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Interview with Oliver Ressler by Selen Gobelez

Otonom: Could you talk a little about yourself and your works?

Ressler: As an artist I have produced several projects in recent years on issues such as economic globalization, racism, genetic engineering, and various forms of resistance to the existing capitalist system. Some of these projects were presented in public spaces as billboards and posters, some as one channel videos, and others as theme-specific exhibition projects such as “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies”, which you can see here at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul.

Otonom: How did you start making art?

Ressler: After finishing high school at the age of 18, I went to an art university and studied there for six years. During this time, I wasn’t very satisfied with what the university was offering me. I was already interested in certain political questions, and tried to bring these issues into my artistic works. I tried out a lot of different methods and techniques. When I finished university I created some works for public inner city spaces, especially billboards, posters, and light-works. At some point art institutions showed interest in presenting my work. Now for almost ten years I have been working as a freelance artist and have been involved in several collaborations with different people and groups, producing around twenty projects.

Otonom: You have just mentioned your dissatisfaction with art education in the university. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Ressler: The situation at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna was difficult, as it was in so many other art academies in Europe. The whole education was focused on one person, the professor, who in many cases was an artist who did not know what was really going on in the contemporary art world. At the beginning, when I started to study, the situation was okay for me as I was not so much aware of the problematic tendency of this education, which in my case was limited solely to painting. However, not only was the medium in which I was educated a little outdated, but how it was used and with which ideas and ideologies it was combined with were out of touch. So there was not that much I could take from the university, besides having the privilege to spend a lot of time on whatever I was interested in. I had luck, because in 1994, when I was still studying, a kind of independent open space was established in Vienna, called Depot – Art and Discourse, which was not related to the art university, and offered presentations by artists, theorists and curators, screenings, a small but nice library – all the things which the art universities in Vienna at the time lacked.

Otonom: The question “Can art really be taught in universities?” is really important for me. Can somebody be taught to become an artist?

Ressler: I think it is very difficult, maybe impossible. But at least a university should supply a variety of courses related to contemporary art practices and theory, and offer certain technical equipment with facilitators to support a student’s work. At the time when I studied this was not really the case. In the meantime the situation at the University of Visual Arts has improved a lot, developing in the right direction – at least in comparison to the situation in the early 1990s when I studied. There are many contemporary courses now, new professors, and you can also change easily between different classes.

Otonom: What you are doing is contrasting conservative art and new art. How do you define your own work, as a video artist and activist? What is the power of this kind of art?

Ressler: I am working with different media and formats, so I would not define myself as a video artist, even when maybe sixty or seventy percent of my production somehow involves video. I do not define myself through media but simply prefer calling myself an artist. Some people might say that I am a “political artist” or maybe a “project artist”, because my artistic practice is usually more process and research-oriented than object-oriented. But these are just labels I usually don’t use for myself. Sometimes it is quite important to present this kind of political art I am doing strategically simply as “art”, because I think it is of more importance to struggle for the recognition of this art within the larger art scene, which is highly influenced by the art market, rather than arguing for a separation between “art” and “political art”. I think nowadays there are many possibilities to use art as a tool to make certain issues a subject of discussion. But the work must not necessarily be limited to the art scene and art institutions, because you can also work in public inner city spaces, edit a magazine, create web pages, intervene in different fields or work in different collaborations with people who are not involved with the art scene. For me art institutions are very important networks which you can use for your work, providing a kind of space where it is still possible to say and express certain things from perspectives where in another context there might be censorship or the police would intervene. I think there is a little more freedom and a little more mental space in art institutions, at least in western Europe, where I produce and present the majority of my work.

Otonom: This leads us to my next question, about the relationship between politics and art. In one of your previous interviews you talked about the difference between being an activist and an artist. I have been thinking about such a differentiation between art and politics. Are the spheres of political production and artistic production, or culture in general, so separate?

Ressler: I am not interested in keeping these spheres so separated, as they often appear to be. I am interested in bringing these fields together. Some of my works offer examples for possible modes of collaboration between artists and activists. Sometimes the work I produce has similarities to works produced by activists. If we look at the videos I made surrounding the counter-globalization movement, for sure there are lots of similarities to some videos done by activists.

Otonom: The typical example I have in mind relating to this issue is the deconstruction of advertisements or company logos, something which is done by both artists and activists. Life has been compartmentalized as economy, religion, private life and public life in the modern era. We could think about ancient times, when people did not draw images on the walls of caves as art, but rather as part of their everyday life.

