[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

Sun Apr 12 23:07:49 CEST 2009

Hi,

I agree with Michel that rhetorical hyperbole threatens to fog real threats
when (or if) they do arise.

Having just experienced the post 9-11 Bush Administration, and knowing
government rather well, I must say our organizations of state are more
feckless than I've ever seen.  Information makes a police state unthinkable.

I see no hegemonic "projects" existing or feasible.  We are rapidly headed
in the other direction.  Randomness, crowdsourcing and chaotic events of all
sorts are far more to the fore in the worlds I inhabit.

AI could pose a threat as some in the transhumanist discussions point out,
but that is a long way off.

Ryan Lanham

On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Athina Karatzogianni <athina.k at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Michel
>
> you wrote to andy "but totalitarianism, neo or not, I disagree,
>
> I also think it's counterproductive because when the real thing comes,
> we'll have lost all our conceptual ammunition"
>
> I think the real thing is already here in embryo. The difficulty is that
> recognising it as such, means you are obliged to do something about it.
> There is not enough willingness on the part of the middle classes, as
> life-style anarchism/or discursive theme variations of it are what is
> currently on the menu. Push button democracy is better than nothing, but not
> really the solution. On the contrary, as you constantly point out, the
> hardware 'real' aspects are very important, nevertheless individuals could
> feel threatened enough in certain 'liberal' democracies not to participate
> in alternatives, and that could have a serious effect.
>
> There are elements of every day life in these democracies that are
> neototalitarian. A small example that pops into my mind now is when the
> knowledge worker is constantly scored, timed and monitored in his work from
> going to the toilet to all sorts. Permeating everyday life with fear of
> losing your job (a teacher here in Britain lost her job for saying to a
> child when asked in a multicultural class that there is really not a santa
> clause per se --last xmas). In Britain it is a mainstream observation what
> there is a nanny state in operation, it is not a paranoid idea. Look at the
> state's reaction at last demos in London. Perhaps things are not as hard
> core as Thailand or other  countries, but they are still quite worrying,
> especially when these governments make very 'democratic' claims, providing
> the standards by which other countries would have to abide by to be deemed
> democratic enough to be included in alliances and economic unions.
>
> Lastly, neo-totalitarianism is not only the extreme forms one imagines,
> there are various freedoms that have been recalled both sides of the
> antlantic the past 7 years. That is another quite mainstream observation,
> especially now that Obama is in charge supposedly reversing the mess. You
> might have not experienced this in circles where being critical is one's
> job, like universities, but in the UK, my current country of residency I
> have seen from 96 to now a progressive trend towards neo totalitarianism,
> well hidden perhaps for the audiences abroad. In some professions, in some
> communities and in certain situations people are very careful of what they
> say and dont say.
>
> just a thought
>
> hoped you all had a great easter day
>
> athina
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Andy,
>>
>> I can see you have given considerable thought for this, and most of what
>> you say about what is happening is  true, I just have a problem with calling
>> it neototalitarianism. Even in the UK I see a thriving civil society, and
>> yes certainly Muslim movements are targeted, but in real democracy it has
>> never been the case that no minorities have been targeted ...
>>
>> A totalitarianism that gives us such large amounts of free speech,
>> organizing power, seems not very totalitarian to me, even with the predicate
>> neo, and differing with you, I don't think it will be able to descent intro
>> real totalitarianism without a real social defeat. The miner's defeat was
>> serious but nothing compared to the defeats leading to fascism and Nazism,
>> and neoliberalism was never able  to abolish all the welfare state
>> achievements, at least not ont the continent ... But even the UK, the NHS
>> and state education still stand, and the public's perception of them has
>> vastly improved in the last 10 years.
>>
>> Surveillance state yes, relative authoritarianism yes, danger for eventual
>> totalitarianism at some point, perhaps ...
>>
>> but totalitarianism, neo or not, I disagree,
>>
>> I also think it's counterproductive because when the real thing comes,
>> we'll have lost all our conceptual ammunition,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 4/9/09, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Michel,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, this discussion might have to wait till we both have time to
>>> discuss it properly.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But I’m inclined to think the statement (about China), “many
