There Is an Alternative to Capitalism: Mondragon Shows the Way

Monday, June 25, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Why are we told a broken system that creates vast inequality is the only choice? Spain's amazing co-op is living proof otherwise
by Richard Wolff

 

There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism? 

Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?

I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?

Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.

Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling the output. This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the majority of people – who do most of the actual productive work. The majority must accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major shareholders and the boards of directors they select. This latter also select their own replacements.

Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.

In May 2012, I had occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production.

MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).

As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker's salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)

Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.

MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.

The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise's net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.

The largest corporation in the Basque region, MC is also one of Spain's top ten biggest corporations (in terms of sales or employment). Far better than merely surviving since its founding in 1956, MC has grown dramatically. Along the way, it added a co-operative bank, Caja Laboral (holding almost $25bn in deposits in 2010). And MC has expanded internationally, now operating over 77 businesses outside Spain. MC has proven itself able to grow and prosper as an alternative to – and competitor of – capitalist organizations of enterprise.

During my visit, in random encounters with workers who answered my questions about their jobs, powers, and benefits as cooperative members, I found a familiarity with and sense of responsibility for the enterprise as a whole that I associate only with top managers and directors in capitalist enterprises. The easy conversation (including disagreement), for instance, between assembly-line workers and top managers inside the Fagor washing-machine factory we inspected was similarly remarkable.

Our MC host on the visit reminded us twice that theirs is a co-operative business with all sorts of problems:

"We are not some paradise, but rather a family of co-operative enterprises struggling to build a different kind of life around a different way of working."

Nonetheless, given the performance of Spanish capitalism these days – 25% unemployment, a broken banking system, and government-imposed austerity (as if there were no alternative to that either) – MC seems a welcome oasis in a capitalist desert.

The Meaning of Occupy

Revealing the Failure of 21st Century U.S. Capitalism
by PETER BOHMER

The Occupy movement in the United States is part of a global upsurge that began in Tunisia in late 2010, spread to Egypt and the Middle East, Wisconsin, Chile, Spain, Greece, Wall Street and the rest of the United States and now Quebec. I focus on the United States, particularly the Pacific Northwest where I have been an active participant.

I would like to acknowledge the moment. So often, we are alienated, or apathetic to the economic and social injustices taking place. This is a hopeful period when resistance and uprising in one place have resonated and spread. In the United States, we are living in a period of obscene inequality of income and wealth, a broken economic and political system that needs to be transformed not patched up. The income of the top 1% today is 42 times the bottom 90%, three times greater than the already high income inequality of 1979. 50 million people do not have health insurance, 1 in 3 are poor or near poor. Millions have lost their homes. Over 2 million people are in prison, disproportionately Black and Latino.

Over 20 million are unemployed; the rate for Blacks is twice that of whites. According to the New York Times of June 6th, 2012, of those who graduated from high school between 2009 and the present and who are not in college full time, one in six have full time jobs. For recent college graduates it’s not as bad but there is an ongoing crisis of unemployment and underemployment. The unemployment rate for young adults in Egypt, Spain, Greece and Portugal is even worse and has been an important factor in their uprisings. Whether we are living in a full-fledged global economic crisis is debatable, but the much higher than normal rates of unemployment is striking. The ongoing high unemployment rates and poor job prospects with high levels of student debt are an important factor in the participation and support for the Occupy Movement.

There was significant participation of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan in the physical occupation of public space, Occupy, Olympia, Seattle and Portland, which peaked in October and early November 2011 and were closed down by various police forces over the next month. Most of the vets participating couldn’t find jobs and many were suffering from PTSD, often undiagnosed —another symptom of our imperialist system and poorly functioning health-care system.

The majority of the people who lived in tents at the Occupy Olympia site lacked access to health care, regular jobs and housing. Many had felony convictions, a testament to the U.S. having the highest prison rate in the world. Felons are openly discriminated against in getting jobs, housing, and higher education (see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow.)

Those active in the Occupy Movement were motivated by unemployment and housing foreclosures, by the growing inequality of income and wealth, by the corporate domination of our daily lives, and corporate control of the government. There is a lot of anger at the decline in the social safety net, the bailout of banks and not people, and the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision.

The Occupy Movement has forced public discussion and debate of these issues. Growing numbers, particularly young people, have begun to feel that they can and should act, that their actions matter. Through actions and media attention and by resonating with the lived experiences of the “99%”, the Occupy Movement has brought the economic and political crisis out of the closet.

By economic crisis, I do not necessarily mean a full-blown economic crisis in the Marxist sense. Even if profits are up; the economy is not working for working people and the unemployed. By political crisis I do not mean we are in a possible revolutionary situation, such as Greece, but rather there is a rapid loss of legitimacy of the Democrats and Republicans, of the Supreme Court and a growing awareness of the ongoing destruction of democracy and the growing surveillance state.

Prefigurative Movements

Among activists in the Occupy Movement, a very popular ideology is anarchist, although increasingly an anarchism not hostile to Marxism. I agree with Grubajic and Lynd in Wobblies and Zapatistas, that we need to end the sectarianism and division between anarchists, Marxists and participatory socialists. Although, I would not call the Occupy Movement as a whole, anti-capitalist, many of the participants identify that way. In Seattle, on May Day, 2012, there was an overtly anti-capitalist march, organized by Occupy Seattle, of 800 people.

A priority in the occupations has been meeting the needs of poor people for medical care, housing, food, security and safety, and community and political discussion and education. There was a serious effort by activists to provide these services on-site and to encourage the active participation of the residents of the occupation. These actions show the failure of the current capitalist system to provide for human needs; its discarding of poor people. We made visible the human costs of the U.S. political economy.

A community and democratic structure, although somewhat chaotic and imperfect and with few resources, provided a place for people to live, to learn, and be secure. There has been the development of community in the Occupy Movement; meaningful discussions between people who usually don’t talk to each other, of people looking out for each other. There were problems of limited and difficult communication between activists, mainly students or college educated, with the homeless, but it’s a beginning.

There were fights and drug problems, and problems of male dominance and sexual violence. Nonetheless, I disagree with the commonly held point of view that the Occupy Movement has been weakened by the large participation of homeless people. They are “the canary in the coal mine”. Over time, many identified as protesters.

Although imperfect, this is a concrete demonstration on a small scale of key values of a participatory socialist system. The meeting of basic human needs was a priority of the occupations and was universally understood as a human right. There was discussion of how to move from a makeshift medical tent on-site to the development of a fully functioning and accessible free health clinic. There was sharing of tents and clothing and resources.

There has been an emphasis on direct democracy, encouraging all voices to be heard with consensus decision-making. While this sometimes led to the general assembly being unable to reach decisions, it reflected a key value of the occupiers, of participatory democracy, and horizontal and non-hierarchical decision making. There was a rotation of tasks and facilitators at meetings. There was an emphasis on building an alternative community, ourselves. There was less emphasis on demanding resources from the state. Many participants believe in building a new society with a different economy, politics, culture, and interpersonal relationships–by having these alternative small communities spread until they became a new society.

