boundary 2

Tag: democracy

  • Richard Hill — Multistakeholder Internet Governance Still Doesn’t Live Up to Its PR (Review of Palladino and Santaniello, Legitimacy, Power, and Inequalities in the Multistakeholder Internet Governance)

    Richard Hill — Multistakeholder Internet Governance Still Doesn’t Live Up to Its PR (Review of Palladino and Santaniello, Legitimacy, Power, and Inequalities in the Multistakeholder Internet Governance)

    a review of Nicola Palladino and Mauro Santaniello, Legitimacy, Power, and Inequalities in the Multistakeholder Internet Governance: Analyzing IANA Transition (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)

    by Richard Hill

    ~

    While multistakeholder processes have long existed (see the Annex of this submission to an ITU group), they have recently been promoted as a better alternative to traditional governance mechanisms, in particular at the international level; and Internet governance has been put forward as an example of how multistakeholder processes work well, and better than traditional governmental processes. Thus it is very appropriate that a detailed analysis be made of a recent, highly visible, allegedly multistakeholder process: the process by which the US government relinquished its formal control over the administration of Internet names and address. That process was labelled the “IANA transition.”

    The authors are researchers at, respectively, the School of law and Governance, Dublin City University; and the Internet & Communication Policy Center, Department of Political and Social Studies, University of Salerno, Italy. They have taken part in several national and international research projects on Internet Governance, Internet Policy and Digital Constitutionalism processes. They have methodically examined various aspects of the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) transition, and collected and analysed an impressive body of data regarding who actually participated in, and influenced, the transition process. Their research confirms what others have stated, namely that the process was dominated by insiders with vested interests, that the outcome did not resolve long-standing political issues, and that the process cannot by any means be seen as an example of an ideal multistakeholder process, and this despite claims to the contrary by the architects of the IANA transition.

    As the authors put the matter: “For those who believe that the IANA is a business concerning exclusively or primarily ICANN [Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers], the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force], the NRO [Numbering Resource Organization], and their respective communities, the IANA transition process could be considered inclusive and fair enough, and its outcome effectively transferring the stewardship over IANA functions to the global stakeholder’s community of reference. For those who believe that the IANA stakeholders extend far beyond the organizations mentioned above, the assessment can only have a negative result” (146). Because “in the end, rather than transferring the stewardship of IANA functions to a new multistakeholder body that controls the IANA operator (ICANN), the transition process allowed the ICANN multistakeholder community to perform the oversight role that once belonged to the NTIA [the US government]” (146). Indeed “in the end, the novel governance arrangements strengthened the position of the registries and the technical community” (148). And the US government could still exercise ultimate control, because “ICANN, the PTI [Post-Transition IANA], and most of the root server organizations remain on US territory, and therefore under US jurisdiction” (149).

    That is, the transition failed to address the key political issue: “the IANA functions are at the heart of the DNS [Domain Name System] and the Internet as we know it. Thus, their governance and performance affect a vast range of actors [other than the technical and business communities involved in the operation of the DNS] that should be considered legitimate stakeholders” (147). Instead, it was one more example of “the rhetorical use of the multistakeholder discourse. In particular, … through a neoliberal discourse, the key organizations already involved in the DNS regime were able to use the ambiguity of the concept of a ‘global multistakeholder community’ as a strategic power resource.” Thus failing fully to ensure that discussions “take place through an open process with the participation of all stakeholders extending beyond the ICANN community.” While the call for participation in the process was formally open “its addressees were already identified as specific organizations. It is worth noting that these organizations did not involve external actors in the set-up phase. Rather, they only allowed other interested parties to take part in the discussion according to their rules and with minor participatory rights [speaking, but non-voting, observers]” (148).

    Thus, the authors’ “analysis suggests that the transition did not result in, nor did it lead to, a higher form of multistakeholderism filling the gap between reality and the ideal-type of what multistakeholderism ought to be, according to normative standards of legitimacy. Nor was it able to fix the well-known limitations in inclusiveness, fairness of the decision-making process, and accountability of the entire DNS regime. … Instead, the transition seems to have solidified previous dominant positions and ratified the ownership of an essential public function by a private corporation, led by interwoven economic and technical interests” (149). In particular, “the transition process showed the irrelevance of civil society, little and badly represented in the stakeholder structure before and after the transition” (150). And “multistakeholderism [in this case] seems to have resulted in misleading rhetoric legitimizing power asymmetries embedded within the institutional design of DNS management, rather than in a new governance model capable of ensuring the meaningful participation of all the interested parties.”

    In summary, the IANA transition is one more example of the failure of multistakeholder processes to achieve their desired goal. As the authors correctly note: “Initiatives supposed to be multistakeholder have often been criticized for not complying with their premises, resulting in ‘de-politicization mechanisms that limit political expression and struggle’” (153). Indeed, “While multistakeholderism is used as a rhetoric to solidify and legitimize power positions within some policy-making arena, without any mechanisms giving up power to weaker stakeholders and without making concrete efforts to include different discourses, it will continue to produce ambiguous compromises without decisions, or make decisions affected by a poor degree of pluralism” (153). As others have stated, “‘multistakeholderism reinforces existing power dynamics that have been ‘baked in’ to the model from the beginning. It privileges north-western governments, particularly the US, as well as the US private sector.’ Similarly, … multistakeholderism [can be defined] as a discursive tool employed to create consensus around the hegemony of a power élite” (12). As the authors starkly put the matter, “multistakeholder discourse could result in misleading rhetoric that solidifies power asymmetries and masks domination, manipulation, and hegemonic practices” (26). In particular because “election and engagement procedures often tend to favor an already like-minded set of collective and individual actors even if they belong to different stakeholder categories” (30).

    The above conclusions are supported by detailed, well referenced, descriptions and analyses. Chapters One and Two explain the basic context of the IANA transition, Internet governance and their relation to multistakeholder processes. Chapter One “points out how multistakeholderism is a fuzzy concept that has led to ambiguous practices and disappointing results. Further, it highlights the discursive and legitimizing nature of multistakeholderism, which can serve both as a performing narrative capable of democratizing the Internet governance domain, as well as a misleading rhetoric solidifying the dominant position of the most powerful actors in different Internet policy-making arenas” (1). It traces the history of multistakeholder governance in the Internet context, which started in 2003 (however, a broader historical context would have been useful, see the Annex of this submission to an ITU group). It discusses the conflict between developed and developing countries regarding the management and administration of domain names and addresses that dominated the discussions at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Mueller’s Networks and States gives a more detailed account, explaining how development issues – which were supposed to be the focus of the WSIS – got pushed aside, thus resulting in the focus on Internet governance). As the authors correctly state, “the outcomes of the WSIS left the tensions surrounding Internet governance unresolved, giving rise to contestation in subsequent years and to the cyclical recurrence of political conflicts challenging the consensus around the multistakeholder model” (5). The IANA transition was seen as a way of resolving these tensions, but it relied “on the conflation of the multistakeholder approach with the privatization of Internet governance” (8).

    As the authors posit (citing well-know scholar Hoffmann, “multistakeholderism is a narrative based on three main promises: the promise of achieving global representation on an issue putting together all the affected parties; the promise of overcoming the traditional democratic deficit at the transnational level, ‘establishing communities of interest as a digitally enabled equivalent to territorial constituencies’; and the promise of higher and enforced outcomes since incorporating global views on the matter through a consensual approach should ensure more complete solutions and their smooth implementation” (10).

    Chapter Three provides a thorough introduction to the management of Internet domain names and address and of the issues related to it and to the IANA function, in particular the role of the US government and of US academic and business organizations; the seminal work of the Internet Ad Hoc Group (IAHC); the creation and evolution of ICANN; and various criticism of ICANN, in particular regarding its accountability. (The chapter inexplicably fails to mention the key role of Mocakpetris in the creation of the DNS).

    Chapter Four describes the institutional setup of the IANA transition, and the constraints unilaterally imposed by the US government (see also 104) and the various parties that dominate discussions of the issues involved. As the authors note, the call for the creation of the key group went out “without having before voted on the proposed scheme [of the group], neither within the ICANN community nor outside through a further round of public comments” (67). The structure of that group heavily influenced the discussions and the outcome.

    Chapter Five evaluates the IANA transition in terms of one of three types of legitimacy: input legitimacy, that is whether all affected parties could meaningfully participate in the process (the other two types of legitimacy are discussed in subsequent chapters, see below). By analysing in detail the profiles and affiliations of the participants with decision-making power, the authors find that “a vast majority (56) of the people who have taken part in the drafting of the IANA transition proposal are bearers of technical and operative interests” (87); “Regarding nationality, Western countries appear to be over-represented within the drafting and decisional organism involved in the IANA transition process. In particular, US citizens constitute the most remarkable group, occupying 20 seats over 90 available” (89); and  “IANA transition voting members experienced multiple and trans-sectoral affiliations, blurring the boundaries among stakeholder categories” (151). In summary “the results of this stakeholder analysis seem to indicate that the adopted categorization and appointment procedures have reproduced within the IANA transition process well-known power relationships and imbalances already existing in the DNS management, overrepresenting Western, technical, and business interests while marginalizing developing countries and civil society participation” (90).

    Chapter Six evaluates the transition with respect to process legitimacy: whether all participants could meaningfully affect the outcome. As the authors correctly note, “Stakeholders not belonging to the organizations at the core of the operational communities were called to join the process according to rules and procedures that they had not contributed to creating, and with minor participatory rights” (107). The decision-making process was complex, and undermined the inputs from weaker parties – thus funded, dedicated participants were more influential. Further, key participants were concerned about how the US government would view the outcome, and whether it would approve it (116). And discussions appear to have been restricted to a neo-liberal framework and technical framework (120, 121). As the authors state: “Ultimately, this narrow technical frame prevented the acknowledgment of the public good nature of the IANA functions, and, even more, of their essence as public policy issues” (121). Further, “most members and participants at the CWG-Stewardship had been socialized to the ICANN system, belonging to one of its structures or attending its meetings” and “the long-standing neoliberal plan of the US government and the NTIA to ‘privatize’ the DNS placed the IANA transition within a precise system of definitions, concepts, references, and assumptions that constrained the development of alternative policy discourses and limited the political action of sovereignist and constitutional coalitions” (122).

    Thus, it is not surprising that the authors find that “a single discourse shaped the deliberation. These results contradict the assumptions at the basis of the multistakeholder model of governance, which is supposed to reach a higher and more complete understanding of a particular matter through deliberation among different categories of actors, with different backgrounds, views, and perspectives. Instead, the set of IANA transition voting members in many regards resembled what has been defined as a ‘club governance’ model, which refers to an ‘elite community where the members are motivated by peer recognition and a common goal in line with values, they consider honourable’” (151).

    Chapter Seven evaluates the transition with respect to output legitimacy: whether the result achieved its goals of transferring oversight of the IANA function to a global multistakeholder community. As the authors state “ the institutional effectiveness of the IANA transition cannot be evaluated as satisfying from a normative point of view in terms of inclusiveness, balanced representation, and accountability. As a consequence, the ICANN board remains the expression of interwoven business and technical interests and is unlikely to be truly constrained by an independent entity” (135). Further, as shown in detail, “the political problems connected to the IANA functions have been left unresolved, …  it did not take a long time before they re-emerged” (153).

    Indeed, “IANA was, first of all, a political matter. Indeed, the transition was settled as a consequence of a political fact – the widespread loss of trust in the USA as the caretaker of the Internet after the Snowden disclosures. Further, the IANA transition process aimed to achieve eminently political goals, such as establishing a novel governance setting and strengthening the DNS’s accountability and legitimacy” (152). However, as the authors explain in detail, the IANA transition was turned into a technical discussion, and “The problem here is that governance settings, such as those described as club governance, base their legitimacy form professional expertise and reputation. They are well-suited to performing some form of ‘technocratic’ governance, addressing an issue with a problem-solving approach based on an already given understanding of the nature of the problem and of the goals to be reached. Sharing a set of overlapping and compatible views is the cue that puts together these networks of experts. Nevertheless, they are ill-suited for tackling political problems, which, by definition, deal with pluralism” (152).

    Chapter Seven could have benefitted from a discussion of ICANN’s new Independent Review Process, and the length of time it has taken to put into place the process to name the panellists.

    Chapter Eight, already summarized above, presents overall conclusions.

    In summary, this is a timely and important book that provides objective data and analyses of a particular process that has been put forward as a model for multistakeholder governance, which itself has been put forth as a better alternative to conventional governance. While there is no doubt that ICANN, and the IANA function, are performing their intended functions, the book shows that the IANA transition was not a model multistakeholder process: on the contrary, it exhibited many of the well-known flaws of multistakeholder processes. Thus it should not be used as a model for future governance.

    _____

    Richard Hill is President of the Association for Proper internet Governance, and was formerly a senior official at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). He has been involved in internet governance issues since the inception of the internet and is now an activist in that area, speaking, publishing, and contributing to discussions in various forums. Among other works he is the author of The New International Telecommunication Regulations and the Internet: A Commentary and Legislative History (Springer, 2014). He writes frequently about internet governance issues for The b2o Review Digital Studies magazine.

    Back to the essay

  • Richard Hill – Too Big to Be (Review of Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age)

    Richard Hill – Too Big to Be (Review of Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age)

    a review of Timothy Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (Random House/Columbia Global Reports, 2018)

    by Richard Hill

    ~

    Tim Wu’s brilliant new book analyses in detail one specific aspect and cause of the dominance of big companies in general and big tech companies in particular: the current unwillingness to modernize antitrust law to deal with concentration in the provision of key Internet services. Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. He is best known for his work on Net Neutrality theory. He is author of the books The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, along with Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, and other works. In 2013 he was named one of America’s 100 Most Influential Lawyers, and in 2017 he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

    What are the consequences of allowing unrestricted growth of concentrated private power, and abandoning most curbs on anticompetitive conduct? As Wu masterfully reminds us:

    We have managed to recreate both the economics and politics of a century ago – the first Gilded Age – and remain in grave danger of repeating more of the signature errors of the twentieth century. As that era has taught us, extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding an appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership. Yet, as if blind to the greatest lessons of the last century, we are going down the same path. If we learned one thing from the Gilded Age, it should have been this: The road to fascism and dictatorship is paved with failures of economic policy to serve the needs of the general public. (14)

    While increasing concentration, and its negative effects on social equity, is a general phenomenon, it is particularly concerning for what regards the Internet: “Most visible in our daily lives is the great power of the tech platforms, especially Google, Facebook, and Amazon, who have gained extraordinary power over our lives. With this centralization of private power has come a renewed concentration of wealth, and a wide gap between the rich and poor” (15). These trends have very real political effects: “The concentration of wealth and power has helped transform and radicalize electoral politics. As in the Gilded Age, a disaffected and declining middle class has come to support radically anti-corporate and nationalist candidates, catering to a discontent that transcends party lines” (15). “What we must realize is that, once again, we face what Louis Brandeis called the ‘Curse of Bigness,’ which, as he warned, represents a profound threat to democracy itself. What else can one say about a time when we simply accept that industry will have far greater influence over elections and lawmaking than mere citizens?” (15). And, I would add, what have we come to when some advocate that corporations should have veto power over public policies that affect all of us?

    Surely it is, or should be, obvious that current extreme levels of concentration are not compatible with the premises of social and economic equity, free competition, or democracy. And that “the classic antidote to bigness – the antitrust and other antimonopoly laws – might be recovered and updated to face the challenges of our times” (16). Those who doubt these propositions should read Wu’s book carefully, because he shows that they are true. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a more detailed explanation of how network effects interact with economies of scale to favour concentration in the ICT industry in general, and in telecommunications and the Internet in particular. But this topic is well explained in other works.

    As Wu points out, antitrust law must not be restricted (as it is at present in the USA) “to deal with one very narrow type of harm: higher prices to consumers” (17). On the contrary, “It needs better tools to assess new forms of market power, to assess macroeconomic arguments, and to take seriously the link between industrial concentration and political influence” (18). The same has been said by other scholars (e.g. here, here, here and here), by a newspaper, an advocacy group, a commission of the European Parliament, a group of European industries, a well-known academic, and even by a plutocrat who benefitted from the current regime.

    Do we have a choice? Can we continue to pretend that we don’t need to adapt antitrust law to rein in the excessive power of the Internet giants? No: “The alternative is not appealing. Over the twentieth century, nations that failed to control private power and attend to the economic needs of their citizens faced the rise of strongmen who promised their citizens a more immediate deliverance from economic woes” (18). (I would argue that any resemblance to the election of US President Trump, to the British vote to leave the European Union, and to the rise of so-called populist parties in several European countries [e.g. Hungary, Italy, Poland, Sweden] is not coincidental).

