Welfare State

Nowadays “no ghost haunts Europe”. Therefore our vision about optimism can only allude to maintain or recover the ruins of a utopia, which was substituted in a European context by pragmatism; social democracy for any kind of revolutionary will, the welfare state for the class struggle; in short, comfort has become the main ideology of our time. This ‘diminished utopia’ currently threatened by neo-liberal trends, appears to be the brightest of the possible utopias.
The union between welfare and consumption is the principal characteristic of present day developed societies, with basic needs fulfilled, consumption provides new symbolic meanings like freedom, social progress, solidarity and democracy.
The project developed by Democracia conceives the staging of the disappearance of a marginal community as a spectacle for all members of civil society. Over and above considerations such as the disappearance of specific cultural forms (that of the Gypsy culture), the civil society celebrates the disappearance of the ghetto via a media spectacle. The ‘integrated’ civil society are the hooligans who applaud the action of the diggers demolishing the ghetto. The path of the marginalized society is its integration in the spectacular consumption society, which will assure them of their basic rights.