Hactivism: The Nonviolent Revolution

It’s hard to be a cynic. I do appreciate the fact that it prevents me from occupying myself with ultimately futile activities. However, cynicism can too easily turn into hopelessness, which begets apathy. I don’t want to be apathetic. How do I reconcile my ideals and my desire for social change with the reality that the ideologies and relationships that constitute power permeate every single aspect of life, including institutionalized movements for change? Including revolutions?

I am opposed to violence. Violence is a function of structures of inequality. It is the basis of patriarchy and slavery and capitalism. Yet, is it possible to transform our world without violence? How?

I don’t believe in the “political process” – whatever that means in reality. There is no boundary separating corporate and financial interests from the institutional apparatus of sanctioned violence and social coercion that is the state. Trying to re-shape the system from within the system is like trying to dry yourself off in the shower. When is the last time that a boycott or a petition created lasting, meaningful social change? Even the protests that constituted the so-called “Arab Spring.” What is fundamentally different in Egypt or Tunisia or Libya, aside from greater poverty and more weapons floating around? Yet, if I take violence and politics off of the table, what is left?

I have long held that technology would be the “creation of the system that ultimately destroys the system.” I have talked a bit about the potential of the internet, in particular, to subvert and escape global capitalism. Yet, I have never given too much thought to hacking, as an aggressive action against the system. It’s getting hard to ignore these days. For one thing, we now live in a world where cyber attacks and cyber security are a solid reality. We have WikiLeaks providing us with classified documents. And we have groups like Anonymous, who hack corporations, governments, and other groups to make social/political statements.

We don’t need weapons to dismantle capitalism. Its entire infrastructure is digitally based, and totally vulnerable to cyber attack. We don’t need to engage in endless debates about the nature of power and the government, trying in vain to convince people that democracy is a sham. Hackers can pull away the curtain and show us who’s really back there and what they are doing.

The only problem is that, currently, hactivists tend to be stuck in the old mindset. They employ a “rights” framework and fight for isolated “freedoms.” They protest against particular governments – governments that are under the thumb of industrial powers, no less – without seeing the larger forces that are responsible for the actions of these governments. Overall, they retain a very reformist attitude, and they are not able to keep sight of the larger picture: the particular articulation of capitalist relations, liberal discourses, bureaucracy, and governmental power that orders global and local social structures.

Hactivism could be a very effective nonviolent form of resistance. It just requires a very clear definition of the enemy, and a will to complete transform society.

Why Does "Occupy" Need to Stand for Anything?

The biggest criticism I have yet heard about the "Occupy" movement is that its goals are not clearly defined. They have not as thoroughly articulated what they are for as compared to what they are against. In fact, I recently ran across an opinion piece arguing that the demonstrators could put their energy to better use by trying to work through the political process.

I disagree completely. One of my favorite philsophers, Michel Foucault, responded to a similar criticism (that he would not propose any ideals for which he stood), by saying that the real task for anyone wishing to actually change the system is to investigate and understand in greater detail how the system currently works - to expose all of the subtle and diffuse mechanisms of power that are commonly ignored. Otherwise, Foucault insisted, thought is so permeated by the paradigms of the current system that people only end up reproducing that which they are trying to demolish. The results of the Russian Revolution are a great example of this principle (the revolutionaries somewhat unwittingly created a more capitalist society), and it seems that the revolutions in MENA could take a similar route: individual figureheads are being replaced but the system is being preserved.

Above all else, channeling the momentum of the "Occupy" movement into the political process would be the best way to kill the movement and ensure that nothing is done. That's what the political process is there for: to direct energies into benign activities that preserve the social order... and make people think that they are "doing something" even though they are not.

I say, "Occupy" is good enough as it is!

What "Occupy" Can Accomplish

I guess I can't have a blog like this and not comment on the "Occupy" protests. Although I have been busy and vacationy, and haven't really felt like writing anything lately. Just a few sentences...

In a general sense, these types of occurances tend to raise the heart rate of Marxists/neo-Marxists, as it demonstrates the types of conflicts that, according to them, are inherently built into the system. These events indicate that people have some sense of the limitations and injustices of the current political economic structure, and the ways in which they are being exploited to sustain it. More than that, they are dissatisfied enough to try to do something about it.

Many neo-Marxists, who have been writing for the past few decades about the current period of economic contraction (beginning in the 1970s), and theorizing the necessity of large-scale structural change, have insisted that growing social unrest was bound to occur sometime soon. Now it looks more probable that they could be right.

On the other hand, in a less general sense, do I think these particular protests are going to result in anything significant? My gut says no. But it is a start. Perhaps this is the first ripple of a movement that could, in the longer run, really reverberate and result in some major changes.

But the biggest take-home point is that conflict/resistance/revolution does not necessarily (if ever) result in real liberation. The conditions of most people, particularly the oppressed, do not actually improve in the long run. In fact, the historical precedent has been for structural rearrangements to serve as the ground of conception for new relationships and instruments of oppression, which are almost always far, far worse than what came before.

Thus, there is hope. And that is something. But the worst could be yet to come.