    Chapter One of Wu’s book, “The Monopolization Movement,” provides historical background, reminding us that from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century, dominant, sector-specific monopolies emerged and were thought to be an appropriate way to structure economic activity. In the USA, in the early decades of the twentieth century, under the Trust Movement, essentially every area of major industrial activity was controlled or influenced by a single man (but not the same man for each area), e.g. Rockefeller and Morgan. “In the same way that Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel today argues that monopoly ‘drives progress’ and that ‘competition is for losers,’ adherents to the Trust Movement thought Adam Smith’s fierce competition had no place in a modern, industrialized economy” (26). This system rapidly proved to be dysfunctional: “There was a new divide between the giant corporation and its workers, leading to strikes, violence, and a constant threat of class warfare” (30). Popular resistance mobilized in both Europe and the USA, and it led to the adoption of the first antitrust laws.

    Chapter Two, “The Right to Live, and Not Merely to Exist,” reminds us that US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis “really cared about … the economic conditions under which life is lived, and the effects of the economy on one’s character and on the nation’s soul” (33). The chapter outlines Brandeis’ career and what motivated him to combat monopolies.

    In Chapter Three, “The Trustbuster,” Wu explains how the 1901 assassination of US President McKinley, a devout supporter of unrestricted laissez-faire capitalism (“let well enough alone”, reminiscent of today’s calls for government to “do not harm” through regulation, and to “don’t fix it if it isn’t broken”), resulted in a fundamental change in US economic policy, when Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him. Roosevelt’s “determination that the public was ruler over the corporation, and not vice versa, would make him the single most important advocate of a political antitrust law.” (47). He took on the great US monopolists of the time by enforcing the antitrust laws. “To Roosevelt, economic policy did not form an exception to popular rule, and he viewed the seizure of economic policy by Wall Street and trust management as a serious corruption of the democratic system. He also understood, as we should today, that ignoring economic misery and refusing to give the public what they wanted would drive a demand for more extreme solutions, like Marxist or anarchist revolution” (49). Subsequent US presidents and authorities continued to be “trust busters”, through the 1990s. At the time, it was understood that antitrust was not just an economic issue, but also a political issue: “power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy” (54, citing Justice William Douglas). As we all know, “Increased industrial concentration predictably yields increased influence over political outcomes for corporations and business interests, as opposed to citizens or the public” (55). Wu goes on to explain why and how concentration exacerbates the influence of private companies on public policies and undermines democracy (that is, the rule of the people, by the people, for the people). And he outlines why and how Standard Oil was broken up (as opposed to becoming a government-regulated monopoly). The chapter then explains why very large companies might experience disecomonies of scale, that is, reduced efficiency. So very large companies compensate for their inefficiency by developing and exploiting “a different kind of advantages having less to do with efficiencies of operation, and more to do with its ability to wield economic and political power, by itself or conjunction with others. In other words, a firm may not actually become more efficient as it gets larger, but may become better at raising prices or keeping out competitors” (71). Wu explains how this is done in practice. The rest of this chapter summarizes the impact of the US presidential election of 1912 on US antitrust actions.

    Chapter Four, “Peak Antitrust and the Chicago School,” explains how, during the decades after World War II, strong antitrust laws were viewed as an essential component of democracy; and how the European Community (which later became the European Union) adopted antitrust laws modelled on those of the USA. However, in the mid-1960s, scholars at the University of Chicago (in particular Robert Bork) developed the theory that antitrust measures were meant only to protect consumer welfare, and thus no antitrust actions could be taken unless there was evidence that consumers were being harmed, that is, that a dominant company was raising prices. Harm to competitors or suppliers was no longer sufficient for antitrust enforcement. As Wu shows, this “was really laissez-faire reincarnated.”

    Chapter Five, “The Last of the Big Cases,” discusses two of the last really large US antitrust case. The first was breakup of the regulated de facto telephone monopoly, AT&T, which was initiated in 1974. The second was the case against Microsoft, which started in 1998 and ended in 2001 with a settlement that many consider to be a negative turning point in US antitrust enforcement. (A third big case, the 1969-1982 case against IBM, is discussed in Chapter Six.)

    Chapter Six, “Chicago Triumphant,” documents how the US Supreme Court adopted Bork’s “consumer welfare” theory of antitrust, leading to weak enforcement. As a consequence, “In the United States, there have been no trustbusting or ‘big cases’ for nearly twenty years: no cases targeting an industry-spanning monopolist or super-monopolist, seeking the goal of breakup” (110). Thus, “In a run that lasted some two decades, American industry reached levels of industry concentration arguably unseen since the original Trust era. A full 75 percent of industries witnessed increased concentration from the years 1997 to 2012” (115). Wu gives concrete examples: the old AT&T monopoly, which had been broken up, has reconstituted itself; there are only three large US airlines; there are three regional monopolies for cable TV; etc. But the greatest failure “was surely that which allowed the almost entirely uninhibited consolidation of the tech industry into a new class of monopolists” (118).

    Chapter Seven, “The Rise of the Tech Trusts,” explains how the Internet morphed from a very competitive environment into one dominated by large companies that buy up any threatening competitor. “When a dominant firm buys a nascent challenger, alarm bells are supposed to ring. Yet both American and European regulators found themselves unable to find anything wrong with the takeover [of Instagram by Facebook]” (122).

    The Conclusion, “A Neo-Brandeisian Agenda,” outlines Wu’s thoughts on how to address current issues regarding dominant market power. These include renewing the well known practice of reviewing mergers; opening up the merger review process to public comment; renewing the practice of bringing major antitrust actions against the biggest companies; breaking up the biggest monopolies, adopting the market investigation law and practices of the United Kingdom; recognizing that the goal of antitrust is not just to protect consumers against high prices, but also to protect competition per se, that is to protect competitors, suppliers, and democracy itself. “By providing checks on monopoly and limiting private concentration of economic power, the antitrust law can maintain and support a different economic structure than the one we have now. It can give humans a fighting chance against corporations, and free the political process from invisible government. But to turn the ship, as the leaders of the Progressive era did, will require an acute sensitivity to the dangers of the current path, the growing threats to the Constitutional order, and the potential of rebuilding a nation that actually lives up to its greatest ideals” (139).

    In other words, something is rotten in the state of the Internet: it has “collection and exploitation of personal data”; it has “recently been used to erode privacy and to increase the concentration of economic power, leading to increasing income inequalities”; it has led to “erosion of the press, leading to erosion of democracy.” These developments are due to the fact that “US policies that ostensibly promote the free flow of information around the world, the right of all people to connect to the Internet, and free speech, are in reality policies that have, by design, furthered the geo-economic and geo-political goals of the US, including its military goals, its imperialist tendencies, and the interests of large private companies”; and to the fact that “vibrant government institutions deliberately transferred power to US corporations in order to further US geo-economical and geo-political goals.”

    Wu’s call for action is not just opportune, but necessary and important; at the same time, it is not sufficient.

    _____

    Richard Hill is President of the Association for Proper internet Governance, and was formerly a senior official at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). He has been involved in internet governance issues since the inception of the internet and is now an activist in that area, speaking, publishing, and contributing to discussions in various forums. Among other works he is the author of The New International Telecommunication Regulations and the Internet: A Commentary and Legislative History (Springer, 2014). He writes frequently about internet governance issues for The b2o Review Digital Studies magazine.

    Back to the essay

  • Zachary Loeb – What Technology Do We Really Need? – A Critique of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum

    Zachary Loeb – What Technology Do We Really Need? – A Critique of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum

    by Zachary Loeb

    ~

    Technological optimism is a dish best served from a stage. Particularly if it’s a bright stage in front of a receptive and comfortably seated audience, especially if the person standing before the assembled group is delivering carefully rehearsed comments paired with compelling visuals, and most importantly if the stage is home to a revolving set of speakers who take turns outdoing each other in inspirational aplomb. At such an event, even occasional moments of mild pessimism – or a rogue speaker who uses their fifteen minutes to frown more than smile – serve to only heighten the overall buoyant tenor of the gathering. From TED talks to the launching of the latest gizmo by a major company, the person on a stage singing the praises of technology has become a familiar cultural motif. And it is a trope that was alive and drawing from that well at the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum, the theme of which was “The Tech We Need.”

    Over the course of two days some three-dozen speakers and a similar number of panelists gathered to opine on the ways in which technology is changing democracy to a rapt and appreciative audience. The commentary largely aligned with the sanguine spirit animating the founding manifesto of the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) – which frames the Internet as a potent force set to dramatically remake and revitalize democratic society. As the manifesto boldly decrees, “the realization of ‘Personal Democracy,’ where everyone is a full participant, is coming” and it is coming thanks to the Internet. The two days of PDF 2016 consisted of a steady flow of intelligent, highly renowned, well-meaning speakers expounding on the conference’s theme to an audience largely made up of bright caring individuals committed to answering that call. To attend an event like PDF and not feel moved, uplifted or inspired by the speakers would be a testament to an empathic failing. How can one not be moved? But when one’s eyes are glistening and when one’s heart is pounding it is worth being wary of the ideology in which one is being baptized.

    To critique an event like the Personal Democracy Forum – particularly after having actually attended it – is something of a challenge. After all, the event is truly filled with genuine people delivering (mostly) inspiring talks. There is something contagious about optimism, especially when it presents itself as measured optimism. And besides, who wants to be the jerk grousing and grumbling after an activist has just earned a standing ovation? Who wants to cross their arms and scoff that the criticism being offered is precisely the type that serves to shore up the system being criticized? Pessimists don’t often find themselves invited to the after party. Thus, insofar as the following comments – and those that have already been made – may seem prickly and pessimistic it is not meant as an attack upon any particular speaker or attendee. Many of those speakers truly were inspiring (and that is meant sincerely), many speakers really did deliver important comments (that is also meant sincerely), and the goal here is not to question the intentions of PDF’s founders or organizers. Yet prominent events like PDF are integral to shaping the societal discussions surrounding technology – and therefore it is essential to be willing to go beyond the inspirational moments and ask: what is really being said here?

    For events like PDF do serve to advance an ideology, whether they like it or not. And it is worth considering what that ideology means, even if it forces one to wipe the smile from one’s lips. And when it comes to PDF much of its ideology can be discovered simply by dissecting the theme for the 2016 conference: “The Tech We Need.”

    “The Tech”

    What do you (yes, you) think of when you hear the word technology? After all, it is a term that encompasses a great deal, which is one of the reasons why Leo Marx (1997) was compelled to describe technology as a “hazardous concept.” Eyeglasses are technology, but so too is Google Glass. A hammer is technology, and so too is a smart phone. In other words, when somebody says “technology is X” or “technology does Q” or “technology will result in R” it is worth pondering whether technology really is, does or results in those things, or if what is being discussed is really a particular type of technology in a particular context. Granted, technology remains a useful term, it is certainly a convenient shorthand (one which very many people [including me] are guilty of occasionally deploying), but in throwing the term technology about so casually it is easy to obfuscate as much as one clarifies. At PDF it seemed as though a sentence was not complete unless it included a noun, a verb and the word technology – or “tech.” Yet what was meant by “tech” at PDF almost always meant the Internet or a device linked to the Internet – and qualifying this by saying “almost” is perhaps overly generous.

    Thus the Internet (as such), web browsers, smart phones, VR, social networks, server farms, encryption, other social networks, apps, and websites all wound up being pleasantly melted together into “technology.” When “technology” encompasses so much a funny thing begins to happen – people speak effusively about “technology” and only name specific elements when they want to single something out for criticism. When technology is so all encompassing who can possibly criticize technology? And what would it mean to criticize technology when it isn’t clear what is actually meant by the term? Yes, yes, Facebook may be worthy of mockery and smart phones can be used for surveillance but insofar as the discussion is not about the Internet but “technology” on what grounds can one say: “this stuff is rubbish”? For even if it is clear that the term “technology” is being used in a way that focuses on the Internet if one starts to seriously go after technology than one will inevitably be confronted with the question “but aren’t hammers also technology?” In short, when a group talks about “the tech” but by “the tech” only means the Internet and the variety of devices tethered to it, what happens is that the Internet appears as being synonymous with technology. It isn’t just a branch or an example of technology, it is technology! Or to put this in sharper relief: at a conference about “the tech we need” held in the US in 2016 how can one avoid talking about the technology that is needed in the form of water pipes that don’t poison people? The answer: by making it so that the term “technology” does not apply to such things.

    The problem is that when “technology” is used to only mean one set of things it muddles the boundaries of what those things are, and what exists outside of them. And while it does this it allows people to confidently place trust in a big category, “technology,” whereas they would probably have been more circumspect if they were just being asked to place trust in smart phones. After all, “the Internet will save us” doesn’t have quite the same seductive sway as “technology will save us” – even if the belief is usually put more eloquently than that. When somebody says “technology will save us” people can think of things like solar panels and vaccines – even if the only technology actually being discussed is the Internet. Here, though, it is also vital to approach the question of “the tech” with some historically grounded modesty in mind. For the belief that technology is changing the world and fundamentally altering democracy is nothing new. The history of technology (as an academic field) is filled with texts describing how a new tool was perceived as changing everything – from the compass to the telegraph to the phonograph to the locomotive to the [insert whatever piece of technology you (the reader) can think of]. And such inventions were often accompanied by an, often earnest, belief that these inventions would improve everything for the better! Claims that the Internet will save us, invoke déjà vu for those with a familiarity with the history of technology. Carolyn Marvin’s masterful study When Old Technologies Were New (1988) examines the way in which early electrical communications methods were seen at the time of their introduction, and near the book’s end she writes:

    Predictions that strife would cease in a world of plenty created by electrical technology were clichés breathed by the influential with conviction. For impatient experts, centuries of war and struggle testified to the failure of political efforts to solve human problems. The cycle of resentment that fueled political history could perhaps be halted only in a world of electrical abundance, where greed could not impede distributive justice. (206)

    Switch out the words ”electrical technology” for “Internet technology” and the above sentences could apply to the present (and the PDF forum) without further alterations. After all, PDF was certainly a gathering of “the influential” and of “impatient experts.”

    And whenever “tech” and democracy are invoked in the same sentence it is worth pondering whether the tech is itself democratic, or whether it is simply being claimed that the tech can be used for democratic purposes. Lewis Mumford wrote at length about the difference between what he termed “democratic” and “authoritarian” technics – in his estimation “democratic” systems were small scale and manageable by individuals, whereas “authoritarian” technics represented massive systems of interlocking elements where no individual could truly assert control. While Mumford did not live to write about the Internet, his work makes it very clear that he did not consider computer technologies to belong to the “democratic” lineage. Thus, to follow from Mumford, the Internet appears as a wonderful example of an “authoritarian” technic (it is massive, environmentally destructive, turns users into cogs, runs on surveillance, cannot be controlled locally, etc…) – what PDF argues for is that this authoritarian technology can be used democratically. There is an interesting argument there, and it is one with some merit. Yet such a discussion cannot even occur in the confusing morass that one finds oneself in when “the tech” just means the Internet.

    Indeed, by meaning “the Internet” but saying “the tech” groups like PDF (consciously or not) pull a bait and switch whereby a genuine consideration of what “the tech we need” simply becomes a consideration of “the Internet we need.”

    “We”

    Attendees to the PDF conference received a conference booklet upon registration; it featured introductory remarks, a code of conduct, advertisements from sponsors, and a schedule. It also featured a fantastically jarring joke created through the wonders of, perhaps accidental, juxtaposition; however, to appreciate the joke one needed to open the booklet so as to be able to see the front and back cover simultaneously. Here is what that looked like:

    Personal Democracy Forum (2016)

    Get it?

    Hilarious.

    The cover says “The Tech We Need” emblazoned in blue over the faces of the conference speakers, and the back is an advertisement for Microsoft stating: “the future is what we make it.” One almost hopes that the layout was intentional. For, who the heck is the “we” being discussed? Is it the same “we”? Are you included in that “we”? And this is a question that can be asked of each of those covers independently of the other: when PDF says “we” who is included and who is excluded? When Microsoft says “we” who is included and who is excluded? Of course, this gets muddled even more when you consider that Microsoft was the “presenting sponsor” for PDF and that many of the speakers at PDF have funding ties to Microsoft. The reason this is so darkly humorous is that there is certainly an argument to be made that “the tech we need” has no place for mega-corporations like Microsoft, while at the same time the booklet assures that “the future is what we [Microsoft] make it.” In short: the future is what corporations like Microsoft will make it…which might be very different from the kind of tech we need.