Limitations

By the time of the December, 2011 police raid, participation at Olympia, Occupy had declined. The wet and cold weather was a major cause as was the large time commitment. Since then the Occupy Movement has not been able to regain its momentum. The lack of structure is a factor as is the lack of a clear strategic way to move forward. Should there be physical occupations of public or private space; or campaigns around specific demands, e.g., stopping housing foreclosures; or direct action and/or demonstration, such as mobilizations against the G-8 in Chicago in May, 2012, or at the upcoming Democratic and Republican Convention? None of these tactics have garnered much enthusiasm or active participation. The anger and awareness about the systemic failures of our system continue as does a growing anti-capitalist consciousness, but there is a lull in activism.

A major problem has been how to build a movement that unites the 99% while simultaneously making central the concerns of the most oppressed–by not having our only talking point be the excess wealth and power of the 1%. How do we build a movement that includes immigrant rights, environmental justice, racial justice, LGBT and reproductive/women rights, anti-war and global justice? Most participants in Occupy are sympathetic to amnesty for undocumented immigrants and against U.S. wars; but these have not been principles nor put forth as demands. A major challenge of Occupy is how to be simultaneously broad, inclusive and principled.

A common criticism has been there have been no demands, especially at a national level. Given the divergence of ideologies– many flavors of reformism and of left radicalism– making demands has been difficult and not desirable at this early stage of the movement. There is a need as this movement develops for demands for non-reformist reforms (see Gorz, Strategy for Labor) to emerge, that campaigns can be built around, where there is national coordination and excitement and passion Full employment with living wage jobs is a possible demand.

In fall, 2011, the Occupy Movement in the U.S. broke through feelings of powerlessness. Six months later, this movement is weaker although the movement against neoliberalism and austerity in Greece and Quebec is growing and powerful. New activists have learned organizing skills and have deepened their political understanding. Stay tuned for the next chapter.

Sima de los Huesos: The largest deposit of human fossils in history

The largest deposit of human fossils in history

by Ignacio Martínez, Ana Gracia & Juan Luis Arsuaga

The Sima de los Huesos is a small pit situated in one of the corners of the Cueva Mayor in the Sierra Atapuerca, a modest rise in the terrain located approximately 12 kilometers east of the city of Burgos. At 3,700 meters, the geological complex denominated Cueva Mayor-Cueva de Silo is one of the longest in the Duero River Basin and has two entrances. One of them, known as the Portalón, contains one of the largest Bronze Age sites in the northern Spanish Meseta. An enigmatic cave painting in red lines representing the shape of a horse’s head can be seen on one of its walls.

At the eastern edge of Portalón is the access to the Galería del Sílex, which contains a spectacular prehistoric sanctuary from the end of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. This sanctuary was discovered intact at the end of the 1970’s by members of the Grupo de Espeleología Edelweiss (GEE), a cave exploration society from Burgos, after the opening of a passage closed by natural causes thousands of years ago. As we will see, the GEE has always played an outstanding role in the great discoveries made in the Sierra de Atapuerca.

On the western edge of the Portalón there is access to another corridor that, after a narrow passage, opens into a colossal cavern with a high ceiling, named the Sala del Coro. At the other extreme of this cavern, about 100 meters from Portalón, three main galleries cross one another and diverge in different directions: to the north, the Galería de las Estatuas, to the northwest the Galería Baja, and to the south the Galería del Silo. The Galería Baja crosses the Trinchera del Ferrocarril at the site called Sima del Elefante, which was one of the ancient entrances (now sealed) to the Cueva Mayor.

Following the Galería del Silo, and after passing through a set of very narrow, tight passageways, another huge gallery is reached, the Sala de los Cíclopes, located about 600 meters from the cave mouth at the Portalón. The excavations in this cavern have revealed that this was a place chosen by bears to hibernate. The bears belonged to a species that went extinct more than 120,000 years ago and their scientific name is 'Ursus deningeri'. Fossils of this bear species were found in the Sala de los Cíclopes, along with circular impressions in the clay floor (hibernation beds) which were left by the animals when they hibernated. In addition, on the still fresh clay walls there are traces of bear clawmarks and paw prints.

In the southeast extreme of the Sala de los Cíclopes a steep ramp ascends to reach a small blind recess that houses a deep pit around four meters wide and thirteen meters deep. This is the Sima de los Huesos. At the base of this pit descends a clay ramp with a low ceiling around three meters wide by nearly ten meters long. This sector of the site is denominated SR (Sima-Rampa) and it ends in a small rectangular room, of around seven meters in length by three meters in width, denominated SH (Sima de los Huesos). This area, systematically excavated since 1984, contains the largest accumulation of human fossils ever discovered.

History of a Discovery

Although the Sierra de Atapuerca is internationally known for its Pleistocene sites, the earliest investigations were focused on more recent prehistoric periods. In 1910 Jesús Carballo published the first archaeological and paleontological discoveries of the Cueva Mayor, mentioning the existence of the horse’s head, painted in red, in the Portalón, which Henri Breuil classified as Franco-Cantabrian Paleolithic art. Other important researchers of the time, such as Hugo Obermaier, Emilio Alcalde del Río or Martínez Santa-Olalla, also studied this site.

Later, in 1964 Francisco Jordá and Geoffrey Clark in 1971 carried out the first systematic excavations in the Portalón, documenting an important stratagraphic sequence. After opening a blocked access which had been closed for millenia, in 1972 the GEE discovered the Galería del Silex which dates from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age and preserves burial chambers, numerous examples of rock art, interesting ceramics, and evidence of flint extraction. All of this was preserved intact up to the present day. Between 1973 and 1983, José María Apellániz carried out new excavations in Portalón, investigating a much more extended surface area than before, and also coordinated the research carried out in the Galería del Sílex.

Coinciding with the excavations of Apellániz, in 1976, an unexpected event changed the orientation of the excavations in the Cueva Mayor forever. That year Trinidad Torres, an expert in bear evolution in the Iberian Peninsula, studied the Pleistocene levels of the Trinchera (in the sites Gran Dolina and Galeria) searching for mammal fossils, particularly bear remains. During his fieldwork, members of the GEE alerted Torres about the large quantity of bear fossils in Sima de los Huesos.

In fact, as graffiti on the cave walls attested, the area of Cueva Mayor where the Sima de los Huesos is located has been visited for centuries by people from neighboring villages. The Sima de los Huesos was a particularly attractive place because of its richness in bear remains, with the bear canines being the most coveted prize for the people that visited over the decades.

Encouraged by these reports, Torres organized a short excavation campaign with the GEE in the Sima de los Huesos that same year. Unexpectedly, a human jawbone was found among the numerous bear remains that were recovered. The connection between this human fossil and the bear fossils, which belong to a species extinct for over 120,000 years, suggested a considerable antiquity for the human mandible.

