Anti-capitalist rumba rave in a Spanish bank

Spanish anti-capitalist activists Flo6x8 staged this epic flamenco/rumba flashmob at a branch of Santander. Their excellent dance was too much for the bystanders, and soon 30 of the bank's customers were dancing along.

Rumba Rave "banquero" en el Santander (via MeFi)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Capitalism, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
In times past, Capitalists,Corporatists, were controlled by the governments, respected union controls, and did not seek political clout. In America’s Golden Age, unions raged, the worker was king, the Middle Class grew, wages rose, interest on savings was paid, and money flowed in the country.
Republicans, neo-cons, the Uber-Rich,the investors, the Capitalists, the Corporatists, bought political clout, and altered the political rules of the country in their favor. With lobbyest groups they rendered the peon’s vote innocuous, with down-sizing and shady employment politics they engaged in the part-time labor rip off, downsizing, and a general, lawless, battering of labor. the final blow to the Middle Class came with off-shoring, the selling out of the very life-blood industries of the nation, for larger ROI’s, in Yuan, from China and its semi-slave commie workers.
A review of the rules of incorporation, the Capitalist’s tool, his means to engage the common folk in his extortion, are in order! Here is a documented example of just how anti-proletariat, how cruel and how sociopathic things can get:
In the 1970′s, Ford sold Pinto model cars. These cars were proven death traps, fire hazards and killers, by incineration of their passengers, in even a slight rear end collision. The humane path of action was clear – the cars needed drastic modification before another sale, and another incineration of a customer could occur. What was the Capitalists’ the Corporatists’ sociopathic response? They elected to continue the model as is, to protect the shareholder’s interests, since it was cheaper to pay off insurance claims than to change or discontinue the model!
Another case: Google, torrent, the documentary movie, “Who Killed The Electric Car”, and study it well. It shows the Corporatist in action, covering his own ass at the expense of the general population, the proletariat, the peons, the patriots, you and me!
Think about the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on the Military/Industrial complex, and ask yourself if this does not preclude the enslavement of your sons and daughters as cannon fodder for the sole purpose of selling Military hardware? A country needs good defense – no argument here, but has America gone to extremes, to satisfy the Corporatist, the Capitalist, in making ROI? Churning money?
Look closely at the American Dream – a sales line,designed to entrap common folk in unending debt – interest paying debt – good for the Capitalist debt. The popular, Capitalist, Corporatist, propaganda machine’s demands, clearly, out of control, have common folk buying worthless diamond rings for permission to pro-create, McMansions they do not need, cannot afford, SUV’s filled with planned obsolescence, for their synthetic, surgically altered, sex-machine, Barbie Doll partners, and then, they must golf on weekends? Save for retirement? At this higher level on the hog? In the latest styles? Drink alcohol but not smoke pot? Drive a Harley Davidson, to be cool? The list goes on and on! How far from a realistic, sustainable,practical, affordable, rewarding, life-style is this nonsense? The common folk of America are about to find out!
Corporate, Capitalist, greed has reigned supreme these past few decades and with George Bush, bought the government of the day, bought both political parties, displayed the power of their money over the vote of the common folk, the peons, the proletariat, the patriot. Developed huge, powerful lobbyist factions, enriched the Military/Industrial complex,screwed the peon’s pension aspirations, emptied the nation’s purse in the pursuit of oil,caused the Wall Street fiasco by de-regulation, one only needs to look to the streets of Detroit City, and the demolition of the American automotive prowess in the world to understand the new, barracuda, take no prisoners, sociopathic Capitalism of the day. Even bountiful California has been raped and left in financial ruins, fields burnt from over-production, misguided water-wars, starving the proletariat,and the specter of legal self-medication with pot as a government’s solution for the raped, beaten, unemployed and unemployable, poverty stricken, mal-treated, plebs. smoking pot, a new morality? I think not! Human degradation at its finest, by the Corporatists, Capitalists of the day!
This new, virulent, cancerous, Capitalism, Corporatism, is a cancer in the side of Democracy, and the terminal disease of democracies the world over. America once had respect and a place in the food chain for its labor, its common folk, its peons,the plebs, the proletariat, the rank and file, the patriots. Look to the unemployables lines in America today. America no longer needs a large portion of its population, some say up to 10%, others claim as high as 20% and growing. Should America be out-sourcing, or selling out factories? Can the Capitalists, Corporatists, afford such waste of the perishable human resources like the laborer, the working class of America? Well, Just like the Ford Pinto, situation, just like the electric car situation, the sociopathic Capitalist, Corporatist, response, by Obama’s decree, is to re-format these folks, transform them into something they are not, change them from what they were born and bred to be, into office workers? Green energy workers? You mean your going to take a third or fourth generation industrial welder and teach, morph, shift him and his physiognomy into something different? Change the size and strength of his fingers, to suit your illustrious plans? Plans devised to protect and excuse the Corporatists,the Capitalists? Remember: America’s Capitalists bred this worker from the best European stocks for the last two hundred years, the corporatists selectively bred this individual for his traits. This cannot be undone in a single generation. It is not medically possible.
To satisfy yourself as to where the country is going, search, and review the rules if incorporation, on this very same net. Then decide. be on notice, even as we speak, as this noble beast, the American worker, is put out of work by the Corporatist, Capitalists,the American Medical Association’s Health Insurance officers, the modern day ‘selection committees’ are, for the crime of unemployment, sentencing these poor bastards and their progeny, to a life without proper medical care and and early death, in tenements, tent cities, without heat or light, not even clean bandages for their weeping wounds, in America? Yes, folks, that is the plan, like the Nazis exterminated the Jews of Europe, the ‘system’ exterminated the laboring, the working class of America.
Digilante