    In considering the “we” of PDF it is worth restating that this is a gathering of well-meaning individuals who largely seem to want to approach the idea of “we” with as much inclusivity as possible. Yet defining a “we” is always fraught, speaking for a “we” is always dangerous, and insofar as one can think of PDF with any kind of “we” (or “us”) in mind the only version of the group that really emerges is one that leans heavily towards describing the group actually present at the event. And while one can certainly speak about the level (or lack) of diversity at the PDF event – the “we” who came together at PDF is not particularly representative of the world. This was also brought into interesting relief in some other amusing ways: throughout the event one heard numerous variations of the comment “we all have smart phones” – but this did not even really capture the “we” of PDF. While walking down the stairs to a session one day I clearly saw a man (wearing a conference attendee badge) fiddling with a flip-phone – I suppose he wasn’t included in the “we” of “we all have smart phones.” But I digress.

    One encountered further issues with the “we” when it came to the political content of the forum. While the booklet states, and the hosts repeated over and over, that the event was “non-partisan” such a descriptor is pretty laughable. Those taking to the stage were a procession of people who had cut their teeth working for MoveOn and the activists represented continually self-identified as hailing from the progressive end of the spectrum. The token conservative speaker who stepped onto the stage even made a self-deprecating joke in which she recognized that she was one of only a handful (if that) of Republicans present. So, again, who is missing from this “we”? One can be a committed leftist and genuinely believe that a figure like Donald Trump is a xenophobic demagogue – and still recognize that some of his supporters might have offered a very interesting perspective to the PDF conversation. After all, the Internet (“the tech”) has certainly been used by movements on the right as well – and used quite effectively at that. But this part of a national “we” was conspicuously absent from the forum even if they are not nearly so absent from Twitter, Facebook, or the population of people owning smart phones. Again, it is in no way shape or form an endorsement of anything that Trump has said to point out that when a forum is held to discuss the Internet and democracy that it is worth having the people you disagree with present.

    Another question of the “we” that is worth wrestling with revolves around the way in which events like PDF involve those who offer critical viewpoints. If, as is being argued here, PDF’s basic ideology is that the Internet (“the tech”) is improving people’s lives and will continue to do so (leading towards “personal democracy”) – it is important to note that PDF welcomed several speakers who offered accounts of some of the shortcomings of the Internet. Figures including Sherry Turkle, Kentaro Toyama, Safiya Noble, Kate Crawford, danah boyd, and Douglas Rushkoff all took the stage to deliver some critical points of view – and yet in incorporating such voices into the “we” what occurs is that these critiques function less as genuine retorts and more as safety valves that just blow off a bit of steam. Having Sherry Turkle (not to pick on her) vocally doubt the empathetic potential of the Internet just allows the next speaker (and countless conference attendees) to say “well, I certainly don’t agree with Sherry Turkle.” Nevertheless, one of the best ways to inoculate yourself against the charge of unthinking optimism is to periodically turn the microphone over to a critic. But perhaps the most important things that such critics say are the ways in which they wind up qualifying their comments – thus Turkle says “I’m not anti-technology,” Toyama disparages Facebook only to immediately add “I love Facebook,” and fears regarding the threat posed by AI get laughed off as the paranoia of today’s “apex predators” (rich white men) being concerned that they will lose their spot at the top of the food chain. The environmental costs of the cloud are raised, the biased nature of algorithms is exposed – but these points are couched against a backdrop that says to the assembled technologists “do better” not “the Internet is a corporately controlled surveillance mall, and it’s overrated.” The heresies that are permitted are those that point out the rough edges that need to be rounded so that the pill can be swallowed. To return to the previous paragraph, this is not to say that PDF needs to invite John Zerzan or Chellis Glendinning to speak…but one thing that would certainly expose the weaknesses of the PDF “we” is to solicit viewpoints that genuinely come from outside of that “we.” Granted, PDF is more TED talk than FRED talk.

    And of course, and most importantly, one must think of the “we” that goes totally unheard. Yes, comments were made about the environmental cost of the cloud and passing phrases recognized mining – but PDF’s “we” seems to mainly refer to a “we” defined as those who use the Internet and Internet connected devices. Miners, those assembling high-tech devices, e-waste recyclers, and the other victims of those processes are only a hazy phantom presence. They are mentioned in passing, but not ever included fully in the “we.” PDF’s “the tech we need” is for a “we” that loves the Internet and just wants it to be even better and perhaps a bit nicer, while Microsoft’s we in “the future is what we make it” is a “we” that is committed to staying profitable. But amidst such statements there is an even larger group saying: “we are not being included.” That unheard “we” being the same “we” from the classic IWW song “we have fed you all for a thousand years” (Green et al 2016). And as the second line of that song rings out “and you hail us still unfed.”

    “Need”

    When one looks out upon the world it is almost impossible not to be struck by how much is needed. People need homes, people need –not just to be tolerated – but accepted, people need food, people need peace, people need stability, people need the ability to love without being subject to oppression, people need to be free from bigotry and xenophobia, people need…this list could continue with a litany of despair until we all don sackcloth. But do people need VR headsets? Do people need Facebook or Twitter? Do those in the possession of still-functioning high-tech devices need to trade them in every eighteen months? Of course it is important to note that technology does have an important role in meeting people’s needs – after all “shelter” refers to all sorts of technology. Yet, when PDF talks about “the tech we need” the “need” is shaded by what is meant by “the tech” and as was previously discussed that really means “the Internet.” Therefore it is fair to ask, do people really “need” an iPhone with a slightly larger screen? Do people really need Uber? Do people really need to be able to download five million songs in thirty seconds? While human history is a tale of horror it requires a funny kind of simplistic hubris to think that World War II could have been prevented if only everybody had been connected on Facebook (to be fair, nobody at PDF was making this argument). Are today’s “needs” (and they are great) really a result of a lack of technology? It seems that we already have much of the tech that is required to meet today’s needs, and we don’t even require new ways to distribute it. Or, to put it clearly at the risk of being grotesque: people in your city are not currently going hungry because they lack the proper app.

    The question of “need” flows from both the notion of “the tech” and “we” – and as was previously mentioned it would be easy to put forth a compelling argument that “the tech we need” involves water pipes that don’t poison people with lead, but such an argument is not made when “the tech” means the Internet and when the “we” has already reached the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If one takes a more expansive view of “the tech” and “we” than the range of what is needed changes accordingly. This issue – the way “tech” “we” and “need” intersect – is hardly a new concern. It is what prompted Ivan Illich (1973) to write, in Tools for Conviviality, that:

    People need new tools to work with rather than tools that ‘work’ for them. They need technology to make the most of the energy and imagination each has, rather than more well-programmed energy slaves. (10)

    Granted, it is certainly fair to retort “but who is the ‘we’ referred to by Illich” or “why can’t the Internet be the type of tool that Illich is writing about” – but here Illich’s response would be in line with the earlier referral to Mumford. Namely: accusations of technological determinism aside, maybe it’s fair to say that some technologies are oversold, and maybe the occasional emphasis on the way that the Internet helps activists serves as a patina that distracts from what is ultimately an environmentally destructive surveillance system. Is the person tethered to their smart phone being served by that device – or are they serving it? Or, to allow Illich to reply with his own words:

    As the power of machines increases, the role of persons more and more decreases to that of mere consumers. (11)

    Mindfulness apps, cameras on phones that can be used to film oppression, new ways of downloading music, programs for raising money online, platforms for connecting people on a political campaign – the user is empowered as a citizen but this empowerment tends to involve needing the proper apps. And therefore that citizen needs the proper device to run that app, and a good wi-fi connection, and… the list goes on. Under the ideology captured in the PDF’s “the tech we need” to participate in democracy becomes bound up with “to consume the latest in Internet innovation.” Every need can be met, provided that it is the type of need, which the Internet can meet. Thus the old canard “to the person with a hammer every problem looks like a nail” finds its modern equivalent in “to the person with a smart phone and a good wi-fi connection, every problem looks like one that can be solved by using the Internet.” But as for needs? Freedom from xenophobia and oppression are real needs – undoubtedly – but the Internet has done a great deal to disseminate xenophobia and prop up oppressive regimes. Continuing to double down on the Internet seems like doing the same thing “we” have been doing and expecting different results because finally there’s an “app for that!”

    It is, again, quite clear that those assembled at PDF came together with well-meaning attitudes, but as Simone Weil (2010) put it:

    Intentions, by themselves, are not of any great importance, save when their aim is directly evil, for to do evil the necessary means are always within easy reach. But good intentions only count when accompanied by the corresponding means for putting them into effect. (180)

    The ideology present at PDF emphasizes that the Internet is precisely “the means” for the realization of its attendees’ good intentions. And those who took to the stage spoke rousingly of using Facebook, Twitter, smart phones, and new apps for all manner of positive effects – but hanging in the background (sometimes more clearly than at other times) is the fact that these systems also track their users’ every move and can be used just as easily by those with very different ideas as to what “positive effects” look like. The issue of “need” is therefore ultimately a matter not simply of need but of “ends” – but in framing things in terms of “the tech we need” what is missed is the more difficult question of what “ends” do we seek. Instead “the tech we need” subtly shifts the discussion towards one of “means.” But, as Jacques Ellul, recognized the emphasis on means – especially technological ones – can just serve to confuse the discussion of ends. As he wrote:

    It must always be stressed that our civilization is one of means…the means determine the ends, by assigning us ends that can be attained and eliminating those considered unrealistic because our means do not correspond to them. At the same time, the means corrupt the ends. We live at the opposite end of the formula that ‘the ends justify the means.’ We should understand that our enormous present means shape the ends we pursue. (Ellul 2004, 238)

    The Internet and the raft of devices and platforms associated with it are a set of “enormous present means” – and in celebrating these “means” the ends begin to vanish. It ceases to be a situation where the Internet is the mean to a particular end, and instead the Internet becomes the means by which one continues to use the Internet so as to correct the current problems with the Internet so that the Internet can finally achieve the… it is a snake eating its own tail.

    And its own tale.

    Conclusion: The New York Ideology

    In 1995, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron penned an influential article that described what they called “The Californian Ideology” which they characterized as

    promiscuously combin[ing] the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies. In the digital utopia, everybody will be both hip and rich. (Barbrook and Cameron 2001, 364)

    As the placing of a state’s name in the title of the ideology suggests, Barbrook and Cameron were setting out to describe the viewpoint that was underneath the firms that were (at that time) nascent in Silicon Valley. They sought to describe the mixture of hip futurism and libertarian politics that worked wonderfully in the boardroom, even if there was now somebody in the boardroom wearing a Hawaiian print shirt – or perhaps jeans and a hoodie. As companies like Google and Facebook have grown the “Californian Ideology” has been disseminated widely, and though such companies periodically issued proclamations about not being evil and claimed that connecting the world was their goal they maintained their utopian confidence in the “independence of cyberspace” while directing a distasteful gaze towards the “dinosaurs” of representative democracy that would dare to question their zeal. And though it is a more recent player in the game, one is hard-pressed to find a better example than Uber of the fact that this ideology is alive and well.

    The Personal Democracy Forum is not advancing the Californian Ideology. And though the event may have featured a speaker who suggested that the assembled “we” think of the “founding fathers” as start-up founders – the forum continually returned to the questions of democracy. While the Personal Democracy Forum shares the “faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies” with Silicon Valley startups it seems less “free-wheeling” and more skeptical of “entrepreneurial zeal.” In other words, whereas Barbrook and Cameron spoke of “The Californian Ideology” what PDF makes clear is that there is also a “New York Ideology.” Wherein the ideological hallmark is an embrace of the positive potential of new information technologies tempered by the belief that such potential can best be reached by taming the excesses of unregulated capitalism. Where the Californian Ideology says “libertarian” the New York Ideology says “liberation.” Where the Californian Ideology celebrates capital the New York Ideology celebrates the power found in a high-tech enhanced capitol. The New York Ideology balances the excessive optimism of the Californian Ideology by acknowledging the existence of criticism, and proceeds to neutralize this criticism by making it part and parcel of the celebration of the Internet’s potential. The New York Ideology seeks to correct the hubris of the Californian Ideology by pointing out that it is precisely this hubris that turns many away from the faith in the “emancipatory potential.” If the Californian Ideology is broadcast from the stage at the newest product unveiling or celebratory conference, than the New York Ideology is disseminated from conferences like PDF and the occasional skeptical TED talk. The New York Ideology may be preferable to the Californian Ideology in a thousand ways – but ultimately it is the ideology that manifests itself in the “we” one encounters in the slogan “the tech we need.”

    Or, to put it simply, whereas the Californian Ideology is “wealth meaning,” the New York Ideology is “well-meaning.”

    Of course, it is odd and unfair to speak of either ideology as “Californian” or “New York.” California is filled with Californians who do not share in that ideology, and New York is filled with New Yorkers who do not share in that ideology either. Yet to dub what one encounters at PDF to be “The New York Ideology” is to indicate the way in which current discussions around the Internet are not solely being framed by “The Californian Ideology” but also by a parallel position wherein faith in Internet enabled solutions puts aside its libertarian sneer to adopt a democratic smile. One could just as easily call the New York Ideology the “Tech On Stage Ideology” or the “Civic Tech Ideology” – perhaps it would be better to refer to the Californian Ideology as the SV Ideology (silicon valley) and the New York Ideology as the CV ideology (civic tech). But if the Californian Ideology refers to the tech campus in Silicon Valley than the New York Ideology refers to the foundation based in New York – that may very well be getting much of its funding from the corporations that call Silicon Valley home. While Uber sticks with the Californian Ideology, companies like Facebook have begun transitioning to the New York Ideology so that they can have their panoptic technology and their playgrounds too. Whilst new tech companies emerging in New York (like Kickstarter and Etsy) make positive proclamations about ethics and democracy by making it seem that ethics and democracy are just more consumption choices that one picks from the list of downloadable apps.

    The Personal Democracy Forum is a fascinating event. It is filled with intelligent individuals who speak of democracy with unimpeachable sincerity, and activists who really have been able to use the Internet to advance their causes. But despite all of this, the ideological emphasis on “the tech we need” remains based upon a quizzical notion of “need,” a problematic concept of “we,” and a reductive definition of “tech.” For statements like “the tech we need” are not value neutral – and even if the surface ethics are moving and inspirational, sometimes a problematic ideology is most easily disseminated when it takes care to dispense with ideologues. And though the New York Ideology is much more subtle than the Californian Ideology – and makes space for some critical voices – it remains a vehicle for disseminating an optimistic faith that a technologically enhanced Moses shall lead us into the high-tech promised land.

    The 2016 Personal Democracy Forum put forth an inspirational and moving vision of “the tech we need.”

    But when it comes to promises of technological salvation, isn’t it about time that “we” stopped getting our hopes up?

    Coda

    I confess, I am hardly free of my own ideological biases. And I recognize that everything written here may simply be dismissed of by those who find it hypocritical that I composed such remarks on a computer and then posted them online. But I would say that the more we find ourselves using technology the more careful we must be that we do not allow ourselves to be used by that technology.

    And thus, I shall simply conclude by once more citing a dead, but prescient, pessimist:

    I have no illusions that my arguments will convince anyone. (Ellul 1994, 248)

    _____

    Zachary Loeb is a writer, activist, librarian, and terrible accordion player. He earned his MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA from the Media, Culture, and Communications department at NYU, and is currently working towards a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science department at the University of Pennsylvania. His research areas include media refusal and resistance to technology, ideologies that develop in response to technological change, and the ways in which technology factors into ethical philosophy – particularly in regards of the way in which Jewish philosophers have written about ethics and technology. Using the moniker “The Luddbrarian,” Loeb writes at the blog Librarian Shipwreck, where an earlier version of this post first appeared, and is a frequent contributor to The b2 Review Digital Studies section.

    Back to the essay
    _____

    Works Cited

    • Barbrook, Richard and Andy Cameron. 2001. “The Californian Ideology.” In Peter Ludlow, ed., Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates and Pirate Utopias. Cambridge: MIT Press. 363-387.
    • Ellul, Jacques. 2004. The Political Illusion. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.
    • Ellul, Jacques. 1994. A Critique of the New Commonplaces. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.
    • Green, Archie, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Salvatore Salerno. 2016. The Big Red Songbook: 250+ IWW Songs! Oakland, CA: PM Press.
    • Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row.
    • Marvin, Carolyn. 1988. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.
    • Marx, Leo. 1997. “‘Technology’: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” Social Research 64:3 (Fall). 965-988.
    • Mumford, Lewis. 1964. “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics.” in Technology and Culture, 5:1 (Winter). 1-8.
    • Weil, Simone. 2010. The Need for Roots. London: Routledge.
  • Jürgen Geuter — Liberty, an iPhone, and the Refusal to Think Politically

    Jürgen Geuter — Liberty, an iPhone, and the Refusal to Think Politically

    By Jürgen Geuter
    ~

    The relationship of government and governed has always been complicated. Questions of power, legitimacy, structural and institutional violence, of rights and rules and restrictions keep evading any ultimate solution, chaining societies to constant struggles about shifting balances between different positions and extremes or defining completely new aspects or perspectives on them to shake off the often perceived stalemate. Politics.

