Where are we? Riots? Revolts? Revolutions?

I’m reposting two unrelated pieces that I think each have their own contributions to thinking about this stuff. With the rise of riots, the arab spring, and the indignants of spain, greece, israel, the US, etc., the significance and direction of resistance movements is pressing. I think the relevance of the defensive nature of these struggles is under analyzed.  I lack the time to write more about this, but think it’s notable.

The first piece is from Wu Ming.For those who don’t know, wu ming is a group of libertarian communist novelists in Italy who also write analysis sometimes. This piece is on the meaning of revolution, our present conjuncture, the arab/european/US revolts, etc. They critique the postmodernists like Hardt and Negri, as well as Zizek and Badiou. Much of it is about how to know whether we’re in a revolutionary moment, whether we can or not, and what distinguishes such.

The second piece is from Blaumachen, a greek libertarian communist group who posit these struggles as falling into ransitional and unstable disruptions in the working out of this crisis (however it will go). There’s things I disagree with, but the framing of the question seems important to me.