Ressler: Sometimes it is really fascinating to switch between these constructed divisions between the spheres of art and activism. For example, in 2002 the Kunstverein München invited me to produce a site-specific work for the city of Munich. My piece consisted of three posters to be displayed in light boxes, relating them to the graphic elements of an advertising campaign by the Social Democrats in Germany. So my posters finally looked very similar to the SPD posters, but changed the original message in order to emphasize the conservative and anti-democratic policies of this party in relation to a particular situation. I assume most people did not recognize this as an artistic work. To those people who carefully read the poster texts and realized the changes from the original SPD posters, the work appeared to be a political statement, but there was no indication, no hint that it was a piece of art. The piece left a lot of space for the imagination of the spectator. Another project was the magazine Neues Grenzblatt, which I edited together with the Austrian artist Martin Krenn. We collaborated with eight political groups, anti-racist collectives and immigrant initiatives, and each of these groups wrote a two page article for this informational brochure, which we produced and distributed in 2001 at the frontier between Austria and Slovenia as a direct mailing. We used a conservative graphic design, which we thought local people might like, using a photo of a church from the neighborhood on the cover. But the content was completely different, the texts focused on borders, crossing borders illegally, and critically questioning the terms of trafficking and human smuggling, and how refugees get criminalized through illegalizing them. We received pretty interesting reactions when we carried out some interviews in the region, many people could remember the magazine and seemed to discuss it with their friends and family members.

Otonom: Where was it exactly?

Ressler: At the border region between Austria and Slovenia, but only on the Austrian side, because it was printed it German. This was still a Schengen border at the time of the distribution of the magazine in 2001.

Otonom: I find that idea really exciting, of having no border between people. Here art can really play a powerful role. Art is quite constitutive, as it has the potential to constitute a new world.

Ressler: A lot of projects I have worked on are somehow related to existing resistance movements, to left-wing activist practices, so they involve and engage in already existing struggles. I think the work “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies”, which is on display here in Istanbul, goes one step further, because this work really aims at constituting something which did not exist before. When I started the research at the beginning of this project, I was looking for books with a similar approach, trying to encompass a variety of different leftist concepts and models for an alternative, non-hierarchical and democratic society. I asked all my interview subjects, but nobody knew of an anthology which took such an approach. So it seems “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” constitutes something of an alternative society itself, through the help of these writers and theorists I interviewed who all gave interesting input and ideas regarding alternative economics or societies. I think it is important to create such a network of information at this moment, when we continuously hear that there is no alternative to capitalist globalization. In the ideal case an individual vision for such a new society and economy would be developed in the head of the visitor to the exhibition via the food for thought provided by the interviewees.

Otonom: Yet alternatives are being discussed in various platforms. For instance, the social forums, the World Social Forum and the continental forums that appeared along with the anti-globalization movement provide arenas for various perspectives, though with it limitations and some handicaps.

Ressler: Some models are being discussed in these forums, that’s right, but not all. My artwork is being developed in relation to the socio-political tendencies we find in the political struggles for another world. A central idea of the World Social Forum is to create a space for communication, information, networking and inspiration, and to avoid the classical domination of one movement over another. Such considerations also play an important role in how the project “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” is being organized and developed. But though I consider these social forums extremely important and they are very influential for me, I would say that in the discussions there the dominating models are still those which can be seen as kinds of reformist social democratic models, such as Walden Bellos “Deglobalization”. Or positions from groups such as ATTAC, who seem to aim at changing some paradigms within the existing capitalist model, try to make it more “human”, but do not focus on a complete disruption with the existing power relationships.

Otonom: I agree there are the rather hegemonic discourses in the forums at the moment. The idea of changing a bad capitalism into a good one is really dangerous…

Ressler: The European Social Forum in London was also dominated by left wing British parties. This gap between non-hierarchic alliances, the “horizontals”, and hierarchically structured parties, the “verticals”, was obvious. In reality it seems to be hard to avoid the domination of powerful movements… Also at the ESF in London, a strict division between cultural events, such as film screenings, and those events which were considered really political, was very visible, which leads back to the beginning of this talk.

Otonom: We have been talking about the power and constitutive character of art. Art can really be powerful in two diverse ways: it can be a constitutional part of the existing society and the system but it can also constitute another world. This is one reason why I think corporations are investing in art sponsorship. And your quite radical exhibition “An Ideal Society Creates Itself” is being presented at the Garanti Platform, which is related to one of the symbols of finance capital in Turkey.