Realizing the significance of the finding, Torres took the human mandible to his thesis adviser, an expert in human evolution, Emiliano Aguirre, who recognized the presence of archaic features typical of European human populations of the Middle Pleistocene, highlighting its relevance. Later on, a more detailed inspection of the fossils acquired in the 1976 excavation, resulted in the recognition of more human fossils: some teeth, new fragments of jaw, skull, and long bones.

Two years later in 1978, Aguirre started the new task of excavating the Pleistocene sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca, located in the Trinchera del Ferrocarril and in the Sima de los Huesos. To do so, he organized an interdisciplinary team, consisting of specialists in geology, archaeology, and paleontology, which started to work at the sites of the Trinchera del Ferrocarril. Although the Sima de los Huesos, where human fossils had been found, was the most attractive site, its particular conditions did not allow systematic excavation until 1984. However, in 1983 a small sample was collected from the site in which new human fossils were discovered.

Sima de los Huesos has no comparison with any other site in the world. At no other site does one have to walk through a kilometer of winding subterranean passages, descend to the bottom of a deep pit and work in an extremely oxygen-poor atmosphere. In addition, the activities of the amateur spelunkers that have descended to the site over the years searching for coveted bear fossils have altered the superficial levels of sediments, breaking many bones and mixing them up with trash and limestone blocks in a uniform jumble. As a result, before starting to plan a systematic and rigorous excavation, it was necesary to evacuate tons of these altered sediments and limestone blocks from the site in order to access the intact levels.

In a short visit to the site in 1983, a few kilos of sediment were collected to test if there were still human fossils in Sima de los Huesos. The discovery of two human teeth while carefully cleaning and screening the obtained sediments confirmed the great scientific potential of the site. In light of these findings, systematic excavation of the site was begun during the next field season.

In the 1984 field season, a new excavation strategy was determined and the basic infrastructure was installed to carry it out. The altered sediments were removed in backpacks, each one carried out of the Sima by members of the excavation team. The team then took the sediments to the edge of the neighboring Arlanzón River were they were washed on screens to recover the bone fragments. These fragments were later sifted to more carefully search for the human remains.

To work at the site, it was necessary to install an electric light in the Sima de los Huesos, since the use of gas lamps was already consuming much of the oxygen present at the site. To solve this, the team ran an electrical cable of almost a kilometer in length, from the Portalón to the Sima de los Huesos, where they installed a simple electrical setup consisting of a few sockets and lightbulbs. They also installed a hanging grid system, attached to the ceiling of the cave, in order to locate and map future fossil discoveries following proper archaeological protocols.

During the final days of the 1984 excavations, a small area of unaltered sediments was discovered at the western edge of the site, where the level of the disturbed sediments was very thin. In this zone (know as Area A), four human fossils were discovered, adding to the 78 specimens that were recovered while washing and screening the overlying disturbed sediments.

During the 1985 field season, Area A was systematically excavated, yielding three new human fossils. The level with human fossils, however, was very thin and was quickly exhausted. It was evident, then, that the main efforts had to be concentrated in the removal of the disturbed sediments which occupied most of the site, with the hope of finding the same level with human fossils discovered in Area A under the layer of altered sediments at other parts of the site.

This work, already begun in 1984, was carried out from 1985-1989, during which time more than 12 tons of limestone blocks and sediments were extracted from the Sima de los Huesos, without the use of any type of machinery, resulting in the discovery of 131 new human fossils.

In 1987, the team designed and installed a suspended platform at the site, anchored to the walls, which allowed work to proceed without stepping on the floor. In addition, a perforation was drilled from the outside through the ceiling of the neighboring Sala de los Cíclopes to facilitate the removal of sediments and improve the ventilation in the Sima de los Huesos.

This removal of altered sediments was completed during the 1989 field season. However, the most important discovery of that year was that the level of human fossils found in Area A in 1984, and apparently exhausted in 1985, extended across a larger area than was originally suspected. The last phase of the 1989 campaign and part of the 1990 field season was dedicated to the systematic excavation of this level, yielding 47 new human fossils.

The 1990 campaign marked a turning point in the excavations in the Sima de los Huesos. On one hand, the extension of the fertile level of human remains in the A area was delimited, and turned out to be quite small, giving the impression that the site was close to be exhausted. Secondly, the precise location was located within the cave of where the disturbed sediments were secondarily dumped after their removal from the Sima by the original team which excavated in 1976. These sediments were removed to the outside during the 1989 and 1991 campaigns. The cleaning and sifting of this material produced 161 new human remains. Finally, during the last days of the 1990 excavation six human remains in another area of the Sima were found next to the northern wall. This new excavation area was called Area B. The newly recovered human remains in Area B were the most complete and best preserved among all the discoveries to date.

Between 1984 and 1990 in the Sima de los Huesos, 389 human remains had been found. Of these, 335 came from sediments which had been disturbed by the amateur spelunkers, and 54 had been found among undisturbed sediments in Areas A and B. Although the number of fossils was impressive, being larger than all of the other sites of the Middle Pleistocene (780,000-120,000 years ago), most of the fossils were small fragments that apparently could not provide much information (as some of our colleagues liked to remind to us, a bit maliciously). Yet, this was a false impression. There were two fairly abundant skeletal elements in the Sima de los Huesos sample, which provided very relevant information.

On the one hand were the teeth, that helped establish the presence of at least 20 individuals (or dentitions) within the sample. This was a very large number at any site containing human remains, regardless of the location or chronology. Human remains are among the rarest of paleontological discoveries, making them very valuable. Only a small fraction of archaeological sites have yielded human remains, and one can count with one hand the number of sites with the same antiquity of the Sima de los Huesos where the minimum number of individuals found exceeds half a dozen. The significance is not simply to break a record (“my site has more individuals than yours”), but rather takes on a singular scientific importance. If the number of individuals in a sample is very small, it is not possible to know the variability of the original population, and therefore it is very difficult to evaluate the research results. On the contrary, when the number of individuals is large, it is possible to determine the causes and degree of biological variability and arrive at firm conclusions about the human remains. In this context, one can understand the significance of the large number of individuals preserved at the Sima.

However, on the other hand, it is not very useful to have identified many individuals by their teeth if there is not much left of their skeletons. At this point, the other abundant skeletal elements in the sample from the Sima de los Huesos gains significance, most notably the phalanges of the hands and feet. These small bones are among the most fragile and delicate in the human skeleton, and they are exceptional in sites as old as the Sima de los Huesos. In fact, among all the archaeological sites of the Middle Pleistocene, just a single human phalanx has been found, from the site of Zhoukoudian in China (the well known “Pekín Man” site). Over the years, more than 60 phalanges were recovered from the Sima de los Huesos, an amazing number. This suggested to the members of the excavation team that if these fragile bones were found at the site, it was logical to believe that other parts of the skeleton would also be preserved.

