[iDC] What is Left? / What Does a Distributed Politics Look Like?

[Keith Hart]

Thanks, Abe, for bringing up this topic in this way and Brian as usual, 
of course.

I agree that if solidarity means unions vs corporations 20th-century 
style, it doesn't play all that well under present circumstances. It 
didn't really succeed before as a territorial strategy: why gather 
somewhere you can be easily attacked? (I particularly liked your 
emphasis on the land as a factor in conflict). But solidarity has been 
quite successful in other circumstances. Take the abolition movement, 
the anti-colonial revolution and the anti-apartheid movement.

People like Thomas Clarkson invented modern single-issue politics when 
fighting slavery in the late 18th century, aided by the Haitian 
revolution. This was a truly international political movement in another 
age of globalization. The Lancashire cotton famine of the 1860s was 
caused by the South's ports being blockaded in the Civil War. While the 
bosses lobbied for British battleships to be sent and moved production 
to Bombay, the unemployed workers demonstrated in large numbers for the 
freedom of labour and the North.

The most important social movement of the 20th century was the move by 
peoples forced into world society by western imperialism during the 
previous century to establish their own direct relation to it. The 
anti-colonial revolution mobilized huge numbers in ways that the 
organized left in the West never understood and presumed to 'lead'. When 
CLR James predicted in the 1930s that Africa would soon be free through 
its own efforts, no-one believed him. Gandhi left a well-documented 
record of his political philosophy and methods. These included sitting 
alone on a street corner in a 1920s Ahmedabad strike and making himself 
the focus of political action in a matter of days. Not to mention 
symbolic tactics like the famous march to the sea to make salt. The 
means for expressing global resistance to the apartheid regime are in 
living memory.

The French have a lot to say about solidarity, of course, and they have 
not lost the ability to show it effectively on the streets. I recommend 
to any reader of French a Gallimard (2006) handbook of economic 
resistance to neoliberalism, the Dictionnaire de l'autre economie, whose 
slogan is economie solidaire in numerous guises. It sold 6,000 copies in 
the first year -- 700 pages and only 11 euros. The main editor, 
Jean-Louis Laville, is now trying to publish a version in English.

The Japanese philosopher, Kojin Karatani, wrote an interesting book 
reworking Kant and Marx, Transcritique, in which he advocated 
anti-capitalist methods like consumer boycotts a la Gandhi and community 
currencies such as LETS. We may dispute the political efficacy of these 
particular tactics, but they do point to a broader conception of 
solidarity in action.

I am not sure that politics today is any more 'distributed' than at some 
times in the past. But a distributed politics requires us to engage with 
economic power at many levels and in ways that are not restricted to the 
example of western labour movements.