Ressler: The “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” project was presented in a variety of art institutions in different cities. In fact this time the exhibition takes place in an art institution, which is related to a Turkish bank, a corporation. But the art institution is a foundation, they do independent programming and I am sure the director Vasif Kortun did not have to ask anybody from the bank if he could present a show by an artist with an anti-capitalist position in the space. But it is clear that every time you present your work, be it in a state-funded or privately-funded art space, as an artist you should consider the effects of the image-transfer such an exhibition may have for the sponsor. I hope that the positive effects the exhibition has for the people who spend their time in these spaces, which at Platform are usually twenty thousand people per exhibition, are more influential than these other effects for the sponsor. It is impossible to measure, of course. But I really hope the exhibition can open some people’s minds regarding alternative economics and societies.

Otonom: As you talk, I am imagining that all around the world thousands of people who believe in alternative societies, in another world, can create their own spaces, not needing the State, not needing capital.

Ressler: It would be wonderful if it could be the case…

Otonom: How is it in Europe or other places? Is it possible to create such spaces?

Ressler: At least at the moment it seems very difficult to imagine presenting any of the “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” exhibitions outside of the non-commercial art context, which is usually state- or city-funded. To produce the exhibition, you need a huge space, an audience which is interested in these issues, and somebody to take care of the exhibition space. The installation involves a lot of technical equipment, production money, my travel costs, etcetera. It would be wonderful if there could be more spaces which exist independently from funding structures provided by the state or corporations, spaces open for a leftist, critical artistic practice. But I do not see them at the moment.

Otonom: How about unions, associations and the culture centers of revolutionaries? Well, all around the world we are not so few, maybe we are dispersed, but we are many.

Ressler: Indeed I do not want to sound too negative… I only related your question to the concrete installation presented here in Istanbul. I also produced a couple of videos which are presented independently from my exhibitions, videos which are related to various resistance movements. These videos are continuously being presented in different small, autonomous spaces, and many of them are not related to the art scene and are presented independently by politically interested people.

Otonom: To go back to the sponsorship issue… even if they have independent decision mechanisms, there are big problems in terms of sponsorship. Within the last ten years in Turkey, we have seen increasing numbers of companies investing in art.

Ressler: I think there are different concepts of sponsorship or how corporations relate themselves towards art. Many corporations try to use art to represent themselves. If you look at the annual reports of corporations, maybe in every second image with CEOs you can find a piece of modern or contemporary art in the background. In these images art is being used as a sign for symbolic power. But there are also more complicated concepts involved in how corporations relate themselves to art, which seems to be the case with this Garanti bank, which funds Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center here in Istanbul, or with the Generali Foundation in Vienna, which is also an internationally recognized art institution funded by the Italian Generali insurance company. They create independent organizations which make interesting things happen, and these soon become pretty important for a certain network of artists, critics, and curators. But at the same time the corporation uses art to create a certain corporate identity. These positive values or effects for the bank or insurance company are not possible to measure. But it seems to work for corporations, otherwise they would not give the money. I don’t want to simplify this matter, but when for example Siemens funds engaged art projects and creates a symbolic value through them, then perhaps the media or some critical customers of Siemens will not be so critical when looking at the dark sides of this global player that builds nuclear power plants, or refuses to give compensation money to slave laborers who had to work for Siemens in Nazi Germany.

Otonom: You have also made a project about companies.

Ressler: Yes, I did research in 1998 in which I read the annual reports of the five hundred largest corporations in regard to how they write about economic globalization, the liberalization and deregulation of markets. I collected interesting statements and asked some people, who relate their work critically to economic globalization, to analyze and interpret them for a video, which was the central part of an installation. These people I interviewed were two unionists, a globalization theorist, a media theorist, a worker for an NGO dealing with corporations, and a feminist economist. This project then led me directly to these counter-globalization videos, “This is what democracy looks like!” and “Disobbedienti”, and later to “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies”, which is my central project in relation to economics.

Otonom: How about your work concerning the Disobbedienti. Why did you decide to make a video specifically on the Disobbedienti?

