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Ergatocratic astutics (traduzione in inglese a cura di Ben Bazalgette – 1^ versione)

Men their blind steps slow in search of salvation stumbling
or flight-footed globalised wise guys crashing through the heaps of trash crumbling
free your gaze of all this salami boloney and hammish fumbling
and look what a state we’re in (: a ship of fools on a sea of filth):
the fleshy thighs of serial showgirls their empty souls filled with silicon
children dead or killed or drugged or raped
sold off for body parts to the upper echelon
their uncertain future slips through our fingers like so many rosary beads
men obsessed with vanity proud to present another shameful game show
not a thought to justice the freedom of economic parity and equality
only the last drops squeezed from the submission of the majority
while the air around us burns
along with the world that someone should have saved
that home of homes passed down through the ages
written off by politicians all rights have been waived
these surroundings abounding are our glorious wages…
…And if today I stand on a soapbox of paper
oh staid friends it is all for the die-hard reason
that perhaps we’re in time to amend for our caper
and thus I too join in with the chant of the season
standing for leader of the democratic party to be
which albeit a post by millennia outdated
in these crumbling times seems the most elevated
May it not be forgot that in the roots of their names
politics and democracy withhold their indelible perversions intact
For the much-acclaimed polis was the upper level of Greek society
that peopled by rich and powerful layabouts and exploiters
who came up with this most regal invention: its prodigiously nominal extension
to the hard-working astu at their cold sterile toes
in order to give a corner to be trapped in
to those who made their living at a lower elevation
and who had not asked for their imposed mediation
(: be they merchants or fishers or farmers or potters
they were all self-sufficient autonomous workers)
As for the demos of Athens: a string of sufferings not a popular cracy
without a trace of women or slaves or foreign blood it was the usual crowd
with their much-heralded and little-seconded effigy of consent
(: yet the pen of history is in the hand of the victors their testimonies foresworn)
and so anger and pain and suffering reigned unabated
over the masses of that futuristic antiquity until it was annihilated
with those precious few barking out orders from the peak of their pyramid of privileges
(: yet woe to he who points this out) to a majority used abused and refused

Political democracy my over-patient friends has so far been nothing but demagogy
a flawed fairy tale or a case of Greek urban mythology
and those who really have believed in it have not survived to tell the tale
(: see Gandhi Martin Luther King… in Italy the list goes beyond the pale…)

Will this long chain of abuse ever be broken?
Let us start with the name (: for we need to change its connotations if we are to see some innovations)
As the first step of my potted manifesto I propose and counterpose
the substitution of the word politics with astutics
which might appear to be the management of all things astute yet it is not so
although it would be should it ever really lead to
the upturning of that iniquitous pyramid passed down through the ages
giving the practical hard-working astu control over their destinies (: a deserved upturning of the pyramid)
yet from the outset it will mean management of the public sphere
We shall also do without the word democracy overblown and bereft of substance
left too long to be eaten away by the mites of almighty betrayal
especially when teamed with Vatican Christianity
(: like an Ockham spiritualist or a Marsilius of Padua I once dreamt of a Christian-Marxist party
far from the mundane and grasping business-minded papacy and Benjamin approved)
The word I put forward is ergatocracy:
power to the workers to those who occupy the laboratores of mediaeval memory
and the stratified oppression planned by the master
(: the 10th day of the second month of the second season – mid-November 1170 –
date of the first ever hollow strike: a victory declared but never shared)
Equality shall be at the heart of ergatocratic astutics
and in order to bring it about there is no better way than the reciprocal exchange of work
between various levels of shared participation
without classes of any kind or the habits of hatred that have always gone hand in hand with them
Yet I agree that this is jumping the gun and so for the purposes of this address
I shall be happy with all being for equal distribution and equal distribution for all to start with
with minimal differences serving only to highlight the many different skills
(: the same standing for prince and pauper when alive just as they are levelled when dead)
Consequentially this means the abolition of any form of privilege or immunity for anyone
starting with the members of parliament to be renewed from top to bottom (too long their dirty game
has lifted the lowest lice to the highest heavens) who shall at last become commissioners
at the service of the people: with the same wages as everyone else plus their travel and board
(: an inevitable concession the litmus paper of their value)
Being an astutician should mean vocation far-sightedness talent and a sense of mission
responsible altruism should be in their DNA and solidarity their life blood
far from that seen in the unfunny clowns that clutter up our screens
thinking only of their ad personam or ad familiam familias laws minding their own business not ours
who shall be lightened of their heavy golden pensions along with those who left before them
and thus they shall be paid with the coin of collective common sense
not through the mindless recruitment of sports celebs dribbling their way through murky waters
and the immoral offences to the forced indigence of the plundered masses
An overdue tax control will be followed by the block of privatisation
and a renewed restored nationalisation
and the reinstatement of the welfare state bled to death by both sides in an antisocial to and fro
a drastic streamlining of legal procedures with trust once more placed in our harried magistrates
along with the qualitative simplification of society’s fundamental seedbed of learning and understanding
in order to safeguard what is left of the future that environmental resource so quickly running out
Yet we need immediate solutions for the local emergencies and the ousting of the mafia network
from that of the slaves of thirst to the refuse long refused and all the other forms of pollution
As for the religions respect for all creeds which means acceptant of criticism
when guilty of crimes albeit ones that shake those religions to the bone
and with this I take my leave from this park corner of ink and paper
with the universalistic dreams which past domains have never quashed as time passes
with their regal or priestly casts from the sumers down to today’s pernicious asses

Palazzo Bentivoglio, Modena 14th July 2007