Bank of ideas reopens for 2012
jon ideas man | 07.01.2012 02:49 | Occupy Everywhere
The Bank of Ideas, Occupy London's Community Centre, re-opens for 2012.
After closing for one week to re-focus and re-organise, the Bank will now open on Saturday, the 7th of Janunary, for a range of workshops including Occupy Criminal Investigation Unit starting at 11am and a talk by Mark Boyle, founder of Freeconomy and author of 'The Moneyless Man' and Nick Rosen, author of 'How to Live Off-Grid' at 4pm.
For more event information visit
http://www.bankofideas.org.uk/events/
After closing for one week to re-focus and re-organise, the Bank will now open on Saturday, the 7th of Janunary, for a range of workshops including Occupy Criminal Investigation Unit starting at 11am and a talk by Mark Boyle, founder of Freeconomy and author of 'The Moneyless Man' and Nick Rosen, author of 'How to Live Off-Grid' at 4pm.
For more event information visit
http://www.bankofideas.org.uk/events/
jon ideas man
e-mail:
bankofideaslondon@gmail.com
Homepage:
www.bankofideas.org.uk
Comments
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Fuck off and die upper class scum!
07.01.2012 09:29
Read Animal Farm
Response
07.01.2012 10:23
This is feel good middle class rubbish produced by capitalist middle class idiots...
Please get intouch with the real world!
Money man
Non-hierarchy and class.
07.01.2012 11:41
Hardly.
Most activists I know aren't interested in the Middle-Class/Working-Class political wankery of the Socialists and Capitalists. They see this as 'science for tools' and a recruiting sargant for patsies.
Class is the dividing mechanism used by politicians to conquer the people.
Non Heirarchy and acceptance of the division of Class simply do not fit together.
Please explain why you think they do?
anonymous.
Sod the "working class"
07.01.2012 19:24
Sam
"those who are better for the movement"
07.01.2012 20:15
Some goon actually posted this to Indymedia London:
Whats the betting they meant well-educated, well mannered middle class activists when they said that.
Just as white racists don't give a damn about racism until a Diane Abbot tweet is used by the media to deflect from the racism of the system in the whole Stephen Lawrence affair, it seems very likely that it is those who have had privilege all their lives because mumsy and pater were rather comfortably off, who would like us to think that their privilege had nothing to do with it, and that it is unimportant.
Which it wouldn't be if they didn't try and run things their way and to their benefit.
class blindness
Class.
08.01.2012 01:51
Doubt it.
What they mean is people who who are better for the movement...as opposed to people who are only thinking of themselves from a narrow class-based perspective..
Look if you have a problem with the 'Middle-Class' as you call them, then clearly you are an adopter of the class system which means you are helping to enforce it. If you are an enforcer of the class system, and it is the divisions of class that forms the basis of the hierarchal system, then your views are at odds with the mission statement of Indymedia.
Class is hierarchy. Hierarchy is class.
So what are you doing here?
anonymous
@anonymous
08.01.2012 02:11
Reading bollocks from middle class posters apparently.
Patriarchy is also hierarchy, so I guess women in the movement need to pretend it doesn't happen either.
Cos I'm guessing you're male and middle class.
class blindness
Myths and legends.
08.01.2012 14:05
Erm yes, Patriarchy is also hierarchal. It is gender specific hierarchy.
But you are posting messages with a division identified as mistrust over the Middle-Class. The Middle-Class don't really exist except as a false construction of the Capitalist and Socialist political order. They created the Middle Class because they are both hierarchal organisations and require and have a need for some mechanism by which to maintain and trade their political dominance.
Accepting the idea of the Middle Class, even by criticising its existance or the methods it uses, is to accept that it exists, and therefore to accept as legitimate that which created them.
The Middle Class, being a false construction, don't have a mind of their own because they are a myth created by the 1%. If you attack a group and identify them as being Middle Class, you give a signal to the 1% that you have attacked something that belongs to them. And they will gladly come along to save them from you.
The 1% come along, they express digust using the language of unity, and they take control of the narrative on behalf of 'right thinking people everywhere'...all while the populace scratch their heads at who the hell the 1% are referring to!!!
