[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Andy Robinson]

Ryan (and maybe Michel), I assure you guys it's not hyperbole on my part, I
have serious conceptual reasons for what I'm saying.  Please don't assume
bad faith.

I'd also add that I'm referring specifically to America (under Bush),
Britain and a few other cases here (Israel, maybe Australia, to some degree
Italy and Spain but without the capacity to really realise the model), as
well as perhaps a few cases of dictatorships (e.g. China, Iran), NOT to the
whole of western Europe - Sarkozy, Rasmussen, Karamanlis and their ilk would
certainly LIKE to realise this social form but will have to smash some very
strong and impressive social movements to manage it.  There are some sectors
of the EU which seem to aspire to turn the whole of Europe into an instance
of this model, but this remains a future matter.

The dispute seems to be twofold - first of all, I'm using the term
"neototalitarianism" to mean the reproduction of totalitarian traits in all
but a few spheres - exceptions being the maintenance of media freedom,
multiparty systems, some rights protections.  Secondly there is a
substantive dispute over how intrusive or powerful the regime is, or can
become (and whether this is relevant to its designation).

Taking the first point first.  You guys seem to be saying that these
exceptions are actually fundamental to the concepts concerned, that
something can't be totalitarian without for instance prohibiting all
dissident speech.  In a sense, fair enough - it's about fixity of language
vs conceptual slippage or expansion - but the choice of terms does not
negate the concept - perhaps you would rather use the term "national
security state" or "control society" or whatever; then simply  translate my
term "neototalitarianism" as the same concept under a different name.
Personally I think my name for it is good for three reasons - firstly the
big similarities in spite of the differences, secondly that the ethical
position of dissent and of the subject is similar in this form as in
totalitarianism, and thirdly that the strategic field for dissent is very
similar, i.e. that writings on resistance in totalitarian regimes seem to me
to be rather closer to the situation of residual dissent in Britain today
than writings on social movements in liberal-democracies or authoritarian
regimes.  I think there are A LOT of similarities.  I have in mind things
like the terror arrest regime, ASBOs, the prohibition of "harassment" (taken
to mean offensive speech), the corrosion of professional autonomy across a
range of spheres, "control orders", various imprecise legal categories,
flooding city centres with police and "wardens", the ID database and ID card
plans, expanded police impunity, etc.  Also the way the government has fused
with the police, security services and managers, and the ways civil society
and micro-institutions of the state have been turned into organs of state
policy.  Personally I'm very afraid here.  I remember
authoritarian-degenerated liberal-democracy from the 1990s, and it just
doesn't FEEL like that any more, it feels a lot more sinister.

I have to say I'm perplexed as to why, given the other similarities, the
neototalitarians haven't shut down the independent press, opposition
parties, and human rights protections.  Part of the reason is that they
don't need to - they aren't sufficiently threatened to want to.  But a
classical totalitarian might shut them down anyway.  Another part is that
their plausibility is increased if pliant opposition media, parties etc are
allowed to operate.  But this is more what one would expect an authoritarian
regime seeking democratic legitimacy to do.  Actually I think they've got
more clever this time - they divide political groups, the media and "civil
society" into those which accept the dominant ideology and those which
don't.  Those which do, are tolerated and allowed to operate largely
unharassed, though with a threat over their heads (c.f. the raids on the
Tories' offices in the Commons in Britain, and on Democrat Congressmen in
America); those who don't, and who look big enough to be any kind of
irritant, are subjected to a prolonged campaign of demonisation and
harassment - either they're banned (e.g. al-Muhajiroun), their leaders or
spokespeople are locked up (e.g. SHAC) or their infrastructure is disrupted
(e.g. Indymedia).  Dissidents aren't necessarily shut down but are made to
feel under siege and under threat.  If you aren't part of the (very
right-wing) "consensus" you're made to feel like an enemy of the people.

