From Redes libertarias (17/12/2024)
I am asked to reflect on the constraints imposed by state frameworks – borders, languages, national idiosyncrasies – when building relations on a global scale. Such a reflection cannot be carried out in the abstract, but rather on the basis of a given situation at a given time. Let’s say we are in Europe today, when, without thinking too much about it, a social movement with libertarian characteristics, originating in local struggles, considers linking up with other similar movements in other states. One might think that the movement in question should be sufficiently consolidated and enlightened to set itself more ambitious goals, beyond the local sphere in which it was circumscribed. We would then deduce that a cumulative process of experience would have culminated and that the degree of development achieved would allow the “globalisation” of the movement. The overcoming of the state framework would therefore necessarily take place from the inside out. However, there are historical examples to the contrary. The International Workers’ Association was not first constituted in spaces delimited by the state. A local committee convened a congress attended by various delegates with different levels of representativeness; the idea caught on and soon “regional” organisations were formed and further congresses were held. State frameworks were not an obstacle. A general atmosphere was in the air in the various social scenes of the capitalist world prior to the emergence of the IWA. The local was at the same time universal. The proletarian condition extended to all corners of the planet in the same way, so that any worker could feel the most geographically distant struggles as his own. Contrary to the struggles of the bourgeoisie, which pursued the constitution of national states, proletarian struggles transcended any state barrier: they were internationalist by nature. Moreover, the First International saw itself as the bearer of the seeds of the future society. Such a society would result from the universalisation of the organisation of the International. Only the bridge between reality and the future would have to be built either through the parliamentary action of strong political parties, according to the Marxist current, or through “a powerful but always invisible revolutionary collectivity preparing the revolution and leading it”, according to the Bakuninist current.
Only in view of the uniform, massified, consumerist lifestyle imposed by current capitalist globalisation, predatory urbanism, the absolute domination of technology and the extraordinary development of states, particularly of their mechanisms of social control, the chances of a social movement spreading outside the state that contains it are truly minimal. Even those with the greatest impact are ephemeral and leave little trace in consciousness. In the late stages of capitalism, the proletarian condition has become so generalised that it no longer constitutes a distinguishing mark on which to build a class identity. The penetration of capital into everyday life prevents this. Between so many particular interests present and so much dissolved sociability, no general class interest can be formulated. The atomisation under capitalism, extremely favoured by urban development plans, prohibits the solidarity, mutual support or fraternal relations that characterised and governed the proletarian communities of yesteryear. In fact, it is eminently anti-associative. Nevertheless, conflicts occur where the onslaught of the economy – or the undesirable consequences of such an onslaught – meet resistance around which a nuanced anti-capitalism can take shape. New collectives and social movements are born against patriarchy, the industrial way of life, industrial agriculture and food, climate change, air, land and water pollution, green capitalism, evictions, rent prices, low wages, the exploitation of the undocumented, the multiplication of motorways, rampant urbanisation, mass tourism, and so on. And the same struggles give rise to forms of sociability outside the dominant mercantile values, although we are far from “a new human community within the old, that is also in conflict with it”, of which the internationals dreamed.
The social question, as it overflows the world of work, is rethought in a fragmentary way, without any global critique being able to unify it. Any attempt to project it from an international congress has always been a resounding failure. The pathetic poverty of the outcome deters many from repeating the feat, but there are always those who take pleasure in such events. The fractioning of the social question corresponds to a dispersion of theories with increasing irrational components. Thanks to postmodern philosophy, and especially to the devaluation of memory that it has brought about, capitalism has also won the battle in the field of ideas. Militant self-education is now considered unnecessary; ideas are reduced to propaganda. In the realm of forgetting and forgetfulness, references to the past are useless, as well as references to the future. Goals do not matter, only the present counts. In this context, mentioning a future without a state, based on voluntary associations of free and autonomous communities, sounds alien. In material and personal conditions at odds with ideological ones, a retreat to the local is advisable. However, the desire for clarification is only a secondary aspect of a strategic retreat. The anti-capitalist struggle is first and foremost a struggle against globalisation, a struggle for de-globalisation, which implies a return to the grassroots. The local becomes more important than in the past. The establishment of relations at the global level will this time start from the expansion and subsequent confluence of local experiences.
