The Last Day Of Summer – Für Achim [Part lll] To Have Or To Have Not

"Then the three refugees came past a farm, where the house rooster was sitting on the gate and screaming with all his might. 'You're screaming through your bones,' said the donkey, 'what are you planning to do?' 'I predicted good weather,' said the rooster, 'because it's our dear lady's day when she has washed the little Christ child's shirts and wants to dry them. But because guests come on Sunday, the housewife has no mercy and has him The cook said she wanted to eat me in the soup and I should have my head cut off this evening. Now I'll scream at the top of my lungs while I still can.' 'Oh, you redhead,' said the donkey, 'you'd better go with us, we're going to Bremen, you've got a good voice, and if we play music together, it would be fantastic.' The rooster accepted the suggestion and they all went together gone.”

The Bremen Town Musicians

“It is not people’s consciousness that determines their being, but conversely their social being that determines their consciousness.”

Karl Marx – On the criticism of political economy

So now two years. 671 days. So many hours. No more messages from you in the middle of the night, no pages of quotes, no adventurous, beguiling statements. Nothing. Just the silence. The silence of your absence. This terrible silence in which everyone just says something without it really meaning anything. You can no longer find three lines that are actually worth reading. At least in this country. In the end, they themselves campaign for the Tiktok Left in the Golden Rooster. It's good that Bernd Kramer doesn't have to experience that anymore. In general, you and all the others who really had something to say to us. That you are no longer there. Pohrt was only truly loved after he was already dead. The ‘Brother in Crime’. Actually, since the Corona state of emergency, there has been this silence that mutated into acclamation, only a few people understood and named how this general staff maneuver anticipated the permanence of the generalized state of emergency. The new world order, which this time practically no one framed. And here again, the restriction: In this country. And now they can no longer get out of the hole in which they have dug themselves, the social conditions scream for revolt and tough resistance, war, inflation, a surveillance state, a corrupt caste of politicians whose half-life in the responsible positions is no longer even one legislative term. Everyone sees it: “The Emperor is naked”. A system on the brink, in the summer the forests in southern Europe burn, while the old and sick in intensive care units and nursing homes simply die in the heat because there is no air conditioning.And now that everything in society is ripe for upheaval, the left is stuck in its bubbles, incapable of discourse, the trench warfare among each other is the only thing that still breathes life into the carcass. And the right-wing populists are fishing for the anger and helplessness.

I can still remember the first time we met. Must have been a good decade ago. You and your Frankfurt comrades presented your theses on the general trend of state fascisation at the Mehringhof in Kreuzberg and I objected and found that that did not get to the heart of the developments at the time. But you were right, you understood earlier where the journey was going. Then I contributed a short article, ‘Schanzenblues’ [1], for the book [2] after the G20 riots in Hamburg, which you published with Dellwo, among others. We were then invited to Friedrichshain for some “Resistance Days” (I can’t for the life of me remember the exact title), the hall was packed, we presented something and then there were questions and discussion. It was as if people from completely foreign cultures met each other; it was difficult to even find a common language between the podium and the hall: the chasms were already so deep and could no longer be overcome; we actually talked past each other the whole time. Then we didn't see each other for a long time, but we exchanged more and more. The Corona state of emergency naturally brought us closer together, even if it was an affection at a physical distance. At some point your last book was finished, 'The Ecstasy of Speculation', you sent me a copy with a dedication and I sent you a picture of myself with your book and of course with a clenched fist.Who clenches their fist these days except the K groups and the clowns at their party conferences when they sing the Internationale? We were ahead of time and yet out of time and now we no longer share time with each other.

„Drinking don’t bother my memory. If it did I wouldn’t drink.“

Eddie – To Have Or To Have Not

We're back in the game, my dear. Actually, we were never really out, but there was this strange, intangible vacuum. Just as the sea suddenly and mysteriously retreats and everywhere only puddles cover the bare seabed. And it is the tsunami that is building up far out at sea. Peru, Romania, Syria,… Fuel prices are skyrocketing and with them the anger. Riot. Strike. Riot. In France, the fishermen are blocking important fuel depots, ports and refineries, on social networks they are drumming up support for the nationwide day of action on October 17th, everyone is dreaming of the return of the gilets jaunes, a lot will probably happen spontaneously next weekend, in opinion polls two thirds sympathize with the idea that the yellow vests could take back the streets again. I know you shouldn't praise the day before the evening, but there's a lot coming up. That shouldn't dissuade us from further investigating why these revolts keep exhausting themselves, but with the fresh wind of a new social storm, it may be easier to get to the bottom of the matter. How did you write:

"If the everyday life of a part of the world's population in the global south increasingly takes place in the informal economies, then this part itself becomes a surplus and is confronted with conditions of its reproduction beyond the wage employment relationship, and in this conflict-ridden situation, which then appears on the streets, every unauthorized gathering of a group on the corner, in a public square, or in the streets can be understood as a potential riot. In contrast to the strike, it is difficult to find out when the riot starts or when it ends, on the one hand it is a particular event, on the other hand it is the holographic miniature of a complete situation, a picture of the world.” [3]

I think we are still at the very beginning of truly understanding how social dislocations and social antagonism are articulated, constituted and shaped today. Despite all our breaks with the historical left and its failures, we still carry so much ideological and theoretical baggage with us that we are unable to grasp their consistency in real time alongside the revolts and make proposals that go beyond them. Someone will have to do this in order to identify the breaking points in the imploding system that is trying to drag us all into its historic demise. We need you for this work, but you're no longer here. And I don't know how we're going to close this gap. But I will tell you about how we struggle and feel our way forward, blind as moles, carrying out our burrowing underground. And if whoever or whatever is kind to me, I will tell you again in a year where we are now.

In love,

Sebastian Lotzer – Berlin Kreuzberg, September 18, 2026

Notes

[1] Schanzenblues, S. Lotzer

https://lotzerswelt.de/2018/04/07/schanzenblues/

[2] Riot: Theory and Practice of Collective Action. What was going on in Hamburg? Dellwo, Szepanski et al.

https://www.getidan.de/gesellschaft/getidan/77950/riot-theorie-und-praxi...
[3] The Ecstasy of Speculation, A. Szepanski [2023]
Publisher of the Absent Arts

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