 Welcome to this Christmas special of DMTV. I am Sotiris Mitralexis and I work for Metta, the Centre for Post-Capitalist Civilisation, to which this episode shall be dedicated. And the episode's title is All I Want For Christmas is Post-Capitalism. Usually, for such Christmas special, it is customary that a fire place is in the background, unfortunately, albeit that as it may, this is not the case right now, yet our political struggles are more fiery than our office's infrastructure. Metta, the Centre for Post-Capitalist Civilisation, will soon celebrate its first birthday. It was founded in 2020 as a think tank combining research and art in order to serve and assist Mera25, Greece's parliamentary party, DM25, the Pan-European movement, Democracy in Europe, and the Progressive International. Yet we have prepared an introductory video for most of this, prepared by the artist Jo Kanima, Yorgos Karayorgos, dear director Dimitris Ografakis, please present this one minute video. We are currently at a crossroads. We find ourselves at a threshold. Something is over. What we are experiencing can no longer be properly described as capitalism. The old tools are broken. The old rules do not apply anymore. Something begins. Something after capitalism as we knew it. From a dystopic, techno-feudalist future with even more powerful economic oligarchies, stride the prospects of justice, equality, prosperity. Metta, the centre for post-capitalist civilisation, examines and researches this threshold and it tries to propose ways out towards a sustainable distribution of wealth, a sustainable use of technology, a sustainable relationship to our environment, to our labour, our society and our creativity. Not only via research, but also via culture and art, which is not simply to depict the world, but to change it. Metta, centre for post-capitalist civilisation. Metta's mission is to become a unique international intellectual, artistic and scholarly and cultural hub for radical progressive movements across Europe and beyond. A centre not only for researching post-capitalism, but also for working towards its civilisation. For we live in politically eschatological times. Late modernity is expiring. We know that an era is coming to a close, or rather that it has already come to a close. And capitalism is silently being replaced by a technologically advanced feudalism. The contradicting terminus encapsulated in the global permanent crisis forms the least of our symptoms. The primacy of bankrupt entities, what has been called bankruptocracy, the limits of financialisation, the emergence of wholly new types of automation, the development of artificial intelligence, the radical digitisation of everything, and the promised dystopian metaverses, all these merely indicative facts circumscribe a system that cannot be properly called capitalism anymore. We already witness the first stages of an emerging era, an emerging reality that can only be described by that which it succeeds. We live in post-capitalist times. These may eventually prove to be utopian, or dystopian, or anything in between. Meta, the centre for post-capitalist civilisation, strives to understand this future by studying the past, and correctly, hopefully correctly, diagnosing the present. And the turbulences of the gradual transition to any possible post-capitalism are to be witnessed by all. The oligarchic decline of liberal democracy engenders countless variations of authoritarian tendencies. The supply chain of tributes for the global minotaur are increasingly interrupted. Novel desiderata for emancipation are articulated, the chasms between mega-cities and provinces nurture silent, cold civil wars. The emergence of a non-anglophone, non-Atlantic, non-liberal, non-bipartisan state as the planet's largest economy is just around the corner, overturning a two centuries old order. The changes in global demographics and geopolitics are vertiginous, climate change is threatening our very existence. Transformations of gigantic proportions radically reshape the world before our very eyes. Now, terms with a post or meta-prefix do not necessarily run on parallel courses. They describe a new reality by citing what this reality succeeds. They describe thresholds. However, now that late modernity is reaching its final thresholds, realities described by terms with a post-prefix or meta in Greek seem to be reaching a convergence. Post-capitalism, post-secularism, post-colonialism, post-modernity and the list goes on. We are reaching, we have already reached, a common threshold. This post or meta-prefix declares a lucid realisation that something has ended, but also a certain opacity concerning that which now commences. Meta, the centre for post-capitalist civilisation, explores that which now commences and strives to achieve lucidity in all of its varied aspects via research, discursive and academic means, publications, conferences and seminars, art and culture. What comes after an end of times? What kind of reckoning does this day of reckoning dictate? These questions form the general field of our enquiry through art and research, argument and poetry. Meta will strive to help progressive movements break with a dismal present and imagine the world anew to grasp our present historical moment so as to pave the way to a world worth fighting and living for. These are the founding, as it were, words of the academic sector of Meta. Meta has two sectors, the academic one and the cultural one. As it strives, as I just said, to combine art and research, argument and poetry. But let us ground the floor to the chairman of the steering committee of Meta, a noted artist Dana Estratou. She had recorded a video for our launching event, about which I will tell you after a few words from her. Dear director, please present our chairman Dana Estratou to the world. Well, it is said that from the historical point of view, the pandemics forced the people to come and throw themselves into their past and imagine the world anew. This is not a different pandemic. It is a dilemma, a dilemma between you and the world and the future. We can choose to continue to be together in the depths of our expectations and our goals, our stubbornness, our negative