    Politics is a simple word but one with a lot of history. Coming from the ancient Greek term for “city” (as in city-state) the word pretty much shows what it is about: Establishing the structures that a community can thrive on. Policy is infrastructure. Not made of wire or asphalt but of ideas and ways of connecting them while giving the structure ways of enforcing the integrity of itself.

    But while the processes of negotiation and discourse that define politics will never stop while intelligent beings exist recent years have seen the emergence of technology as a replacement of politics. From Lawrence Lessig’s “Code is Law” to Marc Andreessen’s “Software Is Eating the World”: A small elite of people building the tools and technologies that we use to run our lives have in a way started emancipating from politics as an idea. Because where politics – especially in democratic societies – involves potentially more people than just a small elite, technologism and its high priests pull off a fascinating trick: defining policy and politics while claiming not to be political.

    This is useful for a bunch of reasons. It allows to effectively sidestep certain existing institutions and structures avoiding friction and loss of forward momentum. “Move fast and break things” was Facebook’s internal motto until only very recently. It also makes it easy to shed certain responsibilities that we expect political entities of power to fulfill. Claiming “not to be political” allows you to have mobs of people hunting others on your service without really having to do anything about it until it becomes a PR problem. Finally, evading the label of politics grants a lot more freedoms when it comes to wielding powers that the political structures have given you: It’s no coincidence that many Internet platform declare “free speech” a fundamental and absolute right, a necessary truth of the universe, unless it’s about showing a woman breastfeeding or talking about the abuse free speech extremists have thrown at feminists.

    Yesterday news about a very interesting case directly at the contact point of politics and technologism hit mainstream media: Apple refused – in a big and well-written open letter to its customers – to fulfill an order by the District Court of California to help the FBI unlock an iPhone 5c that belonged to one of the shooters in last year’s San Bernadino shooting, in which 14 people were killed and 22 more were injured.

    Apple’s argument is simple and ticks all the boxes of established technical truths about cryptography: Apple’s CEO Tim Cook points out that adding a back door to its iPhones would endanger all of Apple’s customers because nobody can make sure that such a back door would only be used by law enforcement. Some hacker could find that hole and use it to steal information such as pictures, credit card details or personal data from people’s iPhones or make these little pocket computers do illegal things. The dangers Apple correctly outlines are immense. The beautifully crafted letter ends with the following statements:

    Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

    We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.

    While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

    Nothing in that defense is new: The debate about government backdoors has been going on for decades with companies, software makers and government officials basically exchanging the same bullets points every few years. Government: “We need access. For security.” Software people: “Yeah but then nobody’s system is secure anymore.” Rinse and repeat. That whole debate hasn’t even changed through Edward Snowden’s leaks: While the positions were presented in an increasingly shriller and shriller tone the positions themselves stayed monolithic and unmoved. Two unmovable objects yelling at each other to get out of the way.

    Apple’s open letter was received with high praise all through the tech-savvy elites, from the cypherpunks to journalists and technologists. One tweet really stood out for me because it illustrates a lot of what we have so far talked about:

    Read that again. Tim Cook/Apple are clearly separated from politics and politicians when it comes to – and here’s the kicker – the political concept of individual liberty. A deeply political debate, the one about where the limits of individual liberty might be is ripped out of the realm of politicians (and us, but we’ll come to that later). Sing the praises of the new Guardian of the Digital Universe.

    But is the court order really exactly the fundamental danger for everybody’s individual liberty that Apple presents? The actual text paints a different picture. The court orders Apple to help the FBI access one specific, identified iPhone. The court order lists the actual serial number of the device. What “help” means in this context is also specified in great detail:

    1. Apple is supposed to disable features of the iPhone automatically deleting all user data stored on the device which are usually in place to prevent device thieves from accessing the data the owners of the device stored on it.
    2. Apple will also give the FBI some way to send passcodes (guesses of the PIN that was used to lock the phone) to the device. This sounds strange but will make sense later.
    3. Apple will disable all software features that introduce delays for entering more passcodes. You know the drill: You type the wrong passcode and the device just waits for a few seconds before you can try a new one.

    Apple is compelled to write a little piece of software that runs only on the specified iPhone (the text is very clear on that) and that disables the 2 security features explained in 1 and 3. Because the court actually recognizes the dangers of having that kind of software in the wild it explicitly allows Apple to do all of this within its own facilities: the Phone would be sent to an Apple facility, the software loaded to the RAM of the device. This is where 2 comes in: When the device has been modified by loading the Apple-signed software into its RAM the FBI needs a way to send PIN code guesses to the device. The court order even explicitly states that Apple’s new software package is only supposed to go to RAM and not change the device in other ways. Potentially dangerous software would never leave Apple’s premises, Apple also doesn’t have to introduce or weaken the security of all its devices and if Apple can fulfill the tasks described in some other way the court is totally fine with it. The government, any government doesn’t get a generic backdoor to all iPhones or all Apple products. In a more technical article than this on Dan Guido outlines that what the court order asks for would work on the iPhone in question but not on most newer ones.

    So while Apple’s PR evokes the threat of big government’s boots marching on to step on everybody’s individual freedoms, the text of the court order and the technical facts make the case ultra specific: Apple isn’t supposed to build a back door for iPhones but help law enforcement to open up one specific phone within their possession connected not to a theoretical crime in the future but the actual murder of 14 people.

    We could just attribute it all to Apple effectively taking a PR opportunity to strengthen the image it has been developing after realizing that they just couldn’t really do data and services, the image of the protector of privacy and liberty. An image that they kicked into overdrive post-Snowden. But that would be too simple because the questions here are a lot more fundamental.

    How do we – as globally networked individuals living in digitally connected and mutually overlaying societies – define the relationship of transnational corporations and the rules and laws we created?

    Cause here’s the fact: Apple was ordered by a democratically legitimate court to help in the investigation of a horrible, capital crime leading to the murder of 14 people by giving it a way to potentially access one specific phone of the more than 700 million phones Apple has made. And Apple refuses.

    Which – don’t get me wrong – is their right as an entity in the political system of the US: They can fight the court order using the law. They can also just refuse and see what the government, what law enforcement will do to make them comply. Sometimes the cost of breaking that kind of resistance overshadow the potential value so the request gets dropped. But where do we as individuals stand whose liberty is supposedly at stake? Where is our voice?

    One of the main functions of political systems is generating legitimacy for power. While some less-than-desirable systems might generate legitimacy by being the strongest, in modern times less physical legitimizations of power were established: a king for example often is supposed to rule because one or more god(s) say so. Which generates legitimacy especially if you share the same belief. In democracies legitimacy is generated by elections or votes: by giving people the right to speak their mind, elect representatives and be elected the power (and structural violence) that a government exerts is supposedly legitimized.

    Some people dispute the legitimacy of even democratically distributed power, and it’s not like they have no point, but let’s not dive into the teachings of Anarchism here. The more mainstream position is that there is a rule of law and that the institutions of the United States as a democracy are legitimized as the representation of US citizens. They represent every US citizen, they each are supposed to keep the political structure, the laws and rules and rights that come with being a US citizen (or living there) intact. And when that system speaks to a company it’s supposed to govern and the company just gives it the finger (but in a really nice letter) how does the public react? They celebrate.

    But what’s to celebrate? This is not some clandestine spy network gathering everybody’s every waking move to calculate who might commit a crime in 10 years and assassinate them. This is a concrete case, a request confirmed by a court in complete accordance with the existing practices in many other domains. If somebody runs around and kills people, the police can look into their mail, enter their home. That doesn’t abolish the protections of the integrity of your mail or home but it’s an attempt to balance the rights and liberties of the individual as well as the rights and needs of all others and the social system they form.

    Rights hardly ever are absolute, some might even argue that no right whatsoever is absolute: you have the right to move around freely. But I can still lock you out of my home and given certain crimes you might be locked up in prison. You have the right to express yourself but when you start threatening others, limits kick in. This balancing act that I also started this essay with has been going on publicly for ages and it will go on for a lot longer. Because the world changes. New needs might emerge, technology might create whole new domains of life that force us to rethink how we interact and which restrictions we apply. But that’s nothing that one company just decides.

    In unconditionally celebrating Cook’s letter a dangerous “apolitical” understanding of politics shows its ugly face: An ideology so obsessed with individual liberty that it happily embraces its new unelected overlords. Code is Law? More like “Cook is Law”.

    This isn’t saying that Apple (or any other company in that situation) just has to automatically do everything a government tells them to. It’s quite obvious that many of the big tech companies are not happy about the idea of establishing precedent in helping government authorities. Today it’s the FBI but what if some agency from some dictatorship wants the data from some dissident’s phone? Is a company just supposed to pick and choose?

    The world might not grow closer together but it gets connected a lot more and that leads to inconsistent laws, regulations, political ideologies etc colliding. And so far we as mankind have no idea how to deal with it. Facebook gets criticized in Europe for applying very puritanic standards when it comes to nudity but it does follow as a US company established US traditions. Should they apply German traditions which are a lot more open when it comes to depictions of nudity as well? What about rules of other countries? Does Facebook need to follow all? Some? If so which ones?

    While this creates tough problems for international law makers, governments and us more mortal people, it does concern companies very little as they can – when push comes to shove – just move their base of operation somewhere else. Which they already do to “optimize” avoid taxes, about which Cook also recently expressed indignant refusal to comply with US government requirements as “total political crap” – is this also a cause for all of us across the political spectrum to celebrate Apple’s protection of individual liberty? I wonder how the open letter would have looked if Ireland, which is a tax haven many technology companies love to use, would have asked for the same thing California did?

    This is not specifically about Apple. Or Facebook. Or Google. Or Volkswagen. Or Nestle. This is about all of them and all of us. If we uncritically accept that transnational corporations decide when and how to follow the rules we as societies established just because right now their (PR) interests and ours might superficially align how can we later criticize when the same companies don’t pay taxes or decide to not follow data protection laws? Especially as a kind of global digital society (albeit of a very small elite) we have between cat GIFs and shaking the fist at all the evil that governments do (and there’s lots of it) dropped the ball on forming reasonable and consistent models for how to integrate all our different inconsistent rules and laws. How we gain any sort of politically legitimized control over corporations, governments and other entities of power.

    Tim Cook’s letter starts with the following words:

    This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake.

    On that he and I completely agree.


    _____

    Jürgen Geuter (@tante) is a political computer scientist living in Germany. For about 10 years he has been speaking and writing about technology, digitalization, digital culture and the way these influence mainstream society. His writing has been featured in Der Spiegel, Wired Germany and other publications as well as his own blog Nodes in a Social Network, on which an earlier version of this post first appeared.

    Back to the essay

  • De América Latina a Abya Yala. Una reseña de Latinoamericanismo después del 9/11

    De América Latina a Abya Yala. Una reseña de Latinoamericanismo después del 9/11

    Una reseña de Latinoamericanismo después del 9/11

    Click here for English text/ Clic aqui para leer en ingles

    Emilio del Valle Escalante (Maya k’iche’, iximulew)

    Luego de los ataques del 11 de septiembre en suelo norteamericano en el 2001, los estado-nación latinoamericanos se unieron a George W. Bush en sus consignas de negar a “grupos terroristas la capacidad de operar en el Hemisferio.”1 A través de la Organización de Estados Americanos Bush indicaba que “Esta familia Americana permanece unida” (Youngers, 151). Sin embargo, en lugar de cultivar el inmenso apoyo continental, la administración Bush dio su espalda a los estados latinoamericanos e inició su “batalla contra el terrorismo” en el medio oriente (particularmente Irak), batalla que encendió un largo y divisivo conflicto cuyas consecuencias se sienten hasta hoy día, ahora con la emergencia del Estado Islámico de Iraq y Siria (ISIS en sus siglas anglosajonas). El distanciamiento de Estados Unidos de Latinoamérica, algunos han argumentado, resultó en la emergencia de políticas izquierdistas que a través de la democracia paulatinamente han tomado control del estado-nación, un fenómeno que es hoy conocido como “Marea rosada.” En efecto, luego del 11 de septiembre del 2001, presenciamos el establecimiento de los gobiernos del fallecido Hugo Chávez en Venezuela, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva en Brasil, Evo Morales en Bolivia, Rafael Correa en Ecuador, Cristina Fernández en Argentina, y Daniel Ortega en Nicaragua, gobiernos que muestran una transición de economías capitalistas neoliberales a proyectos orientados hacia un “renovado” socialismo.

    Tomando este contexto como punto de partida, Latinamericanism after 9/11 o Latinoamericanismo después del 9/11 de John Beverley explora la importancia de los gobiernos de la Marea rosada para los Estudios Latinoamericanos, argumentando que estos gobiernos de orientación izquierdista abren “una nueva, e imprevista serie de posibilidades y determinaciones.”2 Con su apuesta en el socialismo, estos gobiernos marcan el declive del Consenso de Washington y un alejamiento de las políticas e influencia estadounidense en la región. Beverley ve estos procesos políticos como desdoblando una necesaria confrontación entre América Latina y los Estados Unidos que provee una oportunidad para redefinir y asegurar la “fuerza ideológica y geopolítica” del Latinoamericanismo (Beverley, 7). El libro incluye una introducción y siete capítulos donde Beverley desarrolla discusiones y debates con varios sectores de la intelectualidad latinoamericanista a modo de re-examinar, conciliar, trascender y establecer un marco crítico “pos-subalternista” que, por un lado, valide al estado-nación como un lugar de lucha, y por el otro, articule un “nuevo” Latinoamericanismo que en su compromiso político con los movimientos sociales pueda potencialmente materializar cambios políticos y sociales (Beverley, 15).

    En los capítulos “Latinoamericanismo después del 9/11” y “Entre Ariel y Calibán,” Beverley hace un mapeo de los debates entre Latinoamericanistas que claman hablar desde América Latina y aquellos que hablan y se ubican fuera de sus entornos geopolíticos. En estos capítulos, Beverley desarrolla una crítica a intelectuales neo-arielistas como Mabel Moraña, Hugo Achugar y Nelly Richard quienes proponen un posicionamiento crítico que en lugar de adherirse a las nuevas políticas y demandas de los movimientos sociales, parecen más interesados en articular una forma de crítica que valora formas culturales cosmopolitas y la autoridad del intelectual criollo-mestizo como portador del conocimiento y la memoria histórica.3 Los argumentos de los neo-arielistas contra los Latinoamericanistas en Estados Unidos, según Beverley, tienen tres componentes: 1) los estudios latinoamericanos en Estados Unidos se concentran en cuestiones de las políticas de la identidad y el multiculturalismo, discusiones que están siendo “trasladadas” a América Latina y no representan adecuadamente las historias diversas y formaciones culturales en la región; 2) Los estudios latinoamericanos anglosajones disminuyen el papel militante de los intelectuales latinoamericanos en suelo latinoamericano y al hacerlo, subalternizan las contribuciones de pensadores que operan en y desde Latinoamérica; 3) los aparatos teóricos como los estudios subalternos y poscoloniales en el “Norte” contribuyen a disminuir la habilidad de los latinoamericanistas que hablan desde América Latina a implementar sus propios proyectos de identidad y desarrollo a nivel nacional o regional (Beverley, 62-63).

    Beverley indica que al construir un argumento que sitúa América Latina contra los latinoamericanistas en Estados Unidos y otras partes del mundo, los neo-arielistas ofrecen una respuesta inadecuada a la hegemónica cultural y económica anglosajona. Al reclamar que se habla “desde” América Latina, estos intelectuales no solo pasan por alto la orientalización que opera dentro del circuito de la ciudad letrada latinoamericana, sino que también reafirman su propio autoridad cultural y política, así como la de la literatura y la crítica cultural. Con esta propuesta, este sector intelectual también reafirma su propio origen criollo-mestizo europeo y su estatus de clase media alta burguesa, el cual articula una posición discursiva incapaz de producir un “atractivo nacional-popular” (Beverley, 20) A contrapelo de este posicionamiento, Beverley propone un “nuevo” Latinoamericanismo que recupere el “espacio de la des-jerarquización cedido al mercado y el neoliberalismo,” y “capaz de que, a la vez, inspire y se nutra de las nuevas formas de práctica política y social que emergen desde abajo” (Beverley, 22-23). Este proyecto requiere reconocer la naturaleza multiétnica y multinacional de América Latina, las demandas de los movimientos sociales y las poblaciones amenazadas por la globalización y el neoliberalismo en la región, las formas de territorialidad que van más allá del estado-nación (por ej. los Hispanos en Estados Unidos), las luchas contra el machismo, racismo, la homofobia, así como las luchas por la igualdad de género de las mujeres y las minorías sexuales . Dado que todas estas demandas y luchas son constitutivas de América Latina, es ahora el momento—Beverley sugiere—de desarrollar aproximaciones críticas que den cuenta e incorporen las demandas de estos sectores a modo de afirmar el desarrollo de un proyecto civilizatorio propio en la región; un proyecto civilizatorio “capaz de confrontar la hegemonía estadounidense y expresar un futuro alternativo para los pueblos de las Américas” (Beverley, 18).

