Paradox of the post-modern worker/consumer

"Here in lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the same time as workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore their lack from which they are supposed to distract us."

The Public Sphere

"It seems to me today that [...] the idea is gaining ground that these ancient motivations [solidarity and family bonds] are no longer important, that they can be discarded without any consequences. It is believed to be perfectly possible for a company's successes to coexist with permanent insecurity and a continuous turnover of employees."
-from "Homo Globatus" in: On the Edge of the New Century — Eric Hobsbawm

"To go on waiting is madness."

Some excerpts from the closing chapter "Insurrection" of The Invisible Committee's The Coming Insurrection

-In a country like France, where radioactive clouds stop at the border and where we aren't afraid to build a cancer research center on the former site of a nitrogen fertilizer factory that has been condemned by the EU'S industrial safety agency, we should count less on “natural” crises than on social ones. It is usually up to the social movements to interrupt the normal course of the disaster.

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-An assembly is not a place for decision, but for talk, for free speech exercised without a goal.

-A nightmare of little pretenders to power confronting each other: elections. It is not a “general assembly” so much as bourgeois theatrics.

-Foil temptation of hegemony...constantly renewing itself, decisions crystallize organically from a collective presence, and opinion naturally take hold of the group assembly.

-Do not decide on actions; it is not “the action in question should govern the assembly's agenda." No not contract action to specialists; not abandon group action for sake of control and security.

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-Mandated specialists are hindered in there actions, but are not hindered to deceive their “bosses.”

-Action gives rise to a broader form, not having a specific form attached to it.

-Circulate shared knowledge: individual reconnaissance...info organized into public archives (or forums)

-Decisions will occur gradually, not made, or forced.

More detailed overlook of the text.