Seattle is dead, long live MultitudeSeattle is dead, long live MultitudeSeattle is dead, long live Multitude
One of the things that tires me to no end about left activists is the notion that we all have to be on the same page, all the time, about everything. Having weathered through a seemingly endless number of house meetings, groupthinks, clusterfucks and so on, I can personally testify to the incessant drum beat of such practices. Note that this includes anti-authoritarians, although for obvious reasons, not to quite the same degree as a centralized, cadre-driven Marxist-Leninist party: think vegans, punk rock/hipster conformity, and collective living.
In no small part, I think this hive-mind-as-potluck tendency is due to leftover – and in some cases, active – strains of 1960s/70s Leninist centrism within left activist circles; an approach that has its origins in a centralized vanguard controlling a mass movement via multiple satellites. Simply put, this approach has outlived its debatable usefulness, both culturally and practically. If anything, discussing this in anything other than the past tense reflects how much a large portion of the activist left is out of touch with the changes that are happening rapidly within global culture. A cursory glance over the political landscape in the US reveals many recognizable movements, and then there’s the thousands of internet-based groups, of which a small but notable minority are political in nature – and yet, if you were to take your information from your standard Usual Suspects, you would be under the impression that there’s a small scattering of such movements, if not a monolithically framed “The Movement” – as if working for social change was some sort of singularity for process freaks – while groups on the internet are dismissed as being escapist or dilettantish.
In fact, it is not centralized, factory-like apperatti that drive social change at this point; instead, it is the very same tendencies towards decentralization and spontaneous mass formation that are part of the culture as a whole, and that are frequently used to formulate mass opinion via crowd psychology. As awful as that may sound, this trend is enormously beneficial: as Rosa Luxembourg noted back in the day, revolution starts with the unconscious: the spontaneous forming of mass resistance to societal forces occurs when a critical mass of people can’t take the unbearable bullshit of it all and start to fight back. It is after this resistance starts to mature a bit that the need for some sort of organizational structure begins to take root. In addition, as Hardt and Negri note in their seminal books Empire and Multitude, the fomentation of a decentralized mostly rural resistance under a centralized command has started to give way to a urban one of a more autonomous nature, circa 1968 onward. As such, the formation of Empire through a decentralized web of semi-conscious individuals, wherein each person is a potential consumer (or if you will, an energy source within a Matrix-like socioeconomic framework) is also the same mechanism wherein individuals can wake up, creatively formulate and strategize with others, and start to resist their own subjugation.
This process of shifting from centralization to autonomy began as many things do: at the end of a cycle. As anarchists were still suffering from the defeat in Spain (as was everybody on the left who was within Franco’s purview), the beginnings of what would become the New Left were beginning to take shape, both culturally and politically. Possibly because of the psychological impact of World War II, as well as the eventual mass availability of the birth control pill and the personal computer, the progressive modernist ideals of the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th century were giving way to postmodern ones. It is for this reason that what has matured throughout the latter part of the 20th century up to the present day is not a centralized, vertical apparatus, but a swarm of decentralized, horizontal pluralities with varying states of authority or autonomy on a case-by-case basis. Seen through a modernist lens, this may look like a regression; but in fact, it is a meaningful shift in tactics and strategies to the present-day virtuality of culture. What is now clear is that centralized organizing as a unitary movement-generating tool has long outlived its prime, and what the left – and in particular, the radical left – is currently suffering from is the last vestiges of that dying ember.
And now, we find ourselves in the midst of an even more articulated form of autonomous resistance yet again, thanks to the internet. The very technologies that are being used to monitor us all are also being used to coordinate the beginnings of mass resistance. As Clay Shirky notes in his seminal book Here Comes Everybody, what used to be the exclusive domain of governments and mainstream media is now potentially in the hands of all, or will be very shortly: from flash mobs in Belarus to internet-coordinated student walkouts in the US, people are using digital technology to assert their collective power in creative and unpredictable ways. (The irony of this to Star Trek fans should be evident: it’s as if the Federation – the government – had given the Borg – the resistance – a bad reputation by castigating it as mindless and hierarchal, when in fact the opposite is true.)
With time, hopefully the activist left will start to capitalize more effectively on this trend towards mass decentralization and empowerment, and act accordingly. As it presently stands, it appears that we’re going through a prolonged period of the left using these tools, but not necessarily being adept at manipulating them. (My own personal attempts to educate fellow activists on the usefulness of these technologies can stand as testament to this fact: having grown weary of debating the merits of the web with laptop-lugging luddites and patiently re-re-schooling “How do I use the internet?” newbies, I’ve taken to blogging instead.) While I do think this is a shame, I also contend that it is critical for people on the left to realize that people en masse are going to empower themselves, with or without activists to “help” them. Any other course of action would be a rather profane act of self-effacement, serving no real purpose other than adhere to antiquated notions about the nature of power in society, such as technology being exclusively in service to our supposed betters, rather than a multi-faceted manifestation of biopower that embodies as much as it oppresses. Most people do not have the sort of luxury that allows for such adherence, and the left should not delude themselves into thinking that they have that sort of cultural opulence either.