Ressler: The video “This is what democracy looks like!” was about a demonstration in Salzburg, Austria, against the World Economic Forum in 2001. In this demonstration a large group of demonstrators were encircled by the police for seven hours. I was one of these demonstrators and recorded material, including the reactions of the police, from the viewpoint of the demonstrators. I made a video about this incident, interviewed people who were with me in the demonstration. It was important work to bring the viewpoints of the activists to attention. Usually in my films I try to present activists or people who are somehow related with resistance in situations and contexts in which they are really free to act and react how they like. So I decided to produce another video on the “counter-globalization movement”, and to focus on the, in my opinion, most interesting and strongest part of the movement at this time, the Disobbedienti, who originally called themselves “Tute Bianche”. These Italian activists emerged in the mid-90s, they wore white overalls and protected their bodies with helmets, foam rubber and homemade shields. They showed up in counter-summits against the G8, the World Economic Forum or IMF meetings, the central institutions for globalized capitalism. But they also did some other interesting things, for example trying to dismantle detention centers for asylum seekers, and several times they were successful. Now the Disobbedienti dissolved, at least they don’t use the label “Disobbedienti” any more, but many of the activists are still active in the struggles against precariousness in Italy. But I think it still makes sense to present the video because it is about tactics and theoretical backgrounds, and many people outside of Italy can learn not only about their strategies, but also about the limits to these kinds of actions. The video is one in an ongoing series of independent videos on resistance movements and tactics, something I have been focusing on since 2000.

The interview was carried out by Selen Gobelez in Istanbul on April 29, 2005, and published in Turkish in Otonom 11/2005.

The transcription was edited by Nick Santos-Pedro.

Links:

Documentation of Oliver Resslers projects: www.ressler.at

Transcripts of videos of “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” in 5 languages: http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/index.htm

Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center: www.platform.garanti.com.tr

War is the most concentrated form of politics of re-structuring of power relations. The national, regional and global dimensions of war are key to the reading of the re-structuring of power relations and positioning of actors in these relations, although they do not make any change in the conceptualization of �war’. The Iraq war has the features of neither a national nor a regional war. By transgressing (aufheben) these features, the war restructures a new global power which organizes all power relations and actors in its own terms. It is a world war and history evolves through the Third World War.The Third World War cannot be regarded as the third split war, unlike the First and Second World War. Hence it is necessary to analyze the socio-historical reality which goes beyond it. There is a transition from a dependency relation based on a world market centered on national economies to a dependency relation of regional market structure centered on world economy. We live through the Capitalist Empire within which dilemma of inside and outside is abolished by embodiment of the Third World . The concept of �state’ is still the most important instrument of the power mechanism. But it should be seen that it is structured through re-functionalization in accordance with the socio-historical power mechanism. We have passed from a world working with the conflicts between power structures dependent on imperialist state centers structured in terms of nation state, to a conflictual world determined by power relations dependent on power mechanism of Capitalist Empire. We move from a world power structure shaped by multi-centered relations between one-centered power structures to a world structure that is based on one-centered relations and that is structured with multi-centers. In this context, the Iraqi War represents the crisis of legalization and structuring of power mechanisms of Empire, with the accumulated problems of transition from imperialist to the Imperial era of capitalism.

In the working of capitalist Empire, there is no nation-state or national borders to defend; there are only the interests of the Empire. The socio-historical conditions of democracy based on national sovereignty are being ruled out and replaced by the global democracy discourse of the Empire. It is concretized in the sublimation of national sovereignty and dissolution of national states. Instead, economic, social and political norms of global democracy are being structured. In this context, in G-20 countries, which have accomplished the material and ideological infrastructure of modernity due to the dependency relations of neocolonialism in the imperialist era, national sovereignty is shattered and nation-states are dissolving. However, the nation-state mechanism of Islamic countries, which have not accomplished the material and ideological infrastructure of modernity, hinders and resists the power mechanisms of Empire. The Iraqi war is declared against all those nation-states resisting the Empire. The Empire does not recognize the relations of national sovereignty which hinders (or will hinder) the power relations, and considers military intervention as an imperial right. This is one of the constitutional principles of the Empire approved by the imperial centers of the Empire ( USA , EU, Russia , China , etc.). Those who perceives the Iraqi war in terms of power relations of imperialist era of capitalism, considers it to be the imperialist occupation of USA, or those unsatisfied with this analysis perceives the war as a matter of structuring of the US Empire and narrows the cause of the war with oil conflict. Naturally, this approach considers the crises within NATO, UN and EU as the contradictions and conflicts of the imperialist era. And they argue that the NATO, UN and EU are paralyzed and will disintegrate, and envisage the rise of new military-political poles. However, these imperialist contradictions do not culminate to explicit military conflict between imperialist states. To the question of why an explicit war does not break with the imperialists, they reply that a third world war will not break due to issue of the nuclear weapons. This situation represents the weakest point of all the approaches that argue that we live through the imperialist era. In this context, the discourse of �Down with Imperialism� is directed towards political agitation, rather than political pioneering.