Keith Hart
www.thememorybank.co.uk



Abe Burmeister wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>
> First off thank you for you quick and insightful reply and please  
> forgive me when I say that I can't take much solace from your answer.
>
> Solidarity is of course a historically important tactic for the left,  
> and in all likelihood will continue to be important in certain times  
> and spaces. But it also seems to me that it is a tactic that's  
> effectiveness is tied to the land. That is to say, when it is used in  
> a struggle against a power that needs to stay in place, it can be  
> quite effective. But when a power is dematerialized, when it can  
> shift across the globe in miliseconds, or even days & weeks, how much  
> can it accomplish. Its something that can be seen rather readily when  
> you look at where unions are effective, at least here in the US.
>
> Locate a strong trade union and odds are you will find an industry  
> that is locked into a limited location. It's no coincidence that  
> government workers are the most unionized of all workers in the US,  
> the governments power in it's entirety is tied to the land. Similarly  
> as I'm sure you are well aware, it's far easier (but not of course  
> easy) to unionize (and keep unionized) highly centralized industries,  
> namely large industrials like automakers and steel. The reason is  
> simple of course they have nowhere to go, the factories are to large  
> and too heavy to move. They can fight the union or attempt to pull in  
> scabs from outside the area, but if a union achieves real solidarity  
> within itself and it's community it has a good chance of achieve real  
> victories. In the pure economic terms the company managers like to  
> use, it's cheaper to negotiate with the union than to either fight it  
> or to relocate. Hence in an industry like garment manufacture, where  
> the equipment is literally small enough to be carried by one person,  
> the success of unions, and really the success of solidarity is  
> fleeting, the conditions don't improve the jobs just pick up and  
> leave for spaces with less solidarity.
>
> None of this is new of course, but I put it out there really as a  
> reminder for just why I think it's important that the left look to  
> build create and discover new tactics for a distributed age. To  
> borrow some terminology from internet, we live in a time when  
> corporations can literally route around solidarity, and that requires  
> an answer in kind, no?
>
>
> cheers,
> Abe
>
>
>
> On Sep 17, 2007, at 6:25 PM, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
>   
>> Abe Burmeister wrote:
>>     
>>> What is Left?
>>>  What does a distributed
>>> politics look like? For we are just beginning to create a tool  
>>>       
>> set to  really look at and understand the distributed networks that  
>> interweave the globe.
>>
>> Hello Abe,
>>
>> Thanks for this question. And happiness to Trebor and Jenny and  
>> their new baby!
>>
>> You are right, what the Left is cannot be answered by neuroscience.
>>
>> In history a key word stands out: solidarity. An Italian guy named  
>> Bobbio looked deeply into the question a decade or so ago. He came  
>> up with essentially that answer: the aspiration to equality, and  
>> the solidarity required to achieve it.
>>
>> Since 1968, tremendous changes in the structure and demands of  
>> capital have been interpreted in complex ways by many different  
>> kinds of people in the developed sectors of society who formerly  
>> would have identified themselves as Left, who at once benefited  
>> from various forms of liberation that happened in the 20th century,  
>> and suffered from many other things. At the same time, the failure  
>> of the classical Left national modernization programs to do  
>> anything about gaping class divides has pushed many people on to  
>> other solutions for the existential problem.
>>
>> Today the compass is broken. None of the old definitions is going  
>> to help, including the one that identified Left with a certain kind  
>> of vanguard. The capitalist elites have become so crazy about the  
>> future which they think they posses by birthright, that it's a  
>> actually a little scary. Still I don't feel conservative. A Left  
>> split between nostalgia for its past, and uncertainty whether the  
>> fact of being "distributed," or "digital," etc. will be simply lost  
>> in its own kaleidosope.
>>
>> Around us is tremendous suffering, injustice, assaults on every  
>> kind of freedom, a dangerous world. There is no organized force to  
>> confront it, even if many are trying. Pretending that spontaneity  
>> or the magic of technology would create what is needed is childish  
>> and only the privileged would have the time and emotional security  
>> to dream of it. The only answer I can see to your question is to  
>> contribute to the necessity of a new formulation of the Left, by  
>> weighing one's own acts and words and work in the light of what  
>> that could be. The historical Left arose out of long struggles in  
>> which people learned to be aware of their particular class position  
>> and work beyond it. We can do that today. Around the world and by  
>> by any media necessary.
>>
>> solidarity,
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>
>>
>> Abe Burmeister wrote:
>>     
>>> What is Left?
>>> The left perhaps has never been unified. Perhaps it has always  
>>> been a  patchwork of interests: labor unions, marxists,  