    En el capítulo tercero, “La persistencia de la Nación,” Beverley ofrece una crítica de Imperio (2001) de Michael Hardt y Antonio Negri. Puesto que Hardt y Negri argumentan que vivimos en una especie de Imperio Romano donde no hay “centro” y/o “periferia”, Beverley se pregunta: ¿Quién en el mundo de hoy representa entonces una lógica de resistencia que puede derribar al imperio y proponer alternativas a su lógica? La crítica de Beverley se concentra en la idea de la “multitud” propuesta por los autores. Con esta idea, Hardt y Negri sugieren que la multitud es la “multifacética, hidra de las siete cabezas, o sujeto hibrido colectivo constituido por la globalización y la deterritorializacion cultural” (Beverley, 26-27) Para Beverley, sin embargo, la multitud no es sino una nueva forma de nombrar al proletario como un sujeto hibrido o heterogéneo universal que margina las demandas específicas—muchas veces nacionalistas—del subalterno. Por ejemplo, los movimientos sociales evocados por Hardt y Negri, como los Zapatistas en Chiapas, o el Intifada en Palestina, se caracterizan precisamente por usar políticas identitarias y la necesidad de cambiar la naturaleza misma del estado-nación. Hardt y Negri quieren imaginar—según Beverley—una forma de “política que vaya más allá de los límites de la nación y las formas de representación política y cultural tradicionalmente asociadas a la idea de hegemonía” (Beverley, 27-28)

    En el cuarto capítulo, “Deconstrucción y latinoamericanismo,” Beverley se concentra en The Exhaustion of Difference [El agotamiento de la diferencia] de Alberto Moreiras el cual es interpretado como una “nueva” forma de latinoamericanismo que se vale de la deconstrucción como aparato teórico capaz de renovar “si no a la izquierda en el sentido tradicional, ciertamente una política emancipadora en un nuevo orden global emergente;” Moreiras, según Beverley, se preocupa con las políticas del conocimiento relacionadas con la representación de la cultura latinoamericana, y busca “poner en crisis y radicalizar el espacio ideológico y conceptual de los estudios culturales latinoamericanos” (Beverley 44-45). Dado que Moreiras depende de la apropiación y privilegio de ciertos conocimientos (usualmente cosmopolita, o barroco), al igual que los neo-arielistas, termina resignificando la autoridad del intelectual dado que no interroga su propio posicionamiento crítico privilegiado. Moreiras tampoco cuestiona otras formas de conocimiento subalterno que quedan fuera de la mirada del latinoamericanismo latinoamericano por el que aboga. En este sentido, Moreiras articula un espacio crítico y teórico cosmopolita “que es en sí mismo producido por y realimenta la lógica de la globalización” (Beverley 54).

    En capítulo quinto, “El giro neoconservador,” Beverley percibe que de la mano con la re-emergencia de la izquierda como una fuerza política luego del 11 de septiembre, también surge una tendencia crítica dentro de la izquierda latinoamericana que “se está definiendo a sí misma, o está convirtiéndose en ‘conservadora’ en asuntos culturales, pero ‘liberal’ en asuntos políticos y económicos” (Beverley, 91). Esta tendencia crítica, similar al neo-arielismo y la deconstrucción, está representada por una clase burguesa medio-alta, usualmente con una educación universitaria, y esencialmente de raza blanca y/o criollo-ladino/mestiza. Estos críticos, representados por el trabajo de Mario Roberto Morales, Mabel Moraña y Beatriz Sarlo, buscan recuperar “el espacio hegemónico y hermenéutico hegemónico” con sus respectivas críticas al movimiento Maya en Guatemala, el campo de la crítica literaria latinoamericana en contra de los estudios subalternos y poscoloniales como alternativas teóricas, y el género del testimonio (Beverley, 91). En sus respectivas discusiones, estos críticos despliegan cierta incomodidad con el multiculturalismo y las políticas de la identidad cultural, las cuales son vistas como fetichizando y orientalizando su objeto de estudio subalterno. Estos autores hablan “en nombre de la autoridad de la literatura con el propósito de descalificar los esfuerzos de sujetos indígenas y subalternos a inscribirse ellos mismos en la historia” (Beverley, 83) De estas lecturas, Beverley concluye que el giro neoconservador en América Latina se distingue por 1) un rechazo a la autoridad de la voz y experiencia subalterna, y una insatisfacción extrema al o escepticismo sobre el multiculturalismo o la interculturalidad y políticas identitarias; 2) una defensa a la autoridad del crítico-escritor como portador del conocimiento; 3) una reafirmación de la identidad criollo-mestiza; 4) su fracaso a reconocer la persistencia del racismo y las jerarquías de género en América Latina; 5) expresar su “objeción a los proyectos de las luchas armadas revolucionarias de los años 60 y 70, y más bien a favor de una izquierda más razonada y cautelosa,” y 6) una “reteritorialización de las disciplinas académicas—particularmente el campo de la crítica literaria y cultural” (Beverley, 89).  La preocupación de Beverley es que este grupo “tiene el potencial de dividir innecesariamente a la nueva izquierda latinoamericana e impedir la fuerza hegemónica con la que está surgiendo a nivel nacional y continental” (Beverley, 91).

    En “Más allá del paradigma de la desilusión,” Beverley discute el tema de la lucha armada en América Latina. El capítulo argumenta que las narrativas actuales de las rebeliones armadas en la región, como Utopía desarmada de Jorge Castañeda, ofrecen una visión negativa de la insurgencia dado que están “más inclinadas a ver en donde fallamos en lugar de ver donde estuvimos bien” (Beverley, 109) . Estas perspectivas negativas despliegan un “paradigma de desilusión” donde la crítica, retrospectivamente, habla de la insurgencia armada como una “equivocación” o un error, o como movimientos “mal concebidos” y románticos, compuestos de jóvenes inmaduros, “destinados a fracasar”, “propensos a la desproporción, irresponsables y con una anarquía moral” (Beverley, 98-99). A pesar de que con la derrota de muchos de estos movimientos revolucionarios formas previas de capitalismo fueron “reestablecidas” (ahora bajo las banderas del “neoliberalismo” y la “globalización”), ver las luchas armadas de forma negativa oblitera el hecho de que estos movimientos sirvieron de piso a las corrientes políticas de resistencia y al activismo social actuales (por ej. el EZLN u otras movilizaciones de carácter étnico en América Latina). En este sentido, los movimientos sociales actuales confrontan desafíos muy similares a los de los movimientos de los años sesenta: ¿cómo “transformar el estado y empezar a trasformar la sociedad desde el estado” (Beverley, 108). Además, “mucha gente involucrada en los gobiernos de la marea rosada o en los movimientos que los llevaron al poder, apostaron sus esfuerzos e ideales políticos en el periodo de la lucha armada” (Beverley, 98) La “experiencia de la lucha armada en América Latina, incluyendo Cuba—Beverley argumenta—siguió la dirección de la democracia, e introdujo en la política un nuevo espíritu de esperanza para el cambio social que no había estado presente en la región desde los años treinta, y con ello, nuevas posibilidades de participación política directa” (Beverley, 105).

    Beverley cierra su libro con, “El subalterno y el estado”, abogando por la necesidad de un paradigma “pos-subalternista.” Es decir, una perspectiva teórica que en su aproximación crítica al estado nación revele su deuda a los estudios subalternos, pero que a la vez, los desplace. Beverley encuentra por lo menos dos limitaciones con los estudios subalternos. Primero, que éstos conceptualizan al subalterno fuera y constitutivamente opuesto al estado y la modernidad dado que estas instituciones han sido el resultado del colonialismo. Segundo, los estudios subalternos imaginan a la sociedad civil completamente independiente del estado nación. Lo que los gobiernos de la marea rosada han mostrado, sin embargo, es que el subalterno y el estado pueden ser compatibles. Beverley indica que “El Chavismo fue precisamente el resultado de la cristalización de una variedad de movimientos sociales operando en Venezuela durante la emergencia del Caracazo como nuevo bloque político” (Beverley, 114). De forma similar, el éxito del Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) en Bolivia fue resultado de movimientos sociales de incidencia indígena que exitosamente modificaron las relaciones económicas y establecieron un liderazgo “predominantemente indígena” (Beverley, 109) En este sentido, los gobiernos de la marea rosada, según Beverley, nos permiten imaginar un estado que puede incorporar “las demandas, valores, experiencias de los sectores subalternos-populares (lo que requiere un proceso de articulación hegemónica preliminar y de un bloque político nuevo capaz de interpelar al estado), y que a su vez, desde el estado, pueda rehacer la sociedad bajo modelos económicos que distribuyan mejor la riqueza, igualitario y culturalmente diverso (es decir, el cómo la hegemonía puede ser construida desde el estado)” (Beverley 115-116).

    Mientras que encuentro relevancia en la crítica que Beverley hace al neo-arielismo y deconstrucción, su evaluación de la lucha armada, la importancia del estado-nación y las políticas de la identidad en un “mundo globalizado,” y su llamado a desarrollar un proyecto político que se asocie con los movimientos sociales, encuentro también algunas limitaciones en sus argumentos. Quiero subrayar tales limitaciones en lo que sigue.

    Como podemos ver, la crítica de Beverley se concentra en cómo el Latinoamericanismo ha fracasado en sus esfuerzos de reconocer e incorporar las demandas de los movimientos sociales y las poblaciones amenazadas por la globalización y el neoliberalismo. Sin embargo, si la idea es incorporar en los espacios hegemónicos—dominados por la inteligencia latinoamericanista de clase media alta, usualmente con una educación universitaria, y esencialmente de raza blanca y criollo-mestiza—las “demandas, valores, experiencias de los sectores subalterno-populares,” ¿hasta qué punto Beverley no es también cómplice en prevenir “los esfuerzos de sujetos indígenas y subalternos a inscribirse ellos mismos en la historia” (Beverley, 83)?

    Beverley reconoce que el proyecto civilizatorio de América Latina históricamente ha involucrado la supresión y marginalización de “lenguas y formas de pensar y ser” indígenas bajo el supuesto de que la vida y cultura indígena son “inadecuadas” o “atrasadas” (Beverley, 59). Dadas estas suposiciones, “los pueblos indígenas o campesinos o trabajadores o los pobres de la urbe no se identifican con el proyecto” civilizatorio latinoamericano (Beverley, 48). Pero a la vez que Beverley subraya estas limitaciones, no tiene problemas en abogar por un “nuevo latinoamericanismo.” Al hacerlo, rechaza y oblitera algunas de las categorías y alternativas propuestas por los movimientos sociales, en particular, de los intelectuales y activistas indígenas y afro-descendientes.4 Me sorprende, por ejemplo, que Beverley no reflexione o considere la categoría y el proyecto civilizatorio de Abya Yala 5  el cual ha sido propuesto por algunos estudiosos y activistas indígenas desde los años ochenta, y que ha sido teorizado por un ex – estudiante de doctorado del mismo Beverley: el académico y activista kichwa, Armando Muyolema.6 Muyolema desafía la idea de América Latina precisamente porque es y continúa siendo un proyecto constitutivo del etnocentrismo y colonialismo dado que, en la mayor parte, aboga por las aspiraciones de los intelectuales blancos y los criollo-mestizos de origen europeo; es decir, los sectores que el mismo Beverley crítica. Latinoamérica no es meramente un “nombre” o categoría, sino más bien un proyecto geopolítico que encarna y confirma el histórico y perdurable régimen del colonialismo en la región. Los pueblos indígenas sólo podemos ser parte de América Latina si renunciamos a nuestros territorios, idiomas, y especificidades culturales y religiosas. Contrario a este proyecto civilizatorio, Abya Yala, según Muyolema, representa nuestro propio proyecto y lugar de enunciación.

    En efecto, para muchos sectores Indígenas y no indígenas, la posibilidad de una “alianza política entre grupos sociales” y la formación de “un nuevo bloque histórico a nivel nacional, continental e internacional” (Beverley, 83) ya no reside tanto en un “nuevo” proyecto Latinoamericano o latinoamericanista sino más bien en Abya Yala. A mi modo de ver, para nosotros, reconocer y abogar por el Latinoamericanismo contribuirá a la afirmación de una lógica colonialista que ignora nuestras necesidades como naciones indígenas: en particular, nuestros continuos esfuerzos de recuperar y defender nuestros territorios, así como restituir nuestras especificidades lingüísticas, culturales y religiosas, esfuerzos que el Latinoamericanismo en todas sus formas, no ha podido entender y atender de forma profunda. Debido a esto, me atrevo a afirmar que los esfuerzos de los movimientos indígenas subalterno-populares están mejor empleados si primero, desarrollamos un bloque indígena a nivel global. Se trata de comprender que tenemos una historia común; reconocer que a partir de los esfuerzos por contrarrestar la opresión y marginalización podemos desarrollar un discurso colectivo que nos acerque como pueblos y naciones indígenas diversas que luchan para trascender los colonialismos externos e internos. Nuestro posicionamiento como sujetos indígenas no solamente permitirá la articulación hegemónica de nuestras demandas, sino que también nos permitirá negociar mejor con los no indígenas en la constitución de modelos nacionales multiculturales e interculturales en base a nuestras propias perspectivas indígenas.

    Respecto a la discusión de Beverley a propósito de la marea rosada, no hay ninguna duda que estos gobiernos izquierdistas han traído beneficios económicos y políticos a importantes sectores de la población marginalizada. Sin embargo, ¿Qué hacemos con Michelle Bachelet y su promulgación de la ley “anti-terrorista” creada por Augusto Pinochet en 1984, la cual está siendo empleada para justificar el encarcelamiento de líderes mapuches en la región norte de la Araucanía en Chile? ¿O los esfuerzos de Rafael Correa para cerrar la cede de las oficinas de la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAI), una organización que inicialmente apoyó la elección presidencial de Correa? (ni mencionar el encarcelamiento y asesinato de varios activistas ambientales y campesinos en la región amazónica del Ecuador). ¿O el cómo la administración de Evo Morales ha invadido territorios indígenas Amazónicos (el llamado programa TIPNIS) para construir carreteras, puentes y sistemas eléctricos para económicamente favorecer a sectores electorales que le han apoyado? A mi modo de ver, lo que los gobiernos de la marea rosada muestran es que si bien por un lado han constituido al estado nación como un punto de lucha que propone el socialismo como alternativa, y en un caso, han establecido un liderazgo que es “predominantemente indígena”, por el otro, éstos también evidencian cómo son capaces de reproducir colonialismo, llegando a ser—tal y como lo sugiere Nicholas Dirks—“tan opresores como los peores regímenes coloniales” (Colonialism and Culture, 15).

    Al decir esto, de ninguna manera estoy sugiriendo que nosotros no veamos el estado-nación o la modernidad como espacios de posibilidades políticas. Como Beverley, considero que la nación y sus instituciones hegemónicas son claramente espacios de lucha necesarios que con nuestra participación y crítica eventualmente cambiaran las reglas del juego a favor de un “bloque subalterno-popular”, y la construcción de una “sociedad que sea a la vez igualitaria y diversa” (Beverley, 79). A diferencia de él, sin embargo, no creo que la labor de los movimientos sociales deba ser entendida e interpretada como completa luego de que estos movimientos ocupen el estado. En lugar de esto, pienso que los movimientos sociales y su articulación hegemónica debe seguir siendo la fuerza política que siga redefiniendo y determinando las políticas del estado-nación, y la transformación de la sociedad, cambios que solo pueden ocurrir desde abajo, en lugar que desde arriba.

    Emilio del Valle Escalante (Maya k’iche’, iximulew) es profesor asociado de español en la Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill. Es autor de Nacionalismos mayas y desafíos postcoloniales en Guatemala (FLACSO-Guatemala 2008).

