reopening of restaurants, bars and clubs. The sector is clearly not essential, but accounts for at least $20 billion in revenue per year.

At the same time, state and federal authorities are rapidly moving to resume face-to-face teaching in the schools, despite widespread opposition, as a precondition for workers returning to their jobs.

The Northern Territory Labor government has thus far gone the furthest in reversing lockdown measures, announcing that from today outdoor activities involving pools and childrens playgrounds will reopen, while weddings and funerals can proceed with an unlimited number of attendees.

Beginning on May 15, indoor activities at cafes, gyms and food courts will be permitted and on June 5, all restrictions on mass sporting events, TAB gambling venues and cinemas will be abolished.

The territory is being used as a test case for broader measures, because its small population and isolation appear to have buffeted it from the worst effects of the pandemic.

That the NT cannot be shut-off from broader developments, however, as was shown this morning with the announcement that four Australian Defence Force personnel had been hospitalised in Darwin after reportedly contracting COVID-19 in the Middle East.

The territory is a hub of the Australian military, with Darwin hosting a major marine base directed against China. Some 2,500 US marines are set to arrive at the base in July, while an unknown number of US intelligence assets come and go from the spy base in Pine Gap near the town of Alice Springs, all year long. The US is currently one of the epicentres of the pandemic and there have already been large-scale outbreaks on board its naval vessels.

The move in the NT is particularly reckless, given that fewer than 5,000 tests have been conducted out of a population of some 250,000.

More than a quarter of Territorians are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. They suffer the health consequences of centuries of oppression and many continue to live in communities that lack the most basic amenities. While for other demographics, individuals over the age of 60 are considered at risk of serious illness or death if they contract the coronavirus, among Aborigines, the warning age is just 50.

The South Australian state government is reportedly seeking to lift many of its restrictions within three weeks. The Victorian state of emergency concludes on May 11, which is the date that Morrison and state leaders have assigned for a review of all lockdown measures.

In New South Wales, the countrys most populous state and the largest centre of infections, government claims that the worst of the crisis is over have been dealt a blow by a spate of tragic deaths at the Newmarch House aged care home in Western Sydney and by ongoing reports of community transmission.

This morning state authorities announced the thirteenth death at the Newmarch facility. Family members have protested over several weeks that they have been denied information about the plight of their relatives and their health status.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian also revealed that there had been nine new confirmed infections over the previous 24 hours. At least four of them are a result of community transmission in the Penrith area.

The state is nevertheless proceeding with back to work measures, including the reopening of the schools.

This week, the Daily Telegraph published details of a previously secret matrix, which the NSW government is using to plan the end of the lockdown. It appears to provide a cost versus health analysis of a series of measures.

For instance, it is noted that the removal of restrictions on large-scale outdoor gatherings would result in a medium risk of new COVID-19 infections, but this is counted against the high economic and well-being benefits that would result from such a measure. The reintroduction of widespread retail shopping would similarly result in a medium risk of a coronavirus outbreak, but would have high economic benefits.

According to the Telegraph, the NSW state government is hoping that its recently announced abolition of limits on family visits will have been normalised by mid-May, prior to the lifting of other restrictions.

The Murdoch-press, however, claims that there is a group of cabinet ministers in NSW pushing for a faster relaxation of lockdown laws, including Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, Deputy Premier John Barilaro and Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello. Two of those have portfolios that would receive a direct boost from a rapid reopening of the economy.

Similar calculations are being made nationally. This week the media revealed modelling by the Group of Eight universities, commissioned by the government to advise a route out of the crisis.

The academics presented two models. One would require the maintenance of most lockdown measures until at least June, aimed at the effective elimination of the spread of the virus. The other would involve the phased overturn of restrictions and a subsequent policy of controlled adaptation to COVID-19.

The proponents of the latter strategy bluntly stated that it would lead to a slightly higher number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths. All of their modelling is predicated on untested assertions that the health system will be capable of dealing with a rapid spike in infections. Nevertheless Morrison and other government representatives immediately declared that they were not seeking to eliminate the virus, because to do so would have too great an effect on the economy.

Governments are touting a decline in cases to justify the removal of lockdown measures. The reduction, however, is clearly the result of the policies they are seeking to overturn. Within the corridors of power, it is openly discussed that the abolition of the social distancing measures will result in a rapid spike in infections, and inevitably, in deaths.

The Murdoch-owned Australian has been among the most insistent advocates of a speedy return to work. Yesterday, its foreign editor Greg Sheridan spelt out what this would mean, declaring: [B]ased on everything we know about COVID-19 there will likely be a second and a third wave of the pandemic. They could easily be worse than the first. He concluded: Dont think the worst cannot come here.

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Australian governments rushing to reverse lockdown measures - World Socialist Web Site

Dont cross picket lines of striking workers. It hurts their ability to negotiate with corporate and reflects poorly on you.

The Daily Iowan; Photo by Ben Smith

Organizers and protestors chant in support of laborers during a Labour Walkout event in Des Moines on Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. Organizations in support of laborers across Iowa such as Service Employees International Union, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and Democratic Socialists of America participated in the rally. (Ben Smith/The Daily Iowan)

Peyton Downing, Opinions Columnist April 29, 2020

This pandemic has hurt everyone but some are more hurt than others. Service workers who are interacting with people every day while going about their jobs are in some of the most precarious situations today, and they are not being fairly compensated for it. In protest of unfair working conditions, hundreds of thousands of workers will begin a general strike May 1.

From retail work to food manufacturing, workers require proper wages for their labor in wake of this pandemic. They are risking their lives each and every day they go into work and are not being treated fairly, whether it be a lack of personal protective equipment or an absence of hazard pay.

Its not as though these retailers and service providers are hurting either Amazon alone has had its shares reach a record high at $2,449.05, with CEO Jeff Bezos fortune reaching past $138 billion.

Companies such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, and any other large brand can easily afford to provide for its workers. They just dont feel the need to.

That is why this upcoming strike is so important. In order to make these corporations give the workers what they are owed for their labor, they must feel the pain workers do.

They must be made to understand that without labor, there is nothing. That to keep the labor they have, they must give their workers what is necessary to make it through this economic hardship.

To anyone who thinks this is an immoral act to seek an increase of wages during a pandemic I can see where youre coming from. These are services that are required for society to function. Everyone has to eat, get supplies for work, and be able to keep themselves occupied during whatever stay-at-home orders youre under during this time. What right do these workers have to hold these services hostage?

But I have to ask what right do we have to hold workers hostage? We have to work to live, to have shelter, food, and water. These jobs may be all that allow workers to live, because without adequate social welfare, they will lose their homes and their ability to eat.

Should we force people to risk their lives at these mind-numbing jobs for a pittance of what corporate makes? Force them to risk their lives when its possible to make it safer for them?

I am not asking anyone to join in the general strike, although if you are interested, genstrike.org has an excellent May Day guide put together.

All I ask of those of you reading this is to please respect these workers rights to strike. Do not cross those lines come May 1.

If you believe this is just some minor action that wont amount to anything, I urge you to reconsider, because such strikes are how workers won some of the most important victories throughout history. The eight-hour work day, weekends, minimum wage, the abolition of child labor, and more all came from the influence of labor unions and strikes.

We are on the cusp of great change. In the coming months of this pandemic, as our society continues to adapt, we must make conscious decisions as to how to spend our time, money, and effort.