The 1991 field season began under a new scientific leadership. Until 1990, the year in which he retired, Emiliano Aguirre was the director of the excavations at the diverse Pleistocene sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca. During those years, the excavation team had been organized around three outstanding collaborators of Aguirre: Juan Luis Arsuaga, José María Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell. This situation led the team to aquire a different and relatively original structure, with a collaborative leadership under the direction of the three leaders of the different teams. Following this reorganization, Arsuaga, who had been in charge of the excavation in the Sima de los Huesos under Aguirre’s management, continued this work.

In the 1991 campaign, the team completed the excavation of the dumped deposits from the original 1976 excavation (adding 54 new human remains), and the systematic excavation of Area B was undertaken, where as mentioned previously, six very complete human fossils had been found in 1990. Soon after, it was realized that the level where those fossils were found had not been altered by the amateur spelunkers, which made the team hopeful about finding new complete and well preserved human remains in Area B. The expectations were entirely justified since by the end of the campaign, in a surface area of just an eighth of a square meter (1/8 m2) excavated to a depth of only 20 cm, they had recovered 112 new human fossils. However, the most important fact was not the number of fossils found in an intact geological level, but the extraordinary state of preservation of the fossils. In addition, bones from parts of the skeleton were found that had never before been recovered (or were extremely rare) at any other site of the same time period. The Sima de los Huesos started to become recognized as an exceptional site, for both the number of fossils and their scientific significance.

But this new situation also presented new working conditions and new challenges. The fossils coming from the intact sediments were much more fragile than the ones from the distrubed sediments, which made their excavation a much more delicate task. A hardening solution was needed to extract the skeletal remains from the sediments without them deteriorating. Given the very high relative humidity in the air at the Sima de los Huesos, it was not possible to use the most common hardening solution, which is dissolved in water, and it was necessary to make new ones dissolved instead in acetone. On the other hand, to excavate in the intact levels a different, more systematic methodology is necessary compared to working with disturbed sediments. In essence, the objective is to register as accurately as possible the three-dimensional position of each fossil before it is removed. This method is commonplace in any archaeological excavation.

But there is no single excavation in the world comparable to the Sima de los Huesos. At no other site do they recover hundreds of human fossils each field season. Thus, it was decided to modify the traditional archaeological method in an important detail. While the excavation maps at most other sites are made at a 1:10 scale, in the Sima de los Huesos they are drawn at a 1:1 scale. This change of scale implies a relative increase in the prescision of the maps, given that 1:1 scale is ten times more exact than that of 1:10. But this increase of precision also significantly increased the work necesary to make the maps at this new scale.

In addition to modifing the field methods during the excavation, it was also necessary to change the work plan in the laboratory. There were now many more fossils to clean, preserve, and catalog, all without losing the exact place of origin of each fossil. To this end, all the excavation and laboratory methods were reconsidered and new protocols were established to optimize the labor within the reduced time during the field season.

The excavation of 1992 was planned with an extremely ambitious objective. On the one hand, the systematic excavation of the dense levels of human fossils in Area B was continued, and at the same time, excavation in more limited and selected (test) areas along the access ramp to the site (designated Sima-Rampa, or SR) were initiated. The excavation in these test points (named SRB, SRM, SRA) contributed very valuble information in understanding the stratigraphy and formation of the site. In addition, 16 human fossils were recovered in SRB and SRM, some of which could be joined to other fragments in sediments from SH, making it clear that the human remains were originally deposited on the ramp.

Although these finds were important, the most incredible discoveries during this year came from Area B – finds that would catapult the Sima de los Huesos Site, and in turn the Sierra de Atapuerca, to the forefront of the scientfic world.

In the first fews days of excavation a complete neurocranium was discovered (Cranium 4), informally baptized “Agamemnon,” in homage to classical archaeology. To demonstrate the importance of this find, it is sufficient to point out that there is only a single skull of comparable antiquity in the whole archaeological record of Europe. The task of excavating this fossil occupied almost the entirety of the field season and occupied an area of around one quarter square meters (1/4 m2), to a depth of some 25cm. In this same area, an additional 200 human fossils were subsequently excavated, including a second human skull (Cranium 5), named Miguelón in honor of the 5-time champeon of the Tour de France, Miguel Indurain. In contrast to Agamemnon, Miguelon also preserved the facial bones and, to this day, is the best preserved and most complete fossil human skull ever discovered. In addition, several skull fragments found this year, together with others recovered during previous field seasons, allowed the reconstruction of a third very complete skull belonging to an individual who died at around 13 years of age and named "Rui", in honor of the legendary figure from Burgos, Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.

The 1992 finds proved to be an important turning point in the international recognition of the site, which now began to be considered one of the most important sites for human fossils in the world, and key to the understanding of human evolution in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene.

Since then, the excavations have continued uninterrupted in the Sima de los Huesos, summer after summer. Over the years, the site has continued to produce incredible finds. In 1994, the same year that the first fossils of 'Homo antecessor' were found in level TD6 of the Gran Dolina, the only practially complete and undeformed human pelvis (Pelvis 1) in the fossil record was recovered from the Sima. Following the tradition of giving informal names to exceptional fossils, it was coined Elvis, in memory of the pelvic gyrations of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. In the last 14 years we have encountered thousands of human fosils at the Sima de los Huesos, up to a provisional total of 5,500. This is an extraordinary number, that excedes the total number of human fossils found the rest of the sites on the planet.

Above all, the most intriguing find, and perhaps the most far-reaching of all in the Sima de los Huesos, has not been a human fossil. In 1998, in the same level as the human fossils, the only stone tool ever found at the site was recovered: a stone handaxe (or biface), made of red quartzite, which we named Excalibur.

The type of flaking corresponds to Mode 2, or Acheulean, technology, which coincides with the human type (see below) found in the Sima de los Huesos. This type of technology is widely found in other sites of Atapuerca, in the Trinchera de Ferrocarril, of a similar geological age, such as Galeria and the upper levels of Gran Dolina. It’s interesting to point out that at these sites, similar-sized tools made of the same raw material as the handaxe at the Sima de los Huesos are rare.

All these discoveries, Elvis, Excalibur and most of the thousands of new fossils came from Area B in SH, where excavation is far from being completed. The new field seasons (2002-2005) have been carried out pursuing a new scientific strategy. Instead of continuing work in Area B, whose richness in human remains is well established, major efforts have been focused on the SR and other locations, different from Area B, in SH. The aim is to enhance the data on other relevant aspects of the site: to confirm the proposed stratigraphy, to refine the dating of the site and to determine the geometry of the deposit.

As the result of these activities, several dozen new human remains have been found in the highest area of SR (in a location called SRA), which undoubtedly belong to the same individuals that were found in SH, confirming the results of prior campaigns in the original place of deposition of the skeletons. In addition, in this spot (SRA) it has been possible to date the fossil deposit with absolute accuracy at more than 350,000 years old. Later we will discussin detail the question of dating the fossils from the Sima de los Huesos. However, we will first devote some lines to a question that inspires curiosity in the general public: How much is still left to excavate in the Sima de los Huesos?

