[Nettime-bold] Don't Fuck with Democracy.

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

Karl, 

Thanks for your reply. My mail is not 
meant as a criticism of your conference 
(nor is the subject line)
in Chicago nor of its theme concerning 
rights and responsibilities in a 'digital commons' and methods of tactical media. 
I just wondered where the phrase ‘tragedy of the commons’ came from and what this phrase 
 was doing in your conference call. It 
sounds like dangerous right wing 
revisionism in new media suited to 
the undemocratic agenda of the 
National Security State. 

I read in the conference call for 
participation a very familiar history, the
history of 'the commons' or common rights
and responsibilities in relation to land 
and community obligations; as well as 
an idea developed from this history by 
democratic radicals called Levellers or the 
Leveller Movement or Party during the 1640s.

Given the democratic gains of the period you
mention, the 1640s in England, 
intimately tied up with an outpouring of  
‘tactical media’ or ‘press pamphlets’,
the formation of ‘textual communities’ 
or reading publics (like Nettime bbs),
‘tragedy of the commons’ is not merely
incorrect it is dangerous undemocratic nonsense.

The Leveller party  or movement anticipated
and in some cases won many of the rights 
we now take for granted, or have recently lost.
 The Levellers invoked a notion of 'common
 wealth'  to put forward a political platform that 
included parliamentary reform, the end of 
monarchy, the formation of a Republic in 
England,  a written constitution, and universal 
suffrage. ‘Extremes’ of the Leveller movement 
included women writing as women for the first 
timeasserting their right to speak for themselves and to lobby for full political participation in 
politics including the vote and the right
to sit in parliament. This was 300 years 
before the right was won. The ‘true-Levellers’ 
orDiggers who acted on a remarkable insight 
that we can still learn from concerning
the interrelation of land ecology and politcs.
They occupied and cultivated common land 
near Royal Estates arguing that the land
should be parceled out among the poor.

Most of the Leveller platform was 
achieved during the following three 
hundred years. The American revolution
was deeply inflected by the Leveller 
tradition.

The actions of Levellers introduced civil 
rights we take (or until recently took) for 
granted. 
To give an example, Leveller John 
Lillburne by refusing to recognize the 
authority of a court of Puritans
who sat to trial him gave us the ‘right to silence
before the law’ – his argument was simple
he refused to speak since he could not see
who had elected the judges who tried him:
he refused subjectivity to an arbitrary power.
I see we have recently accepted subjectivity 
to arbitary power by accepting changes to 
the law that remove this right.
 
Modern Democracy appeared in template 
in the mid 1640s. The American 
Revolution and Constitution recalled the 
Leveller platform. This is hardly a ‘tragedy 
of the commons’. 


The period is particularly relevant to tactical 
media, reading publics, and activism
hence it is great to see you recalling
this repressed history. It is not good 
however
to assume that what was a remarkable
outpouring of ideas, creativity, and
innovation in culture and politics
ended in tears. The Levellers made 
the world we know, and when 
the surrendering British at Yorktown
played ‘the world turned upside down’
they played the hymn of the Levellers
out of respect for the achievement
of Amercan democratic revolutionaries.
OK? Mate.

I have a paper of the period which I wrote
as an allegory for the coming digital revolution(and as a comparison for claims to
radicalism in electronic media), which was
circulated among people getting involved in
‘the new media’ in 94-95. I meant to
write a second part comparing 7 years of
online electronic media with the 
time 1640s in retrospect, but, well, events...

Sorry about my tone, I have a cold.

Yo.

Lachlan Brown
Toronto


P.S. The 'tragedy of the commons' probably 
refers to the Enclosures Act of the 18th century.
This has relevance to what I have called 
‘new enclosures’ attending the application 
of IT in libraries impacting scholarship traditions 
in universities, etc. and while 
this is one reaction, it is not a necessary 
consequence of radical publishing, the 
formation of reading publics, and the 
production, reproduction and dissemination 
of knowledge. It’s a problem Professors are 
eventually going to have to tackle
before they allow scholarship to be 
consigned to the ‘unmarked grave of history’.


