CRACK CAPITALISM

7. DOING-TIME IS LIVING NOW THE WO RLD THAT EXISTS
NOT-YET. BY DOING SO, WE SETTHE AG ENDA,
BECOME OUR OWN TRUE SUN.
Our time is the time of living in our world, the world that does
not yet exist, and exists not yet.
We create the world that does not yet exist by living it. We
simply assert our own world. The organic gardeners of the
world do not wait for the revolution to create a less aggressive
relation with plants: they do it now. The movement for a free
transport system in Oslo does not lobby the government for a
reduction of fares, it simply organises people not to pay. The
critical teacher does not wait for a change in the curriculum
to introduce a different concept of learning and teaching: she
just does it. Squatters do not wait for the abolition of private
property and rents to live in vacant houses: they just do it. Many,
many migrants do not wait for the abolition of border controls
before crossing from one country to another: they just go.
This concept is opposed to a politics of demands. A demand
is addressed to someone and asks them to do something on
our behalf in the future, whereas in the politics of living now
the world we want to create (or creating now the world we
want by living it) there is no demand. We ask no permission of
anyone and we do not wait for the future, but simply break time
and assert now another type of doing, another form of social
relations. The state or the party ceases to be an intermediary
separating us from what we want to achieve: we simply assume
our own responsibility and do it. The anti-poll tax campaign in
Britain (which eventually led to the fall of Mrs Thatcher) took
this form: it was centred not on a demand that the government
should repeal the tax, but on the outright refusal to pay, without
mediation, the living of a world in which the tax did not exist.
The Zapatista experience is interesting in this respect. Their
original i Ya basta! of 1994 was accompanied by a list of demands,
and a series of dialogues with the Mexican state led to the signing
of an agreement on indigenous rights. Although the Zapatistas
started to construct their own autonomous municipalities,
schools and clinics from an early date, it is only really after the
complete failure (in 2001) of the Mexican state to implement the
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