On the second point.  I'm not sure that classical totalitarian regimes were
actually as total in their power (in terms of thought control, censorship
etc) as you seem to be assuming.  As I've said before, nearly everyone in
Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia was listening to foreign radio
broadcasts.  Information was getting in and out through samizdat dissident
networks.  So I wouldn't want to make EFFECTIVE total thought-control a
criterion of totalitarian regimes.  On the other hand, the classical
totalitarianisms do ATTEMPT total control of information, which
"neototalitarian" regimes would seem not to.  Actually I wonder if they
don't regulate flows by other means instead - they channel and plant
information instead of visibly censoring it.  What reaches the conformist
reader/viewer is usually very close to what the information managers want to
reach them, so they seem to settle for this.  What I would observe however,
is that the public (mainstream) space is flooded with manufactured
information which is propagandistic and tautological.  In particular,
reports on responses to alleged threats (terror raids, number of
prosecutions or ASBOs or crime reports, number of children excluded from
school or number of schools using some control technology or other) which
are read off as evidence of the scale of the threat/problem and therefore of
the necessity of the response; and statements from police, security services
etc, distributed directly through the media without critical comment (e.g.
the rather implausible "4000 Pakistani-trained terrorists in Britain" story
- which is directly taken from a statement by the head of MI5 - one does not
even need to look for a conspiracy to recognise this as a planted story!)
In the British case, there is also a strong tension between what the British
government wants to do and what the European Court will let it.  It's a bit
like the way the threat of foreign sanctions makes it hard for Southern
regimes to maintain full-scale dictatorships nowadays, the way people like
Gnassingbe are forced to hold elections whether they like it or not.

Here's how I'd link it to technology.  First off, information technology can
be used in two ways.  This is clearly shown in the workplace applications
studied by Zuboff - information technology can be used to create a totally
mapped and surveilled space, or it can be used to speed up and enable
horizontal connections.  So while the potential is there for it to be used
in the kind of way peer-to-peer networks and the Open Source movement use
it, it also has the potential to be used in nightmarish ways such as the
cameras watching every corner of major cities and the massive, instantly
checkable databases set up by the police.  This sinister potential feeds
into the fantasies of the "deep state", the agents within the state who want
something like totalitarianism (the term they use is "full spectrum
dominance"), while the emancipatory potential feeds their fears - every open
space or network is something that can be used by terrorists, subversives,
criminals (their tropes are very revealing here: the Internet is portrayed
as a terrifying space overrun with child-abusers and abducters, bomb-makers
and identity thieves, down to misattributions like the "Facebook Killer").
So the new frightening world of netwar and cybercrime becomes the imputed
"cause" of the crisis, and the same technologies turned the other way become
its solution.

Also, the growing speed and power of networks of all kinds (activism,
reactive and "terrorist" networks, capitalist networks) is seriously
threatening to the state.  Networks have speed which states can't match.  To
try to match it, states speed up.  The only way states can speed up is by
simplifying procedures and eliminating checks and balances and other
"subtleties".  Another temptation is to cut down open space per se, so as to
deny it to networks.  Still another, that as effective, successful state
action becomes increasingly difficult (e.g. identifying perpetrators of
"crimes"), states sacrifice precision for clumsier forms of "effectiveness"
(criminalising "preparatory" action, loosening evidential standards,
performing collective punishment, declaring certain groups to be deviant in
advance of any action).  I see it as a kind of "statist integralism" -
states lashing out against their future irrelevance by acting-out.  (This is
actually similar to the origins of classical totalitarianism, which fed off
a similar declining or besieged status of certain strata or regimes).

Actually, in the last instance I suspect Ryan is right - horizontal-inclined
technologies and techniques have gone too far for the state to really
reimpose control.  Equally, the old feudal aristocracy had seen its day by
the eighteenth century - this didn't stop it causing all kinds of horrors in
its swansong.  I don't think the state is going to surrender, or even let
itself "wither away" through hybridisation with the growing networks.  It's
going to fight to the death, and it's going to use every means at its
disposal to do it - including those it has previously held back to maintain
legitimacy or to integrate itself with other social forces.  Not every state
will do this, to be sure, since a process of hybridising may well be a more
stable strategy for the state to survive for a time, but at certain places
and times, "statist integralism" will wreak a terrible toll.  The nightmare
Michel refers to will only come to pass if the project is generalised, and
actually overruns the capabilities of networks.  But the people who run
regimes like Britain's are constantly trying to do this.

bw
Andy
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