> Lachlan,
> 
> Hi. Thanks for your thoughts on the "commons" and "commonwealth". They are
> important distinctions and I appreciate your bringing them to the fore.
> While we felt a little silly when we realized that we fired the initial call
> for participation off without a more thorough read by our allies here better
> suited to position some of the historical points, your response is a great
> reminder why we reached out in the first place.
> 
> So, we've been nose down in the tactical, myopic, soup of getting this thing
> on and there are certain clarification issues that have not been nearly as
> realized as they maybe should be by now. Our goal is to provide an arena for
> a swell of people that can focus and examine this dialogue, we are not the
> group to provide a detailed historical analysis or all the critical input.
> 
> That's where you come in. I am very interested to here more about your work
> and how you think you can contribute. We are re-working the symposia ideas
> as I type this and in the next few days will push you some more information,
> if you are interested. They are pretty, um, "global" (ie soft) because we
> are looking for the participants and moderators to run with them.
> 
> The music, films, installations, sound art gallery, net object gallery,
> gallery and alternate performance space tours and after hour parties are
> going to be incredible. We think the symposia and various publications of
> works will be as well. Looking forward to hearing from you.
> 
> Thanks again taking for taking the time to comment.
> 
> Peace,
> 
> Karl
> 
> Ps. Hello to everyone else on your cc list. Yo, don't make other plans for
> April 18-20
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/10/02 2:10 PM, "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > No, this is not right. Its important to
> > know your .histories (small h or repressed histories rather than History) as
> > the 
> > confusion over the meanings of 'commons'
> > and common-wealth' is an outcome of these repressed histories.
> > You can't know where you are at until you
> > know where you came from, Once you know
> > both, you know where you are going.
> > 
> >> The term /digital commons/ is derived from >the Common Law movement in
> >> England in the 1600s. The movement called
> > for >the protection of shared
> >> public spaces - the "commons" - its tools and >resources. Often, larger,
> >> private interests overran the commons, and >this failure of the
> > communities to maintain their public resources is known in the discourse as
> >> "the tragedy of the commons".
> > 
> > 'The Commons’ is NOT an outcome
> > of radical thinking in England in
> > the 1600s. The idea of ‘Common-Wealth’ is. It’s an important idea that
> > inflected all 
> > radical thinking in the English speaking
> > world including the foundation of
> > New England colonies and the American Revolution.  ‘The Commons’ is a
> > part of a tradition of ‘common law’, the ‘commons’ being the colonized English
> > under the feudal Lordship of the Normans,
> > or the ‘Norman Yoke’. If one wonders
> > what Heath Bunting is doing leveling enclosures, and leading the way for
> > hundreds of Agfhani refugees to illegally enter Britain through the Channel
> > Tunnel,  
> > he is, among a number of others, merely embodying a deep tradition of dissent,
> > revolt and cultural revolution in English,
> > and British life. Some of this may be
> > relevant to other cultural contexts,
> > some of it may not.
> > 
> > I note that Mute magazine’s editorial to
> > its Leveller and Digger inspired issue also
> > made this error possibly due to hasty or
> > foggy abridgement somewhere down the line (probably Sean Cubitt) of Lachlan
> > Browns 
> > paper “Love is the Law: the passion of
> > revolt” which was written in 1993-94  and published in Public #10, a rather
> > obscure and sometimes irrelevant
> > Canadian art and theory journal published
> > in Toronto.
> > 
> > The paper drew upon substantial research in
> > the period by Christopher Hill, in particular “The World Turned Upside Down”
> > recommended reading for all would be
> > revolutionaries, as well as relevant contemporary cultural theory.
> > 
> > I wrote the paper at the outset of my
> > research into the field of digital culture
> > to allegorise the threads, themes and issues the ‘digital revolution’ might
> > parallel during the ‘long revolution’ we are presently engaged in. The idea
> > was to contrast a distinctly radical historical instance where publishing was
> > associated with ‘reading communities’ or nascent publics, including some
> > distinct feminisms, with claims applied to ‘the digital revolution’ and to map
> > out some of the issues it would have to address if it was to meet the
> > honorific 
> > ‘radical’.
> > 
> > I’ll come to Chicago to deliver the
> > original paper if you like, (there were several important sections including
> > the relevance of anti-colonial movements in
> > the New Model Army and The Leveller Party
> > in 1647 to contemporary post-colonial
> > thinking edited out of the published paper) and to discuss how mediation and
> > distribution are related in new modalities of publishing.
> > 
> > 
> > When I began my research into the cultural implications of Internet I was
> > interested 
> > in possibilities for alternative or radical publishing. The 'culture of the
> > press pamphlet' in England during our Civil War
> > and failed Republic (hijacked by the ‘Independents’ or Puritans, and
> > ultimately abandoned in a compromise with conservative forces) threw up a
> > tremendous range of ‘proto-englightenment’ ideas
> > some of which were millenarian (or religio-aesthetic), some of which were
> > political and some that were economic. Ultimately The English Revolution of
> > the mid seventeenth century merely helped make the world safe
> > for The Hudson Bay company, The East India Company The American Republic, and
> > hence 
> > IBM and Microsoft, but many of the ideas of the time have relevance for
> > radical thinking today.
> > 
> > Its important to get these .histories 
(and
> > the Leveller and Digger movement was for centuries  repressed (small h)
> > .history) right. Some of the ideas and movements that appeared during the
> > period are highly relevant to the contemporary cultural situation during the
> > War, or dare we call it contemporary cultural revolution?
> > 
> > The 'digital commons' is an idea from
> > 'common law'. The notion of 'common-wealth' (all things in common for the good
> > of community) has resonances in the ecological
> > debate, the political debate about uneven development, distribution and access
> > to resources and wealth, as well as the present
> > 'open source', shareware, and copyright debate.
> > 
> > 
> > As I say, you can't know where you are at until you know where you came from.
> > Once you know both, you will already be half way to where you are going.
> > 
> > If there is confusion over 'the digital commons' and 'the common wealth' well,
> > there's is a distinct hegemonic reason for this obfuscated history, and of
> > course I 
> > will discuss this too.
> > 
> > Best,
> > 
> > Lachlan
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Lachlan Brown
> > Toronto
> > T. (416)  826 6937
> > Voice Message (416) 822 1123
> > 
> > Cultural Studies
> > Goldsmiths College
> > University of London
> > 
> 
>

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