This topic will be treated in the decentralised gathering in Frayssinous.

Call for a gathering about struggles against industrial capitalism and the techno-scientific maelstrom.

Over the last decades, the struggles against nuclear industry, GMOs, chips in animals, biometry or nanotechnology have spread and political responses have been developed that break with simple counter-expertise. The rejection of industrial capitalism, of technocracy, of the rapid growth of new technologies, of the scientific ideology, is also the rejection of the world that goes with it: modes of living alienated from consumption and work, the omnipotence of experts, ultra-security, destruction of the social and natural environment... This universe is founded on a belief in the neutrality of techologies and knowledge (they are "neutral" because they can be used for good or evil), and also a belief in progress, notions which are also taken on (paradoxically) by many revolutionary thinkers.

Counter-information, acts of sabotage, the refusal to participate in activities of research, production and consumption linked to techno-industry... all aspects of a struggle which, due to the intensification of control, the artificialisation of life and the degradation of our collective and personnal autonomy, becomes ever more urgent.

Nevertheless, we are continually coming up against the same limits. The alarms we raise just end up with results to which we are radically opposed: a legislative framework which establish the transformations which are occuring rather than blocking them, fatalistic conclusions which push us towards complicity rather than revolt, calls for individual responsibility and initiatives so we can "manage" the catastrophe together, an ecology that is completely depoliticised, that removes environmental questions from the political stakes and transforms them into a marketing opportunity for a "made-over" capitalism, a confinement of the radical critique to very restricted scenes.

Evaluate / Consider our strategies of action

We wish to reconsider that which helps us go further in our struggles, we wish to give names to the energies from which we draw our support. We wish to speak about our strategies against the techno-industrial world. What are our aims, our action forms, our targets? Which forms of struggle to use to neither let the scene be defined by the "citizens' movement" and the media confusion nor to fall into a ghetto culture, with an elitist critque creating an activist and elitist ghetto.

We propose that this gathering should be, first of all, an opportunity to recount our respective experiences, the movements, initiatives and moments of struggle in which we have taken part and to highlight the following questions: "what do we want?", "what means do we make use of?", "what exchanges or discoveries have we made happen", "in which history are our struggles recorded", "how have the connections with other people been thought about?", "how have relations between people who knew each other before been transformed?" "where do we look for support when we start looking to extend our struggles (class struggles, local communities, broadening of the struggle...)?".

We wait for your contributions, be they written, oral, or in any other form!

Industrial agriculture / farmers' struggles / struggles for subsistance

At a global scale, the peasantry- which constitutes the majority of the population - is jeopardised by the aggressive transnational agronomic industry, destroying the local vital economies for millions of people. Under the pressure of control, of technologisation and of persistent productivism, peasant agriculture has nearly disappeared in the West.

In this way all the meaning of such activity is lost, and simulaneously a way of life is imposed that is removed from the soil, in which time as well as space ceases to exist, in which the countryside becomes nothing more than a landscape park or a desert poisoned by pesticides, in which animals are nothing other than merchandise. This gives the struggles against GMOs, RFID chips or informatisation a character that to a large extent goes beyond that of corporatism: they stand for the refusal to accept this world that threatens each one of us. How should we maintain and invent anti-industrial or anti-capitalist rural practices? How do we deal with the difficulties caused when these practices fall outside what is legal?

Open-mindedness in our reflections and in our actions / Concrete practices.

Within the name "People's Global Action" there are people. This word resounds with echos of popular struggles: from the Luddite workers of the 19th century, to the anti-nuclear demonstrations in Malville in 1977, moving onwards to the harvesting of GM crops in the last few years or the recent mobilisation against Minatec in Grenoble. But how could a "popular resistance" to today's industrialised world be thought about? How could it be put in place? What would it mean in terms of changes to our current practices? Who are we struggling with? Is a movement without women, children, proletarians or immigrants a popular movement?

By discussing together in the same place the problems linked to childhood and industrial capitalism, we would like to question the idea of "hierarchy of struggles", the tendency to compartmentalise our struggles or make them impenetrable, and elitism. Above all we would like to explore "practically" how it is possible to take into account other people and ways of questionning than those to which we are accustomed. To note also that many of the practices of autonomous /DIY culture have a definate connection with anti-industrial critiques, although the two respective milieux do not meet. What space do we give to the reappropriation of certain practices or the rejection of certain technologies within our struggles? Are these just diversions or could they even strengthen us?

In Frayssinous, we want to explore these questions, not only through discussion, but also by what we put into practice during our daily life together and the many activities which take place (workshop to "free yourself from machinery", carpentry workshop, construction projects.

Your suggestions are welcome!

Some contributions and infos easy to find

• A series of booklets "sciences and technology" and "ecology" on infokiosques.net
• Notes et Morceaux Choisis, bulletin critique des sciences, des technologies et de la société industrielle, where you will find "Technologie contre Civilisation"
• Text about "The idea of progress"
• "La société de l'avenir, l'âge de l'ersatz, ou en sommes-nous?" and others texts of Wiliam Morris
• "La raison malmenée, de l'origine des idées reçues en biologie moderne" of Gérard Nissim Amzallag

Some NGO...

• GRAIN, in particular writer of (in frenche)"Grippe aviaire : une réponse mondiale imposée d'en haut"
• ETC group (action group on Erosion, Technology en Concentration), in particular writer The big Down : Atomtech - Technologies Converging at the Nano-scale

And on the side of Grenoble...

• Site d'enquête critique sur le capitalisme industriel des technologies de pointe et son monde, dans la régions transalpine : "pièces et main d'oeuvre (PMO)"
• OGN (Opposition Grenobloise aux Nécrotechnologies), contre l'inauguration de Minatec et de la technoindustrie
• indymedia-grenoble
  • Une semaine contre Minatec et son monde
  • Les argumentocs des nécrotechnologies
  • Luttes contre la technopole
  • Biométrie : au doigt et à l'oeil...
  • Le TGV Lyon-Turin pris en embuscades