I kinda sorta get the feeling that something big is brewing across the world. The fallout from the crisis may spawn bigger things.

“May you live in interesting times” is seen as a curse, but I say bring it on. Nothing worse than the same old crud day in, day out ;-)
- Anonymous
  
  Crisis = angry people
  Angry people + angry people from other places = lots of angry people + sense of community + sense of common purpose
  Angry global community with common purpose + Internet = ……
  
  Well… the world itself seems to be computing that one as we speak: revolts organized through social networking, those in turn inspiring more revolts; Wikileaks; Pirate parties; P2P; copyright reform; citizen-based news; thousands over thousands of alternative ways to organize on practically anything, many of those showing achievements EVEN WITHOUT money or payment…. It doesn’t take much to speculate on the repercussions of this.
  
  “Anti-Capitalism? What’s that?”
  Come on. Is it too much to ask to think outside of the box for a while? “It is impossible!” pshh, giving up so easily on the thought-experiment? I expected more from the Boing Boing comment crowd.
  - zyodei
    
    Except that almost all of those – genuine, autonomous citizen uprisings against the things that are making their lives miserable – are revolts against government control, not against “capitalism.”
    
    We really need to differentiate “state capitalism” – a system where powerful economic actors (ie, corporations) receive artificial state protections, favors, and are able to influence state actors to crack down on small competitors – with a basic free market, where every individual is free to produce, buy, sell, work, and hire as they choose without restriction, and where every actor is responsible for his or her actions.
    
    The second may or may not be a pipe dream, but make it’s important to place blame where blame is due: the world we live in is run in the model of state capitalism, and it is from that cozy relationship between the state and the corporations that most problems arise.
    - Anonymous
      
      Anon here.
      I understand what you say. Completely. And I thank you for putting that on the table.
      
      When I was composing my message, my mind was thinking more of the sentiment contained in Digilante’s comment, and not directly focused on the concept of capitalism itself.
      That same sentiment, in me, is strongly connected to the existence of the Internet, and therefore, all that it entails.
      
      I understand that the uprisings in North Africa are not about capitalism.
      
      The issue on my mind is how the Internet is making alternatives stronger. It’s empowering people to do things, and do things differently.
      Is “anti-capitalisim” in there, somewhere? I don’t know.
      Are non-capitalistic things happening thanks to the Internet? Yes, and many of those are things that we would understandably associate and expect to be involved in capitalistic processes, but instead show themselves to be able to operate without their involvement.
      
      Even if there wasn’t any involvement of the government in the market, something like Wikileaks can still materialize and shake the concept of the state itself, at least to a degree that couldn’t be done before.
      That’s the kind of thing I had in mind: the Internet and how massively it can reorganize things and our thinking about institutions; why they’re there in the first place; if the way we’re connected now doesn’t ask some very profound questions.
      
      Does that mean capitalism is going to die? I don’t know that. But I would not be surprised AT ALL to see sentiments of that sort arising more and more. Anti-statist sentiments? Not surprised either.
      
      You know, quite frankly, goodness knows where we’re headed!
zartan

those are some prosperous looking “anti-capitalist activists.”
Griefer

How many of these “anti-capitalists” do you think are carrying an iPhone?
xian

The free market has spokenâ€¦ expect to see flamenco and rhumba dancing at your local branch!
nerak

Being an anti-capitalist doesn’t preclude one from participating in the culture of technology or wearing decent clothes. Perhaps what anti-capitalism used to look like is evolving into something else?
technogeek

Mi Espan~ol es muy malo — I’ve forgotten most of it. Does someone have a translation of the lyrics, or a subtitled version of the vid?