Struggles are not really anti-capitalist if they do not reject the consumerist, techno-dependent, individualistic and peri-urban lifestyle typical of the dominant social organisation. Since capitalism is omnipresent, the rejection will be abstract, but it can become quite concrete at the local level. Locally, societal and autonomous ways of life can be built on the margins of capital, more easily outside urban agglomerations and residential areas, in the territory, which drives ruralising processes whose irradiation depends on their exemplarity and effectiveness. The decolonisation of the space shaped by the real estate market is mandatory. On the other hand, groups of unemployed workers are beginning to occupy or rent land to plant vegetable gardens and organise networks to distribute their produce, thus counteracting the demoralisation produced by forced idleness. This shift in the focus of conflicts from labour to the defence of territory has important consequences. In the territory, it is relatively easy for different collectives with sometimes conflicting dispositions to converge, but they are able to find common ground and establish links that will enable them to emerge victorious from the clash with the dominant interests. The coordination of struggles paves the way for the re-emergence of a unified social question, reflecting the incipient self-construction of the anti-capitalist subject, the one that in the past was called the ‘proletariat’. Evidently, its defining characteristics will be others more in line with the malign potential of the new technologies and the urbanism of dispersion or, seen from another angle, with the historical conjuncture. It is an excuse to say that, at present, social movements tend to fade rather than expand, with the result that meetings of collectives have little continuity and attempts at supra-state coordination, if they do occur, do not go beyond a first stage of contact and exchange of material. Let us look at the reasons for this.
It is easy to be inclined to think of the demoralising effect of the visible presence of adventurers, nutcases, curious people, charlatans and other toxic characters, that is, the “lumpen” of today as a factor in the disarticulation of movements without bosses or rules, but only if we stick to static movements, paradoxically enough, such as Occupy or 15M, whose aim is none other than to fill their existential void by emotional means. But other demobilising factors weigh more heavily, such as heterogeneity and self-limitation. The variety of elements that concur in the defensive movements, mainly the group of mayors, elected officials and party militants, impregnated with a citizens mentality, prevents the realisation of programmes and strategies that are too radical (remember the failed interstate No-Tav coordination). The self-restraint imposed by most territorial conflicts makes them barely distinguishable from “not in my backyard” protests (struggles against high-voltage power lines, against wind farms, against tourist flats…). However, the most damaging factor of all, digitalisation, has not been given due attention, or at least, outside the small anti-development circles. Without even realising it, contestation activity has become largely virtualised, which is to say that it has escaped reality. Hyperconnectedness may have accelerated membership and the promotion of demonstrations in a moment, but it has magnified both its volatility and its innocuousness. Without a multiplicity of direct relationships, commitments are labile and social responsibility quickly evaporates. Popularity for today, vacuity for tomorrow. Messages are spread and forgotten at high speed, submerged in an ocean of irrelevant information. Virtual space, the so-called “cyberspace”, is not neutral; it is designed to make money. It tends to maintain the capitalist status quo, however much its creators may claim otherwise, something that has become apparent with the rapid spread of social networks. The social movements that make use of them have to face a veritable avalanche of manipulations that are indifferent to the unlikely difficulties that state frameworks may impose. The new generations were born with mobile phones in their hands. We are at the beginning of a uniform digital culture propelled by platforms that create aberrant identities and parallel realities. This culture is homogenous and universal, speaking all languages. In the last decade, social networks have changed for the worse the way a vast majority of people around the world think, behave and relate to each other. They have finished off in time the predatory work of urbanisation in space. For users, fully reconfigured, the true reality is what they convey. They do not need anything else. In a very short time, the classic means of education and information, books, magazines, newspapers, conferences and debates, have become rare, ignorance spreads unchecked by whatsapp and disinformation in the form of fake news is rampant. The power of networks to distort reality, pseudo-polarise it and forge a mob mentality is terrifying. Individuals’ cognitive and moral processes are being seriously damaged, their personalities destabilised, and, meanwhile, everyday life reappears shaped by the incentives and norms imposed by the algorithms of industrialised persuasion. Given the great speed with which advances and new discoveries (e.g. artificial intelligence) are being made, the manipulative capacity of digital platforms promises to surpass all kinds of limitations. The mechanisms of alienation and psychopathy have a great future ahead of them. Real conflicts do not escape a trivialising virtualisation as they gain access to advertising, from which it is impossible to escape. The social question becomes an existential question. Social movements thus have their greatest enemy, their greatest conditioning factor, in the networks. The high degree of sectarianism and aggressiveness of certain groups with a woke ideology that is currently dynamiting the libertarian media is not alien to the platforms. Curiously, these same groups tend to take the side of new technologies and oppose anti-industrial positions. And nor are they immune to the on-screen prominence or fictitious prestige of many social media influencers. For these reasons, relationships on any scale have to be built from the outside. Or at least keep their lines of action and coordination well outside; immersing oneself in the laborious task of weaving organisation through personal contacts, meetings, paper publications, face-to-face assemblies and rotating coordinators. Breaking out of capitalism used to be an operation that was hardly practicable within metropolitan conurbations. It is also impossible today without breaking away from the online networks.
