[rohrpost] Who can save us from the future?

[Krystian Woznicki]

  Hallo,

die neue Ausgabe von Turbulence ist erschienen und trägt den koketten Titel:
Who can save us from the future?

Viele Grüße,

Krystian

Berliner Gazette e.V.
Schoenhauser Allee 141a
D - 10437 Berlin
kw at berlinergazette.de
www.berlinergazette.de


Please forward>>>

Turbulence: Ideas for movement No. 4: 'Who can save us from the future?'

Today, the very act of thinking about the future 
has become a problem. What both capitalism and 
'really existing socialism' had in common was the 
belief in a future where infinite happiness would 
spring from the infinite expansion of production: 
sacrifices made in the present could always be 
justified in terms of a brighter future. And now? 
The socialist future has been dead since the fall 
of the Berlin wall. After that we seemed to live 
in a world where only the capitalist future 
existed (even when it was under attack). But now 
this future, too, is having its obituaries 
composed, and impending doom is the talk of the 
town. The 'crisis of the future' – that is, of 
our capacity to think about the future – is born 
out of these twin deaths: today it is easier to 
imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

With this in mind we've assembled a collection of 
articles that, in different ways, speak to us 
about futures. As much as we didn't want people's 
ten-point programmes when, in June 2007 we asked 
'What would it mean to win?', our interest here 
has nothing to do with futurology. There are no 
grand predictions. No imminent victory, because 
comfort-zone wishful thinking is the last thing 
anyone needs now; but no apocalyptic doom either. 
Neither are there any forward-view mirrors where 
capitalism recuperates everything and always gets 
the last laugh. We must have the modesty to 
recognise that the future is unknown, not because 
today is the end of everything or the beginning 
of everything else, but because today is where we 
are. What we do, what is done to us, and what we 
do with what is done to us, are what decide the 
way the dice will go. This requires the patient 
and attentive work of identifying openings, 
directions, tendencies, potentials, possibilities 
– all of which are things that amount to nothing 
if not acted upon – and of finding out new ways 
in which to think about the future.

CONTENTS

1)     'Introduction: Present Tense, Future Conditional' by Turbulence

2)     '1968 and Paths to New Worlds' by John Holloway

3)     'The Politics of Starvation: From Ancient 
Egypt to the Present' by George Caffentzis

4)     '6 Impossible Things Before Breakfast: 
Antagonism, Neoliberalism and Movements' by The Free Association

5)     'Global Capitalism: Futures and Options' by Christian Frings

6)     'The Measure of a Monster: Capital, Class, 
Competition and Finance' by David Harvie

7)     'The Abolition of the Parliamentary Left 
in Italy' by Sandro Mezzadra, with an 
Introduction by Keir Milburn and Ben Trott

8)     'There is No Room for Futurology; History 
Will Decide' by Felix Guattari, with an 
Introduction by Rodrigo Nunes and Ben Trott

9)     'This is Not My First Apocalypse' by Fabian Frenzel and Octavia Raitt

10)  'The Movement is Dead, Long Live the Movement!' by Tadzio Mueller

11)  'Network Politics for the 21st Century' by Harry Halpin and Kay Summer

Art work by Octavia Raitt. Cover design, Kristyna Baczynski.

Copies can be ordered from <http://www.turbulence.org.uk>www.turbulence.org.uk

In Germany, copies are available via Red Stuff 
<http://www.antifa-versand.de>www.antifa-versand.de

And in North America, copies are available via PM 
Press <http://www.pmpress.org>www.pmpress.org

All articles are also available, for free, via our website.

Please get in touch with us at 
<mailto:editors at turbulence.org.uk>editors at turbulence.org.uk 
if you are able to help out with distribution, or 
would like to translate any of the articles 
published in this issue. Some translations are 
already available online. See: 
<http://www.turbulence.org.uk/translations>www.turbulence.org.uk/translations

Donations to cover costs incurred in production 
and distribution are welcome! They can be made 
via our PayPal account, here: 
<http://turbulence.org.uk/donate/>http://turbulence.org.uk/donate/ 
or get in touch with us at 
<mailto:editors at turbulence.org.uk>editors at turbulence.org.uk

-- 
Turbulence: Ideas for movement
<mailto:editors at turbulence.org.uk>editors at turbulence.org.uk
www.turbulence.org.uk