Please, for the sake of your fellow human beings, respect the strikes. Spend your money at locations that give their workers protective equipment and livable wages. If you want to do more, then please, do more, but at the very least, respect what these workers are trying to accomplish.

Individually, your action may not mean much. But if everyone, everywhere respects the strike, we can help provide and protect fellow workers now, and into the future.

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Opinion: Don't you dare cross that strike line - UI The Daily Iowan

Antonio Barreca, one of the key figures in Italy's travel and tourism industry, talks to Wanted in Rome about what challenges the country's tourism faces as a result of the coronavirus lockdown.

by Marco Venturini

Federturismo is the National Business Federation of the Travel and Tourism Industry of Confindustria, and represents the entire production chain of the tourism industry.

The federation includes 20 different productive sectors, that range from hotels, spas, beach establishments, ski lifts, travel retail, marinas, transport (airports, buses, trains, car rentals), amusement parks, entertainment companies, travel agencies, tour operators, currency exchange, tax- free shopping, fairs, conferences and catering.

Federturismo is an association of companies, and as such represents their interests within the government and parliament in a spirit of constant dialogue and collaboration.

The Italian tourism industry has 4.2 million employees and an annual turnover of 232 billion, equal to 13 per cent of the nations GDP. Tourism represents the economic engine of entire regions of our country, now totally at a standby. Its a sector with an incredibly valuable heritage that must be preserved, enhanced and made competitive. More importantly, in this moment of emergency in which all productive categories are blocked and will probably not restart even after the lockdown has been lifted, it must receive help.

The situation is dramatic. Already in March, at the beginning of the emergency, the overall losses were estimated at around 30 billion, but now there are fears that they may also double, reaching 60 billion. Not to mention the 500,000 seasonal workers that should have been hired in this moment, and who have not yet seen the start of their contracts. Many of them live an entire year on the work of the summer months, and have problems accessing NASPI, a monthly unemployment allowance.

They are all in the same situation, none excluded, even if the airlines, transport and accommodation facilities are the ones that are paying the higher price. Tourism was one of the first industries to be hit by the coronavirus crisis where travel restrictions and cancellations led to an almost complete halt to international and domestic tourism. All the bookings we had, as a country, were all cancelled.

Businesses need to start again, quickly and safely. Along with UNI, the Italian Unification Board, we have agreed to open a technical tourism table in order to develop a first series of useful guidelines for businesses, that will gradually reopen in view of the summer season.

We are working to develop, within the general rules on workplace safety defined at national and international levels, the protocols to which all tourism companies must adapt in order to guarantee and offer their services in the safest way possible for workers and customers.

Having said this, government intervention will be necessary in any case. We must be sure that the lost profits will not force companies to close.

A return to normal is not going to happen soon, especially if we think of international customers which make up half of our market.

This summer in Italy, we will not be able to rely on international tourism, which contributes 51 per cent of the bookings in hotels and accommodation facilities. We trust in the internal market, even if we are worried about the spending capacity of our fellow Italians. There is a possibility that many of them will have to work during the summer, as their vacation days were used up due to the fact that companies have leaned on this method to ground themselves during the pandemic.

We must also consider that the structures that will reopen, in order to guarantee social distancing, will necessarily work at 30-35 per cent of their usual capacity.

It is inevitable that the way of doing tourism will be turned upside down.

Although it is difficult now to be able to make predictions, we can still assume that in the reboot phase, forms of travel mainly concentrated in Italy and of short-medium range will be preferred. A kind of tourism that will go for smaller and less crowded destinations and open air activities. As well as individual trips for couples and families.

In this climate of profound uncertainty, Italians are not booking their holidays and those who have done so previously, have cancelled their booking. But, the summer holidays must be saved and the message to convey is that you can go on holiday despite the virus, you just need to be equipped and follow the instructions that will soon be given by the competent authorities.

It will be proximity tourism: by the sea, in the mountains or in the villages. The important thing is that Italians start travelling again.

Certainly the pandemic crisis, with the blocking of flights and the fear of infections, will make the arrival of foreign tourists in Italy very difficult. However, they must be reminded that they all can book with the guarantee of not losing anything, as they will always be refunded. The government has set regulations on how to make refunds, and tourism companies will respect them with great responsibility.

In this critical phase of health emergency, but also a socio-economic one, companies need a quick and decisive intervention to support their business and a push to restart. For this reason, we have asked the government for a package of measures, such as the abolition of taxes for the whole of 2020, a tax credit on rent for hotels and tour operators, and extraordinary funds dedicated to tourism along with the simplification of the application of social safety nets.

The government must show that it has understood the seriousness of the situation, and we expect special measures to help us face the situation.

Since July 2011 Antonio Barreca has been the director general of Federturismo, the Italian National Federation of the Travel and Tourism Industry which is part of Confindustria (the Italian employers' confederation). He served in 2014 as a senior advisor for tourism for Sicily. He has been a member of the Tourism Sustainability Group of the European Commission since February 2011, and the vice president of the tourism committee at the Italian Organization for Standardization (UNI), an association that publishes standards for industrial, commercial and tertiary sectors.

Originally posted here:

What does the future look like for Italian Tourism - Wanted in Rome

May Day, or International Workers Day, is celebrated with marches and rallies every May 1 to lift up the working people and their demands for freedom, equality, and justice. That is the Red tradition of May Day. But there is also an older Green tradition in which cultures the world over celebrate as Spring arrives in temperate and arctic climates or the wet season arrives in tropical climates. This Green tradition of May Day celebrates all that is free and life-giving on the green Earth that is our commonwealth and heritage. These Red and Green May Day traditions are complementary.

Historian Peter Linebaugh, in hisThe Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day, provides an evocative description of the Green tradition of May Day:

Once upon a time, long before Weinberger bombed north Africans, before the Bank of Boston laundered money, or Reagan honored the Nazi war dead, the earth was blanketed by a broad mantle of forests. As late as Caesars time a person might travel through the woods for two months without gaining an unobstructed view of the sky. The immense forests of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America provided the atmosphere with oxygen and the earth with nutrients. Within the woodland ecology, our ancestors did not have to work the graveyard shift, or to deal with flextime, or work from Nine to Five. Indeed, the native Americans whom Captain John Smith encountered in 1606 only worked four hours a week. The origin of May Day is to be found in the Woodland Epoch of History.

Everywhere people went a-Maying by going into the woods and bringing back leaf, bough, and blossom to decorate their persons, homes, and loved ones with green garlands. Outside theater was performed with characters like Jack-in-the-Green and the Queen of the May. Trees were planted. Maypoles were erected. Dances were danced. Music was played. Drinks were drunk, and love was made. Winter was over, spring had sprung.

The Red tradition of May Day developed in response to the rise of capitalism, which undermined the Green tradition of May Day that people the world over had celebrated for millennia. Beginning in the 1500s in a process that continues to this day, landlords and capitalists have increasingly dispossessed working people from their land, their tools of production, and thus control over their means to life.

In the 1500s, rich landowners, with the support of the state, began to appropriate and take exclusive ownership of ancient public lands and forests, enclosing them for their own private profit-seeking purposes. Peasant communities lost their communal use of common fields and forests for grazing animals, hunting game, and gathering food and wood. This process continues today in many parts of the world.