Miquel Amorós: The new internationalism in the struggle for de-globalisation
From Redes libertarias (17/12/2024)
I am asked to reflect on the constraints imposed by state frameworks – borders, languages, national idiosyncrasies – when building relations on a global scale. Such a reflection cannot be carried out in the abstract, but rather on the basis of a given situation at a given time. Let’s say we are in Europe today, when, without thinking too much about it, a social movement with libertarian characteristics, originating in local struggles, considers linking up with other similar movements in other states. One might think that the movement in question should be sufficiently consolidated and enlightened to set itself more ambitious goals, beyond the local sphere in which it was circumscribed. We would then deduce that a cumulative process of experience would have culminated and that the degree of development achieved would allow the “globalisation” of the movement. The overcoming of the state framework would therefore necessarily take place from the inside out. However, there are historical examples to the contrary. The International Workers’ Association was not first constituted in spaces delimited by the state. A local committee convened a congress attended by various delegates with different levels of representativeness; the idea caught on and soon “regional” organisations were formed and further congresses were held. State frameworks were not an obstacle. A general atmosphere was in the air in the various social scenes of the capitalist world prior to the emergence of the IWA. The local was at the same time universal. The proletarian condition extended to all corners of the planet in the same way, so that any worker could feel the most geographically distant struggles as his own. Contrary to the struggles of the bourgeoisie, which pursued the constitution of national states, proletarian struggles transcended any state barrier: they were internationalist by nature. Moreover, the First International saw itself as the bearer of the seeds of the future society. Such a society would result from the universalisation of the organisation of the International. Only the bridge between reality and the future would have to be built either through the parliamentary action of strong political parties, according to the Marxist current, or through “a powerful but always invisible revolutionary collectivity preparing the revolution and leading it”, according to the Bakuninist current.
Only in view of the uniform, massified, consumerist lifestyle imposed by current capitalist globalisation, predatory urbanism, the absolute domination of technology and the extraordinary development of states, particularly of their mechanisms of social control, the chances of a social movement spreading outside the state that contains it are truly minimal. Even those with the greatest impact are ephemeral and leave little trace in consciousness. In the late stages of capitalism, the proletarian condition has become so generalised that it no longer constitutes a distinguishing mark on which to build a class identity. The penetration of capital into everyday life prevents this. Between so many particular interests present and so much dissolved sociability, no general class interest can be formulated. The atomisation under capitalism, extremely favoured by urban development plans, prohibits the solidarity, mutual support or fraternal relations that characterised and governed the proletarian communities of yesteryear. In fact, it is eminently anti-associative. Nevertheless, conflicts occur where the onslaught of the economy – or the undesirable consequences of such an onslaught – meet resistance around which a nuanced anti-capitalism can take shape. New collectives and social movements are born against patriarchy, the industrial way of life, industrial agriculture and food, climate change, air, land and water pollution, green capitalism, evictions, rent prices, low wages, the exploitation of the undocumented, the multiplication of motorways, rampant urbanisation, mass tourism, and so on. And the same struggles give rise to forms of sociability outside the dominant mercantile values, although we are far from “a new human community within the old, that is also in conflict with it”, of which the internationals dreamed.
The social question, as it overflows the world of work, is rethought in a fragmentary way, without any global critique being able to unify it. Any attempt to project it from an international congress has always been a resounding failure. The pathetic poverty of the outcome deters many from repeating the feat, but there are always those who take pleasure in such events. The fractioning of the social question corresponds to a dispersion of theories with increasing irrational components. Thanks to postmodern philosophy, and especially to the devaluation of memory that it has brought about, capitalism has also won the battle in the field of ideas. Militant self-education is now considered unnecessary; ideas are reduced to propaganda. In the realm of forgetting and forgetfulness, references to the past are useless, as well as references to the future. Goals do not matter, only the present counts. In this context, mentioning a future without a state, based on voluntary associations of free and autonomous communities, sounds alien. In material and personal conditions at odds with ideological ones, a retreat to the local is advisable. However, the desire for clarification is only a secondary aspect of a strategic retreat. The anti-capitalist struggle is first and foremost a struggle against globalisation, a struggle for de-globalisation, which implies a return to the grassroots. The local becomes more important than in the past. The establishment of relations at the global level will this time start from the expansion and subsequent confluence of local experiences.