>>> alternatives are possible, as long as you not directly challenge the rule of
>>> the party”, would be true most of the time in post-49 China, in Russia
>>> after the death of Stalin in 1953, in most of eastern Europe most of the
>>> time, in Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy.  But with qualifiers
>>> which also apply to China today:  that the definition of what
>>> constitutes a “challenge” lies with the rulers, and can include pretty
>>> innocuous peaceful societal activities (Falun Gong for example, or waving a
>>> Tibetan or Taiwanese flag); that the risks involved in being deemed to be
>>> “challenging the rule of the party” or the state are extreme, the
>>> punishments severe; that the space for alternatives is far less if one is
>>> deemed part of the “anti-nation”; and that the alternatives are possible
>>> only at the level of ideas, and are suppressed the moment any attempt is
>>> made to realise them.  So if this typifies authoritarianism and not
>>> totalitarianism, then totalitarianism becomes almost nonexistent in history,
>>> referring to only two cases – Nazi Germany and high Stalinism in Russia.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Has there been “a severe social defeat of popular and democratic forces
>>> ”?  I think this would be a fair depiction of the situation in Britain
>>> (recent resurgence notwithstanding), predicated first on the Miners’ Strike
>>> and then the recourse to highly repressive policing of the Mayday protests.
>>> There’s been a dearth of any kind of widespread resistance or protest
>>> from about 2002 to the present day.  And the remaining dissident forces
>>> – numbering a few thousand perhaps, and very much demonised – have been
>>> attempting to recompose in a climate where any public dissident activity
>>> faces instant repression.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I’d similarly argue that there was never an *absence *of dissenting
>>> forces during any of the other totalitarian regimes, from contemporary China
>>> (the resurgence of urban unrest and persistent Tibetan and Xinjiang
>>> separatism) through Francoist Spain (persistent anti-regime protests and
>>> counterculture) to high Stalinism (peasant resistance and insurgency from
>>> marginal nationalities) and Nazism (movements like White Rose, Edelweiss
>>> Pirates, the early AFA, etc, not to mention resistance in the occupied
>>> countries).  It’s more a difference in *status *of the dissenting forces
>>> – in all these regimes, the dissenting forces operate as “dissidents” in a
>>> hostile climate, at considerable risk and outside the social mainstream,
>>> whereas in a democratic regime (even a degenerated/authoritarian democratic
>>> regime) they would normally be safe unless they were accused of particular
>>> acts.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The boundary between totalitarianism and authoritarianism is contentious,
>>> but I’d associate the term “authoritarian” with a kind of regime found
>>> commonly in the global South and historically in Europe, in which the
>>> political ruling elite is part and parcel of a wider social Establishment
>>> composed of conservative/reactionary classes (landowners, comprador or
>>> extractive capitalists, military elite, judiciary, civil servants,
>>> professionals) and in which the political regime exercises power mainly to
>>> maintain and administer the broader social rule of the Establishment.  Establishment
>>> power, as distinct from political power, is composed mainly of “concentrated
>>> informal sanctions” and is exercised through patronage, unequal control of
>>> resources, prestige, and cultural conservatism.  In contrast, I’d
>>> associate totalitarianism with rule by a political class which has separated
>>> itself from other social forces to a substantial degree, connected to a
>>> “modernising” project which is more bourgeois than “quasi-feudal”.  It
>>> gets more complicated I think.  There are cases where the two come very
>>> close to one another (Franco’s Spain for instance, and several of the Latin
>>> American dictatorships), but there are clear differences of type.  There
>>> is an intermediary case of “army-states” where the military holds extensive
>>> power in the state and intervenes in politics, where it is a social as well
>>> as a political power (not simply a political class), but where it is
>>> coextensive with a wider elite rather than accountable to it (Russia,
>>> Turkey, Pakistan).  There are also times when some authoritarian regimes
>>> may be crueller, less tolerant, and worse in human rights terms than some
>>> totalitarian regimes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But the point here is whether ‘authoritarian’ is a better designator than
>>> ‘totalitarian’ for a certain group of regimes.  I don’t think that what
>>> I’m calling neo-totalitarian regimes fit with this model at all.  For
>>> one thing, Peter Oborne’s book “The Triumph of the Political Class”, from
>>> someone with clear affinities to the Establishment, would seem to debunk the
>>> view that the Establishment still holds political power in Britain.  For
>>> another, the social composition behind authoritarianism is typical of
