<nettime> Harry Cleaver: Networked Social Movements & Global Threat to Capitalism

["Grugnog" <grugnog@tao.ca>]

Harry Cleaver, "Computer-linked Social Movements and the
Global Threat to Capitalism", Austin, Texas, July 1999
<http://www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/Faculty/Cleaver/polnet.html>

Abstract:

Of all the emerging roles of computer communications in social
conflict, this paper argues that the most serious challenge to
the basic institutional structures of modern society flow from
the emergence of computer-linked global social movements that
are, increasingly, challenging both national and supranational
policy-making institutions.

The suggestion is that we are currently witnessing an
accelerating circulation of social conflicts whose participants
recognize a common enemy:  contemporary capitalism. In their
increasingly common rejection of business priorities their
struggles cannot but recall Marxist notions of 'class warfare'.
Yet the common opposition to capitalism is not accompanied by the
old notion of a unified alternative project of socialism. On the
contrary, such a vision has been displaced by a proliferation of
diverse projects and the notion that there is no need for
universal rules.

In response to these struggles, the threatened institutions are
responding in various ways, sometimes by military and
paramilitary force, sometimes by co-optation aimed at
reintegrating the antagonistic forces.  The problem for us is
finding ever new ways to defeat these responses and continue to
build new worlds.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik Wesselius

Corporate Europe Observatory
Paulus Potterstraat 20
1071 DA Amsterdam
tel/fax: +31-20-6127023
e-mail: <ceo@xs4all.nl>
internet: <http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo>


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net