NetWar:
The New Threat
to Contemporary
Capitalism
By Amin Sharif
|
. . . of all the emerging roles of
computer communications in social conflict . . . the
most serious challenge to the basic institutional
structure of modern society flows from the emergence of
computer linked global social movements that are
increasingly challenging both national and supranational
policy-making institutions . . . The suggestion is that
we are currently witnessing an accelerating circulation
of social conflict whose participants recognize a common
enemy: contemporary capitalism. In their increasingly
common rejection of business priorities their struggle
cannot but recall Marxist notions of “class warfare.”
Yet the common opposition to capitalism is not
accompanied by the old notion of a unified alternative
project of socialism. On the contrary, such a vision has
been displaced by a proliferation of diverse projects
and notions that there is no need for universal rule.
-- Henry Cleaver, Computer
Linked Social Movements and the Global Threat to
Capitalism (1999) |
The above quote is
literally and figuratively pregnant with meaning for forces for
and against “contemporary capitalism.” With the defeat of
Soviet-style socialism and the continued co-optation of the
communist regime in China, it was thought that the field was
clear of any real opposition to the New World Order and hegemony
of the United States of America.
But just when things looked
best for global capitalist forces a new threat has emerged. The
new threat comes, according to Henry Cleaver, from not one
single rogue nation or movement (i.e. international communism)
as was the case during the Cold War. Instead, the new global
threat to capitalism comes from hundreds, perhaps thousands of
“information age” organizations with anti-capitalist
agendas.
These groups and the
individuals within them constitute a “threat matrix” that
could one day lead to the direct overthrow of global capitalism.
Mr. Cleaver even has a name for the conflict between the
“information age activists” and “contemporary
capitalism”—“Netwar!”
What is significant for
these “information activists” and their anti-capitalist
organizations—the new computer linked social movement—to
understand is that their activities have already caught the eyes
of “independent critical intellectuals, mainstream social
scientists and National
Security Analysts.”
Cleaver’s paper, itself,
is a compilation from various sources. But, from reading
Cleaver’s paper, it is clear that he was deeply impressed by
the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. These
intellectuals were able to transcend “Left notions of
structuralism” and “dialectics” and have instead been able
to focus on the “micro-dynamics of the individual and the
social movements” themselves.
In other words, these men
scrapped the old way of analyzing social movements and their
participants in favor of different and more revealing analysis.
What they have concluded is that there is emerging a global
network of progressives, radicals, and revolutionaries linked by
modern information technology—e-mail, cell phone, pc’s, etc.
that yield power greater than the sum of their parts.
These computer linked
social movements include environmentalists, human rights
activists, immigration advocates, indigenous peoples’
movements and fighters for freedom in cyberspace. Individually,
these social movements might seem weak. But, like individual
threads woven together (by websites and the Internet), they
undoubtedly constitute a considerable and threatening force to
global contemporary capitalism.
To illustrate this point,
Cleaver presents an analysis of the “Zapatista
Movement”-an armed uprising for land reform and dignity by
the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, Mexico in 1994. His paper
points out that “the most striking thing about the sequence of
events set in motion on January 1, 1994 has been the speed with
which news of the struggle circulated and rapidity of the
mobilization of support which resulted.”
This was due, according to
Cleaver’s assessment, to the “Internet and the Association
of Progressive Communications Network.” Despite the Mexican
government’s effort to suppress any and all information
related to the Zapatistas, the word still got out through the
Internet and the progressive media. This was because
Subcommandante Marco [sic] of the Zapatista National Liberation
Army (EZLN) in Mexico was able to “utilize a portable laptop computer to issue orders to other EZLN units via
modem and to foreign media contacts in order to maintain a
favorable international propaganda image.”
Cleaver based his
conclusions about the EZLN on a 1995 Defense Department
“strategic assessment” of the Internet for the Special
Assistant of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.
Cleaver’s paper, however,
is not merely concerned with an analysis of this new, emerging
threat to global capitalism. His paper also suggests a general
strategy for waging a Counter-Netwar against these new
anti-capitalist social movements. Interestingly enough, the best
strategy to defeat the “information age” activist movement
is not a military response or more political repression.
Cleaver states that such
actions would be “totally inappropriate” considering the
“political character of the social conflict” at hand.
Instead, Cleaver points out that a strategy for dealing with the
new global threat has already been fashioned by international
capitalist agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF. These
agencies employ a strategy known as “consultation
co-optation” when dealing with “information age”
organizations who oppose such issues as globalization and
advocate Third World debt forgiveness, etc.
Consultation co-optation is
a process by which the international capitalist agencies engage
social movements in fruitless negotiation aimed at giving the
appearance of progress. This strategy has a “triple advantage
for agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF:
1. it gets the
activists off the street into the less visible conference
room;
2. it adds to the
stock of ideas about how to foster capitalist development;
3. it bleeds time,
energy, and creativity away from any consideration of more
radical tactics.”
This strategy of
co-optation reached its apex when the IMF uses it in dealing
with the labor movement in South Korea. As Cleaver points out:
“The surprising willingness in early January of 1998 of IMF
Managing Director William Camdessus to meet with workers in
South Korea who were opposing the government-IMF program to deal
with the ‘Asian Crisis’ broke with all previous practice.