This is how wars are waged, how wealth is distributed to banks and corporations, how deep inequality comes about. The 1% create that which they intend to fight on behalf of, and then fight to preserve that invisible and nonsensical relationship.
This narrative of the 1%, can theoretically be maintained with 100% opposition. Just as long as the myth sticks.
Imagine that...100% opposition.
Can you imagine what kind of a world that would be if your government were following policies and you couldn't find a living soul anywhere that supported them!
anonymous.
working class?
08.01.2012 16:09
So anyway, My roots are working class, like most people I think, but I probably don't seem that working class now. I am well educated, but it wasn't school that educated me. I don't like how 'well educated' is assumed to mean a specific thing. I find a lot of people who were 'well educated' to be un'work'ably stupid.
I have no interest in working in some factory producing unnecessary shite for the consumerist market. Or down in a mine for that matter!
I survive by choice without benefits, and well below the 'poverty line' , and the point I am trying to make is that I don't think I am unusual.
We would do well not to associate well educatedness with class. Are you too clever to be working class?
I don't like these prescribed denominations. Its the ruling class who play divide and rule, and yes many of them are white, but they are colour blind with regard to who they subjugate. Because it isn't about race, or about class...... its about greed baby, moneeeeyyyy and constant growth and using more and more stuff all the time and throwing it away and flushing it down the toilet, when the faeces ceases to exist, at least in the minds of the slaves and their masters.
ffs I think I can see a pattern here, whereby we are being divided and ruled.
ps the class system really pisses me off and there are lots of times when I feel frustrated at having to deal with some smug 'well educated' (or at least thats what they think) middle class bastard, but they identify in that way themselves. Its very difficult not to play into this system but I think it would be very good if we didn't.
Then we might be able to give matriarchy a go.
karla marx
Good idea!
08.01.2012 16:29
What a good idea!
Because as far as I can tell patriarchy seems to be all about a load of blokes shouting at eachother, and being ridiculously egotistical and tribal.
All this nonsense about class in activist circles really boils down to is egotistical blokes not liking eachothers accents and therefore deciding that they hate eachother, and then getting really into it and using it as an excuse to drink or smoke too much and not do anything besides say stupid things about class.
Whilst this is happening most of the women and to be fair a lot of the men roll their eyes and get on with trying to change the situation and bring about a better future for ourselves and for the next generation.
Or is that too boring a cliche? you know, the one about peace and harmony?
I get the feeling some people are addicted to the class system, like they feel it is so much a part of their identity that they can't live without it.
And I think that we should be aware that there are trolls about who use this sort of divisive language to help their goblin masters to rule us, but then they are just doing their job.
In summary, don't be a dickhead.
Nora Chomsky
All that peace, love and privilege
08.01.2012 18:29
The first comment claimed that the Bank of Ideas was run by "Oxbridge educated professionals"
anonymous popped up claiming that "Class is the dividing mechanism used by politicians to conquer the people. Non Heirarchy and acceptance of the division of Class simply do not fit together."
We can simply dismiss the claim that non-hierarchy cannot exist with imbalances of power, as he then conceded that patriarchy does exist, although apparently thats just "gender specific hierarchy". So there is no great problem with accepting that power imbalances don't just evaporate because a group claims to be, or seeks to be non-hierarchical.
It is however also true that there are people who have led privileged lives and people who have not. Growing up in a 5 bed house with a large garden in Boxhill is rather different to growing up in a 10th floor 2 bed flat in a large estate in Tottenham. Going to a posh school is very different from attending an inner city comp. Living in poverty is rather more difficult than having a Daddy who is a lawyer earning ten times more than the average wage. Having a daddy who can pay your way through uni and give you a deposit for your house and get you a well paid job through one of his contacts is very different from leaving home penniless and landing a badly paid job or not having a job at all.