This is a question without a definitive answer given the nature of the site. In fact, many years of work were necessary to begin to understand the geological complexity from the data recovered during many field seasons.

The human remains appear, together with bear remains (the Ursus deningeri" species), in a red clay stratum. This sedimentary level was deposited on an irregular relief already present, resulting from prior periods of sediment erosion and deposition. This level of red clay rich in human remains was in turn altered by subsequent water circulation at the site, resulting in a new irregular relief. Later on, another level containing fossils of the same bear species and of other carnivores (see below) covered the sediments rich in human remains. In this way, different levels do not have a constant thickness throughout the site, nor are they horizontally located one above the other, but make contact laterally.

To this irregular geometry of the deposit, a consequence its complex geological history, it must be added that the human remains are not homogeneously distributed in their corresponding red clay level. On the contrary, they have accumulated in some parts of the SH, such as Areas A and B, while in other areas of the site there are hardly any fossils. This chaotic distribution is the result of the bones which reached the SH being carried there by small mud slides from their original place of deposition in the ramp (SR).

As a result, it is not possible to predict exactly how long it will take to complete the excavation of the site. However, there is one very interesting piece of information. The team working at SH has estimated the percentage of human remains which have been recovered in relation to the total initially accumulated in the site. This calculation is based on the certainty that in the Sima de los Huesos there has been an accumulation of complete skeletons of at least 28 individuals. This information, along with other studies on the pattern of fracturing of human remains at the site, allows a prudent estimate of the number of human remains expected in the site. The team believes that to date just a third of the existing human remains at the site have been recovered.

Dating a Site

One of the most fascinating questions for the general public in the field of paleontology is the age of the fossils. It seems amazing that it is possible to know the date of such remote events that no one witnessed with such precision. Although a detailed explanation of the different techniques that scientists use to date fossils is beyond the scope of these pages, we explain some general considerations that are useful to understand the basics of the methods and evaluate the results.

In paleontology there are two ways of dating an event. One is to establish a relative date, that is, to situate an event within a temporal order of events. For this procedure, the antiquity of the object is established in terms of “before, or after,” but does not imply knowledge of the exact date. This concept can be illustrated with an example from daily life. The terms, grandmother, mother, and daughter establish a relative date between three women - the grandmother the oldest, the mother in the middle, and the daughter being the youngest – but we don’t know the exact age of the women. Establishing the exact (or reasonably precise) age of the events is the objective of absolute dating.

It is a common mistake to think of the word “absolute”, when refering to a date, as indicating “definitive” or “incontestable.” In paleontology, definitive or incontestable dates do not exist, since they are always subject to contrast with the results of other techniques. Only when the dates obtained by various methods (relative or absolute) agree can they be thought to reasonably estimate (although constantly improved by new techniques) the date of a fossil or site.

Establishing the relative date of sites (and, thus the fossils contained in them) is a task done through the use of biostratigraphy. Essentially, this attempts to construct a chronological framework (or chronobiostratigraphic scale) that temporally organizes the distinct species that have lived throughout the history of biological life. To do this scientists employ concepts and methods from the field of geology (such as the law of stratigraphic superposition) and biology (like the irreversible nature of the evolutionary process). In this way, the different fosilized species that appear in a site indicate to a biostratigrapher the temporal period to which they correspond.

For their part, the techniques commonly used to obtain absolute dates are based on natural radioactive phenomona to establish how much time has passed since the occurence of a certain event. The relative porportions of certain isotopos (which give their name to each technique) are measured, since these proportions change as a direct function of the amount of time passed. If the event dated is the death of the organism that produced the fossil (as in the case of the well-known Carbon 14 technique), the antiquity of the fossil can be directly established. More commonly, the event to be dated by these methods is the formation of certain types of rocks, such as volcanic basalt (Potassium/Argon technique) or flowstones, stalactites and stagmites (Uranium-series technique).

There is one very important question when attempting to understand and analyze dates obtained by these methods: the maximum reach, limit or range of the method. This is the maximum age that can be reached, with acceptable precision, with each given technique. Currently, the limit of the method of the Carbon 14 technique is around 40,000 years. Beyond this date, the results of the technique are not reliable and it is not used to date events that are older than this. Essentially, the maximum effectiveness of each technique has is limited by its capacity to precisely measure the exact number of atoms of the corresponding isotopes. Inevitably, all measurement instruments have a margin of error, and the magnitude of this error determines the realiability of the results based on a determined date, which varies with each method. When a technological advance is produced that reduces the error and changes the precision of the measurement, then the maximum age limit is increased. This happened, for instance, when the reach of Carbon 14 increased by employing particle accelerators in association with the measuring instruments.

After this brief foray into the world of dating techniques, let’s return to the case of the Sima de los Huesos. As mentioned previously, when the first human mandible was discovered at the site in 1976, its association with Ursus deningeri bear fossils suggested a great antiquity. Since this species of bear went extinct around 120,000 ago, this appeared to be the minimum age attributable to the human fossil. However, the fact that the levels of the deposits from which both the bear and human fossils derived may have been disturbed by amateur spelunkers called this date into question. Some researchers have suggested that the bear fossils could hve come from a different stratigraphic level than that of the humans and, for this reason, they have different dates.

This doubt was not put to rest until the 1991 excavation when, once the disturbed sediments were cleared away, the intact levels were exposed and confirmed that they contained both 'Ursus deningeri' and human fosils. As such, the association between both species was confirmed and established a minimum age of 120,000 years for the site. While this highly significant date confirmed the great antiquity of the human fossils, it was still much too imprecise. At that time, no datable rock had been found at the site that showed a clear stratigraphic relationship with the human fossils, which led to two independent lines into the question. On the one hand, the rest of the faunal remains from the site were studied. At the same time, new experimental techniques were applied to date the fossils. The results of both methods coincided with an older minimum age for the Sima de los Huesos fossils of around 250,000 years ago.


Finally, after more than 10 years of excavation in different areas at the site, during the 2001 field season a discovery was made that allowed for a more precise date. That year a horizontal stalagmite was found in the upper portion of the ramp (in the place designated SRA) that was deposited directly over the fossil-bearing levels which contained dozens of fossils of the same individuals found in SH. This type of sedimentary rock can be reliably dated by the uranium-series dating technique mentioned above. The results obtained from the stalagmite at SRA showed its age exceeds the maximum reach of that technique, established at 350,000 years, and as a result the human fossils are older than this date.

There is one final consideration to conclude this section on the antiquity of Sima de los Huesos. It is a common mistake to confuse the minimum age of a site with its absolute date. A minimum date of 350,000 years does not mean, as it is often mistaken in the media, that the site is exactly 350,000 years old, but rather that it is older than this date (without knowing how much older). This is an important point to make clear since we are sometimes approached by people who claim that we continue to change the date of the site over the years, making it older each time. This is not correct. What has happened is that the minimum age has been refined from 120,000 years ago in the beginning to 350,000 years ago currently. When technological advances lead to improvements in the measuring devices, thereby lowering their error, the date of the stalagmite of SRA will become even more precise and establish another adjusted minimum age for the site, which will inevitably be even older.