His promise to set up a permanent dialogue between the IMF and the labor movement is very
much in the spirit of the World Bank’s consultation with its
critics.”
So, here, we find that
under the guise of having a “dialogue with civil society,”
agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF seek to defuse the
growing militancy of the new anti-capitalist movement.
But, as Cleaver points out,
this strategy can only work if these new anti-capitalist forces
are willing to move from the streets to the conference room.
More and more, the new anti-capitalist forces have chosen
confrontation rather than consultation as evidenced by their
actions at the WTO meeting in Seattle recently.
Yet, not only is the
strategy of consultation co-optation subject to defeat by the
new anti-capitalists forces by refusing to enter the conference
room, it is also subject to defeat by a preemptive strike by
these same forces. Just such a preemptive strike occurred when
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
tried to negotiate and pass a Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI) “behind the backs of most of the world’s
people.”
The MAI was an initiative
that would have defined a set of “global rights” for
corporate investors throughout the world. Negotiations for the
MAI began in 1995 but did not become public until 1997 when a
draft of the proposal was leaked. Cleaver points out that the
temporary defeat of the MAI was, in part, due to the
“utilization of e-mail and websites to circulate information
about the MAI, including circulation of both the content of the
agreement and the undemocratic process of drafting it.”
As a result of the effort
of “information age” activism, the OEDC halted negotiations
in April of 1998 and France pulled out of the negotiations
completely.
It is clear from the two
examples above that these new social movements engender real
power. But, as Cleaver points out, this was not always so. In
fact, Cleaver explains, “before social movements demonstrated
their ability to organize an embarrassing amount of public
pressure, they were ignored.” It was only after these social
movements were able to “organize themselves internationally,
or globally, in ways that bypassed all layers of mediation that
previously protected institutions” that these diverse forces
became a concern for contemporary capitalism.
And Cleaver is clear on
what moved these heretofore impotent social movements into the
role of global antagonists to world capitalism. It was the fact
that they used the Internet and websites to construct
“elaborate connections and linkages . . . to bring vast
numbers of imaginative people into a collective endeavor where
their joint creativity challenges . . . power often organized in
more rigid and [a] less flexible manner.”
Cleaver continues:
“Against a powerful, rulemaking and enforcing institution,
grassroots power pits . . . a constituent force, more capable of
innovating and elaborating . . . new lines of struggle.”
What Cleaver has described
is nothing less than a movement of “information activists”
using highly adaptive tactics in waging an asymmetrical war in
both the real world and in cyberspace via websites and the
Internet against entrenched and inflexible international
capitalist agencies.
And, if history has taught
capitalist nation states anything, it is that they are not good
at fighting asymmetrical wars. One wonders if future generations
will one day speak of the battles fought by these “new
information” activists the way Civil Rights and Vietnam
activists speak of Pettus Bridge, the Freedom Rides, and the
resignation of President Johnson.
Perhaps, the confrontation
in Seattle against the WTO will be considered just as much a
political landmark event as Dr. King’s boycott in the South?
Who knows?
What is truly significant
is that this “new information” warfare has opened up a new
front for anti-capitalist struggle. And it has come of age under
conditions that were heretofore believed to be impossible
according to previous norms. During the Industrial Age,
progressives, radicals, and revolutionaries perceived
centralized and hierarchical movements (international communism,
civil rights, women’s rights, labor and anti-colonial
struggles) as being the best way to oppose capitalism.
These movements sought
ideological purity and brooked no deviation from policy. If
ideological differences arose these movement simply purged the
offending members or in the case of the USSR sent them to gulags
or killed them. In other words, these adherents to
“centralized” control of organization and thought precluded
any kind of real democracy ever being practiced.
But the new “information
age” organizations present a counter-example of how
anti-capitalist warfare can be waged. These new “information
age” forces, unlike their predecessors, prize decentralization
and democratic mechanisms as a means to fight their enemies. As
such, by their very existence and mode of struggle, these new
“information” based social movements represent a break with
most or all of the Leftist notions of “struggle.”
As Cleaver has pointed out,
they have supplanted the vision of old style “universal
socialism” with their own diverse visions of a new world. So,
in the end, it is not simply contemporary, global capitalism
that is threatened by these new forces. The old ideologues of
social change may also be swept away by a younger, more
innovative social movement!
Cleaver does not make any
predictions as to whether these new social movements will
succeed in carrying out their threat to displace contemporary
capitalism. Though Clever is not willing to interpret the
proverbial handwriting on the wall he is at least willing to
admit that such writing exists. And, in the end, it will be the
new “information age” movement itself that will have to
decide how far it is willing to go.
But there can be little doubt that this new force
antagonistic to capitalism has decided for now that it will
continue their net war against international capitalist agencies
such as the WTO, IMF, OECD who seek to continue to oppress
millions around the world. If they succeed in doing nothing more
than tying the hands of these international tyrants then these
“information age” activists will have still performed a
heroic service for the oppressed peoples of the world.
posted 2003
* * *
* *
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update 22 December 2011
|
