Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

elections, they were strongly criticized. Their detractors called
them impotent anarchists and called their refusal to engage with
state institutions and electoral politics ideological and hysterical.
They were breaking apart the Left! The indignados, of course, are
not anarchists, and they are not responsible for fragmenting the
Left. Instead they have created a rare opportunity for reforming
and relaunching a new and different Left. A few years earlier
many of them were the same activists who, when right-wing
politicians publicly attributed the tragic bombing at Madrid's
Atocha train station to Basque militants, immediately proclaimed
the truth through an extraordinary' relay on cell phones and
other media— pasalo, they wrote, "pass it on"—and their actions
effectively ushered the socialists and Zapatero to a surprise
electoral victory. The indignados did not participate in the 2011
elections, then, in part because they refused to reward a socialist
part}' that had continued neoliberal policies and betrayed them
during its years in office, but also and more importantly because
they now have larger battles to fight, in particular one aimed at
the structures of representation and the constitutional order
itself—a fight whose Spanish roots reach back to the tradition of
antifascist struggles and throw a new and critical light on the
so-called transition to democracy that followed the end of the
Franco regime. The indignados think of this as a destituent
rather than a constituent process, a kind of exodus from the
existing political structures, but it is necessary' to prepare the
basis for a new constituent power.