****

Scientists accused of distorting theory of human evolution by misdating bones
By Robin McKie, The Observer
Saturday, June 9, 2012

 

 

Briton says Spanish researchers are out by 200,000 years and have even got the wrong species

It is the world’s biggest haul of human fossils and the most important palaeontology site in Europe: a subterranean chamber at the bottom of a 50ft shaft in the deepest recesses of the Atapuerca cavern in northern Spain. Dozens of ancient skeletons have been unearthed.
La Sima de los Huesos – the Pit of Bones – has been designated a Unesco world heritage site because of its importance to understanding evolution, and millions of euros, donated by the EU, have been spent constructing a museum of human antiquity in nearby Burgos.

But Britain’s leading expert on human evolution, Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, has warned in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology that the team in charge of La Sima has got the ages of its fossils wrong by 200,000 years and has incorrectly identified the species of ancient humans found there.

Far from being a 600,000-year-old lair of a species called Homo heidelbergensis, he believes the pit is filled with Neanderthal remains that are no more than 400,000 years old. The difference in interpretation has crucial implications for understanding human evolution.

“The Atapuerca finds are hugely important,” said Stringer. “There is no other site like it in terms of numbers of bones and skulls of our ancient predecessors. It is the world’s biggest collection of ancient human fossils and the team there has done a magnificent job in excavating the site. However, if we cannot correctly fix the age and identity of the remains then we are in trouble. Getting that wrong even affects how we construct our own evolution.”

La Sima de los Huesos was discovered by potholers exploring Atapuerca’s cavern system. One brought back a few fragments of human bone. Excavations led by Juan Luis Arsuaga, of Madrid university, began in 1990 and within two years had uncovered two complete human brain cases. Ribcages, leg bones and jawbones were also dug up. Arsuaga tentatively dated the finds as being 300,000 years old.

Since then, the remains of 28 bodies have been dug up, the world’s greatest single haul of ancient human fossils. During this time, Arsuaga and his team pushed back the dates of their finds to 600,000 years ago and assigned them as belonging to Homo heidelbergensis.
This dating and identification has caused increasing upset among other palaeontologists. The scientists at La Sima believe H heidelbergensis is an ancestor of Neanderthals but not of Homo sapiens. However, others, including Stringer, believe it is indeed an ancestor of our species.

“The problem is that many of the skeletons unearthed at La Sima clearly have Neanderthal features,” said Stringer. “In particular, their teeth and jaws are shaped very like those of Neanderthals. But all other evidence indicated Neanderthals did not appear on the scene for another 200,000 years. Dating these bones to such an early date completely distorts our picture of our evolution.”

This criticism is supported by Phillip Endicott of the Musée de l’Homme, Paris. His studies of human and Neanderthal DNA have shown the latter did not appear as a separate species until 400,000 years ago. “Yet the bones in La Sima, which bear Neanderthal features, are supposed to be 600,000 years old,” he said. “This cannot be true.”

Another criticism is of the method used to date the Pit of Bones. A stalagmite found just above the remains has been dated as 600,000 years old, using natural uranium isotopes, and Sima scientists argue that the fossils must be older. They say the 28 bodies were thrown into the pit as an act of reverence for the dead and that the stalagmite grew over the sediment containing the bones.

However, this interpretation is controversial. No one has found any other evidence of ceremonial behaviour in humans of that antiquity. In addition, there is a deficit of small finger and toe bones. “If complete bodies were thrown in there, you would expect to see every piece of human anatomy down there,” said Stringer. “But you don’t. A lot of skeletal parts seem to be missing.”

Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo and Peter Andrews, of, respectively, the Natural History Museums of Madrid and London, suggest the absence of small bones is best explained by assuming the bodies came from the cave system and were washed there by flood. Fingers and toes would have been lost as skeletons were swept into the pit where the stalagmite could already have formed.

However, Arsuaga has rejected this analysis. “You can call [the fossils] early Neanderthals or give them another name, it does not matter. I prefer to give a different name.” But he admitted the 600,000-year age his team had put on the Sima fossils did look too early. “We are working on that,” he said.

The Rebellion of the Poor

Sunday, October 16, 2011 by The Independent/UK
Across the World, the Indignant Rise Up Against Corporate Greed and Cuts
by David Randall and Matt Thomas

 

Protests against corporate greed, executive excess and public austerity began to gel into the beginnings of a worldwide movement yesterday as tens of thousands marched in scores of cities. The "Occupy Wall Street" protest, which started in Canada and spread to the US, and the long-running Spanish "Indignant" and Greek anti-cuts demonstrations coalesced on a day that saw marches or occupations in 82 countries.

Some protests were small, as in Tokyo, where only 200 turned up; some were large, as in Spain, where around 60 separate demonstrations were staged; and some were muted, as in London, where nearly 2,000 intending to march on the Stock Exchange obeyed police who turned them back. As dusk fell, some 500 of them were kettled in St Paul's churchyard.

Containment tactics were also used by police in New York last night as thousands of demonstrators were penned behind barricades in Times Square. They had marched through Manhattan and protested outside the city's banks, withdrawing their money as they did.

Only one of the protests, in Rome, was violent. Here, among an estimated 100,000 protesters, were a few who broke away and hurled bottles, smashed shop windows, torched cars and attacked news crews. There were reports that the defence ministry had been partly trashed. Most of the disorder took place near the Colosseum, and police charged the protesters and fired water cannon. Some demonstrators fled, but others turned against the troublemakers, trying, with limited success, to stop them. Italy, with a national debt ratio second only to Greece's in the 17-nation eurozone, is rapidly becoming a focus of concern in Europe's debt crisis. But even in Germany – part of the solution to the crisis rather than the problem – around 4,000 people marched through the streets of Berlin with banners that urged the end of capitalism. Some scuffled with police as they tried to get near the country's parliamentary buildings. In Frankfurt, continental Europe's financial capital, some 5,000 people protested in front of the European Central Bank.

In Spain, six marches were set to converge on Madrid's Puerta del Sol plaza just before dusk yesterday. This is the country where, in May, groups which became known as the Indignant Movement established the first around-the-clock protest camps that lasted for weeks in cities and towns. Portuguese angry at their government's handling of the economic crisis were due to protest in central Lisbon later yesterday evening. Portugal is one of three European nations – the others being Greece and Ireland – that have already needed an international bailout.

In Stockholm, 500 people gathered to hear speakers denounce capitalism at a peaceful rally. They held up red flags and banners that read: "We are the 99 per cent" and "We refuse to pay for capitalism's crisis". The reference was to the world's richest 1 per cent, who control billions in assets, while billions around the world live in poverty or are struggling economically. Bilbo Goransson, a trade union activist, declared through a megaphone: "There are those who say the system is broke. It's not. That's how it was built. It is there to make rich people richer."

