New Media and Bleeding-Edge Communism
Posted by Mike E on June 7, 2009
credit: zack
by Nando Sims
The new media is radically changing the ways human beings exchange ideas and connect to each others. Technology is changing how we create, how we collaborate, how we develop intimacy, how we learn, how we sum things up, how we refine and popularize ideas — starting first, of course, in the wealthier metropole countries and in the more privileged strata in the rest of the world.
Chegitz recently wrote with only slight overstatement:
“The internet is the 4th communication revolution in human history. The first was the development of language itself. Second was the invention of writing. 3rd was the printing press. Finally, the internet and the world wide web. Each of these revolutions increased the number of people by whom and with whom communication was possible. Language allowed us to share with our immediate companions. Writing allowed a select few to communicate with a select few, across time as well as distance. The printing press allowed some people to communicate with many people at a time, and the internet allows everyone to communicate
with everyone else.”
In some ways the development of telephone, radio and television may (one day) be seen as the opening inventions of the revolution that culminated with the merger of human information, cultural exchange, social organization and personal communication via the Internet.
Revolutionaries need to become masters of all this — in the sense of understanding the changes that are underway, and also in energetically wielding (exploiting!) the powerful new media as they emerge around us.
These are changes that will transform the ways we (humans) connect, work and speak. And if we (revolutionaries) don’t transform, we will miss historic openings (and risk further deepening impotence).
1) A clash of the social and the private within capitalism
People share music, books, articles, information in escalating and innovative ways– it is a huge advance for humanity, as people are wired together across the globe. And yet, as we all know, this is all treated as a huge problem, and as a crime, as PIRACY! –it violates intellectual property, it tears apart the “business model” of the “music business,” photography, newspapers and television news.
Open source deviates from the whole framework of private ownership and profit … placing the guts of the software in everyone’s hands, to use for free, and to freely revise. My late friend Tron Ogrim argued strongly that Linux was communism , which seemed a deliberate exaggeration to me — but with a sly germ of truth. “From each according to their ability… to each according to their need” — and capitalism be damned.
Suddenly people can swap ideas and culture quickly and globally — in ways undreamed of in the 200,000 years humanity has existed. And all of this collides (sharply, sharply) with the whole capitalist way that things are “supposed” to be organized.
There has been (of course) an energetic attempt to exploit all of this for capitalist purposes (including globalization and military advantage). But there have also been parallel moves to constrain it, demonize it, censor it, rework it.
Just one example: from the beginning there have been scare campaign (of a social conservative kind) especially using with stories of sexual predation and identity theft. In major parts of the world there have been constant attempts to muzzle and censor the internet — in China (of course) , but also in U.S. libraries, corporations, schools and countless households. All the blatant moves to stifle the exchange of information, to protect private property and the political status quo is a huge exposure of the backwardness of the capitalist system.
2) New kinds of collaboration
I’m not going to elaborate all the ways that new forms of collaboration are exploding and morphing — wiki sites, collaborative software (sharepoint etc.), increasingly universal internet connectivity (phones, home, work, etc.) and open source are just the most prominent examples. We can barely anticipate now where it will all go.
The old “one to many” paradyms (crafting finished ideological products and “bringing them down”) have been undermined throughout society.
Here at Kasama we have been saying that “the thread is the locus” — in other words, it is in the discussion (not just in the initiating posts) that truth and subtelty are worked out.
This is rapidly transforming corporate life — collaboration across long distances — and has accelerated the “flattening” of the hierarchical pyramid in capitalist institutions.
I remember someone describing for me how he was in touch with his dorm roommates with IM (instant messaging) all day long — sometimes discovering that they were sitting in the same library room, and texting each other. And how years after they had left school and dispersed around the country, they were still in touch, casually and routinely, by IM — maintaining the intimacy of their previous life.
We need to take a very uninhibited look at the implications of this for future outbreaks of revolutionary consciousness, and future organized revolutionary movements. And we need to learn from others who are way deep into this. Ad we have to simultaneously understand how to do this in ways that don’t just form naive and vulnerable organizations — networks that are easily disrupted when deprived of these forms of communcation, and that are incapable of keeping secrets or engaging serious political conflict.
