CRACK CAPITALISM

.I",ellda. Dignity consists in setting our own agenda: this is what
we shnll do, irrespective of capital. If capital chooses to repress
liS, t ( ) 'o-opt LIS, to imitate us, so be it, but let it be clear that
w' I 'ad the dance. This certainly does not mean, cannot mean,
t ha t we cease to struggle against capitalism, but that, as far as
possible, we take the initiative, we set the agenda, we make it
clea r that it is capitalism struggling against us, our lives, our
projects, our humanity.
Dignity is to refuse-and-create: to refuse to make capitalism
and to create a new world. In an article on the movement in
Oaxaca, Gustavo Esteva comments, 'Thousands, millions of
people assume now that the time has come to walk our own path.
As the Zapatistas say, to change the world is very difficult, if not
impossible. A more pragmatic attitude demands the construction
of a new world. That's what we are now trying to do, as if we had
already won' (Esteva 2007d: 7).1 Building a new world does of
course mean changing the existing one, but the shift in emphasis
is crucial: instead of focusing our attention on the destruction
of capitalism, we concentrate on building something else. This
is an inversion of the traditional revolutionary perspective that
puts the destruction of capitalism first and the construction of
the new society second.
To make a new world means to cut the web that binds us
into the cohering force of capitalist society, so that we can
create something different. The enemy is the social synthesis of
capitalist society.
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