So, but yeah, the Zapatistas are the ones who are known most for it, and the idea is breaking from concepts of needing to have ultimate goal: "This is where we are going and this is The Path," but that as we are moving together, we figure out where we are going and that necessarily things have to change, because we're people and we're talking to one another, and as we start moving in one direction, whatever that is, we might change our minds a little bit, or the situation changes, and the world changes, and so where we're going and how we're getting there, needs to change. So, it can be this very beautiful metaphorical way of talking about things, but it's also a very sharp critique against formalism and political parties, which have "The Agenda," "The Goal," "This is 'The Path' and this is what you must do to win," and winning has already been defined before you even start walking. And this says, "No," that you can't have any kind of ultimately decided--I mean you can have loose goals. Obviously, you have equality and freedom and these kinds of things and frameworks, but not, "We must build the party to take power in this, that, and the other way, and this is how we're going to do it and this is what everyone must do." It's a rejection of that kind of politics.
Rob: And this is something that was important in the beginning of the Occupy Movement, because there were so many people, particularly in the media, said that Occupy had to come up with goals. They had to come up with defined plans, and it was often a criticism of Occupy that they didn't. This seems to really be at the crux of that aspect of Occupy.
Marina: Right. It is and it's a critique that we hear a lot less now in Occupy--that we don't have a list of demands or we're not serious, because we don't have this list of demands or ultimate goals. And for those of us in the Occupy Movement and what soon became tens, hundreds of thousands of people around the country involved in more than 1500 villages, towns and cities and we just wanted to come together with one another and figure out what we wanted. Whoever we were and whatever it was that we wanted to do, and it would be, not just against the idea of walking and asking questions, but it would be totally anti-democratic to say, "Okay, those of us in New York. I mean, who? A few thousand people in Liberty Plaza or Zuccotti Park are going to decide for the rest of the country what the demands are? Or, in a village in Northern California, they're going to decide the demands for the country? But actually, no! People need to come together and discuss with one another, and it might be that over time that some groups and spaces have certain goals they work towards and then they change those goals, or certain demands and change those demands. That's possible. But you can't start with a list of demands, you need to start with the conversation.
Rob: And I think part of it is that, this whole idea of horizontalism, which includes autogestion, which is self taking control of things. It's a creative process. It's breaking free of what's been and creating something new. And to do that, you don't have all these preconceived ideas. So you have to be comfortable with what is without defining it in the beginning. Am I getting that right?
Marina: Yeah. No, that's exactly, "in the process." I mean, in tying it together which you just did, which I think is so important with this idea about the autogesti ֹ ón, In French autogestion, but it's what historically was seen as the idea of self-management. And then in the movements in Argentina, self-management, and organizing for our self, self-organization came together with the idea of horizontalism and autonomy. And so it's not just talking for talking. As beautiful as assemblies can be, and it's so nice to participate, that's not the only thing that it's about. It's actually about organizing our lives and our structure in our lives and doing something--whatever that doing means--but people coming together and figuring it out, so that autogestion in Argentina is used with unemployed folks who takeover land and build something on the land, or with workers who have their workplaces shut down for different reasons, usually economic reasons, that there's not enough profit being made, and they come together and they take over the workplace and they run it together with horizontalism, and without bosses and hierarchy and they call that autogestion. It's very concrete things that horizontalism is a part of this process, but it's people finding ways to survive together. It's not just an abstract sense of conversation.
Rob: When I think of that term it summons up, for me, some of my past experience in the world of biofeedback. Biofeedback is a training process that enables people to learn more about how to control their bodies with their minds. To increase their voluntary self-regulation over their physiology--over their heart rate, their brain waves, their muscles. And using some simple technologies, this enables people, once they have the understanding that they can do it, to control themselves and their physiology better than they ever could before.
And it seems to me that what happens with autogestion, is that with the process of horizontalism, where people's become more conscious that they are part of a community, that they are part of creating something, that it opens them up to see the possibilities.
Marina: Uh-huh. Yeah.
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