I have to sympathize with that poor bank guard. He’s just trying to do his job, but he winds up becoming part of the dance…

(The right response from the bank would have been to alert security, but to have one of the guards try to buttonhole someone in the flash mob and ask how long the routine was going to run. A few more minutes? Fine, finish up and take your bows. Half an hour, or until we chase you out? That’s a different kettle of worms.)
diracshard

@zartan, @Griefer Yeah, because any sign of prosperity and luxury of any sort is totally antithetical to any anti-capitalist movement. Strawman trolling is such fun, isn’t it?
- pbaseoul
  
  “Yeah, because any sign of prosperity and luxury of any sort is totally antithetical to any anti-capitalist movement.”
  
  Uh, yeah, actually, it is. Or maybe you’d like to cite a single example from any point in human history of a prosperous, luxurious, and anti-capitalist society.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Stalin had a very luxurious moustache.
    - pbaseoul
      
      Touche. :)
  - Anonymous
    
    Srsly? Yr qstn s s ncrdbly stpd tht y mst b trllng. I will give it a shot– several Chinese kingdoms, the empire of Alexander, Athens, Rome, the Empire of the Greeks, the Persian Empire, a few kingdoms in India over the years, Egypt, uh….the Scandinavian countries. Those are a few examples of powerful and luxurious states from history that were not “capitalist” in the sense we now mean. I will go ahead and head off your “yeah, where are they now?” comment and advise you to wait 40 years or so before asking it.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Harsh intro aside, that’s a good point. Unless you define capitalism as ‘not socialism’, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. And even today, you could certainly argue that Saudi Arabia, for example, isn’t really capitalist since it’s a welfare state for citizens and quasi-slavery for non-cits.
  - Gilbert Wham
    
    Or maybe you’d like to cite a single example from any point in human history of a prosperous, luxurious, and anti-capitalist society.
    
    We could try & make one, d’you wanna help?
    - zyodei
      
      Well, we’ve tried several times. Generally, millions of people starved to death, and millions more were murdered.
normd

I liked this, just wish the video was a little higher res. Arguing about what “anti-capitalist” means in this context seems silly. One of them was a man-cow.
Anonymous

I’m sorry, but this is not a rumba, either a rave. just a mix of ‘Flamenco’ song. Bad mix, by the way…
Anonymous

So I saw “rumba” and thought it meant “roomba”, and watched for three minutes before realizing that the roombas I was hoping for weren’t ever going to come.
:*(
Anonymous

How long before banks will advertise these kind of “protests” as an entertainment asset?
marco antonio

… and I’m really baffled at people’s reaction at ‘anti-capitalism’. Seriously you don’t know what it is? – then you’ve been living in a capitalist society so long and blind that you’ve lost sight of the alternatives.

Check out the wikipedia, there’s plenty of information. Although I am also aware that Americans seem to be unable to understand Socialism (and other -isms) in a factual context; they have polarized the issue so much that they’ve turned it into a meaningless charicature of an insult. Spain is a socialist country, and we’re proud of it.

I, too, am against the abuse of economic power, the never-ending search for profits above all reasonable issues, the ostrasizing of the less wealthy, the increasing gap between rich and poor, the disappearance of the middle class, the dependency on credit and on banks… should I keep going?

Anti-capitalism can take many shapes, and the most common one is against the excesses it takes, which are intrinsic in its for-profit structure.
- peterbruells
  
  I gather most of them are Americans or other Anglos, where its customary to understand capitalism, private property and market-driven economy as one and the same thing.
- Mister44
  
  Ok – I can see your point on a few of those. So what is the alternative?
  
  And what do people expect the above protest/performance to actually DO. What proactive options are there.
petsounds

I’m not really sure what an “anti-capitalist” is, other than a communist. Now, an anti-corporatist or anti-fascist, that makes sense.

But I appreciated the interpretive dance moves that rise above language.
- Anonymous
  
  “I’m not really sure what an “anti-capitalist” is, other than a communist.”
  
