Anarchism & Social Technology: Contextualising the (non?)-field?

Simon Collister, Royal Holloway, University of London 3rd September, 2012

Paper presented in the Anarchism and Social Technology Stream at the 2nd Anarchist Studies Network conference: Making Connections, Loughborough University, 3rd 5th September 2012.

Simon Collister, Doctoral Candidate New Political Communication Unit, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London. Email: simon.collister.2010@rhul.ac.uk

The purpose of this short paper is two-fold, firstly it seeks to contextualize the origins of this particular conference stream and set the scene for an investigation of the fields of technology and social change interpreted largely, although not exclusively, from an anarchist or libertarian communist perspective. Secondly its ultimate goal is to kick-start a wider debate about the role technology plays (and the potential it possesses) in political resistance and social struggles as well as to stimulate renewed theoretical as well as practical engagements with the topic. To begin, then, some background: this conference stream came about following discussions with a number of individuals interested or involved in technology theory and practice with a personal desire to bring about transformations at the social level. It seemed apparent to us that there was a distinct lacuna within the Anarchist Studies Networks annual conference programme regarding the role technology has played or can play in driving anarchist studies and practice in the contemporary networked age (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Castells 1996; Latour 2005). This absence was particularly problematic given that the conference call for papers made use of ongoing events in the middle east and the global #occupy movements movements making extensive, if complex and contested, uses of technology - as lead points to highlight the relevance of anarchist social struggles and studies to contemporary politics. This prompted us to a) submit a proposal for a conference stream dedicated to technologies, with an emphasis on more recent iterations of social technologies (see below for a more detailed clarification of terms) and b) reflect on whether there is a field of anarchist studies engaged with issues surrounding social technology or social media. At a first glance it would appear that there is no substantial engagement with issues of social technology and emergent forms of praxis or theoretical evolution among anarchist scholars.1 For example, while far from an exhaustive indicator of the present academic state of affairs, a Google Scholar search for anarchism and social technology throws up little relevant research.2 Such results, however, prompted us to believe that there is scope for an initial investigation of the issues of social technology and anarchism, even if we were forced
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Of course, it is highly probable that a number of scholars engage with issues of technology and even more recent iterations of social technologies and social change without using the banner of anarchism. While such papers may potentially reflect on issues and directions broadly aligned with anarchisms position we are focusing here on overtly anarchist or libertarian communist politics. 2 This evidence also risks missing non-academic publications about social technology and anarchist practice, such as personal reflections from within social movements, which are arguably equally as valuable in efforts to expand the knowledge base.

to conclude that further investigation along the trajectory would be fruitless. Furthermore, we discovered an anarcho-Lolcat which gave us hope that somebody, somewhere, was interested in the field! (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Anarcho-Lolcat (image taken from https://twitter.com/d150b3y/status/254303835768635392

Social Technology and Struggle The starting point for our investigation then is the seemingly powerful and ubiquitous adoption and adaption of technologies, in particular the recent developments in social technologies, as tools within political resistance and social struggles. By way of a short detour into terms and definitions social technology in considered social in both senses: 1) as technology which connects users primarily according to social relations and facilitates dialogic, asynchronous communication and 2) any technology that can be appropriated for social purposes that is purposes intended to build and foster associations between individuals or collective groups, predominantly outside of commercial relations3. Crucially, this definition can include, for example, Facebook as a specific technology platform enabling peer-to-peer dialogue as well as more traditional technologies, such as fax machines or landline telephones when applied in the relevant context. Such technologies and social practices and contexts have been 3 Although, as this paper develops I will argue that within contemporary society it is impossible to acknowledge hierarchical strata between reductive concepts such as capital, social, etc.

put to use in a range of struggles over the past few years, notably the Arab Spring (McQuillan 2011), Occupy Wall Street (Firger 2012; Schlinkert 2011) and the UK student movement (Economist 2011) to mention just a few more mainstream examples. Moreover, while it has been demonstrated that earlier forms of networking technology such as listservs, websites, and collaborative networking tools helped to facilitate new patterns of protest (Juris 2012, 260) with newer and emerging technologies embedded within the social domain, it can be argued that such technologies are actively transforming and (re)shaping the fields of practice and underlying the reality of autonomous political struggles. As Juris has already observed: The question that now arises is whether the increasing use of social media such as Facebook or Twitter has led to new patterns of protest that shape movement dynamics beyond the realm of technological practice and to what extent these are similar to or different from the networking logics characteristic of global justice activism. (ibid)