And those who were fortunate from the start tend to take their privilege for granted, just as white people in a racist society take theirs for granted. Some of the privileged even develop a bit of a social conscience or have a little radical stage and join 'the movement'. But not many of them can see that as members of 'the movement' they are no longer GPs or managers or professionals. They use the skills acquired through their privilege to lever themsleves into key positions and as, quite frankly they have a lot more to lose, their presence in these key roles is likely to become a hindrance at some point.
It therefore seems sensible that this tendency should be noted and challenged, either by themselves or by those who are perhaps less eloquent and have not been as well schooled in advancing themselves into positions of power to ensure that the 'movement' does not become hindered by Tabitha's fear that she will get arrested and lose her career, or Henry's concern that as a homeowner he will lose everything if the group undertakes a risky action.
At the end of the day anyone who thinks that they are "better for the movement" probably isn't. And when they advertise themselves as such on a activist website, then the 'movement of the 99%' should really be asking what the hell is going on.
That is all.
class blindness
point is
08.01.2012 23:49
1) failed to support a fellow occupier who was nicked leaving their building on N30 and was later sent to prison. when challenged on this they became verbally abusive and claimed that "anarchy means each means each man for himself" as well as "if nobody supported him it's cos he has no friends, you should ask yourself why".
2) ignored repeated requests from those camping outside st pauls to come and give support during the nights when they are vulnerable to physical attacks
3) made people homeless via physically violent evictions from the UBS building and failed to give any good explanation for such outrageous behaviour.
we can blame it on their class, their gender, or simply on their lack of ethics. i really don't care. i'd just like to see them stopped frankly, and for the rest of the occupy movement to loudly and publicly dissasociate from them.
free massages and art classes do not a radical movement make.
thinker
Occupy the Middle-Class.
09.01.2012 01:04
In any non hierarchy as in any system, there is always going to be a problem with gender specifism. What happens if the majority of women decide they want to have children and feel that that is the best way to live in their community? What happens if men decide to do the same thing? Patriarchy and Matriarchy do not repesent a problem in any system, unless there is systemic encouragement to favour one sex to 'perform' in specific roles. Capitalism for instance has endless problems with its patriarchal tendencies. No matter what it does, it just cannot break its Patriarchal habits.
If we go back to the beginning of this conversation, the original sticking point was the original poster denigrating the Occupy camp as 'Middle-Class' and full of people defined by that class. This is disengenuous.
My view, is that the Middle Class are a false creation of the Capitalist/Socialist order and don't really exist. More the the Working Class or even the Upper Class, the Middle Class is a creation of the political elites.
The Working Class created themselves by their labor. The Upper Class created themselves by their labor, but the Middle Class have been created by others. The Middle Class are a Frankensteins monster of the modern age. A political experiment that frankly went badly wrong. In every age in which widespread political and social experimentation has occured, there is a Middle Class to 'represent' that experimentation.
The other comments by 'thinker' i'm quite sure are made by somebody who is involved in the movement but could, as far as its logic is concerned, be posted by establishment types such is the tone of the format.
You can't say you would like a campaign 'stopped' and expect any sympathy!
anonymous
In praise of continued inequality and elites
09.01.2012 08:15
The Working Class created themselves by their labor
Thats the worst historical analysis of capitalism I've ever come across. It makes it sound as if the majority woke up one day and decided to want to live on crappy estates and work bloody hard to be bloody poor, rather than that the ruling class seized control of the resources and means of production by means of violence, and continue to control them by means of state violence.
It is no surprise that anonymous has refused to engage with 'Boxhill boy' and 'Tottenham girl' but of course, other than the use of the phrase 'patsy' (1) in such a way that suggests he is a conspiracist, he hasn't declared his political interest in this conversation at all.
A classic illustration of why meaningful debate is an impossibility on an open publishing website such as this.
Thus when 'thinker' outlines the manner in which the Bankers of Ideas elite have seized control of an Occupy movement resource and declares:
"we can blame it on their class, their gender, or simply on their lack of ethics. i really don't care. i'd just like to see them stopped frankly, and for the rest of the occupy movement to loudly and publicly dissasociate from them."
anonymous comes back with:
"You can't say you would like a campaign 'stopped' and expect any sympathy!"