>>> “quasi-feudal” societies, exhibiting slow economic growth or stagnation, in
>>> which established classes impede or channel capital accumulation to
>>> reinforce their own power and prevent instability.  I would also expect
>>> an authoritarian regime to contain substantial “checks and balances”, but of
>>> a kind which hand power to the Establishment classes and elites.  And
>>> I’d expect elite groups outside the state to be given considerable immunity
>>> and official respect.  The traditional British unwritten constitution
>>> actually conforms to an authoritarian model quite closely – checking the
>>> power of the political elite by means such as the unelected House of Lords,
>>> extensive judicial power using common law, local autonomy of each police
>>> authority (implicitly connected to local elites), a large interpretive role
>>> for the civil service with its inflexible appointment procedures,
>>> independence of schools, universities, doctors, etc.  A contemporary
>>> example might be somewhere like Thailand, with an elite-linked judiciary
>>> able to dismiss governments, the army periodically intervening in politics
>>> on the side of the elite, and police chiefs as concerned to represent elite
>>> interests as to obey their political superiors.  Yet, what we have seen
>>> recently in Britain, America and elsewhere is a corrosion of all checks and
>>> balances, including those which hand power to the Establishment.  Indeed,
>>> the Establishment as a social force seems to be decomposing.  The
>>> professions are not at all shown respect, quite the opposite – they are
>>> subject to increasingly severe surveillance and micro-regulation (proposals
>>> in Britain for doctors to be re-tested every five years and certified by the
>>> state instead of the BMA being a case in point).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Your point that things could get even worse is certainly valid.  But I’d
>>> question whether things would need a qualitative change to reach the depths
>>> of the most extreme kinds of totalitarianism.  I feel it would only need
>>> a quantitative change, a more systematic, even crueller application of
>>> existing categories and “powers”.  For instance, the proscription of
>>> dissident organisations, the periodic arrest and harsh sentencing of
>>> dissident “leaders” and a portion of the membership, mistreatment in
>>> custody, arrest for expression of opinions, systematic denial of all rights
>>> while in prison or even on release (“control orders”), extensive
>>> surveillance, constant vulnerability to pretext or suspicion raids, are
>>> already suffered by the radical Muslim political movement in Britain.  It
>>> would only take an executive decision, not a change of regime or even of
>>> law, to extend this to other categories of dissidents.  If that
>>> happened, anyone who professed (say) anarchist or Marxist views could be
>>> locked up, or at least purged.  There’s very little limit, too, to what
>>> could be done with the ASBO regime in regard to banning and harshly
>>> criminalising any type of social activity the executive decided to target.
>>> In America, an equivalent would be the use of the “enemy combatant”
>>> designation, or of already existing powers to strip citizenship for
>>> political reasons.  Which doesn’t leave very much they CAN’T do.  They
>>> could probably even set up death camps if they wanted (though not being
>>> racialist regimes, I doubt they will – they’re quite happy with
>>> detention/torture camps such as Guantanamo).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There are a few things that, at present, they don’t do.  They don’t
>>> execute, they don’t usually open fire on protesters, they don’t carry out
>>> mass arrests, they don’t generally detain in camps (actually China does
>>> execute on a huge scale, and America too; and both also detain in camps, but
>>> let’s stick with Britain for now).  But I think this is because they’ve
>>> found more publicity-friendly variants of the same practices.  For
>>> instance, instead of executing, they give “indefinite” (life) sentences, or
>>> keep people on “control” regimes which could lead to re-imprisonment at any
>>> time.  They don’t open fire, but they extensively abuse “less lethal”
>>> weapons, sometimes fatally.  They “corral” as an alternative to mass
>>> arrests.  They use detention centres instead of camps.  And there are
>>> also things that neo-totalitarians can do, which classic totalitarians
>>> cannot.  For instance, the surveillance regime is far more intrusive
>>> now, and the former limits on the frequency of things like ID card checks
>>> are being eliminated by technology.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> bw
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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>
>
> --
> Dr Athina Karatzogianni
> Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
> The Dean's Representative (Chinese Partnerships)
> Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
> The University of Hull
> United Kingdom
> HU6 7RX
> T: ++44 (0) 1482 46 5790
> F: ++44 (0) 1482 466107
> http://www.hull.ac.uk/humanities/media_studies/staff/athina_karatzogianni/
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