The next stage of dispossession developed with the rise of the factories of industrial capitalism, which underpriced the handcrafted products of artisans, who then became dependent on capitalists for employment in the factories. In the U.S., the American ideal of republican liberty grounded in the economic independence of a free citizenry of small farmers and artisans gave way to a more inequitable class society of many workers and increasingly fewer capitalists, alongside a moderately-sized middle class of professionals and managers. The working people no longer had their freedom grounded in the economic independence provided by their own land and tools. They were now dependent on capitalists for their means of livelihood. When they crossed the threshold of the workplace, they entered a dictatorship where they had to work as directed and surrender their political rights to free speech, press, and assembly in the workplace. They received a fixed wage, while the owners took all the additional value that their labor created. They soon began to call their oppressive and exploited condition wage slavery in a conscious comparison to the conditions of African slaves on southern plantations.

The workers movement that arose in response began to organize labor unions and political parties around a program of cooperative production where workers would democratically manage their collective work and workers would receive the full fruits of their labor. They reasoned that economic democracy in cooperative production was the only way they could restore their freedom and achieve a decent standard of living under the conditions of large-scale production. The first political party in the world to raise this program which soon became known as socialism arose in Philadelphia and New York City in 1929 when labor unions organized the Workingmens Party. The Workies elected the president of the carpenters union to the state Assembly of New York.

The author of the Workies platform resolutions, Thomas Skidmore, soon penned a book calledThe Rights of Man to Property!He argued for common ownership of large-scale means of production, universal public education, a debt jubilee, and land redistribution. He called for the abolition of private inheritance with estates going into a public fund for distribution of a share to each person upon adulthood. He called not only for the abolition of slavery but for reparations, for land and a share of the nations wealth to the former slaves to help them get started on their farms. He called for citizenship for American Indians and suffrage and equal rights for women. With an eye to environmental protection, he decried the destruction of the planets resources that would eventually result from capitalisms promotion of the unrestricted use of unlimited private property.

This Red tradition of socialism can be seen as a way to recover the ecological sustainability that the Green tradition of May Day rejoiced and sanctified. It will take the full political and economic democracy of socialism to give the people the power to choose ecological balance instead of being powerless subjects of capitalisms competitive structural drive for the blind, relentless growth that devours the environment. Hence Green Party activists often describe their perspective as ecological socialism.

The Red tradition of May Day emerged in the 1880s in the United States. It arose out of the workers movement fighting for the same kinds of demands that the Workies had raised in 1829. The immediate impetus came from the Haymarket Massacre in 1886. On the night of May 4, 1886, 176 Chicago police attacked about 200 workers who remained after a day-long demonstration for the 8-hour day. The police fired live ammunition, killing four and wounding 70. Somebody threw a stick of dynamite. Eight of the labor organizers were charged and convicted. Four of them were hung to death. One of the Haymarket martyrs, Albert Parsons, a white former confederate soldier married to Lucy Parsons, a former slave of African, Indian, and Mexican descent, said at this trial, What is Socialism or Anarchism? Briefly stated it is the right of the toilers to the free and equal use of the tools of production and the right of the producers to their product.

Lucy Parsons campaigned across the United States and Europe to have the workers movement commemorate May 1 as International Workers Day. Many workers organizations supported her call, including the American Federation of Labor, which then urged its adoption by the Second International of socialist parties. The first international May Day celebration in 1890 was a big success. The demonstrations worried the establishments across the world. After Coxeys Army descended on May 1, 1894, in the first mass march on Washington, D.C. to demand public works spending to employ the unemployed in the midst of severe depression, President Grover Cleveland got Congress to declare a federal Labor Day holiday in September in a move designed to divide the labor movement.

Green Party members will be joining with other working peoples organizations to commemorate International Workers Day this year online given the social distancing we must practice in this coronavirus pandemic. What Greens can do to bring to these events is an understanding of the connections between the Red and Green traditions of May Day.

Conservatives try to red-bait Greens as watermelons green on the outside but red on the inside. But we dont take that as an insult. We will be on the ballot line in November as the Green Party, but there is plenty of Red as well as Green in our platform.

This article was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2020 at 12:02am and is filed under Activism, Labor, Land Use, May Day, Opinion, Social Movements, Socialism, Solidarity, Strikes, Unions, Working Class.

Go here to read the rest:

May Day is Red and Green - Dissident Voice

This July, it will be twenty-five years since Ernest Mandel passed away. A life-long socialist thinker and activist, Mandel played a crucial role in founding the IIRE. During the coming months, we will publish on our website texts by Mandel that were previously unavailable online. In the following essay from 1985, Mandel summarized his view on what socialism means, and why it is possible.

This paper first appeared in a collection of essays from the Cavtat Conference in Yugoslavia, Socialism on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century, Milos Nicolic, ed., London 1985. We previously published Mandels essay Material, social and ideological preconditions for the Nazi genocide.

The Actuality of Socialism

1. What is Socialism?

According to the tradition established by Marx and Engels, socialism means the first and lower stage of communist society. It means a society of associated producers that is characterized by collective ownership of the means of production, the immediately social nature of labor and the planning o fproduction to satisfy needs (production of use-values and not commodities). It means a classless society without a state, without, that is, special organs or apparatuses for administrative, managerial or joint decision-making purposes that are divorced from the mass of citizens.

Such a society can exist only if it is managed by the producers, citizens (and consumers) themselves and only if it takes its destiny into its own hands. It must free itself from the tyranny of the ''laws of the market" (the law of value), from the tyranny of despotic authorities, and from that of the state. Priorities for the use of available resources and social labor-time must be decided on the basis of a choice between structured and coherent proposals. This is why socialism must be based upon political pluralism in the true sense of the word and not upon a one-party state or a single "remote-control" apparatus. True pluralism implies a coherent choice between alternative national (and international) priorities. It does not preclude a large number of decentralizing mechanisms at the local, regional, and neighborhood levels and in the various branches of social and economic activity, nor of organs in which democratic choices can be made at the base.

Given the uneven development of the socio-political balance of power at the international level, the construction of such a socialist society may begin at the national level But socialism can only be fully realized on a world scale; it must, that is, encompass the main countries in the world.

Defined in these terms, socialism means neither an earthly paradise, the fulfilment of millenarian dreams, nor the establishment of a perfect harmony between the individual and society or between man and nature. It means neither the "end of history" nor the end of the contradictions that characterize human existence. The aim pursued by the supporters of socialism is more modest: to resolve six or seven contradictions which have for centuries caused human suffering on a mass scale. There must be an end to man's exploitation and oppression of man and to wars and large-scale violence between human beings. Hunger and inequality must be banished forever. There must be an end to institutionalized and systematic discrimination against women and against races, ethnic groups, and national or religious minorities, which are regarded as being "inferior." There must be no more economic or ecological crises.

As a socialist, I am convinced that the resolution of these contradictions would represent a great leap forward in terms of progress and emancipation, both for our species as a whole and for the individuals who make it up. It would be as great a leap forward as the abolition of cannibalism and slavery. I am convinced that such progress is possible only if private property, commodities, and money are abolished. Their abolition is a precondition for the withering away of social classes and the state. But I am also convinced that the alternative to the withering away of classes and the state, and to the emergence of a worldwide socialist federation, is not simply maintenance of the status quo. The alternative is the possible collapse of human civilization or even the extinction of the human race as a result of increasingly unbridled competition and increasingly violent conflicts.