     

    NOTAS
    1. Coletta Youngers, “Latin America,” in Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11, ed. John Feffer (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), 151.
    2. John Beverley, Latinamericanism after 9/11 (London-Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 7. Todas las traducciones de las citas en inglés son del autor de esta reseña.
    3. Arielismo en Latinoamérica se refiere a una clase intelectual a inicios del siglo veinte que desarrollo una postura política y crítica contra la expansión estadounidense luego de la guerra española-norteamericana en 1898. Figuras como el uruguayo José Enrique Rodo evocaron la figura de Ariel de la obra La tempestad de William Shakespeare para sugerir que mientras Latinoamérica encarnaba virtudes nobles, intelectuales, harmoniosas y sensibles, los Estados Unidos representaba materialidad e insensibilidad. Además de Rodo, este grupo incluía al argentino Manuel Baldomero Ugarte y al mexicano José Vasconcelos.                                                                                                                                                                                                        4. Para una discusión sobre las relaciones entre los afro-descendientes y el estado nación en Latinoamérica véase, Agustín Lao-Montes, “Decolonial Moves. Trans-Locating African Diaspora Spaces,” en Cultural Studies. 21:2-3 (March-May 2007): 309-339.
    5. Para aquellos que no estén familiarizados con el concepto de Abya Yala, éste emerge hacia finales de los años setenta en Dulenega, o lo que para otros es, San Blas, Panama, territorio de los pueblos Kuna Tule. Abya Yala en el idioma Kuna significa “tierra en plena madurez”. Luego de que los Kuna ganaron una demanda legal para detener la construcción de un centro comercial en su territorio, algunos dirigentes kuna le dijeron a un grupo de periodistas que ellos empleaban el término Abya Yala para referirse al hemisferio occidental, o las Américas en su totalidad. Luego de escuchar esta historia, el líder aymara Takir Mamani sugirió que los Pueblos y organizaciones Indígenas usen el término Abya Yala en sus declaraciones oficiales para referirse al continente “americano.” Desde los años ochenta, muchos activistas indígenas, escritores, y organizaciones han abrazado la sugerencia de Mamani.
    6. Véase Armando Muyolema, “De la cuestión indígena a lo indígena como cuestionamiento. Hacia una crítica del latinoamericanismo, el indigenismo y el mestiz(o)aje.” Rodríguez, Ileana, ed. Convergencia de tiempos: estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos estado, cultura, subalternidad (Amsterdam; Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001): 327-363.

  • From Latin America to Abya Yala: A Review of Latinamericanism after 9/11

    From Latin America to Abya Yala: A Review of Latinamericanism after 9/11

    A Review of John Beverley’s Latinamericanism after 9/11

    Click here for Spanish text/ Clic aqui para leer en español

    by Emilio del Valle Escalante (Maya k’iche’, iximulew)

    In the wake of the September 11 attacks on U.S. soil in 2001, Latin American nation-states united behind George W. Bush’s policies toward denying “terrorist groups the capacity to operate in this Hemisphere.”1 Through the Organization of American States Bush stated: “This American family stands united” (Youngers, 151). However, instead of nurturing this support, the Bush administration turned its back on Latin America and launched a “war on terror” in the Middle East (particularly Iraq) that ignited a long and divisive conflict whose consequences are still felt today, particularly with the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). U.S. distancing from Latin America, some have argued, led to the emergence of Left-leaning politics that through democracy have taken control of the nation-state, a phenomenon that is known as the Marea rosada or “Pink Tide” politics. Indeed, after September 11, 2001, we see the establishment of the governments of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Cristina Fernández in Argentina, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, governments that mark a transition from neoliberal capitalist economies to “socialist” oriented ones.

    Taking this context as a point of departure, John Beverley’s Latinamericanism after 9/11 explores the significance of the Marea rosada governments for Latin American studies, arguing that these Left-leaning governments open up a “new, unforeseen, and unforeseeable series of possibilities and determinations.”2 With their bet on socialism, these governments mark a decline of the Washington Consensus in the region and a shift away from identification with U.S. power. Beverley sees these political processes as unfolding a necessary confrontation between Latin America and the United States that provides an opportunity to redefine and assert Latinamericanism’s “ideological and geopolitical force” (Beverley, 7). The book includes an Introduction and seven chapters where Beverley engages in discussions and debates with various sectors of the Latinamericanist intelligentsia in order to re-examine, conciliate, transcend and establish a new critical “post-subalternist” framework that validates the nation-state as a site of struggle and proposes a “new” Latinamericanism that in its engagement with social movements can potentially lead to political and social change (Beverley, 15).

    In the chapters “Latinamericanism after 9/11” and “Between Ariel and Caliban,” Beverley maps the debates between Latinamericanists who claim to speak from Latin America and those who speak of Latin America outside its geopolitical boundaries. In these chapters, he develops a critique of neo-Arielist intellectuals like Mabel Moraña, Hugo Achugar, and Nelly Richard who propose a critical stance that instead of embracing the new politics and demands of social movements, seem more interested in rearticulating a form of critique that values high culture and the authority of the criollo-mestizo intellectual as a carrier of knowledge and cultural memory.3 Neo-Arielist arguments against Latin Americanists in the U.S., according to Beverley, have three components: 1) Latin American studies from the U.S. concentrate on identity politics and multiculturalism, discussions that have been “transferred” to Latin America and misrepresent diverse histories and social-cultural formations; 2) Latin American Studies occludes the prior engagement by Latin American intellectuals on “native grounds,” and in doing so, they subalternize the contributions of thinkers from Latin America; 3) theoretical frameworks such as Subaltern and Postcolonial Studies from the North contribute to diminish Latin America’s ability to implement its own projects of national or regional identity and development (Beverley, 62-63)

    Beverley points out that by constructing an argument that situates Latin America against Latinamericanists in the United States and other parts of the world, neo-Arielists offer an inadequate response to cultural and economic U.S. hegemony. By claiming to speak “from” Latin America, or “on the ground,” these intellectuals not only overlook the orientalization that operates within the Latin American lettered city, but also reassert their own cultural and political authority and that of literature and literary criticism (Beverley, 61). In doing so, they end up reaffirming their own criollo-mestizo European origins and bourgeois or middle class status and articulate a discursive position incapable of producing a “national-popular appeal”(Beverley, 20) Instead, Beverley proposes a new form of Latinamericanism that recovers the “space of cultural dehierarchization ceded to the market and neoliberalism” and is “capable of both inspiring and nourishing itself from new forms of political and social practice from below” (Beverley, 22-23). This would entail recognizing the multiethnic and multinational nature of Latin America, the demands of Latin American social movements and the populations threatened by globalization and neoliberalism, the forms of territoriality that go beyond the nation-state (e.g. Hispanics in the United States), the struggles against male chauvinism, racism, homophobia, and those of women and sexual minorities for gender equality (Beverley, 24). Given that all of these demands and struggles are constitutive of Latin America itself, it is now time, Beverley argues, to develop critical approaches that can incorporate these populations’ demands in order to affirm Latin America as its own civilizational project, “capable of confronting U.S. hegemony and expressing an alternative future for the peoples of the Americas” (Beverley, 18).

    In the third chapter, entitled “The Persistence of the Nation,” Beverley offers a critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2001). Since Hardt and Negri argue that we live in a sort of Roman Empire where there is no “center” and/or “periphery,” Beverley asks: who in the world today represents a logic of resistance that can bring down Empire and propose alternatives to its logic? Beverley’s critique concentrates on Hardt and Negri’s idea of the “multitude” by which they mean the “many-faced, hydra-headed, hybrid collective subject conjured up by globalization and cultural deterritorialization” (Beverley, 26-27). For Beverley, however, the multitude is an expanded way of naming the proletariat as a hybrid or heterogeneous and “universal” subject that dismisses the specific demands—many times nationalistic—of the subaltern. For example, the social movements that Hardt and Negri themselves evoke, like the Zapatistas in Chiapas, or the Intifada in Palestine, are characterized by identity politics and the necessity to change the nature of the nation-state. Hardt and Negri want to imagine—Beverley indicates—a form of “politics that would go beyond the limits of both the nation and the forms of political and cultural representation traditionally bound up with the idea of hegemony” (Beverley, 27-28).

    In chapter four, “Deconstruction and Latinamericanism,” Beverley concentrates on Alberto Moreiras’s The Exhaustion of Difference which he reads as a “new” form of Latinamericanism that uses deconstruction as a theoretical framework capable of renewing “if not the Left in a traditional sense, then certainly an emancipatory politics to come in the emerging new world order of globalization” (Beverley, 44-45). Moreiras, according to Beverley, is concerned with the politics of knowledge involved in the representation of Latin American culture, and aims “to bring into crisis and radicalize the ideological and conceptual space of Latin American cultural studies” (Beverley, 45). Given that Moreiras depends on the appropriation and privileging of certain kinds of knowledge (usually that of high culture, or the baroque), like the neo-Arielists, he ends up re-signifying the authority of the intellectual, failing to interrogate his own critical position and authority, as well as other forms of subaltern knowledge that fall outside the metropolitan Latinamericanism he proposes. In this sense, Moreiras articulates a critical space of cosmopolitan critical theory “which is itself produced by and feeds back into the logic of globalization” (Beverley, 54).

    In “The Neoconservative Turn,” Beverley sees that alongside the re-emergence of the Left as a political force after 9/11, there is also a critical tendency within the Latin American Left that “is characterizing itself, or turning ‘conservative’ in cultural matters but ‘liberal’ in political and economic ones” (Beverley, 91).  This critical tendency, similar to neo-Arielism and deconstruction, is represented by a middle- and upper-middle-class, university-educated, and what is essentially a white, Criollo-Ladino/Mestizo intelligentsia that attempts to recapture “the space of cultural and hermeneutic authority” (Beverley, 93).  This intellectual class is exemplified by, among others, Mario Roberto Morales, Mabel Moraña and Beatriz Sarlo who develop critiques, respectively, of the Maya movement in Guatemala, the field of Latin American literary criticism against postcolonial and Subaltern studies theoretical frameworks, and testimonio and witness literatures. In their respective discussions, these critics display a strong discomfort with multiculturalism and identity politics, which they see as fetishizing and Orientalizing their subaltern object of study. These authors speak “in the name of the authority of literature to disqualify the effort of indigenous and subaltern subjects to write themselves into history” (Beverley, 83). From these readings, Beverley concludes that the neoconservative turn in Latin America is characterized by 1) a rejection of the authority of the subaltern voice and experience, and an extreme dissatisfaction with or skepticism about multiculturalism or interculturalidad and identity politics; 2) defense of the authority of the writer-critic as the bearer of knowledge; 3) reaffirmation of their criollo-mestizo identity; 4) failure to recognize the persistence of racism and gender hierarchies; 5) expression of a “disavowal of the project of the armed revolutionary struggle of the 1960s and 1970s, in favor of a more considered and cautious Left” , and 6) a “reterritorialization of the academic disciplines—particularly the field of literature and cultural criticism” (Beverley, 89). Beverley’s concern is that this group “has the potential to divide unnecessarily the new Latin American Left and inhibit its emerging hegemonic force at both the national and the continental levels” (Beverley, 91).

    In chapter six, “Beyond the Paradigm of Dissolution,” Beverley discusses the question of armed struggle in Latin America. He contends that the accounts of the armed rebellions, such as Jorge Castañeda’s Utopia Unarmed (1994), provide a negative view of insurgency that is “more inclined to see where we went wrong than what we did right” (Beverley, 109). These negative perspectives develop a “paradigm of disillusion” where critics retrospectively speak of armed insurgency as “equivocation,” or romantic, immature, “ill-conceived” movements “doomed to failure,” “prone to excess, error, irresponsibility and moral anarchy”(Beverley, 98-99). Despite the fact that with the defeat of many of these movements, previous forms of capitalist domination were “restored” (now under the banners of “neoliberalism” and “globalization”), to view the armed struggles in these negative terms obliterates the fact that they paved the way to current political and social activism in the present (e.g. EZLN or other ethnic mobilizations in Latin America). In this sense, current social movements confront similar challenges as those of the 1960s: how to “transform the state and begin to transform society from the state” (Beverley, 107). Moreover, “many of the people involved in the governments of the Marea rosada or in the movements that brought them to power, cut their political teeth in the period of the armed struggle” (Beverley, 98). The “experience of armed struggle in Latin America, including Cuba—Beverley argues—went in the direction of democracy, and brought into politics a new spirit of hope for change that had been missing since the 1930s and new possibilities for direct participation” (Beverley, 105.)

    Beverley closes his book with “The Subaltern and the State,” arguing for the need of a “post-subaltern” paradigm; that is, a critical perspective that in its critical approach to the nation-state reveals its debt to, but in turn, displaces subaltern critical frameworks. Beverley finds at least two limitations with Subaltern Studies. First, it conceptualizes the subaltern as outside and constitutively opposed to the state and modernity since these institutions have been the result of colonialism. Second, Subaltern Studies imagine civil society as completely independent from the nation-state. What the Marea rosada governments have shown, however, is that the subaltern and the state can be compatible. He indicates that “Chavismo was precisely the result of the crystallization of a variety of social movements operating in Venezuela in the wake of the Caracazo into a new political bloc” (Beverley, 114). Similarly, the success of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia was the result of Indigenous social movements that sought to and successfully modified economic relations and established a leadership that is “predominantly indigenous” (Beverley, 109). In this sense, Marea rosada governments, according to Beverley, allow us to envision a state that can bring “into it demands, values, experiences from the popular-subaltern sectors (which would require a prior process of hegemonic articulation of a new political bloc capable of addressing the state), and how in turn, from the state, society can be remade in a more redistributive, egalitarian, culturally diverse way (how hegemony might be constructed from the state, in other words)” (Beverley, 115-116).

    While I find relevance in Beverley’s critique of neo-Arielism and deconstruction, his assessment of the armed struggle, the importance of the nation-state and identity politics in a “globalized world,” and his call for an intellectual political project that engages with social movements, I also find some significant shortcomings in his arguments. Let me address them here.

    As we can see, Beverley’s main critique of Latinamericanism has to do with its failure to recognize and incorporate the demands of social movements and the populations threatened by globalization and neoliberalism. However, if the idea is to incorporate into hegemonic institutional spaces—dominated by middle- and upper-middle-class, university-educated, and essentially a white, Criollo-Ladino/Mestizo Latin American intelligentsia—the “demands, values, experiences of the popular-subaltern sectors,” to what extent isn’t Beverley complicit in preventing “the effort of indigenous and subaltern subjects to write themselves into history?”(Beverley, 83).

    Beverley recognizes that the civilizational project of Latin America has historically entailed the suppression and marginalization of Indigenous “languages and ways of thinking and being” (Beverley, 59) on the assumption that Indigenous life and culture are “inadequate” or “backwards.” Because of these assumptions, “Indigenous Peoples or peasants or workers or the urban poor may not identify themselves with the project” (Beverley, 48). But while Beverley underscores these limitations, he does not have a problem advocating for a “new Latinamericanism.” In doing so, he rejects and obliterates some of the categories and alternative projects being proposed by social movements, in particular, those of Indigenous and Afro-descendant intellectuals.4 I am surprised, for instance, that Beverley does not reflect or consider the category and civilizational project of Abya Yala 5 which has been proposed by some Indigenous scholars and activists since the 1980s, and has been theorized by Beverley’s former student, the Kichwa scholar Armando Muyolema.6 Muyolema challenges the idea of Latin America precisely because it is and continues to be constitutive of an ethnocentric and colonialist project that, for the most part, endorses the aspirations of the white, and criollo-mestizo intellectual sectors Beverley criticizes. Latin America is not merely a “name” or category, but rather a geopolitical project that embodies and confirms the historically enduring regime of colonialism in the region. Indigenous Peoples can only be a part of Latin America as long as we give up our lands, languages, and cultural and religious specificities. Contrary to the civilizational project of Latin America, Abya Yala, according to Muyolema, would represent our own civilizational project and locus of political enunciation.

    Indeed, for many Indigenous and non-Indigenous sectors, the possibility of “alliance politics between social groups” and the formation of “a new historical block at national, continental, and intercontinental levels” (Beverley, 83) does not lie so much in a “new” Latin American or Latinamericanist project anymore, but rather, in Abya Yala. For us to recognize and endorse the former, in my view, will contribute to affirming a colonialist logic that overlooks our needs as Indigenous Nations: in particular, our continued efforts to recover and defend our territories, and restitute our linguistic, cultural and religious specificities, efforts that Latinamericanism in all of its forms has failed to deeply address and understand. Because of these, I would venture to say that the efforts of subaltern-popular Indigenous rights movements would be better invested in first developing an Indigenous and even global historical block that while it addresses internal and external oppressions also manages to bring us together as diverse Indigenous Nations struggling to overcome external and internal/settler colonialisms. Our positioning as Indigenous subjects will not only allow the hegemonic articulation of our demands, but also negotiate with non-Indigenous others the constitution of multicultural or intercultural national models based on our own Indigenous perspectives.