attitudes and our bad ideas. The dark rivers and the mollified skies behind us. Or we can destroy them with weapons, with a few weapons. To imagine a new world and to be ready to fight for it. Today we are moving to Meta, the center for the semi-capitalist culture. From Pse, we are starting a lot of ambitious projects. From the title of Kiemonos, some basic decisions are being made. The center for the semi-capitalist culture is not yet an institution or a think tank. We chose, with an emphasis, the word culture. Why? Because for us, the business and the land, the science and the art, the research and the music are all the weapons needed against the reforms of organized solidarity, of oppression, of free will. Meta will be supported by two basic actions, from one, the Pse, the art, the creation. And from the other, the research, the academy and the education. But why, with the specific capitalistic culture? Is it an institution? Is it a belief? Or is it a prejudice? It is also the three, because we live in an art, a capital. From the crisis of 2008 and the attacks of an anarchist capital, to the pandemic and the parallel between our communities, and even more. Capitalistic businesses, either have a bad feeling and are being protected by the central banks, or have been transformed into a state-of-the-art state, like Amazon or Facebook. Something has been completed, we know it, we see it. What we live, can no longer be described as capitalism, it has been removed from its roots. The old jobs have been lost, the old laws simply no longer exist. Something has begun, something after capitalism, as we know it, but we don't know yet what. In this period of transition, everything is effective. From a local future, technologically empowered authorities, and even more powerful economic authorities in which we are fighting, to the point of a bright future, of equality, of prosperity, to which we will be able to fight again, and if we fight hard to save it. This struggle, for saving a human with capitalist culture, needs to be supported by the goal. Without its support, the social presence of the party was halted on the 25th. However, the goal is to overcome the Greek background. The revolution is to become the birthplace of technology and ideas, for the Pan-European movement of the European Republic on the 25th, but also of the progressive nation, of the progressive international. It is the first center or institute of the Greek party with international support, but also of administration. Besides that, our contribution to the revolution is also a part of the individuality of the whole world. And a last personal discussion. As a craftsman, as a craftsman, I would like to leave you with nothing other than my works, the artistic disasters. However, traveling around the world, in the context of the creation of the artistic works, I had already been very impressed by the global economic crisis of 2008, starting with a serious problem with the crisis of the environment, the uncertainty of democracy. After this crisis, already in 2010, we had the opportunity to meet with Gianni Varoufakis for the discussion of art and politics, as well as the organization Vital Space and the Vital Space Projects. It is very strong that I do not believe that at a time of great uncertainty and economic and social crisis, modern art can create a deeper connection around the most important and vital parts of our times, and to improve the quality of art in the conditions that make up our present and future. With the way of the business and of the business, with the way of the culture, after the end of capitalism, as we know it. We are starting something new, we are starting something nice. We would like to have you as speakers, and all of you who are participating. What you just watched was a few words by Danai Strato from our launching event on the 13th of May 2020. Due to the lockdown, this was unfortunately, regrettably, a digital event with which we officially launched our center. As mentioned previously, this center has two sectors. The academic sector, where I run most of the things, and the cultural artistic sector. The director of this sector is Nikos Kanarelys, also a noted artist in Greece. And please, do watch a minute or two of his message at that launching event. As a result of the pandemic and the lockdown, the sector is working towards the end of the crisis with the pandemic, without even realizing and imagining the new world. The cultural sector of the sector is dealing with the diagnosis of the period of crisis and creating a vision for a capitalistic future through technology. A platform for performance, statements, speeches and dialogues. We live in a controlled society. We are multilateral and pluralistic. We are experiencing the diversity in the different. We do not have the right to have it. And we deserve the respect, even though we are different. Walter Benjamin said, there is never a demarcation that is not the same-day demarcation of barbarity. Otherwise, technology is a trauma. Technology is a crisis. Technology is a threat. Technology is a race. In technology, it is included in the whole society and with its barbarity. We must realize that technology is a political expression as it refers to the freedom of the human and the logical expressions and actions. It affects as many people who produce it as many as those who take it. And in a critical way, it has the ability to make us think and imagine. Technology can change if not the world, certainly the perceptions and the values of people. It can make criticism and criticize. It can influence people and make us see things in a different way and make us see another reality, another hidden option. It has the ability to cover the issues that are being discussed for economic or political reasons. We called it our effort to focus on the multi-capitalism of civilization. As Chaucis said, civilization remains a part of the social society. As a matter of fact, the social identity and the self-sacrifice of three important institutions and the social community. This is the recognition of interaction and participation. Thanks to the culture, the members of the social community get to know each other, get involved in