3) Transparency — “Information wants to be free”
For a century, revolutionaries have struggled with the problem of “breaking into” the increasingly monopolized and centrally controlled “mass media.” Newspapers were relatively cheap and competative in 1900 — compared to radio in 1930, and certainly compared to a handful of TV channels in 1960s.
Suddenly that trend of centralization (Murdoch, Clear Channel), based on the high cost of conventional broadcasting, has been shaken by a counteroffensive — the eruption of non-official alternative channels that bypass the official gatekeepers.
The video taping of Rodney King’s beating in the early 1990s forshadowed a major change. The Oakland shooting of a young Black man was videotaped by witnesses and quickly appeared online. When an Iranian fundamentalist professor sexually harassed a student, his outrages were captured secretly and became a national scandal. Within minutes after bombs sent off in London a few years ago, youtube was full of downloaded phone videos from every part of the city — people walking out of the underground tubes, people filming the site of the explosions, people showing crowds and so on. And these examples are just the tip of a iceberg.
Internet radio, blogs, flicker, youtube, social networking, viral exchange of unprocessed information… all of these new media have created exciting new ways to bypass the system’s media gatekeepers and reach audiences directly.
The internet has created the possibility of “niche audiences” — where radical kids far from centers of movement activity can find information and analysis.
All of this creates a tremendous still barely-exploited potential for spreading and elaborating radical ideas. We need to understand this, embrace it, and get in front of it.
(Ben Seattle has been exploring these matters in some ways that deserve attention.)
4) Reconceived Socialism in a Rewired World
One of the glaring problems for revolutionary change is that (for a number of historic reasons) the capitalists have been able to mascarade as defenders of democracy (popular will, human rights), while casting communist movements and socialist societies as dictatorial and repressive.
This cannot continue, or else it is unlikely that people around the world will see socialist revolution as preferable to capitalism (even in those moments when capitalism’s crimes and flaws stand exposed).
A great deal of political power in the last century rested on restricting information — whether carried out by The Ministry of Information or the Hollywood mogul or watertight world of Prime Time News. Hiding crimes and failures. Inventing false justifications. Preventing dissent by making dissenters invisible and mute.
By contrast, modern socialist revolutionaries have every reason to stand (militantly) on the side of free flow of information and culture. We should champion the escalating creative fusions that are connecting humans. The new socialist societies need to give full play to the creativity and consciousness that this allows — in ways that tyrants and capitalists cannot.
This decision has implications for new inroads for internationalism, for eliminating illieracies, for raising consciousness, for exposing reactionary forces, for engaging the once passive and for connecting the once isolated. All of this can greatly serve the socialist project.
* * * * * *
This is not a matter of “doing the same old shit” through new channels. Making a newspaper (as usual) and posting its flat fixed articles as an online edition reflects stone-age thinking lagging far behind current possibilities and realities.
We need to experiment boldly in how to create networks (scaffoldings of a movement) in radically new ways, and mobilize people , and shatter the hegemony of the system’s ideas.
The technology itself is changing at exponential speeds. And the social potential of those changes need to be uncovered through serious theoretical and practical work.
The one thing i’m sure of is this: if we are not on the bleeding edge of this, we are throwing away some of the most positive factors we’ve been given.
BobH said
This essay is a good start in understanding the impact of the IT revolution. IMO there’s an even bigger revolution coming as open source principles carry over to fabrication. Machines that can essentially “print” physical objects are widely used by design engineers, and their cost is coming down as their sophistication increases. For instance, a university professor recently demonstrated a machine that can “print” the entire structure of a house out of liquid concrete in a matter of hours. The implications for labor and surplus value creation are quite great.
Of course, these are long term changes. If nothing else, the fact that free software is a kind of actually functioning communism serves as a reminder that communism is far from dead.