In the era of Capitalist Empire, the ontological paradigm of politics is based on a well-interpretation of global monopolies, the working of law of unequal development within the global market; as a result the concentration of competition, market struggle and crisis, the actors that will manage this crisis and the relations between them, as well as the recognition of the revolutionary potentialities, created by the process of Empire. At this point, the power mechanisms of Empire have some aspects are clear, where as some have vagueness that will be clarified in the process. That the global monopolies legalize the power relations of the Empire is clear. The question is not only the oil conflict. It is a matter of both disarmament of the world in a way that would not threaten the Empire except the Imperial centers, and commercialization, marketization and incorporatization of the whole social spheres in order to pave the way for global monopolies within the conditions of economic recession that the Empire as a whole goes through.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union , east Europe , Caucasians, Central Asia and Middle East can be considered as problematic in terms of geopolitics. It is obvious that the problems that would arise from these regions, transcend their regionality to such an extent that they will have a crucial effect on all over the world. What we want to emphasize strongly is that the global capital is weak-spirited, fragile and panicked under the neo-liberal economic policy of Empire. The stability of political power is vital to the existence and self-realization of the Empire. The global monopolies have no life-chance if not guaranteed by the stability of political power. In the imperialist era, this guarantee has been provided by the imperialist nation-states. In the era of Empire, this does not suffice and there is a need for a global power ( potenza ) that is structured with multi-centers and that functions with single-center. For the Empire, this situation is vital and sine qua non. In this context, the expectation that the world will be more democratized in the era of Empire is wrong. Within the power mechanism of Empire, politics will be more militarized than it was in the era of imperialism.

It would be useful to mention briefly the institutional powers that intervenes with the regions that threatens the Empire and the balance of power between them: NATO, EU, UN, Russia and China . The US, Britain , France, Russia and China are the five countries that have veto right in the UN. The interventions since 1990 have been authorized by UN and NATO. The problem between UN and NATO is that Russia and China which have veto right in the UN, are not involved in NATO. As in the case of intervention in Kosovo, the decision was authorized by NATO in order to bypass the veto of China and Russia in the UN. By the affiliation of East European countries in the NATO and UN, both the power of Empire and its multi-centered hierarchical structure is guaranteed in this region.

The intervention in Afghanistan is the intervention of UN under the security of the NATO. Within this process, Russia gained status in NATO and China is admitted to the WTO. Russia and China have taken important steps in their strategy of involvement in the hierarchy of multi-centered structure of the Empire.

We have arrived at the Iraqi war by the 1991 Gulf War and the interventions of Somalia , Bosnia-Herzigova, Kosovo and Afghanistan . All of these interventions have been authorized by the power of Empire within a short time of twelve years. The world has been passing through interventions from 1990’s up to present and the daily life continues in an indifferent way. It is due to the central interventions of the Empire on the basis of consensus of the imperial powers. The fact that the US is a leading figure is considered as a matter of the US imperialism. This leads to not understanding the body-power of Empire, that functions with single-center on the multi-centered structure; a holistic anti-capitalist political line can not be formed and emphasizing the US imperialism legitimizes the other imperial powers.

The Empire, with the Gulf War, has handed over its political power to the military power of the US under the supervision of the UN and NATO in order to structure and protect its global interests. The US is the Bonaparte of the Empire. Bonapartism represents temporality, rather than permanency. With the present Iraqi War, the US tries to turn its temporality into permanency. With this war, the US wants to declare to the Capitalist Empire that it is the king of the Empire. The multi-centered structure of the Empire resists the US declaration of central kingdom and the support given to the military power of the US is being held back. At the moment, the US nothing other than a military power, devoid of the political power of the Empire. No matter how the process develops, the Empire will put down the US from the horse of the Bonaparte and turn it into a cowboy on a donkey.

