[disponible en castellano aquí ]

The encampments which have taken ground across Spain have arrived as the culmination of many months and years of neighborhood self-organization, a slow and steady composition of tenants’ unions that have now reached a decisive moment in their development. This housing movement has inspired many as it has managed to increase the capacity of everyday people to give shape to the places they live, a feat which exists in stark contrast to the paralysis that has otherwise taken hold in Spanish national politics as the center-left party in power has proven capable not of confronting but ultimately only managing the misery that characterizes capitalist society, promising to save Spain from an insurgent far-right but little else. The question that must be resolved by the encampments in this moment is whether they too will aspire to work with the state and thus also enter into this state of paralysis, perhaps in the best case scenario winning some minor but ultimately insufficient reforms, or whether they will pursue a path of sharpening their own power away from the state and its parties, a power which is radically destituent.

The destituent dimension of the movement has thus far been expressed most prominently in the eviction defense struggle which has significantly developed and strengthened in recent years. This power in the neighborhoods to block the violence of the state and keep people in their homes is a power which ultimately aims not to construct some new form of authority so much as to diminish and ultimately negate its possibility. They aspire in this sense to deny the right of the police to determine the conditions of our existence and instead to give shape to it ourselves beyond the logic of the market or government. And indeed, seeing the police retreat as groups of neighbors successfully defend one another brings as much inspiration as it does joy. It is precisely within the rubble left behind by the failure and collapse of the leftist parties that emerged in the wake of the 15M movement that this autonomous power has been built, one which combines militant direct action with territorial forms of solidarity and organization.

For the moment the camps themselves continue to grow but also seem to be approaching their own limit. In their best moments, they offer the participants a chance to spend time and think with another, to develop new ties to one another and in this way new forms of collective power. In the organization of communal kitchens, in the pleasure of inhabiting a time and space free of capital, and in the successful defense of the camps from far-right gangs, a new sense of one another and of what life can be takes shape. But at the same time, when the camps present themselves as a voice intended to simply make demands of the state, they reveal their weakness and lack of power, pleading only for someone else to manage our lives, and perhaps slightly ameliorate the pain which is apparent will only continue to grow so long as the present system persists.

There are in this sense two divergent paths forward, one constituent which hopes to influence or even become part of the state, and the other destituent which aims to decouple ourselves from the state and diminish the power it has to determine our lives. The most promising development in this sense are the emerging calls for a general strike, a form of disruption whose scale and intensity far exceed that of an eviction defense. Putting a halt to the usual capitalist operation of society is precisely the condition within which another society can take shape, one which is based upon the dignity and autonomy of each life. The destituent question we find ourselves with thus asks whether the gesture of the strike will be directed again towards the state, aspiring only to win some temporary concession or minorly shift the composition of the governing coalition in this or that way, or whether this gesture will depart from the state and be directed towards ourselves and our lives, towards our own power to give shape to an existence that is common and free, in which everything is for everyone as capital and the state are made to vanish from our lives.