Which is yet another strawman (he substutes the 'in-crowd' for the campaign) and yet another attempt to undermine any notion that the Occupy movement should not stand for elitism within its own ranks. Occupy resources should be run through genuinely democratic GAs with real attempts to reach real consensus.
Either we are against inequality or we are not. All the evidence suggests that anonymous is not. 'Some inequality is ok' isn't a sustainable position in the long run. But perhaps it is still the case that it is mainly those who haven't been cocooned in privilege from the day of their birth who get that.
Like thinker I think that we should challenge elitist behaviour and aim to make non-hierarchical organisation as non-hierarchical as possible.
(1)"Most activists I know aren't interested in the Middle-Class/Working-Class political wankery of the Socialists and Capitalists. They see this as 'science for tools' and a recruiting sargant for patsies."
class blindness
re class blindness
09.01.2012 17:04
I saw a lot of this kind of problem at CAT
its in mid wales but you wont hear any welsh accents there, seriously not even one.
CAT has totally lost its way as a result of too much middle (and upper) class pandering.
Now they are effectively slaves to a bank via the wonderful mortgage system
am i right in thinking mortgage means 'death grip' in latin or french?
whatever it seems as if CAT has been caught in a death grip.
Yes this is a big problem.
We need to tackle it in a dignified middle class sort of way
no swearing!
wot about a game of rugger?
fucking middle class cunts!
oops I didnt mean it
hmmmmmm
karla marx
agree with karla
09.01.2012 19:51
I , friends and family have lived in poorer sink estates that never get a mention and don't have anything like the money and amenities that the above place has. Think on this...
As for CAT and the rest of those green toff NGO wankers 'estate' refers to the family pile and its grounds notliving on an 'estate'.How to live off grid. Next you will be on about 'affordable' (sic) fucking housing or 'social housing' ( i.e billeted in an overpriced cupboard run by a dodgy ripoff housing association run for the benefit of its overpaid stuckup management ).
I follow this with interest and loathing of stuck-up privileged liberal fascists...
stillangry
generalisations
09.01.2012 20:20
A lot of variation, I know working class hippy types and punk anarchist types from very rich backgrounds, so that can't be it.
A lot of green types are posh, thats a definite trend, but its not like just being posh makes you a bad'n is it?
I like some posh people, although to be fair they do annoy the crap out of me.
The posh middle class activist thing is pretty dire though.
Nice middle class kids going on a little anti-capitalist adventure before they settle down with jobs at fathers company or inherit some land and turn it into a rural art space.
I somehow want to get along with everyone but I sure as shite don't want to see activism diluted by tourists from a different class, who are 'roughing it' as some kind of rebellion against overbearing parents. They don't believe man! And they'll be off faster than a, faster than a..... well you know.....
Hard as it is I am determined not to act out of prejudice, even towards those who act out of prejudice towards me.
karla marx
You are all stark raving mad
09.01.2012 22:04
I'd consider myself middle class..... thats it - self analysis over.
From that point onwards, I get on with my life.
I think you lot are sat around thinking too much and just avoiding the reality of life. You are trying to replace if with somekind of fantasy world because you are unable to cope in this world
Some people do this via religion, but you seem to remodel the world around an idealistic fantasy.
As an analogy, it is like a Zebra saying that he is not going to go to the watering hole because it has some bourgeois crocodiles in it, and then demanding that there is a watering hole for each and every animal where all the water is divided equally blah blah. Meanwhile, after day-dreaming is over, the zebra is still in the same situation.
anon
Political elites.
09.01.2012 22:32
The working class are defended by Anarchists on this site. We see it frequently. The "Right to Work", "Class War", and on and on. The working class died of coal dust poisoning slaving away for industrialists. The working class died by the metric tonne in the two great wars. It was the working class that were happy to wait at the tables of the Aristocracy. The working class have their own political heritage...How is Marx and Lenin these days?
The upper classes...they have always lived with privilege. Even before the term Capitalism had appeared, it was the upper classes who were turning the peasants from their land to clear the way for sheep grazing in Scotland in the Highland clearances. Was it not?