Anti-banking protests outside St Paul's cathedral yesterday drew a crowd of around 2,000. The "Occupy London" protesters gathered with the intention of taking over the plaza in front of the London Stock Exchange but were turned back at Temple Bar by mounted police. The crowds returned to St Paul's churchyard where WikiLeaks' Julian Assange spoke briefly.

The singer Billy Bragg was also in the crowd. "Today is about accountability," he said.
"People want to see a change in the way things are done." He believed yesterday's protest represented a shift in the way the public views demonstrations. "I think the attitude coming out of protests here and on Wall Street has been incredibly positive," he said. "It's a desire to build, rather than smash things up."

In Canada, hundreds gathered in Toronto's financial district to decry what they said was government-abetted corporate greed which has served elites at the expense of the majority. Further protests were planned yesterday for other Canadian cities, while, in the US, marches were scheduled in cities large and small, from Providence, Rhode Island, to Little Rock, Arkansas; from New York to Seattle. In the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, there was a different tone: hundreds walked through the streets carrying pictures of Che Guevara, old communist flags and placards that read: "Death to capitalism, freedom to the people".

Turnout was light in Asia, where the global economy is booming. In Sydney, around 300 people gathered, cheering a speaker who shouted: "We're sick of corporate greed! Big banks, big corporate power standing over us and taking away our rights!" Only 200 people protested in Tokyo; and in the Philippines, about 100 people marched on the US embassy in Manila to express support for the Wall Street protests.

A group of 100 prominent authors, including Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelists Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham, signed an online petition declaring their support for "Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world". And there were stinging words yesterday in The New York Times' leading article for David Cameron and George Osborne. It began: "For now, Britain's economy has been stuck in a vicious cycle of low growth, high unemployment and fiscal austerity. But unlike Greece, which has been forced into induced recession by misguided European Union creditors, Britain has inflicted this harmful quack cure on itself."

It ended: "Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr Cameron's failed experiment."

Several years after the Western financial crisis began, and with growing momentum it seems, new dividing lines – if not battle lines – are being drawn up.

+++++

From Wall Street to South Africa

by RICHARD PITHOUSE

Grahamstown, South Africa.
In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s novel about the Great Depression, Tom Joad, the novel’s central character, a man who has been made poor and who is on the run from the law, tells his mother in the climactic scene that: “I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together….”


That wondering is a red thread woven through American history with the promise of a way out of what Martin Luther King called “life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign”. In recent years a lot of Americans who have not been born to life in that desolate corridor have been forced in to it. The time when each generation could expect to live better than their parents has passed. Poverty is rushing into the suburbs. Young people live with their parents into their thirties. Most can not afford university. Most of the rest leave it with an intolerable debt burden. It’s the same in Spain, Greece and Ireland. England is looking pretty grim too. The borders that surround the enclaves of global privilege are shrinking in from the nation state to surround private wealth.


If the problem was that there just wasn’t enough money to go around, people would have to accept the situation. But when there is plenty of money, when there is, in fact, an incredible abundance of money but its being held by a tiny minority, its perfectly logical to start wondering along Tom Joad’s lines.


The financial elite who had, for so long, successfully presented themselves as the high priests of the arcane arts of economic divination on whom our collective well being was dependent caused the financial crisis of 2008. The problem was not a miscalculation in some algorithm. It was the greed of a caste that had been allowed to set itself up above everyone else. As a character in a Bruce Springsteen song about the deindustrialisation of America observes “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”. This caste has developed so much power over the media and politicians that it has been allowed to dictate the resolution of the crisis. Their plan, of course, comes down to the proposal that they should continue to profit while the shortfall is recovered from society. That means more people losing their homes, no longer able to afford health care or child care, dropping out of university, sliding deeper into debt and working two or three crappy jobs just to keep going.


There was resistance from the start. But for a long time it looked like right wing populism would be the dominant popular response in America. But with the occupation of Wall Street inciting occupations and planned occupations in cities throughout the United States, and as far away as Hong Kong and South Africa, it seems that a response that targets the real source of the problem is gaining more traction.


The choice of Wall Street as the target for the occupation is, in itself, a perfectly eloquent statement. And slogans like “We’re young; we’re poor; we’re not going to take it any more” are incisive enough. But if the occupation of sites of symbolic power in cities across North America is to win concrete rather than moral victories, and to make a decisive intervention against the hold that finance capital has taken over so much of political and social life, it will have to do two things. It will need, without giving up its autonomy, to build links with organisations, like churches, trade unions and students groups, that are rooted in everyday life and can support this struggle over the long haul. It will also need to find ways to build its own power and to exercise it with sufficient impact to force real change.


Wall Street is usually a world away from Main Street and bringing it under control is no easy task. But its encouraging that what links Tahrir Square to Liberty Plaza, the protests in Athens and Madrid and the movements that have emerged in the shack settlements of Port-au-Prince, La Plaz, Caracas and Durban, is a concern with democracy. In Tahrir Square the primary point was to unseat a dictatorship but elsewhere there is a global sense that the standard model of parliamentary democracy is just not democratic enough. This is a crucial realisation because, in many countries, America being one of them, you just can’t vote for an alternative to the subordination of society to capital. But a serious commitment to dispersing power by sustained organising from below can shift power relations. It is the only realistic route to achieving any sort of meaningful subordination of capital to society.


The idea of an occupation as a way to force an exit from the long and desolate corridor to which more and more Americans are being condemned is not new. Martin Luther King dedicated the last years of his life to the Poor People’s Campaign. In 1968 he travelled the country aiming to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor”, “a new and unsettling force” that would occupy Washington until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights providing decent housing and work or a guaranteed income for all. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection”. King was assassinated on the 4th of April 1968 but the march went ahead on the 12th of May 1968. Up to 50 000 people marched on Washington and occupied Capitol Hill. Thousands built a shanty town known as Resurrection City and held it for six weeks, in which it seemed to rain incessantly, before it was bulldozed.


In that same year there was mass protest, sometimes verging on insurrection, from Prague to Berlin, Paris and Mexico City. Much of it was inspired by the war in Vietnam and much of it took the form, against both the state and the authoritarian left, of direct democracy and collective self-organisation. In 1968 armed third world peasants became the most compelling image of a revolt that, while not global, was certainly international. With the defeat of these struggles the human rights industry was able to recast the third world poor as passive victims requiring charity and guidance from the North.


Debt, often mediated through dictatorship, became a key instrument through which the domination of the North was reasserted over the South. Debtors don’t just have to wring every cent that they can from life. They are also without autonomy. But the servitude of the debtor is increasingly also the condition of home-owners, students and others in the North who are paying for much of the financial crisis.


When some people are living like pigs and others have land lying fallow its easy enough to see what must be done. But when some people are stuck in a desolate corridor with no exit signs and others have billions in hedge funds, derivatives and all the rest it can seem a lot more complicated. And of course it is more complicated in the sense that you can’t occupy a hedge fund in the same way that you can occupy the fallow land of a billionaire.