2. Socialism is Necessary

The areas in which self-destructive tendencies are most obvious are the race to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction, and the threats hanging over the ecological balance. This is not the place to enumerate the countless scientific sources which show how current trends may lead to the destruction of human life on earth. In these areas, the alternative is no longer "socialism or barbarism." It is "socialism or death."

The threat of pauperization and famine in the least privileged zones of the "Third World" and the possibility that a considerable proportion of the population of the imperialist metropolis will be transformed into marginalized or semi-marginalized strata are scarcely less threatening. If we accept as realistic that there will be forty million unemployed in the imperialist countries by 1985-87, and if we also take into account their families, short-time workers, the women "expelled from the labor market" and the young people who have never had access to it, we find that one hundred million men and women in the so-called "rich" countries are already suffering from material, intellectual, and moral poverty. And this represents only the first phase of a crisis which is far from having reached its apogee. If the bourgeoisie succeeds in establishing a "dual society," that figure will have to be at least doubled.

The illusion that things can go on as they are for a long time without having too catastrophic an effect is based upon the hypothesis that the capitalist market economy is infinitely flexible and that the so-called "self-regulating mechanisms" are all-powerful. It is also fostered by the fact that crises, wars, and catastrophes have not replaced the normal routine of ''business as usual," hut simply interrupt it periodically. One has to be blind not to see that these periodic ruptures are becoming more extensive and more serious decade by decade. Anyone who argues that this is not the case is guilty of making a very partial reading of the history of our century.

The First World War cost ten million Jives; the Second eighty million. How many will the Third World War cost? Between the World Wars, there were a score or so of "local wars." Since the Second World War there have been about fifty. The figure is rising year by year, if not month by month.

In the inter-war period, some thirty million people died of famine in Asia and Africa. That figure could easily be multiplied by at least ten for the period beginning in 1945. As we can see from the tragedy of Ethiopia, the real catastrophes are just beginning in this area. Between the two wars, torture gradually spread to twenty countries; it is now endemic, even institutionalized, in at least sixty or seventy. The only good point is that there bas not been another Auschwitz or another Hiroshima since 1945. But who would be so bold as to guarantee that we will be able to say the same thing in twenty years' time?

In the first half of the century, desertification and deadly pollution of water and of the atmosphere were marginal and restricted to a few areas of the planet. But now we suddenly learn that, quite apart from the catastrophes affecting Amazonia and the Sahel, half the forests in Germany are dying.

If it is irresponsible to underestimate these cumulative effects, it is equally so to conclude that we have already reached the point of no return. That pessimistic argument is simply a rationalization of fear, disappointment, and anxiety. It serves to discourage people and not to mobilize them. It is not based upon any scientific argument. It strongly resembles a deliberate abdication of reason.

All living species have an instinct for self-preservation, and they all cling dearly to life. Mankind is no exception. And that is why attempts to prevent catastrophes and to put out the fire if there is still time will always prevail. That is why the struggle for socialism will continue. It can still finally prevail in the face of defeatist and fatalist views of the future of mankind.

The thesis that we are inevitably heading towards the abyss is based upon a false diagnosis of the causes of the apocalypse that threatens us. Our self-destructive tendencies do not derive from our ''hereditary capital" or from some "congenital flaw" (the terms may be biological, but the underlying notion looks suspiciously like "original sin"), from "male aggression" or from the inevitable results of science and technology (a belief which, yet again, is suspiciously reminiscent of the Biblical warning not to eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge). The catastrophes that threaten us are not the result of too much reason or too much science, but of too little of both.

Modem technology may have caused some disasters, hut only because we know too little about its side effects. Increased knowledge and new advances in the natural sciences would increase rather than decrease our ability to prevent catastrophes. The real problem lies elsewhere. Progress in the natural sciences and man's increased control over nature have gone hand in hand with - it might in fact be more accurate to say that they have been paid for or insured by - an almost total lack of control over mankind's "second nature," in other words, our social environment, the evolution of social structures and the determination of our social behavior. That is the real source of the catastrophes that threaten us.

One of the great insights of Marxism is the realization that science and technology are socially determined. Increasingly, the majority of non-Marxist scientists are also taking that view. The history of science and technology does of course have its own logic. It makes demands that are intrinsic to each particular discipline, hut which are also closely related to developments in "adjacent" disciplines. But the major developments reflect an overall social logic and derive from new questions and new mental structures which, in their turn, relate to specific social needs and interests.

In that sense, the nuclear arms race is not the inevitable outcome of quantum physics. Developments in synthetic chemistry do not inevitably result in the pollution of the oceans. Desertification is not the inevitable outcome of attempts to increase the productivity of agricultural labor. All these threats and disasters result from the subordination of technological and scientific developments to the tyranny of capital, to the logic whereby each firm seeks to maximize its own profits, regardless of the long-term consequences for the labor force, for society as a whole or for the ecological balance, because it is subject to the implacable imperatives of competition and capital accumulation.

It is not the inevitable fragmentation of knowledge that produces political, ecological, and economic catastrophes. It is the determination of investment decisions by fragmented short- and medium-term interests that leads to crisis and wars because the overall or longterm effects are not taken into account. It is there and there alone that we have to look for the origins of the ever-more explosive combination of partial rationality and overall irrationality which characterizes the tendential development of bourgeois society.

This brings us to the heart of the problem. Socialism is necessary because the logic of bourgeois society, the logic of private property and the market economy, the logic of the quest for private wealth and, above all, the mechanisms of universal competition that they stimulate in every area of individual and social behavior, are feeding an infernal dynamic which is leading us to disaster. Investments are placed anywhere and everywhere, even if they result in debts totalling $7 trillion and unemployment for hundreds of millions of people (taking the metropolis and the "Third World" together). Manufacturing goes on at any cost, regardless of the natural resources it destroys. We go on constructing nuclear bombs capable of killing the population of the world ten, twenty, or even forty times over, regardless of the monstrous absurdity of "overkill."

In the modem world, this dynamic is increasingly out of control. It applies both to the capitalist part of the world and to the division of the world into "two camps" (but unfortunately both "camps" are part of the same geographical and biological world). It can still be blocked, halted, reversed, or done away with by the victory of internationalism socialism. Mankind's acquisition of sovereignty over the way in which political, social, economic, and material existence is organized has become a matter of life and death. Mankind must gain control over the forces of nature. It is only insofar as the forces of nature are not mastered that they can kill. Nature can be controlled and used to give the vast majority of the men and women who live on this planet a better and happier life.

No purely mechanical force and no "inevitable chain of events" could prevent a worldwide association of 750 million producers from putting an immediate and permanent end to the manufacture of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons - or even all heavy weaponry - from destroying existing weapon stocks or from taking supervisory and coercive measures to ensure that its decisions are respected. They would simply have to be the masters of their own factories and run them collectively. If 750 million wage eamers became associated producers, no "objective economic law'' and no "iron laws" could prevent them from sharing out the total labor time needed to produce the goods and services they required to meet their rational needs, provided that they immediately introduced a twenty-five- or twenty-hour working week rather than dividing mankind into two groups: the men and women who slave away for forty-eight or fifty-six hours a week and the men and women who no longer perform any socially recognized labor and accordingly receive less and less reward for doing so.

3. Socialism is Possible

The productive forces have developed to such an extent that they have now created the preconditions for the abolition of penury and commodity production on a world basis. This would, of course, require a radical redistribution of resources and the elimination of the underutilization or wasteful use of resources (arms production, products harmful to health, etc.). It would also require a redeployment of investments in order to prioritize the satisfaction of basic needs on the basis of the democratically-determined preferences of producers and consumers, and not on the basis of arbitrary or technocratic diktats.