the social community, get rid of the human identity and get involved in life through this interaction. So, with the multi-capitalism of civilization, we present the total and spiritual values that will characterize our way of life in the social community. The occasion of which the Meta, the centre for post-capitalist civilization, was initially founded, was Merot25's entrance into the Greek Parliament, the Hellenic Parliament. Thus, we are able to set up an institute, a centre for primary education and political analysis. However, we strived for a more international nature, also in order to support the progressive international in Diem25, in the context of which we truly boast about the advisory board we have at Meta and the collaborations we have managed to forge in the context of this. The advisory board hosts international figures, internationally known intellectuals, artists, political thinkers and people we deem important, we look up to and we collaborate with these thinkers and artists in order to further our causes and our future projects. For example, we'll soon launch our series of meta-dialogues, that is, dialogues between two or more members of our advisory board, discussing about our current dismal predicament and the possible ways out of this and the way to a better post-capitalist future. Please do take a look at the messages, some of the members of our advisory board, which you can all pay use online, the messages that they have offered to Meta for its launching, the greeting they have provided us with. Every member of the advisory board has also contributed the perspective on post-capitalism, how they see the future currently in front of us unfolding and how they would hope that a different future could indeed unfold. We hope to publish a short booklet on that, both in English and in Greek. Apart from that, though, and even during the lockdown, we strived to offer a number of events discussing both current political events and a more wide perspective to both our English, our international and our Greek audience. In this context, we attempted the following events. Due to Meta being Athens-based and due to its seeds having been planted in the Greek Spring of 2015, our very first event was with Professor Nikos Tucharakis from the University of Athens, who provided us with an insider's view of the undermined negotiation of 2015, of how the Spring of 2015 was annulled by the very government that had as its mandate to materialize it. We continued with a thorough discussion with Professor Saul Newman from Goldsmiths College, London on post-capitalism and post-anarchism entitled at the threshold post-capitalism, post-anarchism, and the pandemic. And we had the great joy of discussing with Dr. Antara Haldar of the University of Cambridge the future of the history of capitalism, that is her research, on capitalism from an interdisciplinary perspective. This was indeed a very interesting discussion concerning Greece and its never-ending crisis. We had also the opportunity to discuss how there is a Tina, there is no alternative of conservatism in Greece after it's turning into a dead colony. And the question that we thoroughly discussed was whether there is an alternative and what this alternative would look like. We went on with a seminar by both Yanis Varoufakis and Nikos Theoharakis on precisely our dead prison predicament and how we may escape this. Sexism, sexual violence and the abuse of the vulnerable was also an issue that concerned us immensely and which we discussed with Greek experts on the topic. In March, we organized a discussion on police violence and the new law and order doctrine in Greece as well as on the mutations of the concept of security. This is particularly timely in Greece as police violence is on the rise. We even had an MP of Marathon D5, a member of parliament being hit by a policeman. Well, Greece is the country where members of the parliament may be routinely hit by policemen as it seems Athens is the city where democracy was born and where it has come to die. Apart from all this, we have a weekly radio show on Greece's Marathon D5, very own digital radio station, Radiomera, Metavasis, which is a program of theory and discussion and analysis by Meta, the center for post-capital civilization, directed, organized and presented by Kostas Raptis, a veteran journalist working with us as a policy analyst and the press officer of Meta. From the 12th to the 22nd of July, after months of confinement and enforced cultural eclipse lockdown, Meta set up a feast on the road with six stops throughout Greece, Athens, Patra, Ioannina, Kavala, Thessaloniki and Volos, our buluki or Meta troupe. The video you shall see offers a glimpse of some highlights and its backstage. At the same time, if there is one field that has been hit harder than any other, during the pandemic and the lockdown, this is the artistic space, the cultural space. Artists have been declared more or less superfluous. Their activity is something like a hobby in Greece. Therefore, the capacity to professionally collaborate with distinguished artists from different backgrounds was also one of the tools of our buluki or a tour around Greece and not confined to Athens, our all-consuming capital, as is usually the case. The outcome thankfully has exceeded our expectations. Our artists gave their best and the reception of our buluki by literally thousands of citizens all over Greece were clearly informed at the beginning of the event about the purposes of Meta and its political connection to Merot 25 was truly touching. Our Meta buluki completed its tour of six stations all over Greece and organized a feast for every citizen with free entrance to the public, collective space that we were deprived of. Thomas Agrafiottis, Dimitra Nikitea, Ira Katsouda and Konstantiz Pistiolis starred in a troupe of music, laughter, critical gaze and a re-examination of the tradition of our country in a future-oriented, nay, post-capitalist even perspective. We warmly thank all the artists and everybody who has supported us in this and please, dear audience, take a glimpse of the backstage of this feast. It was very important. The characters, the actors, the actors, the actors did