Jacob Richter said
What is missing in this blog is the need for political demands to be raised around the mass media question:
Full independence of the mass media from concentrated private ownership and control by first means of workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups – especially at more local levels, for purposes of media decentralization – and anti-inheritance transformation of all the relevant mass media properties under private ownership into cooperative property.
orinda said
If you all don’t know about pandoraradio.com, it’s a new LEGAL way to listen to music online. You essentially design your own radio stations just by picking out a band you like to hear. I’ve been learning a lot about good new (and not so new) bands that way.
SK said
This opens up two other huge questions for revolutionaries. How do revolutionaries in power receive and disseminate information? Also, how do they teach? What is their pedagogy?
How would the internet effect the way that communists in power organize their institutions and communicate with the people? How would the internet be used in a planned economy? Champions of capitalism say that the market is good at responding to all of the information that comes from every transaction, and that planners could never collect or analyze all of that information. Could technology networks allow humans to create a planned economy that was much more responsive and dynamic?
Also, learning and teaching on the internet is different. How do revolutionaries educate? Is the way they teach non-revolutionaries different than the way they teach people in the party? Is knowledge transmitted from teachers or is it constructed socially? If it is constructed socially, how is this related to some of the discussions that I have read on this site about “class truth”?
dave x said
There was recently some discussion of opensource/free software over on unrepentent marxist: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/macbook-pro-first-impressions/ in that discussion I said:
“The battle over vendor-lock has until recently been waged largely at the level of the OS and the desktop environment. I think that there are a number of reasons to believe that this is rapidly changing and that the whole question of what OS you run may be become less important. One reason is virtualization. There is no reason now to run just one OS, virtualization is free and widely available and getting better all the time. At some point applications may come bundled with there own OS bundled in and you just run them on a virtual machine. The host OS and even to a lesser extent the host machine architecture may be irrelevant. I fact this is already increasingly the case. Also services are increasingly residing in the domain of the ‘cloud’ (ie the the ‘network’, the internet, etc). This can provided incredible mobility and may make the need to own a particular machine irrelevant – your computer will will be at your fingertips at any of the many different types of network portals. However this type of cloud computing service architecture raises a new series of issues, for example even though much of the OS’s and software which runs on the cloud may be free software or open source, it is running on machines owned by various capitalist vendors who will find ways to profit off of it. Because it will be on their machines they will in a sense own your data (and your behavior) in a way that they couldn’t until recently. And all this is largely compatible with free software and in fact, depends on it to work.”
The copyleft license (like the GNU GPL) is, in retrospect, one of the most remarkable inventions of the late twentieth century. It is unclear, however, that as we move deeper into this network-is-the-computer/web2.0/cloud-computing future that it will remain as powerful a tool as it was in the past.
garyt said
funny to use the Canonical logo at the top for the “open source/commie” logo.
Zack said
Garyt, yep… that’s what I was goin’ for. Heh.
I think there’s much promise in the FLOSS movement in the way of disseminating technology out further and further from the grasps of private entities. However, there are always those out there seeking to figure out a way to gain private ownership and profits even from such liberated means of software.
There’s been a lot of debate recently in the Ubuntu (a distro of GNU/Linux) community over Canonical’s UbuntuOne project. UbuntuOne is a “cloud” project that seeks to do what stuff like Dropbox. The debate is largely over Canonical’s choice to have the back-end closed-source… which is a BIG no-no to the GNU/Linux community.
Matt said
It would be difficult to overstate the revolutionary potential of the Internet, and it is fully appropriate consider parallels between the introduction of the Internet with the invention of movable type. Prior to the advent of movable type, the Catholic Church held a monopoly over the written word (that is, over most stored knowledge). Books, mainly but not exclusively the bible, were individually hand-written by monks – a slow, expensive process under control of the church. Only a wealthy few could afford printed materials, so the literate population was confined to church officials and the nobility.
The invention of movable type allowed the rapid inexpensive production of large numbers of manuscripts and other printed material. As the availability of bibles grew, for example, whole new doctrines sprang up challenging Church power by emphasizing the duty of individuals to read and to interpret “god’s word” for themselves. Scientific books, plays, and other, non-religious texts began to circulate widely, sparking equally new and radical doctrines. Demand for printed material skyrocketed, as did the numbers of people outside the nobility and church hierarchy who could read and write. The Catholic Church, then the most powerful institution on the continent, was severely and permanently weakened.