I am, however, convinced that existing resources would make it possible to resolve these problems within a reasonably short space of time. There is no reason to suppose that poverty is inevitable and that there are not sufficient goods and services to cover basic needs in terms of food, clothing, reasonably comfortable housing, culture, leisure, and public transport. It is not utopian to speak of the abolition of commodity production. lt is certainly possible to feed all the men and women who live on our planet without destroying the ecological balance, provided that population growth is controlled on a worldwide basis, and the indications are that it is starting to be controlled. The currently available scientific data show no ground for fears that energy or mineral resources will inevitably be exhausted.i

A worldwide redistribution of the resources and net products required to eliminate famine and poverty does not necessarily imply a fall in the standard of living enjoyed by the average producer in the northern hemisphere. Redistribution could to a large extent be achieved using resources which are now wasted or make no contribution to living standards. Two figures are sufficient to demonstrate this.

World military expenditure totals at least $700 billion a year. Over the last ten years, underutilization of industrial and agricultural productive capacity in the imperialist countries and the dependent semi-industrialized countries has averaged twenty percent. The total cost is twice that of military expenditure. The proportion of labor time which is not used for productive purposes (the time during which existing plant and workers produce nothing) is at least as high in the USSR and Eastern Europe, where an eight-hour working day is considered "normal." (Andropov once stated that thirty-three percent of all hours worked in industry were wasted annually.) If we add these figures together, we get some idea of our potential ability to meet mankind's basic needs, even if we do have to take into account the need for prudence in the use of what, on the basis of our current knowledge, are considered non-renewable natural resources.

Commodity production will obviously not disappear all at once. Nor will it disappear simply because some authority decrees that it should do so, even if that authority is the expression of a majority democratic decision verified in free pluralist elections. It will be in the interests of the associated producers who control the means of production to economize their productive effort as much as possible. That, together with the need to extend consumption to more than elementary needs, will create socio-economic tensions. The optimal way (and not merely one possible way) to resolve those tensions will be to maintain a commodity and monetary sector - essentially restricted to "superfluous" products-alongside the non-commodity and non-monetary sector in which the principle of distribution in accordance with need applies. The coexistence of the two sectors means that there can be no sudden leap from the present organization of the economy in the capitalist and so-called socialist countries to the truly socialist economy envisaged by Marx and Engels. There will have to be a transition period. That period has already begun in the so-called socialist countries, hut it is far from over.

The historical logic of the transition period is to ensure the gradual disappearance both of commodity production and of any determination or distribution of the surplus social product other than in accordance with the free and democratically determined wishes of the majority of producers. It will at the same time ensure the disappearance of social inequality and of the underlying material conditions which divide society into a managerial and a "managed" sector. These conditions include the length of the working day and modes of access to knowledge and data which mean that only part of society is in a position to manage and that the rest of society is relegated to productive activities. The disappearance of commodity production is therefore bound up with the withering away of social classes and of the state.

The principal aspects of the third technological revolution, which has now entered the phase of gradual generalization and ''vulgarization," mean that in material terms it is quite possible to introduce these radical transformations. As semi-automation evolves toward robotization and full automation, the reduction of the working day by half in no way implies a fall in material production as a whole. Micro-electronics now mean that all men and women can have full democratic access to data and knowledge. All this is technically possible and relatively easy to achieve. The problem is political and social: how are we to ensure that the enormous possibilities opened up by modern technology do not lead to new catastrophes, new abuses, new privileges, and new monopolies enjoyed by minorities? There is only one answer: they must be subject to open democratic control by a collective organization of producer-consumers.

Historical experience, including that of the so-called socialist countries, definitely shows that the survival of a market economy, except in absolutely marginal terms, inevitably implies the survival of competition for access to the means of consumption and exchange (and at least certain means of production), to the survival of a tendency towards the private accumulation of wealth and therefore to the survival of the socio-economic motivations that lie behind them. Far from being an "innate part of human nature," these motivations did not exist for hundreds of thousands of years. Until very recently, they did not exist in the village and tribal communities in which the majority of mankind lived. But once commodity production expands (or, which amounts to the same thing, when its abolition applies to only certain areas of socio-economic activity), "socialist propaganda," "education," and "totalitarian indoctrination" can do nothing to prevent the spread of such motivations.

Socialism will finally become a new consolidated social system capable of reproducing itself automatically and without external constraints - and this includes constraints exercised by the state - when cooperation and solidarity between producer-consumers replace the selfish urge to acquire private wealth. Cooperation and solidarity were hegemonic in primitive society and must eventually become universal human characteristics. It is not utopian to speak of cooperation replacing selfishness, as both have anthropological roots. The abolition of penury and of the "struggle for life" it generates will provide the material basis for the change.

But the change in social climate and the psychological revolution required if this is to take place imply more than the development of the productive forces and more than a mere "implosion" of material wealth and well-being. They imply a revolution in the relations of production and exchange which will make cooperation and solidarity between producer-consumers the motor force behind economic activity. That revolution will have to be reflected in everyday life and the abolition of material and social privileges will have to be visible to all. None of this can be realized unless commodity production and the competition it generates disappear.

It is not my intention to describe the various stages that will lead to the disappearance of commodity production or the world that will emerge from the general overthrow of capitalism and from the achievements of the so-called socialist countries. I will not even raise the question of whether those stages are "universal" or whether it might not be preferable, given the current state of our knowledge, to restrict the de bate to a pragmatic analysis of the major problems that will have to be solved in terms of democratic planning and self-management, of the problems that arise and will continue to arise from the real process of the socialist revolution and from the bureaucratic deformations which have until now marred all such revolutions. It is precisely because these problems are so vital for the problematic of socialism that I intend to raise them in very genera! historical terms.

4. Which Socio-Political Forces Can Establish Socialism?

Scientific socialism is based upon the thesis that a classless society cannot come about through Aufklrung alone; it will not result from education and "rationalist" propaganda, "science," a "desire for emancipation" or a noble (or ethical) desire to ensure the greatest possible good for the greatest number of people. Like Marx and Engels, socialist militants do of course have such motives, and they are essential if there is to be any sustained and lasting socialist activity. No socialist society can emerge without socialist theory (Engels even explicitly used the term "socialist science") or without a deep desire for emancipation.

But although these motives and impulses are necessary, the victory of socialism requires a social force whose material interests coincide with the abolition of class divisions within society. Socialism can result only from the real movement of a real class capableii of overcoming the obstacles that the bourgeois system and the remaining vestiges of pre-bourgeois society have placed on the road to classless society. Private ownership of the means of production is the major obstacle, hut it is far from being the only one.

Marx's greatest contribution to the socialist cause, to the producers' struggle for their emancipation and, more generally, to the human race, was to provide a material basis for the old socialist project, which is in fact as old as the division of society into classes. Mankind has never accepted class divisions as inevitable and has rebelled against them throughout the ages, regardless of the relative success or failure of its rebellions. Marx's contribution helped the effective and consciously assumed organization of the working class (which is much older than Marxism) to merge into the socialist project. The fusion of the two reached its high point in the first third of this century, in the period between 1905 and 1932. Since then, it has been affected by a latent crisis. The crisis has at times taken the explosive or catastrophic form of historical defeats (Hitler, Stalin). The question is: are these conjunctural and historically transient crises which the real class movement can overcome? Or are they structural and historically irreversible crises? In political-strategic terms, it might be reformulated as: do the culminating points of the proletarian revolution which Marx and Engels outlined on the basis of their historical analysis of the class struggle in the latter part of the nineteenth century lie ahead of us or behind us?

