Demanding the Impossible Read Online Free

nations’ agriculture in the face of the current food crisis, only $2.2 billion has so far been made available. The financial meltdown made it impossible to ignore the blatant irrationality of global capitalism. In this sense, the Copenhagen Climate Summit was simply a fiasco. When there is any type of ecological meeting, all they say is: “Yes, we should go on talking and then we succeeded because we decided that we will meet again and talk in two years.” You see, nonetheless, for the financial crisis, they are able to act immediately with sums of money, which are simply unbelievably huge. This, I think, is a paradox.
    Look what Stalin said: “If you shoot one person you are a murderer. If you kill a couple of persons you are a gangster. If you are a crazy statesman and send millions to their deaths you are a hero.” It’s horrible. We now can say the same thing about crime. If you steal one hundred thousand dollars, you are a thief. If you destroy billions, banks and the state will help you. I’m really worried.
    This is what I mean about my communism – not the Leninist version, which was total madness. Many leftists hate me when I argue that twentieth-century communism might have been the biggest ethico-political fiasco in the history of humanity. I think there is no other soft explanation. Some things were done well here and there, but globally it was a fiasco. But the problems, to which communism tried to provide an answer, are still here, more than ever. They are returning.
    This is why I like to say communism, for me, is not an answer. Communism is not the name of a solution but the name of a problem : the problem of the commons in all its dimensions – the commons of nature as the substance of our life, the problem of our biogenetic commons, the problem of our cultural commons (“intellectual property”), and, last but not least, the problem of the commons as that universal space of humanity from which no one should be excluded. Whatever the solution might be, it will have to solve this problem. So what you are trying to capture with the common good is the name of a problem. This is communism for me. What will be the answer? I don’t know. Maybe we don’t have an answer. Maybe it will be a catastrophe. Maybe … I don’t know.
    Nonetheless, and I’m not being too pessimistic here, but what shocks me, again and again, is how so-called specialists are proven wrong. About 10 or 15 years ago, people said that in postmodern times there are no longer revolutions; forget about people taking to the streets. My god, now you have them all around. Who knows where we will go from here?
    I would like to see Saudi Arabia. This is the true worry. Everybody is in a panic not so much because of Egypt, but Saudi Arabia, which is an incredibly corrupt regime. But do you know what’s really absurd? It is that corruption, in a way, doesn’t exist there, because it is the system itself. In other countries you have politicians who steal from the state, but there the king is the state, so he doesn’t have to steal. The system itself is simply horrible.
    I was in Qatar for the New Year and I met some people from Saudi Arabia who told me this incredible story. Basically, the royal family possesses the state. They don’t even have to steal anything, because they already have it. The key is that they all have a mistress and the breeding, so there are around 10,000 princes in the family. They all have a wonderful life. But if you go out into the neighborhoods, the country has its own poverty. Did you know that, a couple of years ago, there were small demonstrations even in Saudi Arabia? It has already started there. Now everyone is afraid in the West, but don’t they see that the more it is postponed, the more crazy and self-destructive the explosion will be?
    I see explosions everywhere. In Qatar, a female curator at a museum took me to an industrial city in the suburb of Doha. I asked immediately who does the work for all