  Anarchists and Wobblies also fit the anti-capitalist label. Sometimes these groups even work together against their common enemy. It works great until someone decides that they’re the vanguard of something or other and starts being a total dick.
spriggan

…meanwhile nobody noticed the guys in clown masks robbing the bank of it’s mob money.
Anonymous

Actually, I thought the dancing in the bank was pretty cool. It always pisses me off to see that the biggest building in town is an overbuilt bank that no one is allowed to just hang out in. The colossal turd across the street from my house has balconies even, that nobody uses. Money by nature is social.
taghag

thank you, marco antonio.
90th Redoubt

The concept of “Dancing In Our Dept” is not a new one. In Vancouver BC early in 2009 there was a series of small, un-amplified and very well received music festivals held in bank ATM rooms around the city. See video here:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&note_id=501651019346
alllie

How is that anti-capitalists?
Anonymous

Beware of well dressed anarchists.
alllie

Why was there a cow?
- dragonfrog
  
  The only word I understood in all that was the refrain, “vaqueiro vaqueiro vaqueiro”. Vaqueiro means cowboy. Which maybe partially explains the cow suit.
  - marco antonio
    
    Um, actually he was singing ‘banquero’, which means ‘banker’.
    
    here’s a rough translation:
    
    banquero, i tell ya
    ay… you have the wallet, I have the money
    you have nothing until i give you everything
    better than a Raja, with yatchs in Marbella,
    with you the briefcases full of 500-eu bank notes just fly,
    you just take them away, tick-i-tock
    there is no shame anymore
    those people with sly glares
    cold hearts and warm pockets
    you are the unnamables
    (something something)
    you adore the treasure
    the Idex has gone up
    (something)
    but everything is the same\
    have you ever thought about working?
    about working instead of stealing?
    banker banker…
- Suds
  
  Ca$h Cow!
T-Bone

I was wondering why capitalism wasn’t working anymore when I got up this morning — good thing I read this! It’s because some people in another country danced.
JeffinMontreal

Man those spaniards and their dancing are wonderful – spent some time surfing for flamenco dancing in the street videos last week on youtube, got to figure out a way to get huge numbers of people doing this all the time in North America as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dikOpbb7yqE
Anonymous

The singing reminded me of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn
Pantograph

You know how an atheist thinks that worshiping god(s) is a really bad idea?
An anticapitalist thinks that worshiping the Market (and its blood stained invisible hand) is a really bad idea.
evilhippo

“An anticapitalist thinks that worshiping the Market (and its blood stained invisible hand) is a really bad idea.”

So instead they worship the blood stained coercive state instead. Do not look for wit amongst the witless.
- Anonymous
  
  uh no – actually not. But never mind, if you read some of the previous comments you will see an explanation of anti-capitalist. Surely people don’t still think that capitalism is the natural way and that communism is the only alternative?
  
  The point of this kind of protest is that it makes strange. it breaks into the mind numbing routine of life and (sometimes) makes people think. Just look how many people have asked what anti-capitalism means just because of this post.
- Pantograph
  
  So in your view of the world people either live under a communist jackboot or under a corporatist lawyer’s brogue.
  Interesting… You should get out more. There is a whole non-stereotypical world out there.
  - evilhippo
    
    No, in my view statists can be corporatists or socialists or communists or fascists but that all matters far less than the fact they are statists using the means of collective coercion rather than markets.
    
    Anti-capitalists are rarely interested in liberty, just changing the method, and the beneficiaries, of tyranny.
    - alllie
      
      Capitalists are never interested in liberty, except the freedom to make as much money as they can, anyway they can, without being restrained by laws or regulations. Our present economic crisis is the result of pure unregulated capitalism.
      
      Economically end stage capitalism is monopoly, and politically it’s fascism.
Mister44

I’m confused… what exactly are they trying to do? It looks like a flashmob.

WTF does anti-capitalist mean?

Notice they can do routines and dance during the day because hippies don’t have jobs ;o)
- pjk
  
  Also, notice that unemployment in Spain is 20%, and unemployment among young people much higher. goddamn hippies! get a job!
  - Mister44
    
    20% you say? Man, if only there were some sort of a system that promoted the exchange of goods and services between people that led to economic growth.
Grognard

And if you like the song, you can buy the whole album via iTunes.
Anonymous

Griefer, zartan: Your arguments assume that you it is necessary to one of the countless people crushed and exploited by capitalism to be able to be and activist against such crushing and exploitation. In doing so you likely mistakenly project your own lack of capacity for compassionate action to others.