The problem can be subdivided into three questions:

1. Once capitalist society has reached a given threshold of industrialization, does the proletariat actually have the economic, social, psychological, and moral resources needed to wage a victorious struggle against the bourgeoisie, and can it at the same time begin to construct a classless society with at least some chance of success?

2. Can it preserve those resources once capitalism reaches the limits of its world development and the system enters into a period of crisis? Or are those resources beginning to disintegrate as a concomitant of the break-up of capitalist "civilization" itself?

3. Are we faced with an exceptional historical impasse? Could it be that the proletariat is still economically (materially) capable of leading the world to socialism, but that the moral, psychological and social obstacles -in other words, the subjective obstacles -are now insurmountable? One of the obstacles, which is most obvious at the political level, is the division of the proletariat itself. (The sectional interest of professional, industrial, regional, national, and ethnic groups are fostered by the segmentation of the labor market under capitalism, and can lead to very wide wage differentials.) Then there is the relative autonomy of the "leadership" factor, which in its turn reflects the discontinuity between the political activities of different strata within the proletariat, between their different levels of consciousness and organization, and the appearance of bureaucratic apparatuses within working-class organizations. Such apparatuses are relatively autonomous from the masses (bureaucratization) and acquire privileges which lead to the tendency to substitute the defense of the material privileges and the monopoly of organizational and political power upon which they are based for the interests of the class as a whole.

The first question is the easiest to answer in the light of the empirical data. The history of the growth and expansion of capitalism on an international scale since the industrial revolution and since the moment when Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto is also the history of the growth and expansion of the working class, of the self-organization of the working class and of the working-class struggle that inevitably accompanies it. None of Marx's predictions bas been more startlingly confirmed by history. In the 1840s, there were no more than one or two hundred trade unionists in the whole world. There are now more than two hundred million. Wherever capitalism opens a port, a workshop, a factory, or a bank - be it on a distant Pacific island or in a remote village in Amazonia or the tropical forests of Africa-sooner or later the wage earners it brings together will unite to challenge the bourgeois division of the net product into wages and profit.

Whatever birds of ill omen and pessimists may say, the mass of urban wage earners (and workers in the so-called socialist countries must of course be included in the total) continues to grow throughout the world. Even in the midst of a crisis, the number of wage earners has now reached the unprecedented figure of 750 million, which far surpasses the figures for 1914, 1940, or 1968. If agricultural wage earners are also included, the total figure is over one billion. The figure continues to rise, both in absolute terms, and as a proportion of the active population. In countries like the USA, Sweden, and Great Britain, wage earners now make up ninety percent of the active population. The number of countries in which that is the case is likely to rise. More than ever before, these colossal masses are objectively capable of taking control of the means of production and exchange they set in motion every day and of managing them in accordance with freely and consciously chosen criteria and priorities.

When we speak of "freely and consciously chosen" criteria, we emphasize one exceptional aspect of the socialist revolution and of the construction of socialism. The feature that distinguishes it from all previous social revolutions in history is the key role of the subjective or "consciousness" factor, and, therefore, of the political factor. This is why the first question is in part related to the third.

To be more accurate, this is why we have to make a distinction between the objective, socio-economic preconditions for socialism and its subjective, socio-political preconditions. And that is why our first question has to be reformulated. Socialism does not automatically or inevitably result from the development and the crisis of capitalism or from the class struggles they generate. It is only one of two outcomes: the other, as Engels pointed out when he drew a parallel with the fate of the slave society of the ancient world, being the parallel breakup of the two basic social classes. The correct way to formulate our first question is thus: have the development and crisis of capitalism created and maintained a revolutionary potential within the proletariat that will periodically allow the real movement to place the construction of a classless society on the agenda (when the subjective obstacles can be momentarily overcome).

History's answer to this question is positive. And history goes on giving it a positive answer. The most recent and most obvious manifestations of the "real class movement" -May 1968 in France, the "Hot Autumn" of 1969 in Italy, the Portuguese revolution of 1974-75 and the rise of Solidarnosc in Poland in 1980-81 - are enough to show that the historic potential is still there, even though the organized labor movement has been in crisis for the last fifty years. (In world terms, the crisis is obvious, hut that does not mean that there have not been national victories, such as that of the Yugoslav revolution, which has been strengthened by the movement towards workers' self-management. Such victories are, however, partial, limited, and contradictory, in that they take place within the framework of the general crisis.)

The answer to the second question is more debatable. In my view, however, it is quite obvious and is based, not upon some dogmatic "faith," hut upon a sound analysis of the facts as a whole. It depends largely upon the definition of the proletariat and of the nature of its "revolutionary potential," in other words, its capacity to transcend bourgeois society.

The "revolutionary potential" of the modern proletariat is basically determined by its ability to create the objective conditions for the cooperative concentration and socialization of labor and to channel its mass organizational and cooperative capacities in the direction of self-emancipation through active, conscious, and voluntary solidarity within the organs and struggles it develops to defend its interest. The corollary of all this is the proletariat's objective ability to paralyze all the economic and social mechanisms of the modern world and then to set them to work under its own leadership and in accordance with its own ends.

If we analyze these conditions, it immediately becomes apparent that they are not specific to industrial manual workers (which is not to deny that industrial concentration obviously creates the most favorable conditions for the development of the above qualities). The important point is that they apply to wage earners or, to use the classic Marxist definition, to those individuals who are economically obliged to sell their labor power. (All such individuals belong to the proletarian class.)

Wage levels are in themselves irrelevant, provided that the economic obligation is reproduced (provided, that is, that wages do not reach such a level as to allow a large amount to be set aside for the acquisition of means of production or even for the accumulation of capital). The nature of the labor involved (manual or intellectual, "productive" or non-productive of surplus value) is equally irrelevant, especially as the historical tendency is towards concentration (large-scale unionization of assistants in department stores, clerical workers in insurance, etc.). Workers in power stations, telecommunications, and banks are as capable of paralyzing bourgeois society as workers in the steel or motor industries.

Leaving aside the question of the relative weight of the industrial manual proletariat (whether it is rising or falling in world terms is, at the moment, uncertain), the proletariat as a whole, as defined above, is definitely increasing, despite the long depression we are going through. The depression and the mutations it causes are in fact helping to increase the size of the proletariat. We are not witnessing the beginnings of a "post-industrial society." We are witnessing the gradual industrialization and mechanization of both the service sector and the industrial sector, thanks largely to microelectronics and computerization. All long-term statistics contradict the argument that this will lead to a huge deconcentration of labor (or even to a deconcentration of both capital and labor via the expansion of small-scale family firms). Given the innovatory and experimental role played by small firms and individual entrepreneurs, deconcentration in the "leading sectors" is a classically transient phenomenon. Once success is assured, concentration is inevitable, as the home computer sector has found to its cost in the USA, Great Britain, and Japan.