The working class have always been "proud" of their labor and proud to be working class...they have their heroes do they not?
The upper classes have always and to this day been proud of their labor...they have their heroes do they not?
But who are the heroes of the Middle Classes? Where is their self-identity? Who and what is their heritage?
I'll tell you, it is the identity of revulsion. Neither a working class peasant, nor an upper class clown. As Zizek says it is envy, not ego, that drives this middle order. Envy for wealth.
The Middle Classes are a creation myth of the political elite of the working and upper classes. A bi-rpoduct of a long drawn out ideological conflict between these political encampments. They are a self interested homogenous aspirant class of all the things neither the working class or the upper class could ever be.
---Either we are against inequality or we are not. All the evidence suggests that anonymous is not. 'Some inequality is ok' isn't a sustainable position in the long run. But perhaps it is still the case that it is mainly those who haven't been cocooned in privilege from the day of their birth who get that.---
I'm not going to rise to this bait. But what I will say is that inequality is the breadwinner of inequality. The left and right have done their work, and what has been the result...inequality. This is what happens when you tolerate a political elite.
It is time to terminate this arrangement...and to make us a movement of the majority.
The Middle Class doesn't exist, except in the minds of the those who created them.
We are the 99%.
---free massages and art classes do not a radical movement make. ---
Cul-de-sac.
The Occupy movement has acheived an awful lot more than that.
Radical means aggravating the state and its prowlers. Which as we have seen all to often in the past, ends in a media circus in which you are the animals. When its all over, everybody gets to go home and consume the junk of Capitlaism just a little more.
---Nice middle class kids going on a little anti-capitalist adventure before they settle down with jobs at fathers company or inherit some land and turn it into a rural art space. I somehow want to get along with everyone but I sure as shite don't want to see activism diluted by tourists from a different class, who are 'roughing it' as some kind of rebellion against overbearing parents. They don't believe man! And they'll be off faster than a, faster than a..... well you know..... ---
I can't do anything with this. Thats a very blinkered and one-sided insight into a movement that bears no resemblence to the 'people' you describe.
anonymous.
anon the bourgeois crocodile
09.01.2012 22:33
Only in this case the bourgeois crocodiles decided that they should be the only ones to drink at the watering hole that is the Bank of ideas.
On the basis that they were "better" for the watering hole than the other creatures.
I'm not going to thank you for the strawman, because it didn't really get us anywhere.
class blindness
re political elites
10.01.2012 00:36
Actually I entered the debate to try to diffuse inter class tension but ended up thinking of all the times I've been disappointed by the lack of understanding of poverty and struggle demonstrated (understandably) by those who have come from rich backgrounds, and so I foolishly embarked on a mini rant.
I say bad form old chap
wot wot!
I love you all
yes even the trolls!
xx
karla marx
DiY or STFU
10.01.2012 00:43
Yes there were evidences of cliquery but after I've read/skimmed the above I'm just thinking why don't all the indymedia moaners get together and try to do something better?
I mean, shouldn't we be pleased there's a huge open squatted space in central london?
fuckthis
re fuckthis
10.01.2012 00:48
lets not get divided cos i dont like being ruled
karla marx
@fuckthis
10.01.2012 01:29
geddit?
abcdefghi
Middle class = divisive group
10.01.2012 18:09
More importantly, the means of production in the hands of the petite bourgeoisie do not generate enough surplus to be reinvested in production; as such, they cannot be reproduced in an amplified scale, or accumulated, and do not constitute capital properly."
However the 19th century analysis by Marx didn't foresee the growth of the state and with it the growth of a managerial class, the middle class, who would gatekeep access to state resources. Effectively a social class was created from the remnants of the petit bourgeoise and those elements of the proletariat as envisaged by Marx who would side with the bourgeoise in a revolutionary period.
In many ways they are the same thing as the petit bourgeoise were in the 19th century. A divisive group who could be working in the interests of the working class or the ruling class. The one thing they won't be working for is themselves as a class because they fear each other as much as they fear the rest of us. Fear of each other is all they have to offer when you analyse them.
jimmy b
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