Transcripts
Part
One
…2008 financial crash more hard earned
private property was destroyed than if all of us here were to be destroying it
night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are
those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not
dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is tuning into a nightmare. We
are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is
destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart
reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is
nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is
what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey,
look down! (cheering).
In April 2011, the Chinese
government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain
alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. It means that
people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here
we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed
our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy
to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But
you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me
tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.
A guy was sent from East Germany to
work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his
friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in
blue ink ,it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false.
After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says,
this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie
theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The
only thing you cannot buy is red ink.
This is how we live. We have all the
freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink. The language to
articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom war
and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here:
You are giving all of us red ink.
There is a danger. Don’t fall in
love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come
cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal
life. Will there be any changes then. I don’t want you to remember these days,
you know, like - oh, we were young, it was beautiful. Remember that our basic
message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We
do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There
are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want.
But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type
of new leaders do we want?
Remember: the problem is not
corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up.
Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already
working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without
caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat. They will try to make
this into a harmless moral protest. They think (??? unintelligible). But the
reason we are here is that we have enough of the world where to recycle coke
cans…
Part
Two
….Starbucks cappuccino. Where 1%
goes to the world’s starving children. It is enough to make us feel good. After
outsourcing work and torture. After the marriage agencies are now outsourcing
even our love life, daily.
Mic check
We can see that for a long time we
allowed our political engagement also to be outsourced. We want it back. We are
not communists. If communism means the system which collapsed in 1990, remember
that today those communists are the most efficient ruthless capitalists. In
China today we have capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American
capitalism but doesn’t need democracy. Which means when you criticize
capitalism, don’t allow yourselves to be blackmailed that you are against
democracy. The marriage between democracy and capitalism is over.
The change is possible. So, what do
we consider today possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand in
technology and sexuality everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the
moon. You can become immortal by biogenetics. You can have sex with animals or
whatever. But look at the fields of society and economy. There almost
everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes a little bit for
the rich, they tell you it’s impossible, we lose competitivitiy. You want more
money for healthcare: they tell you impossible, this means a totalitarian
state. There is something wrong in the world where you are promised to be
immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for health care. Maybe that ??? set
our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standards of living. We want
better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists is that
we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is
privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and
only for this we should fight.
Communism failed absolutely. But the
problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not Americans
here. But the conservative fundamentalists who claim they are really American
have to be reminded of something. What is Christianity? It’s the Holy Spirit.
What’s the Holy Spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are
linked by love for each other. And who only have their own freedom and
responsibility to do it. In this sense the Holy Spirit is here now. And down
there on Wall Street there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So
all we need is patience. The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday
just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and
nostalgically remembering what a nice time we had here. Promise ourselves that
this will not be the case.
We know that people often desire
something but do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you
desire. Thank you very much!
Last
Note
This is only a part of the entire
speech he gave today, and if it was recorded in its entirety we'd be very glad
to have a copy for transcription purposes.
(Thank you to everyone who offered
transcripts, we had multiple offers)
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