For the moment, the capitalist crisis is unlikely to lead to the break up of the proletariat. It is, however, likely to lead to increased possibilities of a division between those who keep their jobs and those who lose them, hut that problem is as old as capitalism itself, and the labor movement can and must respond to it by fighting for a new and radical reduction in the working week. The proletariat is still the "anticapitalist subject" and the "socialist subject" par excellence. Marx analyzes the conditions which predispose the proletariat towards socialism in the first volume of Capital; history is now reproducing them within the "new" proletarian strata, sometimes with disconcerting rapidity.

The real problematic centers, then, upon the third question. It is no coincidence that that should be the case. By far the most difficult thing to achieve is the creation of the subjective preconditions for the construction of socialism, both before and after the overthrow of capitalism.

There is nothing surprising about that statement in itself. The proletarian social revolution is the first revolution in history to place the fate of society in the hands of a class which, until the day of its political victory (and for a long period afterwards), remains economically and culturally dependent and exploited (oppressed). Whereas all previous social revolutions have resulted in the transfer of power to classes which have already achieved economic hegemony and the ideological hegemony that goes with it, it would be quite utopian to imagine that the proletariat could seize economic power within capitalist society. It would be even more utopian to imagine that it could achieve an ideological hegemony while it is still exploited and dependent in economic terms.

The consequences of its economic and ideological dependency currently restrict a potential for self-organization, cooperation, and class solidarity which, in other terms, results from the proletariat's conditions of existence within bourgeois society. The clash between these two tendencies gives rise both to the daily routine of proletarian life, with its "realism" or tendency to adapt, and to the periodic emergence of large-scale class conflicts (mass strikes, general strikes, political crises, pre-revolutionary crises, revolutionary situations) during which the overthrow of capitalism suddenly becomes possible in the short term.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the major cycles of the proletarian class struggle have been based upon this dialectic, which is itself governed by a deeper dialectic between "subjective and objective factors in history." The cycles may have varied from region to region and even from country to country, but the overall historical tendencies they represent can still be identified.

The first general upswing led to the revolution of 1848 and then to its defeat. this was followed by a long period of decline and then a slow recovery interrupted by the victory and defeat of the Paris Commune. A second general upswing beginning in the 1890s culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The defeat of the revolution in Central Europe in 1919-23 then "overdetermined" the fate of the Russian Revolution itself. This new upswing then gave way to a period of decline and to a series of increasingly severe defeats (Japan, Germany, and Spain) culminating in the Second World War and the spread of fascism throughout almost the whole of the continent of Europe, from Gibraltar to the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. The Resistance and the re-emergence of the revolutionary struggle produced a new upsurge which reached its high point with the victories of the Chinese and Yugoslav revolutions. This phase was, however, also marked by heavy defeats in Western Europe, the USA, and Japan (stabilization of capitalism, McCarthyism, and the Cold War).

This time, the decline of the revolutionary struggle was not worldwide. Nourished by the anti-imperialist liberation movement, the revolution spread to Indochina, Cuba, and Nicaragua. But for at least two decades, there was a real decline in revolutionary activity in the northern hemisphere, and it lasted until the new upsurge of 1968. Even so, the absence of revolutionary victories in the northern hemisphere bas had a negative effect on the world balance of power, as was the long-standing passivity of the American and Russian proletariats.

The dialectic between daily routine and periodic revolutionary breakthroughs relates in its turn to the dialectic between "mass and leadership" or, more accurately, between the real class movement and its political expression. The fact that we have to recognize that the proletariat can periodically overcome the subjective obstacles that bar the road to socialism does not detract from the need to recognize that one of the main features of the last fifty years bas been the crisis within the practice of the organized labor movement (both its social-democratic and its Stalinist branches). This crisis weighs heavily upon the possibility of ensuring the worldwide victory of socialism in the late twentieth century.

This is all the more serious in that the crisis in the labor movement is increasingly bound up with the crisis affecting the "construction of socialism" in those countries which have abolished capitalism. The models of economic, political, cultural, and social management provided by those countries are themselves in crisis. The crisis in the construction of socialism combined with the capitalist crisis and with the crisis in the practice of the organized labor movement to sow objective doubts, scepticism, and demoralization in the minds of the exploited and the oppressed, not only in terms of which "socialist models" to follow, but also in terms of the historical ability of wage earners to emancipate themselves. These now obstacles can only be overcome by life itself and by new historical experiences (though theoretical contributions may have a decisive role to play in paving the way for them). Fortunately, the "real movement" inevitably produces "new models," as during May 1968 and as with Solidarnosc.

Insofar as it continues to gather strength and to gain experience from daily life (economic strikes, electoral movements, struggles for democratic reforms, etc.), the real class movement will continue to give rise to periodic explosive crises in bourgeois society and to the possibility of radical breakthroughs. As Marx and Engels always pointed out, socialists must prepare themselves for these crises and breakthroughs, and they must prepare the masses for them by taking the opportunity to demonstrate the audacity and the decisive role of revolutionary initiatives. In world terms, this is more feasible than it has ever been. In its initial phases, it may in fact be inevitable. History will teach those who believe that the "cycle of revolutions" is over the negative lesson they deserve. In 1905, the twentieth century began under the sign of revolution and counter-revolution. The twentieth century will end and the twenty-first will begin under the same sign.

The proletariat has two great allies. The first is the super-exploited peasantry of the "Third World," which is often motivated by powerful anti-imperialist liberation movements; the worker-peasant alliance was the motor force behind the victories of the Yugoslav, Chinese, Indochinese, Cuban, and Nicaraguan revolutions. It also finds new allies in the new social movements born of mass revolts against the nuclear and ecological catastrophes that threaten us, and against acute situations of oppression (the women's liberation movement). All these movements affect broad strata outside the proletariat itself. As we can see from an analysis of the conditions which make "socialism or death" such a very real dilemma, they have within them an extremely powerful anticapitalist and progressive potential. But that potential can only be realized if the labor movement succeeds in uniting them around clear anticapitalist aims, without trying to deprive them of their individual vitality, without denying their autonomy and without turning them into mere backup forces in an attempt to pressurize capitalism into "adapting."

The victory of socialism will not come about as the result of a world war (a monstrous absurdity) or because the socialist camp is obviously economically superior to the capitalist camp (an eventuality which is hard to imagine in the foreseeable future). It will come about in the manner forecast by Marx and Engels: through the transformation of the movement for the emancipation of wage eamers in the major countries of the world into an association of producers that can take control of the means of production and exchange by establishing a system of political pluralism and democratically planned self-management. That transformation will result from a succession and combination of political, social, and economic crises produced by bourgeois society itself. It will be articulated with the movement for the emancipation of producers in the so-called socialist countries as it moves towards real workers' self-management (planning and distribution of the social product under workers' control and management) and political pluralism (the exercise of democratic political power by the productive masses; without this, workers' self-management can have no real content).

In other words, socialism is still a possibility. The stakes are enormously high. The difficulties should not be underestimated. But, more than ever before, devoting one's life to the emancipation of all exploited and oppressed peoples and to the creation of a classless society is the only ambition worthy of the human race.

Endnotes:

iOver the last twenty-five years, agricultural production has in fact risen faster than the population of the world. than the population of the world. Discoveries of new sources of natural energy (including oil) have risen faster than energy consumption. In bath cases, the ratio of one to the other is two to one.

iiThe concept of the "real movement for the emancipation of the real proletariat" is to be found in the works of Marx and Engels. The concept of"real socialism" is not. That concept is reductionist ("socialism = the abolition of private property," if that), dogmatic and idealist. It is arrived at "by definition," independently of the way in which the producers see their own situation and independently of their actual reactions to it (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, China, Poland...). It then becomes an essentially apologetic concept and is actually opposed to the real movement for the emancipation of the real class. This is no accident. According to Marx and Engels, socialism is inconceivable unless the working class emancipates itself. And, unlike Molire's Monsieur Jourdain, who wrote prose without realizing it, the working class cannot emancipate itself unless it realizes what it is doing.

