The results of the G20 meeting show clearly that global political and financial power are on a flight-forward trajectory. We should not overlook the importance of this observation simply because it's a predictable one.

We've been hearing a lot of people making arguments in that perspective explaining that they won't stop the crisis with the decisions that they've been making up to now. That is also correct and also important.

But I think that it is even more fundamental to look deeper than finance, beyond the fuzzy economics that's doing so much damage to the real economy.
The G20 has bet on protectionism and maintaining economic growth as a goal in itself, and that equals betting on ecological collapse. No one from on high mentions that if you're talking about protectionism, ecologically speaking, you're talking about a reduction of the transportation of commodities and persons.
Transportation is currently 95% petroleum dependent. This has now arrived at a peak - its maximum production capacity - and soon will begin to decline. If indeed there could be various alternatives to the production of electricity, for producing it in a renewable way, there are no valid alternatives for the liquid fuels necessary for the transportation of commodities, mostly done with trucks and ships.
(see the article on energy crisis in the publication Crisis for more info.)

None of the heads of state in the G20 takes into account that talking about economic growth as a goal in itself is totally outside the realm of all consequential logic in a world that is nearing its natural limits. They do not wish to recognize that what they must do is exchange an economic system where money is created by banks from nothing, and where the system of bank business based on different types of interest makes a lack of growth cause the kind of economic and social depression we are living through right now.

(see the article on how they create money in the publication Crisis for more info)

No one remembers how big a problem climate change was in the media in 2006 and 2007 until the the economic crisis began. Let's not forget the dangers we have to face in terms of drinkable water, lack of raw materials for industry, decrease in fish populations and in cultivable land, species extinction, etc...
Not to mention the increase in poor people across the planet, due to causes intrinsic in the capitalist system long before the beginning of the present crisis.

The decision to try to solve the economic crisis while turning a blind eye to the energy, ecological, and social crises is one of the most irresponsible decisions made in history.

The fact that the economic depression will impede growth for a few years might give our planet its big chance to build a new economic system that would permit humanity to last for a long while and do away with social inequalities. What the G20 meeting did was to confirm that those on top won't be the ones to do it.

Faced with this, what can we do from within the social movements?
We must avoid the partial and closed vision that the powerful and the institutional left have; we can't just struggle to make the capitalists less malicious and put less people out of work. We can't just dedicate ourselves to asking politicians to get money allocated for the working class, or for our particular economic sector. We have to unite and transform the system. We are entering some very important years in humanity's history; the economic depression that's coming will possibly be humanity's last chance to stop the destruction of the planet and save ourselves from a social catastrophe unprecedented in our history.

This union to change the system needs strategical projects to cause capitalism to lose its social hegemony. The first thing to do, which is within everyone's reach, is to stop working with those corporations that most symbolize the power of capitalism: the banks and multinationals.
We can disobey the bank and empower alternatives to it. We can stop consuming the products of the majority of the multinationals' products and generally reduce our consumption. Those corporations that we cannot give up because they have been awarded a monopoly over basic necessities (water, electricity, gas...) in privatizations must be dealt with later, eventually being expropriated..

Faced with an exceptional situation, we cannot go on acting as we have been accustomed to from within social movements; exceptional responses are necessary. We need actions that will prepare the context of revolt or anticipate it.

That's why we in the Crisis collective, starting from our first publication on September 17th, have begun a campaign for a united strike of bank users. We are aware that it is not the only one, and perhaps not the most important, of the strategic actions that we have to unite in to fight back against capitalism, but we think it is one of them.

We know, furthermore, that we have to build united action in the labor world, against the firings and the exponential growth of unemployment, which is starting to happen, but we can't agree with putting on pressure so that things will remain as they are, because building an alternative to capitalism requires other kinds of companies, self-managed by their workers, dedicating themselves to more and more of those economic areas that will let us transition to a different way of life. We'll have to also work for the creation of new social groupings to make another way of doing economics and life.

For all that, punctual pressure actions, like certain direct actions, demonstrations, and the possible general strike, must be accompanied by strategic actions of a sustained character that will progressively allow us to wrest hegemony from power and divide it among the underdogs.
Beyond the bank users' strike, other proposals I'd suggest would be:

*a network of persons and groups dedicating themselves directly to supporting workers in danger of being fired and those who are already unemployed and want to occupy and take over crisis-stricken companies or create new cooperatives

*a support network for persons who because of the struggle or their precarious state have problems covering the basic necessities (housing, food, etc). Beyond supporting them with our solidarity and offering them a place in our homes if needed, resources could be increased with direct action: occupying new buildings that are empty because their floor space hasn't been sold, among other options. Also, increase the organization of food recycling networks, and extend expropriation activities to the big warehouses; this is already happening in an autonomous way.

*extend social networks and markets and alternative economy to avoid the consumption of products from multinational corporations and increase self-managed spaces of exchange and freeness. This is not so much a concrete proposal but a rumination on how to make something that a lot of people and groups are already doing more united and broader. In Catalonia, spaces like the xarxa pel decreixement and the xarxa d'economía solidaria can bring a lot to the table on projects like that. It is fundamental for the workers' world and the alternative world to come together in the struggle and in the construction of alternatives to capitalism.

So once the mobilization against the crisis has begun, we'll have to deepen the debate and go deeper into self-management. I think that from the anticapitalist social movements we can take a stand, leave making demands of the government to the collectives effected by it and overcome being trapped in themes like "make the rich pay for the crisis," which are merely defensive slogans, and instead go for a phrase more like “their crisis our opportunity” Behind the words of course acts will be necessary to make that opportunity real. The opportunity to transform society. Now or never.

Enric Duran
Enric (a) enricduran.cat