The anti-American opposition centered by Germany , France and Russia in the UN and NATO is not against a war on Iraq . What they oppose is the self-centered declaration of kingdom of the US . However there lies a political intelligence behind their opposition. This intelligence is the risk of leading the power of the Empire to political instability through a long and difficult war that would paralyze the global monopolies. This risk can only be undertaken by the consensus of the Empire on the basis of the UN and NATO. It is important to read the crisis in NATO and UN ad its reflection on the EU carefully. Neither NATO, nor UN, nor EU will collapse. These international institutions have been established according to the needs of the imperialist era of capitalism. Although the necessity for their re-functionalization and re-structuring according to the needs of the Empire is known, this problem is left to be solved in the process. The Iraqi crisis of the Empire, has unfolded the necessity of solving this problem with voluntary intervention, rather than leaving to its spontaneity. NATO has overcome the crisis of Turkey , but the problem remains unsolved. After the Iraqi crisis has been overcome in UN, the problem will hold its actuality. By the overcoming of the Iraqi crisis, the NATO and UN will be structured and functionalized, in accordance with the needs of the Empire.

What is important for the revolutionaries is to unfold the revolutionary potentialities and to interpret the historical moments that create these revolutionaries potentialities carefully. Some historical moments invite revolutionaries to the platform, stage and to the streets. Like 1848 Europe , the October revolution and the 68 movement� Like the global oppositional movement that starts with Seattle and continues with February 15� There is no more duality between internal and external dynamics. The political concept of world revolutionary dynamics has become common: capitalism and war.

‘Another world is possible’ where all the armies are abolished, all the weapon factories are shut down, all borders are eliminated, where everyone is a world citizen.