pbaseoul: capitalism is not a binary entity. It comes in degrees of pervasiveness. Many anti-capitalists would like to see it markedly reigned in, regulated and balanced by basic income, fair distribution of resources, sharper anti-discrimation laws, rules making it easier to unionize without being attacked, environmental regulation internalizing costs onto corporations, share levy systems, worker cooperatives, promoting creative commons and FOSS systems of production, deliberative democracy at many intersections of society, election funding transparency and limitations to block current extreme corporate control of political power. To begin with. Come join us!
brix

for all the “WHAT IS THIS I DONT EVEN” going on above, i suggest a thought experiment:

you live under the stalinist regime, in russia proper, or maybe the ukraine. you, or your parents or grandparents, remember the czar. but you also remember the kronstadt rebellion, and the makhnovists, and you’ve lived through the purges, and you just can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t what the triumph of the poor was supposed to look like. so you help circulate samizdat books, and take part in what other, limited forms of autonomy are available to you.

if people deride you as a white army sympathizer, or a trotskyist, that person is clearly wrong, because trotsky called in the army against people like you. but you expect it, because those people don’t really mean “the white army” and they don’t really mean “trotsky”, they just mean The Enemy, and those are the names they know to call their enemy. But if someone tells you that of COURSE you’re a bolshevik, because you wear the same coverall and use the same telephone on the corner as everybody else… because OBVIOUSLY you’re a bolshevik, because what else is there to BE but be a bolshevik? surely you don’t want Hitler? Surely you don’t want the Tsar?

Well that person is going to seem kinda ridiculous, insisting that you choose between one jackboot and another.
davechua

Don’t have a cow man.

Just saying.
polossatik

no offence, but I wonder how long it would take in the USA to get a full assualt team to show up if you do something like that…
eerd

I like the man-cow!

Not sure how socialist Spain is, though, or at least, not in totality. As I understand it Spanish banks were all too in favour of similar property-based lending with no due thought as most of the rest of the Western world. Even the cajas – which were intended to be non-profit, more like charitable foundations – got in on inflating the property bubble.

As we’ve seen throughout the EU and US, while we might not like the idea of bailing out a banking system that has skewed perceptions of risk we have no other choice. Without them societies would not function.

If one needs to consider the benefits of capitalism, one could look at that thought experiment documented on NPR, about whether it would be better to be very rich 100 years ago or middle class now. It seems that most of the gains we have made in living standards over that time have been driven by capitalism. (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/19/130680412/)
Melted Crayons

Feed the Fat Cats to the Lionz!
Melted Crayons

Seriously though, people are getting sick and tired of financial exploitation by greedy anti-social POS’s who don’t care one bit about you, your job, your community, or your government except to the extent that that government can protect and enable them to do their thieving both at home and globally.
- Hools Verne
  
  Then how about voting with your wallet and deciding that maybe you don’t actually need a smart phone?
Marya

The more people who stand up, the easier it will become to lift the world.
Anonymous

i understand anti-corruption but not anti-capitalist. angry people = fools i suppose.
Anonymous

An Alternative to Capitalism (which we need here in the USA)

The following link takes you to an essay titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by the
Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm

John Steinsvold

Perhaps in time the so-called dark ages will be thought of as including our own.
–Georg C. Lichtenberg
JaxSean

“It seems that most of the gains we have made in living standards over that time have been driven by capitalism.”

The opinion poll you cite indicates nothing of the sort. Rather:

“The force of economic growth over time has given middle class people in America today things that would have been regarded as miracles a century ago. And having access to those miracles is worth an enormous amount.”

So, capitalists were able to steal vast resources and wealth, sell shiny things to Americans while state-funded medicine enabled them to live longer, and in the end, Americans had better lives.

Africans and South Americans are unlikely to regard this “achievement” as beneficial to their standard of living.
Anonymous

Brilliant street theater!

If you look at the website of Flo6x8 you will see that they call themselves anticapitalist.

Too bad boingboing attracts comments from neanderthal pro-capitalist frat-boys (redundant, i know). I guess I expected better. I don’t know why.
- Anonymous
  
  How dare there be other opinions other than my own! Everyone should think the same as me here!
  
  …*cough*…
- Mister44
  
  No – THIS is brilliant street theater.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ULVQOneeZE
Hools Verne

Also, this is great performance art, but what about dancing in a bank is anti-capitalist?
Grognard

More than anything, what the nice ladies dancing above are displaying is an utter lack of historical knowledge.

I have some advice for any other “anti-capatalists” here: If you ever notice a huge, fast growing corporation that becoming “too profitable”, BUY STOCK IN IT.
- Hools Verne
  
  I have some advice for any other “anti-capatalists” here: If you ever notice a huge, fast growing corporation that becoming “too profitable”, BUY STOCK IN IT.
  
  And then get out before they gut the company. Helps if you have somebody on the inside, but make sure you’re a male WASP, otherwise they might have to make an example out of you to prove the system works.
benher

Capital idea! Simply Capital!