Struggles are not really anti-capitalist if they do not reject the consumerist, techno-dependent, individualistic and peri-urban lifestyle typical of the dominant social organisation. Since capitalism is omnipresent, the rejection will be abstract, but it can become quite concrete at the local level. Locally, societal and autonomous ways of life can be built on the margins of capital, more easily outside urban agglomerations and residential areas, in the territory, which drives ruralising processes whose irradiation depends on their exemplarity and effectiveness. The decolonisation of the space shaped by the real estate market is mandatory. On the other hand, groups of unemployed workers are beginning to occupy or rent land to plant vegetable gardens and organise networks to distribute their produce, thus counteracting the demoralisation produced by forced idleness. This shift in the focus of conflicts from labour to the defence of territory has important consequences. In the territory, it is relatively easy for different collectives with sometimes conflicting dispositions to converge, but they are able to find common ground and establish links that will enable them to emerge victorious from the clash with the dominant interests. The coordination of struggles paves the way for the re-emergence of a unified social question, reflecting the incipient self-construction of the anti-capitalist subject, the one that in the past was called the ‘proletariat’. Evidently, its defining characteristics will be others more in line with the malign potential of the new technologies and the urbanism of dispersion or, seen from another angle, with the historical conjuncture. It is an excuse to say that, at present, social movements tend to fade rather than expand, with the result that meetings of collectives have little continuity and attempts at supra-state coordination, if they do occur, do not go beyond a first stage of contact and exchange of material. Let us look at the reasons for this.
It is easy to be inclined to think of the demoralising effect of the visible presence of adventurers, nutcases, curious people, charlatans and other toxic characters, that is, the “lumpen” of today as a factor in the disarticulation of movements without bosses or rules, but only if we stick to static movements, paradoxically enough, such as Occupy or 15M, whose aim is none other than to fill their existential void by emotional means. But other demobilising factors weigh more heavily, such as heterogeneity and self-limitation. The variety of elements that concur in the defensive movements, mainly the group of mayors, elected officials and party militants, impregnated with a citizens mentality, prevents the realisation of programmes and strategies that are too radical (remember the failed interstate No-Tav coordination). The self-restraint imposed by most territorial conflicts makes them barely distinguishable from “not in my backyard” protests (struggles against high-voltage power lines, against wind farms, against tourist flats…). However, the most damaging factor of all, digitalisation, has not been given due attention, or at least, outside the small anti-development circles. Without even realising it, contestation activity has become largely virtualised, which is to say that it has escaped reality. Hyperconnectedness may have accelerated membership and the promotion of demonstrations in a moment, but it has magnified both its volatility and its innocuousness. Without a multiplicity of direct relationships, commitments are labile and social responsibility quickly evaporates. Popularity for today, vacuity for tomorrow. Messages are spread and forgotten at high speed, submerged in an ocean of irrelevant information. Virtual space, the so-called “cyberspace”, is not neutral; it is designed to make money. It tends to maintain the capitalist status quo, however much its creators may claim otherwise, something that has become apparent with the rapid spread of social networks. The social movements that make use of them have to face a veritable avalanche of manipulations that are indifferent to the unlikely difficulties that state frameworks may impose. The new generations were born with mobile phones in their hands. We are at the beginning of a uniform digital culture propelled by platforms that create aberrant identities and parallel realities. This culture is homogenous and universal, speaking all languages. In the last decade, social networks have changed for the worse the way a vast majority of people around the world think, behave and relate to each other. They have finished off in time the predatory work of urbanisation in space. For users, fully reconfigured, the true reality is what they convey. They do not need anything else. In a very short time, the classic means of education and information, books, magazines, newspapers, conferences and debates, have become rare, ignorance spreads unchecked by whatsapp and disinformation in the form of fake news is rampant. The power of networks to distort reality, pseudo-polarise it and forge a mob mentality is terrifying. Individuals’ cognitive and moral processes are being seriously damaged, their personalities destabilised, and, meanwhile, everyday life reappears shaped by the incentives and norms imposed by the algorithms of industrialised persuasion. Given the great speed with which advances and new discoveries (e.g. artificial intelligence) are being made, the manipulative capacity of digital platforms promises to surpass all kinds of limitations. The mechanisms of alienation and psychopathy have a great future ahead of them. Real conflicts do not escape a trivialising virtualisation as they gain access to advertising, from which it is impossible to escape. The social question becomes an existential question. Social movements thus have their greatest enemy, their greatest conditioning factor, in the networks. The high degree of sectarianism and aggressiveness of certain groups with a woke ideology that is currently dynamiting the libertarian media is not alien to the platforms. Curiously, these same groups tend to take the side of new technologies and oppose anti-industrial positions. And nor are they immune to the on-screen prominence or fictitious prestige of many social media influencers. For these reasons, relationships on any scale have to be built from the outside. Or at least keep their lines of action and coordination well outside; immersing oneself in the laborious task of weaving organisation through personal contacts, meetings, paper publications, face-to-face assemblies and rotating coordinators. Breaking out of capitalism used to be an operation that was hardly practicable within metropolitan conurbations. It is also impossible today without breaking away from the online networks.