But the point about finance capital is that it is the collective wealth of humanity. The money controlled by Wall Street was not generated by the unique brilliance, commitment to labour and willingness to assume risk on the part of the financial elite. It was generated by the wars in the Congo and Iraq. It comes from the mines in Johannesburg, the long labour of the men who worked those mines and the equally long labour of the women that kept the homes of the miners in the villages of the Eastern Cape. It comes from the dispossession, exploitation, work and creativity of people around the world. That wealth, which has been captured and made private, needs to be made public. Appropriated or properly taxed under democratic authority it could fund things like housing, health care, education, a guaranteed income and productive investment.


When a new politics, a new willingness to resist, emerges from the chrysalis of obedience, it will, blinking in the sun, confront the world with no guarantees. But we need to get together and commit what we can to try and ensure that 2011 turns out differently to 1968 or, for that matter, 1989. Here in South Africa the immediate task for the young people inspired by the occupations that have spread from Cairo to New York via Madrid and Athens is to make common cause with the rebellion of the poor.

Spain: Massive Crowds Defy Ban on Protests

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by the Associated Press
by Harold Heckle

Tens of thousands of people are defying a pre-election ban on demonstrations and protesting unemployment in squares around Spain in defiance of an order to quit at midnight.

The government avoided saying if it would order police to break up the crowds on Saturday, but at the stroke of midnight officers kept a discreet presence on the edges of the demonstrations.

Demonstrators kept quiet as city clocks chimed the beginning of a new day, many with sticky tape over their mouths in a gesture organizers said suggested they have things to say but were being gagged by the ban.

People are angry over Spain's high unemployment rate and what they see as the national political parties' ineptitude in dealing with a deep economic crisis. (sound familiar?--jef) Protesters built a camp in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square Sunday, a week ahead of nationwide elections. Since then good-natured, peaceful and colorful gatherings have sprung up and grown around the country under the banner of "Real Democracy Now."

Many protesters have said they were influenced by recent pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and one popular chant is "Join us."

Friday was the last day for candidates to campaign for the election for municipal and regional government positions in much of the country. Citing the mandatory end of campaigning, the national election commission banned protests Saturday and on Sunday, voting day.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero did not say whether he would order police to break up demonstrations.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba was also cagey about how the government would deal with the protesters, although he said the police would not act to make things worse.

Initially he said the government will "enforce the law," but he then toned down this stance, saying "The police are not going to resolve one problem by creating another."

The ruling Socialist party is widely expected to suffer big losses at the polls, perhaps even in traditional strongholds, having been forced by the crisis to introduce austerity measures.

"They want to leave us without public health and public education. Half of our youth is unemployed and they have raised the age of retirement," said protester Natividad Garcia, who declined to give her age and profession.

The government is presiding over an economy struggling to overcome recession and create jobs to chip away at a 21.3 percent jobless rate, the highest in the eurozone.

In Spain, rallies called to urge people to vote one way or another are typically banned the day before an election, called "days of reflection."

The election commission was deeply divided this time, and upheld the ban by just a one-vote margin. The panel was convened to give a blanket ruling for all of Spain because provincial election bodies had issued contradictory rulings, with some allowing protests this week and some banning them, as was the case in Madrid.

Organizers of the protests say that they have no party affiliation, are not trying to affect the election outcome in any way, and are not even urging people to abstain from voting.

"Campaign posters are still going to be up, so why ban people from freely mingling to exchange ideas," said graphic designer Antonio Quiroga, 27.

Stop Calling It a Financial Crisis

The Rise and Demise of the Housing Bubble
By DEAN BAKER

The politicians and the media continue to refer to the economic downturn as being the result of a financial crisis. This is wrong. We have 15 million people out of work because the housing bubble that drove the economy since the last recession finally burst. The financial crisis may have been good entertainment for those who like to see huge banks collapse, but it was a sidebar. The real story was the rise and demise of the housing bubble.

Those who claim that the real problem was the financial system and its faulty regulation can be disproved with a single word: “Spain.” Spain is noteworthy because it now has an unemployment rate of more than 19 percent, the highest rate in any of the wealthy countries. Spain did not have a financial crisis. In fact, its well-regulated financial system is often held up as model for the United States.

Spain did have a horrific housing bubble. As a result, the share of construction in the economy rose from less than 8.0 percent of GDP at the end of the 90s to 12.3 percent in 2007. By comparison, it is typically less than 6.0 percent of GDP in non-bubble years in the United States. This rapid rate of construction led to enormous overbuilding, which meant that a collapse was inevitable with construction falling to far below normal levels.

The run-up in house prices also had the predictable effect on consumption.

Because people believe that the run-up in house prices is based onfundamentals, homeowners assume that their newly created housing wealth is real and they spend accordingly. Spain’s saving rate fell from just under 6.0 percent in 2000 to 3.0 percent in 2007. When the housing wealth created by the bubble disappeared people naturally cut back their consumption.

This is Spain’s crisis. According to the IMF, housing starts in Spain fell by 80 percent from the peak of the boom. While total construction has not fallen as much (repairs and non-residential construction did not decline nearly as much), if construction in Spain fell by 50 percent, this would imply a loss in annual demand of more than 6 percent of GDP. That would translate into a drop in demand of more than $800 billion in the United States.

Similarly the loss of housing wealth reverses the housing wealth effect. If consumption fell enough to return the savings rate to its pre-bubble level, then this would imply a loss in annual consumption demand of more than 3 percentage points of disposable income. In the U.S. this would amount to more than $300 billion in lost annual consumption.

There is no easy mechanism to replace more than $1 trillion in lost demand. This is why Spain’s economy is in a severe slump right now. Note that just about all analysts agree, Spain’s financial system was well regulated and it had none of the loony loans and outright corruption that pervades Wall Street and the U.S. financial system. Yet, it is suffering from this economic downturn even more than the United States.

The moral of this story is that the problem is not first and foremost a financial crisis. It might be fun to watch the Wall Street and government boys sweat as they stay up late trying to keep the big banks from drowning in the cesspools they created. But this is all a sideshow. No one saved us from a “second Great Depression,” they just saved the jobs and wealth of the Wall Street crew.

The economy’s real problem is simply the loss of demand created by collapse of the bubble.

Throwing even more money at the banks is a way to ensure that they don’t suffer from the consequence of their own greed and stupidity. It is not a way to restore the economy to health.

Restoring the economy to health is about finding a replacement for the demand lost as a result of the collapse of the bubble. In the short-term, this means increased government spending and tax cuts. Deficits put money in the economy, and using the old-fashioned view that people work for money, we can determine how much money we need to spend for the government to get the economy back towards full employment levels of output.

In the longer term, we need to move towards more balanced trade, with higher exports and fewer imports making up for the demand lost due to collapse of the housing bubble. This will require a lower-valued dollar – everything else in the trade picture is just for show.

We do need financial reform. We have an incredibly wasteful and reckless financial industry. But bad financial regulation by itself did not give us 10 percent unemployment, nor would good regulation have been sufficient to prevent it. Just ask the workers in Spain.