Today, the dominance of capital relies largely on control of the “means of intellectual production,” including newspapers, TV and radio stations, film studios, book and magazine publishers, and other commercial media companies. The “entry costs” to any of these businesses are prohibitively high – at least if you want to reach large numbers of people on a regular basis. For example, it costs millions of dollars to operate a city newspaper or television station today.
On the Internet, however, it is possible for people all over the world possessing only modest incomes and skills to instantaneously communicate with one another. The high entry costs are essentially eliminated: it costs a few hundred dollars for a basic computer and software; a couple dollars for visit to an Internet café. The skills to use email or even to create a functioning website can quickly be learned by almost anyone.
It is no overstatement to argue that the rising use of Internet technologies may threaten capital’s monopoly over mass communications as severely as the spread of the printing press challenged the monopoly of knowledge once exercised by the Catholic church.
A word of caution — of realism — is needed here, however. Radio, and even television, could have evolved as interactive media, but they did not. They were developed, instead, as one-way, top-communications systems, controlled by private corporations. That outcome was not inherent in the technology. It is by no means assured that the Internet will continue evolving as a democratic sphere of social discourse. Just last week, for example, the Chinese government declared that all personal computers sold on the mainland must come pre-loaded with blocking software. Just two years ago, here in the U.S., Freepress.net (founded by former Monthly Review editor and media scholar Bob McChesney) mobilized millions of people to successfully beat back FCC attempts to increase corporate control and commercialization of Internet communications. The corporations lost the first round, but they will back, and better organized, for a rematch soon enough.
Jacob Richter is correct to note “the need for political demands to be raised around the mass media question” to defend these new emerging practices. It would be incredibly naïve to think capital will stand back as this democratic potential spreads and begins to have even more profound effects on social developments.
It is important, too, to understand media as both 1) hardware/software, and 2) sets of social relations or protocols arising around use of the technologies. It wasn’t movable type that challenged Catholic authority. It was how people collectively interacted with and were changed by movable type that made the difference. So, Tron Ogrim is sort of correct, in my opinion. Linux and other open source technologies are not communISM but, utilized correctly they are communistic practices. Instead of mainly consuming media (mainly receiving what others say) people can use open source technologies to produce their own media, and find their own voice. Instead of a few dominant producers, we see masses of people empowered in very concrete and politically significant ways.
At the same time, it would also be naïve of us to overlook some of the key limitations of Internet-based media. It is fine, as Nando says, to target and strengthen “niche audiences” (smaller groups with distinct needs and interests). The trouble is, web sites and other Internet-based media mainly attract people who already are interested in or curious about whatever subject(s) the web site is addressing. They are the people who will take the trouble to look up a web site and spend time there.
In my experience, revolutionary work (all organizing work, for that matter) often requires putting something in people’s hands at the right time and place and telling them, “This is important. You need to read this. You need to think about this.” Organizing means reaching out to people and engaging them, not waiting for people to come to us.
Secondly, we need to recognize that mass conversation – even a global conversation — is still, well… a conversation. How do we engage in conversation that not only unleashes people’s initiative and imagination but also raises consciousness, and builds a movement capable of taking effective collection action? Niche audiences are part of the answer to that. We tend to forget that movements are not monolithic. They are made up of a myriad of small networks of friends, local collectives, neighbors, activists in allied organizations, and so forth. That flexibility, diversity and decentralization is part of movement strength. At the same time, to achieve anything significant, movements must develop collectively-shared ideas, agenda, and structures that provide tactical and strategic coordination. More is required than a cluster of “niche audiences,” and this is obviously true of a revolutionary organization.
We are back to the “mass line,” I think. The Internet appears to offer an unprecedented forum for developing free but focused mass discussion and – in a very transparent manner – for steadily refining and advancing those discussions to achieve more coherent, rational levels of thought and stronger bases for collective action. How exactly this might be done is a question worth exploring.