February 2003

We owe our present political stance to the analyses we have made of the relationship between leftist thought and modernism in the effort to understand the deadlock of the leftist movement, which is incapable of producing any sort of political stance against global capitalism. Through this effort of analysis, the problems of modernity in both at the intellectual and the practical sphere have become a major topic of debate for us. The main axis of this debate is the way that politics and engagement have taken shape within a modernist discourse. In this article, we attempt to present the intellectual background of our own politics and form of struggle which we try to make part of the society we live in and which have resulted from these discussions.
The dynamics of the modernist discourse which has lead to the deadlock of the leftist movement in Turkey have quite different characteristics from those in Europe or the West, which was able socialize its way of thinking and social structure as an international political subject. This difference is mainly based on the fact that the process of the socialization of capitalist relations was realized at the very foundation of modernist projects imposed by the state and the elites in both the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republic period, rather than emerging as part of the concrete conflicts between classes up to the 1950s. The simultaneous realization of capitalization and modernization processes defined the essence of the Kemalist Revolution, which created the Turkish modern nation-state configured as a bourgeois revolution. This intertwined capitalization and modernization process informed all social and political agents, including those on the left, with a progressivist, developmentalist and nationalist discourse. By constituting itself within this discourse, leftist movements were incapable of creating possibilities for developing resistance-based struggles capable of liberating social conflicts informed by their own specificities. As a result, the left created political agents centralized upon the foundation of a vertical form of politics speaking and acting in the name of social dynamics. Therefore, the politicization of social demands was fulfilled through relations of political and social representation’ which instrumentalize the means of political action. As opposed to this general framework, we distinguish the armed revolutionary struggle in the 70s which we consider to be the political reference for the resistance and movement tradition.
Within the capitalist power mechanism of the modern era, the developmentalist and nationalist discourse sufficed to clear the path for the revolutionary struggle of the leftist movement. Throughout this period, the left could construct its political existence only through an oppositional position; for example, being opposed to imperialism and/or fascism could be a sufficient condition for revolutionism. After the 80s, internationalization, the reorganization of production and labour processes at the international level, and the erasure of differentiation between center and periphery, are determining dynamics within the power mechanism of capitalism. Therefore even though they have been produced by the left, nationalist and developmentalist policies formed in parallel with an anti-imperialist discourse in Turkey, still cannot create a counter-power promising social liberation in response to global capitalism. Yet the guarantee for a power formation against capitalism is the anti-capitalist resistance movement, in which political ends are organized as immanent to the movement. In this sense, every form of resistance to capitalism at the local level organizes vertical politics by itself. In other words, the separation between local and/or national and universal has been removed.
The will of the above–mentioned anti-capitalist movement consists in the social dynamics that are not only the producers of their own discourse, but also the direct subjects of their own actions. Discursively, the driving force of the revolutionary movement has become opposition to the functioning of global power, through a new form of political grounding initiated for the purposes of social liberation by abandoning the entire discourse and tool-kit of vertical politics that took shape as part of the geographical, cultural and economical particularities of the earlier period. In other words, democracy based on vertical politics and social democracy based on the horizontal politics have become interwoven. By deploying itself in all fields of social relations, capitalism has eliminated the differentiation between ‘the political’ and ‘the social’. And the left, which has so far defined itself as ‘vanguard’ with the task of politicizing ‘the social sphere’ on account of this dichotomy, cannot realize its objectives. However, we feel that the process of creating a social democracy which might stand as a counterweight to the deployment of global capitalistic power is indeed possible, and directly related to the organizing of a movement by which the social dynamics can mobilize their own experiences and means of power against the power mechanism of global capitalism. We do not claim this phenomenon to be something new, on the contrary, we believe that the history of revolutionary resistance includes the experiences of social democracy. However much the non-nationalist, anti-globalization movement has the potential for becoming a political subject in the construction of social democracy, so also the European workers movement in 1848, the Paris Commune, and the Soviet experience before NEP in Soviet Russia were the political subjects of social democracy.
Today, we think that Social Forums may provide an opportunity for a new way of politics and socialization practices within the anti-capitalist movement. The multitude in Social Forums opens the way for a theoretical perspective and forms of practices getting beyond the national and geographical boundaries. How Social Forums would be constituted is a matter of political stance given the defensive position of the nationalist discourse. It implies an open-ended process shaping through social movements which can mobilize their own experiences and means of politics on the anti-capitalist basis. In our sense, İstanbul Social Forum (İSF) may provide an interaction with the anti-capitalist global movements. This interaction may serve to share different kind of political experiences and to enable global resistance to spread and grow stronger. We strive to incorporate different movements, dynamics and organizations into the process and invite them to build the Forum together. Yet the problem in Turkish context is the low level of participation in İSF. In the long-term, we believe that we will be able to overcome this problem. We contribute to İSF through organizing student movement within the anti-capitalist discourse.
We conceive of the student movement that we are part of as one of the constituent dynamics for social democracy. By this view, the role of the universities in Turkey’s political and social evolution past and present constitutes a significant reference point. Two constituent forces in the social and political structure in the capitalization and modernization of Turkey: military and universities may be mentioned. Until the 1960s, the universities undertook the role of producing and reproducing the enlightenment tradition within the constitution of the nation-state. This role was mainly realized as part of a broad process of transition to modern life, by means of the producing a Westernizationist perspective and permeating all knowledge of the social and cultural sphere with this perspective. During this earlier period it is not possible to speak of a dominant left-wing opposition within the university in Turkey. After the 60s, however, a left-wing opposition, anti-imperialist in approach as part of the world political conjuncture, was developed out of the context of relatively greater rights and liberties offered by the 1961 Constitution.
