[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

Wed Apr 8 19:29:57 CEST 2009

Hi Ryan,

yes to p2p alternatives, but are they in any way strong enough to offer a
full alternative? they aren't yet ..

so for the time being, it will need to compose with a mainstream system ...

after the slump it could either turn out more ugly, but I don't think we
should rule out a priori any new social compromise based on crisis and
struggle, since it happened so many times before (1848, 1945); when parts of
the elite see the old system is doomed, lost legitimacy, they may usually be
ready for a new social compact, given that the social movement is strong
enough to avoid a regressive alternative.

The question is whether, because the conjunction of long-cycle crisis with
structural biospheric and resource crisis, this uptake can occur or not, I
think the question is an 'open' one

Michel

On 4/9/09, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I struggle with large scale false consciousness arguments.  If false
> consciousness isn't shattered by the Internet, what force could ever be
> pervasive and decentralized enough to overwhelm whatever it is that seems to
> blind us?  We always find a new Enlightened One.  I for one doubt that
> enlightenment isn't entirely subjective.
>
> The green capitalism thesis is compelling, but again I cannot myself
> envision its models, predecessors or logical development from the status
> quo.
>
> Peer to peer models of interaction seem more legitimate and decentralized
> than anything prior.  Ideas like enhancing the Commons yet not having
> everything be the Commons, building things openly, governing things
> collaboratively, seem to be the most compelling aspects of futurism we now
> have.
>
> I again and again have hoped for some enlightened technocratic solutions,
> but the new boss is always the same as the old boss.
>
> Ryan Lanham
>
>
>
>
>  On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Michel,
>>
>>
>>
>> I suspect you’d find plenty of Marxists who would quarrel with the claim
>> that classical fascism was independent from finance capital.  However, I
>> don’t term today’s regimes fascist in the literal sense, I term them
>> “neo-totalitarian” meaning they have many of the features of totalitarianism
>> but in a new combination.  The big difference from classical
>> totalitarianisms is that neo-totalitarianism is closely tied up with
>> capitalism as such…  not so much with racialism and the
>> petty-bourgeoisie, or with bureaucratic anti-capitalism…  I see it
>> converging however, with the Chinese model and the likes of Malaysia and
>> Singapore.
>>
>>
>>
>> However, I think current regimes attempt thought control through political
>> uses of the media, education etc, and that they do attempt to “use the state
>> in a radical/revolutionary way”, namely the reconstruction of subjectivities
>> as conformist, “employable” etc.  This is the difference between “Third
>> Way” social control and classical neoliberalism.  I think if you subtract
>> the aspects of polyarchy, nominal independence of the media and formal
>> rights protections, and bracket out the content of the ideology imposed,
>> neo-totalitarianism is almost indistinguishable from classical
>> totalitarianism (at least in its “weaker” form, in Brezhnev’s Russia or
>> eastern Europe for example).  Perhaps the mistake is made that
>> totalitarianism is assumed to be something it isn’t…  for instance that
>> it could only possibly apply to things like high Stalinism or wartime
>> Nazism, and not their successors and little brothers; and the false
>> assumption that totalitarians actually sought to destroy ALL space of
>> dissent (rather than to drastically narrow its expression) and that they
>> succeeded in total thought control (which empirical research has shown was
>> not achieved even in high Stalinism or wartime Nazism).  I think the
>> biggest resistance in recognising regimes like contemporary Britain as
>> neo-totalitarian is that people balk at the idea that a totalitarian regime
>> can also have de jure features of liberal democracy – yet the Nazis retained
>> aspects of the architecture of Weimar institutions, and Stalin introduced
>> the world’s most democratic constitution.
>>
>>
>>
>> Key to totalitarianism is the attempt at total mobilisation of society
>> within a state-controlled scheme (high-intensity passive revolution), with
>> zero tolerance for difference, general closure of social space and a
>> requirement of active participatory conformity (not simply an absence of
>> active revolt).  This aspect, which differentiates totalitarianism both
>> from (even the most degenerated) liberal-democracies and from conservative
>> authoritarianisms (based on patronage), is certainly present in regimes like
>> Britain.  To be included, one has to accept the mantras of
>> “employability”, anti-“crime” fanaticism and so on.  And everyday life is
>> micro-regulated in very minute ways, greater if anything than historical
>> totalitarianisms – cameras on every corner, DNA and fingerprint databases,
>> card-access systems, constant state propaganda through “public information”
>> posters, mobilisation of fear by the state PR machine through a pliant
>> media, etc.  The included are supposed to be *totally mobilised* in the
>> regime – not only as providers of abstract labour-power but as
>> self-motivated learners, possessers of “skills” (a kind of doublespeak,
>> meaning to have a particular “attitude” and way of communicating, meaning to
>> hold a particular conception of the world) which fit with neoliberal
>> capitalism, reacting as “any decent person” would react to the climate of
>> fear, avoiding any association with “extremism”, participating in mechanisms
>> of regulation such as reporting “anti-social behaviour” and taking part in
>> regulated forms of “community”, etc.  And any deviance, however small, is
>> instantly taken to be completely outside the field of legitimacy – not just
>> a little bit naughty but absolutely abhorrent and needing to be stamped out
>> with zero tolerance.  So we get the “dissident phenomenon” similar to the
>> “anti-Spain” in Francoism or the “dissidents” in eastern Europe – those who
>> are not totally inside are very radically outside, and potentially at risk.
>>
>>
>>
>> Even if you've a problem with the idea of Britain or America being
>> totalitarian, surely the status of China leaves little to the imagination?
>>
>>
>>
>> bw
>>
>> Andy
>>
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>
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