    With regards to Beverley’s discussion of the Marea rosada, there is no doubt that these Left-leaning governments have brought economic and political benefits to important sectors of disenfranchised populations. However, what do we make of Michelle Bachelet’s re-enactment of Augusto Pinochet’s 1984 “anti-terrorist law” which has been used to incarcerate Mapuche activists in the northern region of the Araucania in Chile? Or Rafael Correa’s efforts to shoot down the offices of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), an organization that supported Correa’s presidential election? (Not to mention the incarceration and assassination of several environmental Indigenous activists and peasant leaders in the Amazonian regions of Ecuador). Or the Evo Morales administration invading Amazonian Indigenous territories (the so-called “TIPNIS” affair) to build roads, bridges and electrical power systems to economically favor sectors of his constituency? In my view, what Marea rosada governments show is that while they have constituted the nation-state as a site of struggle that proposes socialism, and in one case, established a leadership that is “predominantly indigenous,” at the same time they demonstrate how they are capable of reproducing colonialism, often becoming—as suggested by Nicholas Dirks—“as repressive as the worst colonial regime.”7

    By pointing this out, I am by no means suggesting that we don’t see the nation-state or modernity as sites of political possibilities. Like Beverley, I believe that the nation and its hegemonic institutions are clearly necessary sites of struggle that with our participation and critique will eventually change the rules of the game in favor of a “popular-subaltern block,” and the construction of a “society that is at once egalitarian and diverse” (Beverley, 79). Unlike him, however, I don’t believe that the work of social movements should be understood as complete once their efforts culminate in the occupation of the State. Instead, social movements and their hegemonic articulations should be the guiding force in continuing to redefine the nation-state, and the transformation of society, changes that can only occur from below, instead of above.

    Emilio del Valle Escalante (K’iche’ Maya, Iximulew) is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He is the author of Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala (SAR Press, 2009).

    NOTES

    1. Coletta Youngers, “Latin America,” in Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11, ed. John Feffer (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), 151.

    2. John Beverley, Latinamericanism after 9/11 (London-Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 7.

    3. Arielism in Latin America refers to an intellectual class at the beginning of the twentieth century that developed a political stance and discourse against the United States’ imperial expansionism after the Spanish-American war of 1898. Figures like Uruguayan José Enrique Rodo evoked the figure of Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest to suggest that while Latin America embodied noble, intellectual, harmonious and sensible virtues, the U.S. represented insensible and material ones. Besides Rodo, this group included Argentinian Manuel Baldomero Ugarte and Mexican José Vasconcelos.

    4. For a discussion about the relationships between Afro-descendants and the nation state in Latin America, see Agustín Lao-Montes, “Decolonial Moves. Trans-Locating African Diaspora Spaces,” Cultural Studies. 21:2-3 (March-May 2007): 309-339.

    5. For those unfamiliar with the term Abya Yala, the concept emerged toward the end of the 1970s in Dulenega, or what, for others, is today San Blas, Panama, a Kuna Tule territory. Abya Yala in the Kuna language means “land in its full maturity.” After the Kuna won a lawsuit to stop the construction of a shopping mall in Dulenega, they told a group of reporters that they employed the term Abya Yala to refer to the Western Hemisphere or the Americas in its totality. After listening to this story, the Bolivian Aymara leader, Takir Mamani suggested that indigenous peoples and indigenous organizations use the term Abya Yala in their official declarations to refer to the American continent. Since the 1980s, many indigenous activists, writers, and organizations have embraced Mamani’s suggestion.

    6. See Armando Muyolema’s “De la cuestión indígena a lo indígena como cuestionamiento. Hacia una crítica del latinoamericanismo, el indigenismo y el mestiz(o)aje,” ed. Rodríguez, Ileana, in Convergencia de tiempos: estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos estado, cultura, subalternidad (Amsterdam; Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), 327-363.

    7. Nicholas Dirks, Colonialism and Culture, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 15.

  • Dissecting the “Internet Freedom” Agenda

    Dissecting the “Internet Freedom” Agenda

    Shawn M. Powers and Michael Jablonski, The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedoma review of Shawn M. Powers and Michael Jablonski, The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom  (University of Illinois Press, 2015)
    by Richard Hill
    ~
    Disclosure: the author of this review is thanked in the Preface of the book under review.

    Both radical civil society organizations and mainstream defenders of the status quo agree that the free and open Internet is threatened: see for example the Delhi Declaration, Bob Hinden’s 2014 Year End Thoughts, and Kathy Brown’s March 2015 statement at a UNESCO conference. The threats include government censorship and mass surveillance, but also the failure of governments to control rampant industry concentration and commercial exploitation of personal data, which increasingly takes the form of providing “free” services in exchange for personal information that is resold at a profit, or used to provide targeted advertising, also at a profit.

    In Digital Disconnect, Robert McChesney has explained how the Internet, which was supposed to be a force for the improvement of human rights and living conditions, has been used to erode privacy and to increase the concentration of economic power, to the point where it is becoming a threat to democracy. In Digital Depression, Dan Schiller has documented how US policies regarding the Internet have favored its geo-economic and geo-political goals, in particular the interests of its large private companies that dominate the information and communications technology (ICT) sector worldwide.

    Shawn M. Powers and Michael Jablonski’s seminal new book The Real Cyber War takes us further down the road of understanding what went wrong, and what might be done to correct the situation. Powers, an assistant professor at Georgia State University, specializes in international political communication, with particular attention to the geopolitics of information and information technologies. Jablonski is an attorney and presidential fellow, also at Georgia State.

    There is a vast literature on internet governance (see for example the bibliography in Radu, Chenou, and Weber, eds., The Evolution of Global Internet Governance), but much of it is ideological and normative: the author espouses a certain point of view, explains why that point of view is good, and proposes actions that would lead to the author’s desired outcome (a good example is Milton Mueller’s well researched but utopian Networks and States). There is nothing wrong with that approach: on the contrary, such advocacy is necessary and welcome.

    But a more detached analytical approach is also needed, and Powers and Jablonski provide exactly that. Their objective is to help us understand (citing from p. 19 of the paperback edition) “why states pursue the policies they do”. The book “focuses centrally on understanding the numerous ways in which power and control are exerted in cyberspace” (p. 19).

    Starting from the rather obvious premise that states compete to shape international policies that favor their interests, and using the framework of political economy, the authors outline the geopolitical stakes and show how questions of power, and not human rights, are the real drivers of much of the debate about Internet governance. They show how the United States has deliberately used a human rights discourse to promote policies that further its geo-economic and geo-political interests. And how it has used subsidies and government contracts to help its private companies to acquire or maintain dominant positions in much of the ICT sector.

    Jacob Silverman has decried the “the misguided belief that once power is arrogated away from doddering governmental institutions, it will somehow find itself in the hands of ordinary people”. Powers and Jablonski dissect the mechanisms by which vibrant government institutions deliberately transferred power to US corporations in order to further US geo-economical and geo-political goals.

    In particular, they show how a “freedom to connect” narrative is used by the USA to attempt to transform information and personal data into commercial commodities that should be subject to free trade. Yet all states (including the US) regulate, at least to some extent, the flow of information within and across their borders. If information is the “new oil” of our times, then it is not surprising that states wish to shape the production and flow of information in ways that favor their interests. Thus it is not surprising that states such as China, India, and Russia have started to assert sovereign rights to control some aspect of the production and flow of information within their borders, and that European Union courts have made decisions on the basis of European law that affect global information flows and access.

    As the authors put the matter (p. 6): “the [US] doctrine of internet freedom … is the realization of a broader [US] strategy promoting a particular conception of networked communication that depends on American companies …, supports Western norms …, and promotes Western products.” (I would personally say that it actually supports US norms and US products and services.) As the authors point out, one can ask (p. 11): “If states have a right to control the types of people allowed into their territory (immigration), and how its money is exchanged with foreign banks, then why don’t they have a right to control information flows from foreign actors?”

    To be sure, any such controls would have to comply with international human rights law. But the current US policies go much further, implying that those human rights laws must be implemented in accordance with the US interpretation, meaning few restrictions on freedom of speech, weak protection of privacy, and ever stricter protection for intellectual property. As Powers and Jablonski point out (p. 31), the US does not hesitate to promote restrictions on information flows when that promotes its goals.

    Again, the authors do not make value judgments: they explain in Chapter 1 how the US deliberately attempts to shape (to a large extent successfully) international policies, so that both actions and inactions serve its interests and those of the large corporations that increasingly influence US policies.

    The authors then explain how the US military-industrial complex has morphed into an information-industrial complex, with deleterious consequences for both industry and government, consequences such as “weakened oversight, accountability, and industry vitality and competitiveness”(p. 23) that create risks for society and democracy. As the authors say, the shift “from adversarial to cooperative and laissez-faire rule making is a keystone moment in the rise of the information-industrial complex” (p. 61).

    As a specific example, they focus on Google, showing how it (largely successfully) aims to control and dominate all aspects of the data market, from production, through extraction, refinement, infrastructure and demand. A chapter is devoted to the economics of internet connectivity, showing how US internet policy is basically about getting the largest number of people online, so that US companies can extract ever greater profits from the resulting data flows. They show how the network effects, economies of scale, and externalities that are fundamental features of the internet favor first-movers, which are mostly US companies.

    The remedy to such situations is well known: government intervention: widely accepted regarding air transport, road transport, pharmaceuticals, etc., and yet unthinkable for many regarding the internet. But why? As the authors put the matter (p. 24): “While heavy-handed government controls over the internet should be resisted, so should a system whereby internet connectivity requires the systematic transfer of wealth from the developing world to the developed.” But freedom of information is put forward to justify specific economic practices which would not be easy to justify otherwise, for example “no government taxes companies for data extraction or for data imports/exports, both of which are heavily regulated aspects of markets exchanging other valuable commodities”(p. 97).

    The authors show in detail how the so-called internet multi-stakeholder model of governance is dominated by insiders and used “under the veil of consensus’” (p. 136) to further US policies and corporations. A chapter is devoted to explaining how all states control, at least to some extent, information flows within their territories, and presents detailed studies of how four states (China, Egypt, Iran and the USA) have addressed the challenges of maintaining political control while respecting (or not) freedom of speech. The authors then turn to the very current topic of mass surveillance, and its relation to anonymity, showing how, when the US presents the internet and “freedom to connect” as analogous to public speech and town halls, it is deliberately arguing against anonymity and against privacy – and this of course in order to avoid restrictions on its mass surveillance activities.

    Thus the authors posit that there are tensions between the US call for “internet freedom” and other states’ calls for “information sovereignty”, and analyze the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications from that point of view.

    Not surprisingly, the authors conclude that international cooperation, recognizing the legitimate aspirations of all the world’s peoples, is the only proper way forward. As the authors put the matter (p. 206): “Activists and defenders of the original vision of the Web as a ‘fair and humane’ cyber-civilization need to avoid lofty ‘internet freedom’ declarations and instead champion specific reforms required to protect the values and practices they hold dear.” And it is with that in mind, as a counterweight to US and US-based corporate power, that a group of civil society organizations have launched the Internet Social Forum.

    Anybody who is seriously interested in the evolution of internet governance and its impact on society and democracy will enjoy reading this well researched book and its clear exposition of key facts. One can only hope that the Council of Europe will heed Powers and Jablonski’s advice and avoid adopting more resolutions such as the recent recommendation to member states by the EU Committee of Ministers, which merely pander to the US discourse and US power that Powers and Jablonski describe so aptly. And one can fondly hope that this book will help to inspire a change in course that will restore the internet to what it might become (and what many thought it was supposed to be): an engine for democracy and social and economic progress, justice, and equity.
    _____

    Richard Hill is President of the Association for Proper internet Governance, and was formerly a senior official at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). He has been involved in internet governance issues since the inception of the internet and is now an activist in that area, speaking, publishing, and contributing to discussions in various forums. Among other works he is the author of The New International Telecommunication Regulations and the Internet: A Commentary and Legislative History (Springer, 2014). He writes frequently about internet governance issues for The b2 Review Digital Studies magazine.

    Back to the essay

  • The Internet vs. Democracy

    The Internet vs. Democracy

    Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracya review of Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy  (The New Press, 2014)
    by Richard Hill
    ~
    Many of us have noticed that much of the news we read is the same, no matter which newspaper or web site we consult: they all seem to be recycling the same agency feeds. To understand why this is happening, there are few better analyses than the one developed by media scholar Robert McChesney in his most recent book, Digital Disconnect. McChesney is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in the history and political economy of communications. He is the author or co-author of more than 20 books, among the best-known of which are The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China (with John Bellamy Foster, 2012), The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (2008), Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of Media (2007), and Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (1999), and is co-founder of Free Press.

    Many see the internet as a powerful force for improvement of human rights, living conditions, the economy, rights of minorities, etc. And indeed, like many communications technologies, the internet has the potential to facilitate social improvements. But in reality the internet has recently been used to erode privacy and to increase the concentration of economic power, leading to increasing income inequalities.

    One might have expected that democracies would have harnessed the internet to serve the interests of their citizens, as they largely did with other technologies such as roads, telegraphy, telephony, air transport, pharmaceuticals (even if they used these to serve only the interests of their own citizens and not the general interests of mankind).

    But this does not appear to be the case with respect to the internet: it is used largely to serve the interests of a few very wealthy individuals, or certain geo-economic and geo-political interests. As McChesney puts the matter: “It is supremely ironic that the internet, the much-ballyhooed champion of increased consumer power and cutthroat competition, has become one of the greatest generators of monopoly in economic history” (131 in the print edition). This trend to use technology to favor special interests, not the general interest, is not unique to the internet. As Josep Ramoneda puts the matter: “We expected that governments would submit markets to democracy and it turns out that what they do is adapt democracy to markets, that is, empty it little by little.”

    McChesney’s book explains why this is the case: despite its great promise and potential to increase democracy, various factors have turned the internet into a force that is actually destructive to democracy, and that favors special interests.

    McChesney reminds us what democracy is, citing Aristotle (53): “Democracy [is] when the indigent, and not the men of property are the rulers. If liberty and equality … are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”

    He also cites US President Lincoln’s 1861 warning against despotism (55): “the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government.” According to McChesney, it was imperative for Lincoln that the wealthy not be permitted to have undue influence over the government.

    Yet what we see today in the internet is concentrated wealth in the form of large private companies that exert increasing influence over public policy matters, going to so far as to call openly for governance systems in which they have equal decision-making rights with the elected representatives of the people. Current internet governance mechanisms are celebrated as paragons of success, whereas in fact they have not been successful in achieving the social promise of the internet. And it has even been said that such systems need not be democratic.

    What sense does it make for the technology that was supposed to facilitate democracy to be governed in ways that are not democratic? It makes business sense, of course, in the sense of maximizing profits for shareholders.

    McChesney explains how profit-maximization in the excessively laissez-faire regime that is commonly called neoliberalism has resulted in increasing concentration of power and wealth, social inequality and, worse, erosion of the press, leading to erosion of democracy. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the US, which is the focus of McChesney’s book. Not only has the internet eroded democracy in the US, it is used by the US to further its geo-political goals; and, adding insult to injury, it is promoted as a means of furthering democracy. Of course it could and should do so, but unfortunately it does not, as McChesney explains.

    The book starts by noting the importance of the digital revolution and by summarizing the views of those who see it as an engine of good (the celebrants) versus those who point out its limitations and some of its negative effects (the skeptics). McChesney correctly notes that a proper analysis of the digital revolution must be grounded in political economy. Since the digital revolution is occurring in a capitalist system, it is necessarily conditioned by that system, and it necessarily influences that system.

    A chapter is devoted to explaining how and why capitalism does not equal democracy: on the contrary, capitalism can well erode democracy, the contemporary United States being a good example. To dig deeper into the issues, McChesney approaches the internet from the perspective of the political economy of communication. He shows how the internet has profoundly disrupted traditional media, and how, contrary to the rhetoric, it has reduced competition and choice – because the economies of scale and network effects of the new technologies inevitably favor concentration, to the point of creating natural monopolies (who is number two after Facebook? Or Twitter?).

    The book then documents how the initially non-commercial, publicly-subsidized internet was transformed into an eminently commercial, privately-owned capitalist institution, in the worst sense of “capitalist”: domination by large corporations, monopolistic markets, endless advertising, intense lobbying, and cronyism bordering on corruption.

    Having explained what happened in general, McChesney focuses on what happened to journalism and the media in particular. As we all know, it has been a disaster: nobody has yet found a viable business model for respectable online journalism. As McChesney correctly notes, vibrant journalism is a pre-condition for democracy: how can people make informed choices if they do not have access to valid information? The internet was supposed to broaden our sources of information. Sadly, it has not, for the reasons explained in detail in the book. Yet there is hope: McChesney provides concrete suggestions for how to deal with the issue, drawing on actual experiences in well functioning democracies in Europe.

    The book goes on to call for specific actions that would create a revolution in the digital revolution, bringing it back to its origins: by the people, for the people. McChesney’s proposed actions are consistent with those of certain civil society organizations, and will no doubt be taken up in the forthcoming Internet Social Forum, an initiative whose intent is precisely to revolutionize the digital revolution along the lines outlined by McChesney.