Originally posted here:

1985: Mandel on the necessity and possibility of socialism - International Institute fro Research and Education

The youth theatre sector is where the actors, playwrights and directors of the future first learn their craft, and where a love of the performing arts is instilled in audiences who may well grow up to become the next generation of theatre company subscribers.

That future is now under threat following the Australia Councils decision to defund a range of companies who are collectively classified as theatre for young people (TYP).

Companies as storied and respected as Barking Gecko (which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year), St Martins Youth Arts Centre, Polyglot, Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and Shopfront Theatre for Young People have consequently had their core funding drastically impacted, threating both their viability and their work with young people across the nation.

Read: Sector in shock as Australia Council 4-year funding announced

While our core earned revenue is through a paid workshop program, the programs that we run to support disadvantaged young people, marginalized young people, people from diverse backgrounds are central to the companys philosophy. Those programs are subsidized by the company in order for them to run, explained Fraser Corfield, Artistic Director of the Sydney-based ATYP.

And so one of the things that were examining is, if we lose a significant proportion of our operational funding, then we do not have the capacity to support the disadvantaged and marginalised communities that the company has been committed to supporting for so many years, and there are significant issues with that.

In Melbourne, the loss of organisational funding means St Martins capacity to create work with young people will also be significantly reduced, according to Artistic Director and Co-CEO Nadja Kostich.

It means, in the end, less contact with our young people, less ability to develop their voices. These are the people that we need to be developing and spending more on more time, more resources. Yes, theyre future artists. Yes, theyre future art lovers. But we also work with young people in exploration of their world view, in them as humanitarians, as creative thinkers in the world and thats whats at stake because of this new OzCo model, she told ArtsHub.

Kostich added: But we also have to remember that what it also means is less resources. Because keeping the doors open and making new work is carried on the backs of people - and real people burn out.

- Nadja Kostich, St Martins

Defunding a swathe of youth companies also threatens future artists and arts workers in a direct and damaging way, said Luke Kerridge, the Artistic Director of Perths Barking Gecko Theatre.

My entire career pathway has been through Shopfront, ATYP and St. Martins, and now Barking Gecko. To see those companies defunded in one fell swoop was gut-wrenching on a personal level. So I think of all the artists who specialise in this space, whose expertise revolves around creating art for and with children, and what pathways will be available to them in the future pathways that are at risk of being lost, he said.

The slow but persistent erosion of the youth arts sector has to be acknowledged, Kerridge continued.

It sends a message to children, and the artists that create theatre for and with them, that they are dispensable in our shrinking arts ecology If you look at the messages the adult world sends to young people it's often about maintaining hierarchy and discouraging any sense of overt activism or opinion. Children are routinely underestimated by the adult world. Yet the same system expects them to then turn up at 18 as fully formed citizens ready to partake in adult life.

I cant help but see an imprint of that paradigm playing out in our arts ecology an underestimation of young audiences and of what it is we do in the youth sector, whilst still expecting the next generation of artists and audiences to turn up fully formed, he said.

A DAMAGING HISTORY

This is not the first time that theatre for young people has borne the brunt of the Australia Councils reduced capacity. As ArtsHub has previously reported, the sector has been hard-hit by successive funding blows, including in December 2015 when only three of 13 youth performing arts organisations were successful in applying for 2016 project funding.

As Corfield explained: Its an old statistic now, but in 2007 we had 21 federally funded youth arts companies. By 2022, well have three. We currently have five.

While many might assume the Brandis intervention of 2015 was the chief cause of calamity, according to Corfield the problem began much earlier, when the Australia Council abolished the dedicated Youth Arts Program Fund

The Australia Council had designated that the Youth Arts Program Fund was to be closed when the programs were revised by the Australia Council in 2014, I think it was. Ever since that announcement was first made, the youth sector has been flagging very strongly that this would have a terrible impact on the sector. And thats been played out, he said.

Whats devastating to see is that not only has that loss of the Youth Arts Program Fund seen so many of the smaller companies lose funding, but its now obviously extended to the largest companies also, Corfield added.

- Fraser Corfield, ATYP

Kostich also questioned the Australia Councils decision to abolish the Youth Arts Program Fund and force companies making work with and for young people to compete on the same footing as theatre companies for adults.

In addition, she raised the question of conscious or unconscious bias towards the work of companies such as St Martins, Barking Gecko and ATYP.

Is there an actual oversight that means people are looking at our work as less important, or is there just an unconscious prejudice or judgment about work made with young people? Because since the abolition of the Youth Arts category at OzCo before that we were on a level playing field and that is absolutely no longer the case, she said.

Kerridge believes that the current situation highlights what appears to be a lack of respect for the agency and creativity of young people and their value as an audience.

We now have three federally funded theatre companies making work for young audiences in a country of 4.7 million children. The numbers just dont add up. Why are children so under-served as an audience? Why are they not a priority? he asked.

We know the impact that quality theatre for young audiences can have on children there is incredible research out there that demonstrates how regular attendance at the theatre develops childrens imaginative skill sets, and that as theyapply those skill sets to their own lives they imagine theirfutures differently.Going to the theatre actually inspires hope in children, and right now I can think of no greater gift we could be giving them.

So whichever way you look at it, whether as cultural citizens and deserving audiences of right now or audiences of tomorrow, there is a real urgency there, and a window of possibility that is being overlooked and it is children that are losing out, Kerridge said.

WHATS TO BE DONE?

Fraser Corfield believes that historically, the Australia Council has been good at recognising when there is a clear need in the sector as well as finding ways to address that need. Now is a time for such decisive intervention, he argues.

What is really clear and what the Australia Council has always been effective at doing is when a clear need within the industry is demonstrated, then the Australia Council and the Ministry for the Arts have moved to address that need, Corfield said.

Weve seen it through producers initiatives, weve seen it through Indigenous program initiatives. Its really clear that whats happened through the funding structures since the 2008 "Make It New" process began, of everyone needing to utterly justify their existence every three or four years, that the youth arts sector has been disadvantaged and its been left behind.

The result of this most recent four-year funding round, Corfield continued, has been to effectively defund the research and development arm of Australias performing arts.

Read: Defunding the sectors R&D arm sounds a warning note for the future

Weve defunded the sector that builds future audiences, that builds future artists, that showcases emerging artists and gives them spaces to try, experiment and fail. And the result of that is going to have long term impacts on the whole industry and the whole of Australian society, if something is not done to intervene sometime soon, he said.

So I think theres a really strong case to be made at this point that there needs to be special initiative funding from the Ministry for the Arts and the Australia Council to ensure that opportunities exist for young people to be participating in professionally run arts experiences and for emerging artists to have spaces where they can showcase and test their skills.

Kostich is in fervent agreement. There is an urgent need for looking into some kind of initiative or incentive that can now give a lifeline to youth arts companies because not only do our young people need it, but our world needs it. We need this in Australia. We need young people to feel regarded at this time. We need their voices heard, she concluded.

Read more:

Slamming shut a window of possibility: youth theatre in crisis - ArtsHub