There were two main factors which distinguished the movement of the 70s from other periods. The first was that the university movement of the 60s restricted itself to a struggle for democracy and academic freedom. The second was the increasing need for a more holistic political intervention transcending the limits of this “academic-democratic” struggle as a response to the rise of fascism which resulted from the problems of integration to capitalism and the economic crisis of the 70s. The combination of these two factors set off an armed struggle which detached itself from the university movement, but the cadres of which consisted mainly of students. The 1980 military coup hastened the course for the integration of Turkey into the new power mechanism of capitalism through structural adjustment programs. This process was perhaps much smoother than could be expected because thousands of revolutionaries and leftist dissident had been eliminated through execution, torture, and years of imprisonment. Thus the regime of oppression and fear prevented the formation of a new opposition. The rising workers protests in the late 80s later provided new vitality for the left, yet this vitality was unable to create a consistent leftist movement since it couldn’t transcend the “economic-democratic” struggle which dominated the workers movement, and similarly, the “academic-democratic” struggle dominating the student movement. In fact the dynamics of the new power mechanisms of capitalism were far from sufficiently understood, and this was a critical obstacle in the path of creating a revolutionary politics. Within the new power mechanisms, the new role of the universities was defined as the socialization of neo-liberal policies. In practice, this definition was manifest as a mercantilization of education and the legitimation of university-market relations. In this process, the universities definied themselves as economical entities and structured their activities and institutionalization according to the conditions of the market. Today, this restructuring continues with the new law proposal drafted by YÖK (Yüksek Ögrenim Kurulu, or the Higher Education Council), which organized and oversaw the 1980 process mentioned above within the universities. This draft law proposal, which defines and operates the university as a market agent, is not only a reflection of the GATS regime that advances the marketization of services, but is also part of the policy of capitalist restructuring in Turkey.*
Global capitalism is internalizing all social spheres through marketization. Within this commodification process, which turns all social relations (not excluding the relation of the individual to herself) into a subject of production and reproduction, globalised capitalism structures them as an operator of their own power mechanisms. While each and every value is defined in relation to market value, the market operates as a control mechanism within the bodies and consciousnesses of the people. Within the totalizing logic of the market, global capitalism eliminates distinctions between ‘the political’ and ‘the social’, as well as the ‘the public’ and ‘the private’. Therefore, the university is no longer a mass sphere (social sphere) politicized by a central leadership; it has now become the constituent dynamic of social democracy.
Yet as subjects of their own discourse and action, the self-organization of the students, academicians and the workers will form the greatest threat as a counter-weight to the functioning of global capitalism. We have witnessed how the power mechanisms of capitalism are capable of internalizing the academic-democratic struggle within the context of the university. As part of the process of integration of the university with the market, financial autonomy can be maintained and even a realm of academic freedom can be defined, though in a limited and debatable way. Moreover, financial autonomy which gives rise to the university as an economic agent in the market and appears to be a reasonable solution to the self-constitution of the university at first glance conceals the process of marketization. Agents of power which would arise from the movement of subjects from every social sphere become a threat as they signify a political rupture with global capitalism and open the way for social democracy. For us, free and equal relations of such power agents create a guarantee of social democracy. According to this perspective, we argue for a new understanding and practice of autonomy that would organize on the basis of the campus and create a student movement by means of the liberation of the specifities of all autonomous individuals.
We have been trying to realize our general discourse through direct activism. We have concentrated our actions at the intersection of university and market relations. Demonstrations against the new law proposal drafted by YÖK were aimed at revealing the intent of the proposed law and at socialization of opposition to it. Through panel discussions, declarations, and campus activities we struggle for maintenance of a unity of anti-capitalist discourse among the constituents of university. However, the important thing for us is how the draft law determines and shapes our lives at universities. We experience it in two ways. The first is that we are forced to pay money for every single service. The second aspect is market oriented social relations and practices originating from relations with business groups such as banks, media companies, and industrial corporations that universities are so eager to form relationships with.
Here we can point to two practices that we have observed and acted on: one is the common projects of university-business partnerships, and the other is what our university administration has put forth under the name “P&R Days”. During “P&R Days” huge companies organize presentational meetings and advertise or market their products at stands which they rent. The university turns into a market place for workers where labor buyers (firms) and labor sellers (students) meet. During the last academic term we have been intensely active for a month for the purpose of exposing “P&R Days”. We organized the activities with our anarchist and anti-capitalist Muslim friends in a common spirit as distinct from the types of alliances arrived at as a consequence of interminable meetings and political bargains. Since we planned demonstrations in the evenings and implemented them the following mornings, we felt ourselves to be part of a new and creative process. Through this process itself we experienced the proposition that market relations are not the only alternative and that another network of social relations is possible through our demonstrations. These demonstrations succeeded in preventing organized meetings and in disturbing both the organizers and presentors. We felt ourselves free within our new form of practice. We shouted slogans in a theatrical manner: “P&R Days is slave market!” “If you are unhappy, the reason is you may be allergic to capitalism!” And the song we sang:
“We are all slaves,
We always obey,
We die for money,
We sell our souls…”
We hope that we have succeeded at informing you about our theoretical background and process of struggle through which we try to constitute and socialize ourselves. We are certain not to perceive this process of political liberalization as completed and absolute; instead, it signifies a permanent affirmation of political experience, a search for revolutionary possibilities that never encloses or closes in on itself within a sense of truth and sufficiency. It opens the way for getting in touch with life through the perception that this world belongs to us.

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* In the context of enlargement process of the European Union, we think that the issue of Turkey’s entrance to European Union is part of the integration of Turkey into the global capitalism. We consider EU as the dynamic of regionalization embedded within the capitalist globalization. Debate on EU in Turkey is based on the concerns of democratic development and human rights and reorganization of social and political life. The issue of integration into the global capitalism is left out of debate. From our point of view, to say ” yes or no” to EU is irrelevant if it would be a matter of inclusion by the power mechanism of global capitalism.