As a result, it could be argued that such technologies are prefiguring social change through the emergence of collaborative, decentralised and non-hierarchical norms embedded at the level of practice. Whether it is livestreaming actions, mapping spaces, fundraising, establishing secure independent wifi networks, etc, technology is enabling (as well as limiting, in some cases) a fecund practical realm of political action with additional implications for established theory. This interpretation is perhaps over-idealistic but hopefully this analysis will bear fruit by demonstrating that such practices do not emerge unproblematically within a dichotomous divide between, for example, hierarchical versus non-hierarchical organising. Rather the subsequent analysis will argue that such material, technological practices must also be reconsidered through a revised theoretical framework of post-anarchism. However, parameters need to be established in light of such a bold claim in order to set and manage expectations. My aim here is not to comprehensively map this new, emergent theoretical and practical space - although the co-contributors here today will hopefully start moving us in such a direction. Rather I want to introduce some of the current anarchist and autonomous thinking in this general area and raise some questions as to the perceived lack of engagement with technology, which I hope will offer much to scholars of an anarchist or autonomous left persuasion. 4

Anarchist Ambivalence? The following, then, is a brief overview of some of the dominant positions adopted with regard to anarchism and technology, including more recent accounts of social technology. The aim is to use these top-line accounts to introduce and provide some context that might help us to, firstly, account for the apparent dearth of substantial research, judge whether there is a field of anarchism and social technology studies; and if there is not, to tentatively start to determine where the parameters of such a field might be set. Having taken some initial steps to shape such a field I envisage the subsequent contributions being offered today as a springboard for future research themes and trajectories.

Figure 2 Occupy Wall Street (image taken from Sam Schlinkert at The Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/06/occupy-wall-streetprotests-tech-gurus-televise-the-demonstrations.html) One immediate consideration that must be brought to bear on any account of the interaction of society and new technology is the increasing embeddedness of such tools in daily life. Such a factor may be the primary cause of a limited scholarly engagement with technology and social practices owing to their ubiquity in contemporary society. It is broadly undeniable that the use of such tools and technologies is already so embedded in society that activists and academics alike cannot - or at least do not need to - see the role of technology outside of praxis. That is, technology is so ubiquitous that it has become merely a thing that facilitates activism. To use the term beloved of Facebook, social media offers us frictionless and thus invisible at the point of use - mediation between technology and daily 5

practice. (See Figure 2) Perhaps the study of anarchist practices through social technology is lost somewhere between, what Shirky (2009) terms, the socially interesting and the technologically boring utility and novelty of it all (105). Alternatively, maybe the reason for minimal anarchist engagement with social technology arises from the historical position of technology within the anarchist tradition. In Anarchy Alive Gordon (2008) undertakes a historical overview of anarchisms engagement with technology and plots the views of a number of early or classical anarchists, such as Kropotkin, Malatesta and Goldman. These anarchists appear to have adopted a broadly optimistic approach to technology as a result of their perhaps nave - belief that technology itself was little more than a neutral byproduct of industrial progress and thus provided opportunities for workers to appropriate technology as a means to transform their social position (Gordon 2008, 113-114). Gordon, however, points to Joseph Pierre Proudhons (1847) pragmatic and pessimistic analysis as the defining account of anarchisms relation with technology. Proudhon asserts that, in terms of social benefit, technology: would have no other effect than to multiply labor [] make the chains of serfdom heavier, render life more and more expensive, and deepen the abyss which separates the class that commands and enjoys from the class that obeys and suffers. (169) Despite the mass adoption and use of technology (including new media such as the Internet, email and mobile phones) by anarchists in organising and communicating social movements, Gordon intimates that owing to contemporary technologys modern antecedents in the origins of the industrial revolution and its potential (or inevitable) appropriation by capital, there is a general distrust of technology within anarchism. More specifically, the historical relation between anarchism and technology is highly ambivalent (2008, 111).

Technological Disciplining Proudhons position, it would seem, sets the tone for ongoing assessments of technology and its relation to society in broader terms by left-wing theorists. 6

While Marx (1867) argued for a differentiation between machinery and its employment by capital Gordon argues that this misses the reality that such a distinction is not possible owing to the ways in which technology has the needs of capital encoded into it from the start (114-120). As a result, Gordon continues, the development of new technology over time has merely created a reality whereby a technological disciplinary regime is constituted, generating power relations that structure permitted and unpermitted forms of subjectivity and action (122). Or put another way: given societys bias towards exploitative, capitalist relations, technology will inevitably be used for state and corporate surveillance, whatever other uses they may have (Lyon 2003) [italics in original].