    Anybody who is aware of the many issues threatening the free and open internet, and democracy itself, will find much to reflect upon in Digital Disconnect, not just because of its well-researched and incisive analysis, but also because it provides concrete suggestions for how to address the issues.

    _____

    Richard Hill, an independent consultant based in Geneva, Switzerland, was formerly a senior official at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). He has been involved in internet governance issues since the inception of the internet and is now an activist in that area, speaking, publishing, and contributing to discussions in various forums. Among other works he is the author of The New International Telecommunication Regulations and the Internet: A Commentary and Legislative History (Springer, 2014). He frequently writes about internet governance issues for The b2 Review Digital Studies magazine.

    Back to the essay

  • Twin Offspring of Empire, Neoliberalism and Neotraditionalism: Thoughts on Susan Buck-Morss, “Democracy: An Unfinished Project” (excerpts)

    Democracy: An Unfinished Project

    a response by Arif Dirlik
    ~
    Susan Buck-Morss’ essay, “Democracy: An Unfinished Project,”1 provides occasion for reflecting on a challenge that faces contemporary radical criticism in North America and Europe: how to reconcile the universalist goals that are the legacies of Euromodernity to radical thinking with the demands of cultural voices emanating from newly-empowered societies that make their own claims on modernity, especially when contradictions between the two seem irreconcilable? Buck-Morss’ discussion navigates through questions thrown up by this dilemma with finesse, engaging critiques of Euromodernity without relinquishing its promises, which demand recognition even by those who would reject it. The title would have reflected the content of the essay more fully had it been elongated to: “Democracy: An Unfinished Project: A Critique of Davut Ahmutoglu’s Project of Islamic Modernity.” Ahmet Davutoglu, Minister of Foreign Affairs when the article was written, just recently has been elevated to the post of Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey. He is a politician with academic credentials. Author of studies on Islamic politics, international strategy and modernity, he displays a strong philosophical bent in his writings which is important for understanding his policies as well….He believes that “ontological differences” between “Islam” and “the West” call for an “alternative modernity” based on Islamic principles. Like the AKP(Justice and Development Party) and others in the Islamic movement, he seeks to roll back the secularist policies instituted by the Republic after 1923, and to restore to Turkey the glory and power of the Ottoman Empire….

    Buck-Morss offers telling critiques of these claims ….Given the venue (a conference in Istanbul) where the article was first presented as a paper, it may be understandable that the author would go about some of her arguments in a roundabout way, skirting issues that might be too venturesome into sensitive territory of national sentiment. While Buck-Morss offers a political reading of claims to an Islamic modernity, what is missing from the discussion is the actual practice of politics. In her addendum she takes note of the Gezi protests of June 2013 that intervened between the initial presentation and the final publication of the paper. She apparently did not think these events and their outcomes to be sufficiently important to introduce them into a more directly political reading of the claims made for Islamic modernity by the likes of Davutoglu who, as a leading member and brain-trust of his party, had no qualms about the suppression of that broad-based democratic movement, instigated by government disregard for public sentiment in its promotion of neo-liberal economic agenda….

    Buck-Morss is primarily interested in Davutoglu’s “reliance on certain Western methodologies, specifically twentieth-century German phenomenology.” This may unduly credit with philosophical intent a political operator whose “political analysis,” according to Turkish scholar Behlul Ozkan, “remains on the level of prophecy rather than prognosis,” and whose “pseudoscientific” ideas are “based on inspiration related to historical destiny rather than rational thought.” Ozkan writes that “Davutoglu’s writings reveal his central concern to be not values but power politics.” The most visible imprint of Western sources on his thinking is geopolitical.

    The discussion only indirectly hints at the alliance between neoliberal global capitalism and claims to unchanging religious or more broadly “cultural” identities that characterizes the ideology of the Islamic leadership in Turkey—as of all the societies that have found new economic and political opportunities within the context of global capitalism and the seeming decline in Euro/American hegemony, most importantly, the People’s Republic of China…. In those societies descended from empires that for long ruled large parts of the world earning them the title of “civilizations,” newfound power and influence have triggered what may best be described as nostalgia for future reproduction of past glories…. Ethical values claimed for various civilizations may serve as a cover for but barely disguise the privatization of public resources, creation of new class divisions, the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, and the sacrifice of public interest and rights to the interests of ruling elites in the name of development that is characteristic of global capitalism in general….The point here is not whether these cultural traditions deserve respect, or have anything to contribute to global futures. The point is rather that what they have to contribute is to be judged not by the texts they claim for their origins or abstract claims about civilizations detached from history, but by the historical outcomes of activity conducted in their name. And the outlook presently is not all that promising.

    _____

    notes:
    1. boundary 2, 41.2 (Summer 2014): 71-98. In-text references are from this text.
    Back to the essay

    _____

    Read the original essay here.

    Summer 2014

    Summer 2014

  • Crowds and Democracy: The Idea and Image of the Masses from Revolution to Fascism by Stefan Jonsson

    Reichstag

    a review by Peter Gengler
    ~
    The failure of interwar Central Europe’s democracies remains fertile ground for scholars in the 21st century. In particular, the Weimar Republic’s promises and failures, its vibrant intellectual and artistic communities, and its ultimate collapse in 1933 continue to fascinate and haunt academics and lay audiences alike. Weimar Germany remains the object of intense interest given the barbarity that followed its demise, yet it also serves as a compelling warning about the fragility of democracy.

    Stefan Jonsson’s Crowds and Democracy examines the tumultuous years between 1918 and 1933 in an original and bold manner, contributing fresh insights to what could otherwise prove a hackneyed subject. In particular, the study’s creative approach and analysis of “the masses” contributes to the literature on Germany’s and Austria’s interwar politics and culture, and more generally raises provocative questions about the challenges of participatory politics, democratic representation, and the individual’s relationship to these processes. Indeed, as Jonsson points out, Europe’s austerity programs and the public outrage, manifested in the recent resurgence of nationalist right-wing parties and fascist movements in the European Union, demand a renewed focus on interwar social movements.

    Stefan Jonsson’s background, training, and research interests suit him well for the type of multidisciplinary investigation that he attempts here. He received his Ph.D. in literature from Duke University, and currently is a professor of ethnic studies at Linköping University in Sweden. The subject of Crowds and Democracy continues Jonsson’s previous work, in which he charted the European understanding of the masses from 1789 to 1989. 1 The monograph under review explores 1920s Austrian and German mass psychology, crowd theory, and the idea of “the masses” not simply as intriguing phenomena, but rather as problems in their own right caused and produced by mass mobilization, the social sciences and arts, and the ambivalences of democracy. Given the author’s expertise and familiarity with different disciplines, Crowds and Democracy combines and commands the literature and theories of literary criticism, philosophy, and intellectual and cultural history in an impressive and authoritative way.

    Jonsson traces the trajectory of the discourse and idea of “the masses,” concentrating on the years between 1918 and 1933. Each chapter represents a sort of case study as he analyzes the works of intellectuals or artists who are symbolic of a particular school of thought or new direction in scholarship. Jonsson thus shows how the meaning of “the mass” became a subject of investigation after the 1890s by mass psychology and mass sociology. This widely accepted notion held that the mass represented the opposite of bourgeois individuality, organization, education, masculinity, and positive qualities in general—the crowd was defined through negation. This assumption nevertheless gave way to a variety of views that attributed rationality to the crowds and sought to understand their internal dynamics, seeing “the masses” as a social formation in their own right.

    Jonsson shows how, despite their increased scrutiny of the masses, German and Austrian intellectuals by the 1920s were no clearer on comprehending the phenomenon and coming up with a suitable theory for understanding it and that by this time no consensus on who constituted the mass and why they were so prevalent in interwar politics existed, though the dominant opinion among sociologists was that they were a symptom of crisis and instability—the “alarm bells of history” (84). These social movements were an “allegory,” Jonsson contends, “evoked by the need to mark powers of change that appeared to govern the world of modernity…the masses connoted a dimension of social existence that caused fear and anxiety precisely because it disrupted the horizon of values and meanings through which class and gender identities had until then been affirmed, cultural hierarchies secured, and social order constituted” (112).

    Though they aroused great trepidation, during the 1920s the idea of “the masses” saw greater contestation as well. Indeed, Jonsson concludes that “[t]o enter the cultural landscape of interwar Germany and Austria is to encounter competing views, theories, and images of crowds” (179), each with varying agendas and presumptions that constructed an image of them reflecting socialist egalitarianism and promises of a democratic society to cultural pessimism and fears of bedlam and anarchy. In short, Jonsson’s study seeks to trace the epistemological foundations of “the mass” in European thought.

    Complicating this study further, Jonsson argues that the discourses on the masses in interwar Europe actually revolved around the problem of democracy. The period saw a proliferation of contesting ideologies, each with a different view of how to constitute society and the polity. Between the poles of revolution and fascism, thinkers articulated various visions of the crowds that reflected the fractured political landscape. “The masses,” therefore, could be constructed in an exclusionary way or in such a manner that they heralded promises of a better future; the throngs of people heightened fears of proletarian revolution or inspired political action. “The masses” therefore touched on the fundamental problem of democracy: how to embody and speak for the people, how to organize them, and how to represent society as a whole. As Jonsson concludes, these social movements “were never anything more, and at the same time never anything less, than the signs and symptoms of unresolved problems concerning the adequate political, cultural, and aesthetic representations of socially significant passions and political desires” (253).

    There are a great many achievements that Jonsson can lay claim to. First and foremost, one cannot help but admire the wealth of material that Jonsson mines. Delving into novels, art, philosophy, historiography, and sociology, the author authoritatively marshals a wide range of sources and subjects them to astute analysis. A number of scholars ranging from the fields of literature, cultural studies, history, the social sciences, film, and art will find intriguing insights and benefit from the lens through which Jonsson reads this vast collection of materials.

    Historians of Germany will also be pleased that Jonsson’s treatment of the Weimar period was nuanced and avoided notions of an inevitable collapse into dictatorship. Moreover, Crowds and Democracy is not encumbered by the fascist specter. Jonsson quite rightly asserts that democracy in the interwar period—though crisis-ridden—cannot be reduced to Hitler’s rise to power. Thus, it is refreshing that Nazism is not the predominant focus. Though it may seem obvious for specialists, Weimar was not defined by fascism and the republic should be treated in its own right. Jonsson’s interpretation takes into account the crises and dangers facing the fledgling democracies, but he also is careful to differentiate his account by judiciously discussing the emancipatory ambitions within Germany’s and Austria’s first republics.

    Jonsson’s erudite treatment of the sociological profession in the interwar period is another remarkable feature of this study. Readers will be charmed with the ease and clarity with which Jonsson disseminates the writings of scholars such as Georg Simmel, Theodor Geiger, or Leopold von Wiese. The sections of the book concentrating on intellectual history convincingly demonstrate how the idea of “the masses” developed and how sociologists and thinkers contended with what was considered the core issue of the day. Moreover, Jonsson differentiates between the actual phenomenon of mass politics and the “idea” that was constructed by these intellectuals, with all of their presumptions and biases. The result is stimulating, as Jonsson places theorists in dialogue with one another and shows how European intellectual thought, psychoanalysis, and philosophy developed between 1918 and 1933.

    Despite these achievements, Crowds and Democracies also suffers from some deficiencies. To begin with, one wonders what audience Jonsson attempted to reach. The book’s intellectual density means that few beyond academia will find it accessible. Simply put: this is not an easy read. The long and meticulous analyses and focus on theory require an engaged and informed reader, especially since some of the historical context—while generally correct—is nevertheless cursory and assumes a reader well versed in Central European history.

    The organization, structure, and style of the book are also somewhat distracting. Generally, Jonsson’s study follows the trajectory of the discourse on “the masses” chronologically, but often subchapters elucidate a particular theme that requires back-tracking. The book essentially is a collection of essays, with the result that taken together, the book meanders and contains redundancies. Sprawling chapters ranging between 50 to over 70 pages could have been broken up more effectively. The argumentative thread is also not always clear; 47 pages in, the author is still explaining what his book will do and how it will be structured. The unclear organizing principle and diffused arguments and objectives detract from the overall work. The lack of a bibliography is also disconcerting. Crowds and Democracy would have benefited from greater organizational clarity and a sustained and coherent argument, thereby guiding readers through an already challenging intellectual terrain more carefully.

    These criticisms of style aside, there are also some shortcomings with Jonsson’s argument. His claim that “few authors have connected the theme of the masses to Weimar history in any deeper sense” (xv) implies that this book seeks to remedy this gap in the literature. Yet while Jonsson succeeds in his discussion of how “the masses” were viewed, he does not fully accomplish his goal of unifying the discourse on mass movements and the actual phenomenon itself. What we are left with is a study of how intellectual and cultural elites contended with “the mass” theoretically and aesthetically. This does not reveal, however, what goals mass politics had and what ideologies drove them. We have little sense of the dynamics of the social movements, what strategies they pursued, or the self-perception of these entities. Jonsson’s argument assumes that the perceptions of Weimar luminaries—as astute or revealing as they may be—had a profound influence on the construction and instrumentalization of the concept of “the masses.” But this phenomenon was not a mere academic or cultural construction. As the author himself points out numerous times, mass politics were a real and defining feature of the interwar period.

    A greater attention on what animated and inspired the crowd would have been of great relevance for the central issue at hand: how “the masses” were imagined and perceived. For instance, taking into account the role of the 1917 Russian Revolution as inspiration for some and specter for others would have both explained the aspirations and fears that Bolshevism unleashed in Germany and which informed how elites viewed mass politics. Not only was the prospect of a proletarian revolution the source for socialist ambitions, it also fueled the animosities of reactionaries who dreaded such an uprising. The intellectual content of the various völkisch movements, the desires for a Volksgemeinschaft, and the inspiration of Mussolini not only motivated rightwing factions, they also had a profound effect on how contemporaries viewed the crowds in the streets. Yet all of this is muted in Jonsson’s study, so that his connection of “the masses” to Weimar history is limited. As intriguing as the observations of sociologists and artists may be, it nevertheless fails to give the crowd agency and in any case is a very narrow focus. In short: a greater attention to the actual crowds and not just how they were perceived could have fleshed out the concept “the masses” more thoroughly. A firmer historical grounding would have only added to this study. 2 As it stands, from a historian’s perspective this book suffers from a lack of tangibility and empiricism, and offers only limited insight into the phenomenon of mass politics and Weimar political and cultural history.

    A second shortcoming with Jonsson’s argument concerns his methodology. The claim that discussion of mass politics was ubiquitous and seen as a bellwether for the modern age would have found greater resonance by broadening the analysis beyond cultural elites. It is questionable how central the thinkers chronicled in this study were to the public discourse of the era. Jonsson admirably outlines the contours of the theoretical construction of “the masses” and meticulously documents how they were viewed. Yet missing is a whole other discourse beyond the ivory towers of academia and the artistic community which contemplated the political stakes. How much of this debate depended on Freud, Musil, Adorno, or any number of other notable thinkers, some of whom wrote in exile or never even finished their analyses? Sources such as newspapers or materials of politicians engaged in mass mobilization would have enriched Jonsson’s study of how contemporaries viewed this phenomenon and capitalized on it or struggled against it. He does analyze socialist publications such as the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung, but a greater use of similar source types would have bolstered his argument. What about the NSDAP publication, The Völkischer Beobachter? Jonsson focuses on rightwing thinkers such as Ernst and Friedrich Gerhard Jünger for another viewpoint on mass politics, but surely other, more widely disseminated sources could have benefitted Jonsson’s study.

    Overall, Jonsson has approached the interwar period in a fresh and creative way, demonstrating that the struggle to represent and understand the masses reflected the instability of democracy and the perplexity of the modern individuality. Whether seeing masses as signals of cultural decline or promises of a new, egalitarian society, Jonsson admirably shows how the sweeping political and social changes after 1918 shook European thought to its core. It is not just a unique history of Weimar, but also an understudied aspect of the ambivalence of democracy and the problems of democratic representation. Intellectual historians, sociologists, and scholars of art and cinema will find Crowds and Democracy a rewarding read. Nevertheless, beyond specialists, this book will not find a wide readership, and those seeking to better understand Central European political or cultural history would be better served by starting with more empirical studies.
    _____

    Peter Gengler is a Ph.D. candidate studying modern German history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His dissertation is on expellee interest group politics and the construction and instrumentalization of expulsion narratives in public discourse in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1944 and 1970. From 2014 to 2016, Peter will be conducting dissertation research in Germany with support of the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) and the Berlin Program.
    _____

    notes:

    1. Stefan Jonsson, A Brief History of the Masses: Three Revolutions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). Back to the essay

    2. For excellent historical studies of Weimar, consult Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992); Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar, 1918-1933: die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie (Munich: Beck, 1993); Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Norton, 2001); and Eric Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Back to the essay