>>> socialists,  feminists, queers, green activists, anarchists,  
>>> progressives,  billionaire followers of Karl Popper, Hong Kong  
>>> born pyramid  schemers, a whole slew of post-hippie entrepreneurs,  
>>> and who knows  what else all get mushed together under the same  
>>> banner, although a  few might deny it themselves. Unity is perhaps  
>>> a luxury reserved for  the right, although it of course has it's  
>>> own divides, particularly  between those whose politics stem more  
>>> from a desire to gain and  retain power and those whose politics  
>>> are more about a reluctance to  embrace change.
>>> Last week a study in Nature Neuroscience [ http://www.nature.com/  
>>> neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn1979.html ] presented a very  
>>> 21st  century interpretation of left vs. right. Those on the  
>>> political left  apparently are more cognitively open to and aware  
>>> of change itself.  The classic conservative vs. liberal divide has  
>>> been reconstructed as  a neuro-politics. For those that identify  
>>> themselves as being on the  left (and I suspect most of this list  
>>> does in at least some regard)  it's a tantalizing study, for it  
>>> basically says that to be  conservative is to be stupid.  
>>> Unfortunately though it is based  entirely on a study of the  
>>> letters "M" and "W" being flashed on  screen in a set up where  
>>> response time is measured. Hardly enough  grounds to make large  
>>> scale conclusions about politics at large, or  at least one would  
>>> hope. For one thing the left is far more  conservative than many  
>>> of it's members would like to let on.
>>> The right wing (or at least a small intellectual section of it)  
>>> after  all has long been struggling to reclaim the word liberal,  
>>> while large  sections of the left are increasingly mired in fits  
>>> of nostalgia. In  the French Revolutionary era of course the left  
>>> rapidly moved  rightward as new more radical members joined the  
>>> Legislative  Assembly. Yet today if there is any movement at all  
>>> it is probably  best described as a churning. The center left is  
>>> alternately busy  dismantling the gains of the 20th century or  
>>> busy frantically trying  to hold on to and defend what remains.  
>>> The most active and charged  leftist movement of today is the  
>>> green movement, which has the  scientific community behind it, and  
>>> increasingly the media and in  some spaces popular politics behind  
>>> it as well. Yet at its roots  environmentalism (or at least large  
>>> strains of it) is about  conservation, that is to say conservatism  
>>> by another name.
>>> It's not just in environmentalism where the left flirts with   
>>> conservatism. It's perhaps most visibly apparent in architecture  
>>> at  least in America, the more liberal the town or neighborhood,  
>>> the more  regressive the housing stock. Meanwhile it is  
>>> conservatives who are  more likely to embrace genetically modified  
>>> food, nuclear power and  the latest march to war. The liberal /  
>>> conservative divide as laid  out in by neuroscience is all about  
>>> change yet it breaks down when  applied across the actual politics  
>>> of people. There are other vectors  for explaining and dividing  
>>> politics of course, power being the most  glaring of them. But  
>>> when you start combining it all, power, money,  change, faith,  
>>> race, land, freedom and whatever else people bring to  the table,  
>>> the political landscape that emerges does not divide on  left  
>>> versus right axis at all, nor on straight top to bottom  hierarchy  
>>> either but instead fragments in many dimensions, and into  the  
>>> multifold complexities that make up real politics the world over.   
>>> What is left then is of course... very complicated.
>>> This is being posted to the "Institute for Distributed  
>>> Creativity"  and the real question being asked is: What does a  
>>> distributed  politics look like? For we are just beginning to  
>>> create a tool set to  really look at and understand the  
>>> distributed networks that  interweave the globe. From power laws  
>>> to protocols, through tracings  and generations, and as it goes  
>>> almost without saying by utilizing  the unprecedented ability to  
>>> transmit information across the globe, a  whole new way of looking  
>>> at politics is now at least theoretically  possible. There are  
>>> antecedents of course, Bruno Latour and company's  Actor Network  
>>> Theory (ANT) in particular comes to mind. But while ANT  and its  
>>> variations has resulted in some rather interesting and  detailed  
>>> tracings/portraits of complex networks, it has done little  to  
>>> incorporated the actual advances in network theory itself. By   
>>> understanding these dynamics and ever evolving interconnections is  
>>> it  possible to move beyond the politics of left and right, the  
>>> politics  of have and have not and towards an understanding of  
>>> distributed  politics?
>>> - Abe Burmeister
>>> New York City, September 2007
>>> ps. Big thanks to Trebor for inviting me to moderate this list, as  
>>> I  non-academic I suspect it will be quite an intriguing and  
>>> hopefully  exciting experience...
>>> Abe Burmeister | abe at abstractdynamics.org | +1 917.806.8177
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>>> Abstract Dynamics | www.abstractdynamics.org
>>> Abe Burmeister Design | www.abeburmeister.com
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>