For some time, I have considered the feasibility of establishing “workers’ media centers” or “peoples’ media centers.” These centers would 1) spread grassroots skills in media production (basic news writing, audio and visual recording, web sites, blogs, email, etc.), 2) provide access to basic technologies, and 3) help people learn how to deal more effectively with established media outlets (alternative and mainstream). These centers could help spread “best practices,” too, by analyzing media work and drawing positive and negative lessons. Indy Media Centers offer a model, of course, but fairly or not I find IMC productions lacking in many ways.
There are a number of groups (including Indy Media) doing various aspects of this work. I would be happy to discuss this further and to hear any ideas or examples others might have.
Zack said
Here’s something I saw today on Boing Boing… they post a video from Daily Show were they visit New York Times and call it “Aged News”. Great comments follow in the commentary section on Boing Boing as well. This is definitely related to the topic of Nando’s piece.
boingboing.net/2009/06/11/daily-show-visits-th.html
Zack said
Matt, great post.
This film kind of gets in to what you’re speaking about. Steal This Film: II
Matt said
Zack: “Steal this Film” is terrific. Thanks!
Zack said
Glad you liked.
I encourage others to check it out as well.
land said
New Yorks Times Tuesday June 16th Page A9.
Article Social Networks Spread Iranian Defiance Online.
Reminded me of this part of Nando’s article:
“This decision has implications for new inroads for internationalism, for eliminating illiteracies, for raising consciousness, for exposing reactionary forces, for engaging the once passive and for connecting the once isolated. All this can greatly serve the socialist project.
Yeah. And check out the Kasama article “How Should revolutionaries Tweet?”
Mike E said
land: can you post a link?
kumaraaditya said
I am fully convinced with you. We must need to become masters of all this, to challenge the poisonous informations spread by cultural imperialism. To challenge the Capitalist globalization we must have peoples democratic globalization in this field .
Communists are weak in this point . We must think to overcome these type problems .
Hegemonik said
Some initial thoughts:
1) With all due respect to Trøn (who is an under-appreciated as a theoretician): I disagree with the Linux-as-communism. The model of Linux and open source is closer, technically, to socialism: not “to each according to his need” but rather “to each according to his contribution.” This has recently been underlined by the emergence of “patent pools” –artificial “bundles” of patents shared by large corporations, through which those corporations provide licenses.
These pools are important in an era when a great deal of technology which we take for granted as “free” is, in fact, provided to us by license. Think of the MP3 or MPEG formats: we take it for granted that they we will have software that will “just work” and play those formats. Anyone who has dealt with Ubuntu and the “restricted extras” problem, these are in fact not free at all, they’re licensed to us.
2) Which brings me to another point: an important distinction to be made here is that between “open source” and “free/libre open source” because this distinction will, as time goes on, become the basis of antagonism. Open sourcing software is entirely possible to do, while retaining the right to enforce copyright law on specific instances. Simply take a look at Microsoft and its approach to its XBox and XBox Kinect. Microsoft now encourages hackers to investigate new ways of exploiting its Kinect motion-sensor technology, essentially allowing others to open source its software to encourage innovations. Meanwhile, it sets up a blanket ban on use of its network by individuals who have done nothing more than mod their XBox 360 hardware.
3) The last point I wish to touch on here: while we can find new and innovative ways to exploit the omnipresence of information networks, the IT bourgeoisie are nevertheless the same old bourgeoisie. This is illustrated by Amazon’s decision to ban Wikileaks from their “cloud” hosting service (the cloud being, in essence, its own private network of servers which are interwoven). It’s especially notable in that everyone has been exhorting us to put our data into the cloud –to put our vital data, such as medical records, contact lists, etc. onto the internet. While this is certainly convenient, having backups in case of emergency, the question remains –who “owns” the data? The person who provides it, or the person who is putting up the capital (the servers) to host it? If I wish to delete the data, do I have the right to do that? If the host wishes to delete the data, what recourse do I have?