the same thing. They had their own packaging, some figures which were covered in a very reputable, so comical, so heroic. They had their own packaging and the basic technical equipment and they arrived in a village, a morning and they left their work and sent it to some coffee shop. They made a positive change with the coffee shop. They presented the work and the next day they left. And of course, it was one night when the whole village was concerned because the theater had arrived in the village. Welcome to our bubble tea. The oldest one can be received and the rest of you surely have heard of it. The famous bubble teasers that were being distributed in the Greek country. We decided to follow their movements from city to city. In a renewed form, in a... with a bubble tea. Don't light up! Here in the bubble tea, we were a bit confused because, let me tell you, I was thinking about it. Because it's very strange, the whole thing and with the audience. First, the actors, then us, then all of us. We didn't talk much, but it's in the beginning that the audience won't be the new one. But everyone here will have good performances. Miran, and we'll see today a stand-up comedy. To avoid seeing stand-up comedies, Zota, Naena and Kirokrot. Don't be shy, I'll teach you. This is my little child, my little girl. She'll be at the end of her mother-in-law. This scene is self-created. It was an idea of someone I don't know and I don't know them. But it has an amazing idea to combine three, four different artists who... They have no relationship with each other. However, there is a connection, a common ground. That's why we can all tell each other that we accept each other's differences. At least, yes. No, that's not what you're supposed to say. After the lockdown, thankfully, we were able to reclaim the public square with actual flesh and blood events. In the context of which, we are trying to forge a series of three events that would be theoretically important for articulating the framework for any better post-capitalism than the dismal, techno feudalist post-capitalism that is already right now in front of us. The first event was on basic income, on universal basic income, with Professor Guy Standing, a very important figure in the international movement for basic income, both in theory and in practice. This was, I propose, the Greek publication of his book on basic income, and it included a discussion with Yanis Varoufakis, which you may find on Meta's YouTube channel in English with Greek subtitles. Our second event in this series was with Professor Vasili Kostakis from Taltec in Tallinn, Estonia, on P2P, Peer to Peer, and the Digital Commons, as not a pathway to post-capitalism on its own terms, but a potent tool in order to achieve one aspect of post-capitalism, yet a tool that does not lie in a utopian future, a theoretical utopian future, but is here with us right now in flesh and blood. The third event in this series, which we are planning but have not realized as of yet, concerns the technology of blockchain. The technology of blockchain as a potentially liberating tool against, over and against the reality of Bitcoin, which, according to Yanis Varoufakis' analysis, is simply good old capitalism. So we are planning an event on how blockchain has the potential to become a tool in liberating us, yet crypto on its own terms cannot do that and might actually prove to be detrimental to this aim. We have also set up a series of working papers of peer-reviewed research papers, well aptly entitled meta-working papers, in the context of which we're also planning a series of papers on a post-capitalist how-to, a handy how-to guide to post-capitalism, because we have to give an answer to three pressing questions if we are to indeed articulate a post-capitalism that is not purely theoretical, but indeed has a map, a pathway on the table. The question of production and the means of production in post-capitalism, the question of allocation that is an alternative to the market as it is now, and the question of decision-making that is democracy and post-capitalist democracy. This has already been set up. Now that you're watching this, at least one of the papers, a paper on participatory planning that is on the question of allocation has been published on our website, MetaCPC.org, by Professor Robin Hanell. And more of them will follow, and we are also planning some video tutorials, video educating material in Greek and potentially also in English on the basis of these dedicated meta-working papers. Yet we also have meta-working papers, both published and soon to be published, which do not form part of this particular post-capitalist how-to series. Of course, when we named our center for post-capitalist civilization Meta, we had no idea that one of our primary techno feudal overlords, Mark Zuckerberg, would also rename Facebook as a company into Meta and propose his dystopian metaverse where the whole of our lives will be digitized and take place therein, yet this space, this new digital universe will belong to a certain person, will be part and a thief of a certain company. Of course, this might be coincidental or rather not because also Facebook's or other meta's coin, digital coin, digital token, Libra, was renamed into Diem a number of months ago. But aside from this all, this techno feudal overlord has proposed a very dystopian post-capitalism, which unfortunately is already here, Apithanikomiria, as we would say in Greece, which are already being invested in this dystopian future. Meta has no millions, much less zillions, but we are trying in order to support the work of Mera25, DM25 and the Progressive International to articulate an alternative, not a dystopian alternative, not only a theoretically utopian alternative, a post-capitalist alternative that we can indeed turn into a flesh and blood reality. The whole discussion on post-capitalism, on the multiple post-capitalisms that lie in front of us as possible realities is starting right now. Another now is indeed possible. Would you like to take part in that conversation? That being said, and given that this is a Christmas special, may I wish to all of you, Merry Christmas or a merry holiday season. Ho, ho, ho!