Figure 3 The Zuckerborg? (image taken from Charis Tsevis via Google: http://www.tsevis.com/) While Lyon and Gordon specifically address technology in a general sense, we do not need to look too far to recognize the ways in which such a framework can be applied to contemporary social technologies, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs (see Figure 3). Moreover, some scholars argue that rather than simply constituting a technological disciplinary regime, the new iterations of consumer technology enmeshing social performances with structuring technologies lead to a more pernicious effect of self-surveillance whereby the cybernetic systems generating and enabling self-managing subjectivities and social relations move Foucaults 7

disciplinary regime to a regime of control. Such control societies have emerged, according to Deleuze, directly as a result of the proliferation of communication and computation technologies. Such a regime operates in close alignment with Michel Foucaults notion of biopolitical power or biopower marked by an intensification of apparatuses of governmentality. Given the ubiquity and embeddedness of such communication technologies, their function as apparatuses become increasingly immanent to the social field. If conventional technologies can be said to exercise disciplinary powers through closed [] and quantitative logics that fixed individuals within institutions but did not succeed in consuming them completely in a control society, power becomes premised on open, qualitative and affective relations (Hardt and Negri 2000, 24) that capture and manipulate the entire (social) body through the continual and real-time modulation of social relations, values and expectations (Deleuze 1992). Social Technology and Liberal Politics Arguably more prevalent but equally unappealing - analyses of social technology and its role in social change can be found in liberal, broadly agent-centric accounts both optimistic and pessimistic. Such accounts often the result of mediatized discourses supported by popular (or mediatized) academics (see Shirky (2009), Gladwell (2010), Morozov (2011), for example) - invest in their analysis the individual as the all powerful agent enabled by unproblematic technology. These idealistic and technologically determinist perspectives simplify the interaction between individuals, collectives, tools and technologies in pursuit of popular liberal narratives about protest, democracy and progress. At the present time, these narratives focus predominantly on the revolutionary moment with events in Moldova, Iran and Egypt generating debate (Morozov 2009, Palfrey, Faris and Etling 2009, Castells 2011). Previously, such liberal optimistic accounts could be found closer to home with the potential for e-democracy to re-ignite political engagement and revitalize participation in democratic politics4. (Post-) Marxist Critiques While it can be argued that such state or liberal democratic-focused interpretations of social technologies are generally unappealing to anarchists, another more dangerous 4 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy for a useful (but continually edited) summary.

side-effect of these narratives can be identified. Transposing the agency located within individuals by liberal perspectives onto the technology, we can recognize a parallel narrative emerging in the media in which dominant (yet commercial and proprietary) platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, become mythologized as emancipatory tools engendering freedom and empowering individuals. This narrative is popular on the one hand because it renders accounts of complex, techno-social negotiations into easily reductionist and determinist analyses that offer a comprehensible story for mass consumer audiences. More worryingly, as the PostMarxist Escalate Collective argue after the 2010 UK student protests (where such accounts of technology and political resistance were swiftly brought to the fore by mainstream media) such media narratives reinforce the perceived leaderlessness of Twitter and Facebook because of how clearly this myth masks the mechanisms of privilege and capital power which allow leadership to emerge (Escalate Collective 2011).

Figure 4 Social Factory (image taken from Auto Italia South East http://autoitaliasoutheast.org/blog/news/2012/10/29/immaterial-labour-isntworking/) Shifting the field of study from the streets to the workplace, Italian Post- and Autonomist Marxist scholars - and the Workerist movement in particular - have identified the troubling ways in which capital has appropriated social technologies as a way to gain deeper control of workers emotional and psychological productivity, thus appropriating the very human soul as a product of capital (Beradi 2009). This raises concerns that social technologies, while perceived as a set of emancipatory 9

tools and practices, are in fact ways to extend production and control into the once personal or genuinely social domain of workers lives. By encouraging the generation of technologically-enabled flows of endless semio-capital (ibid), capitalism has created an inescapable social factory (Figure 4). Interpreted through Terranovas neo-materialist critique of the contemporary digital business (2004) or Tiqquns account of the cybernetic drives of state and capitalism in The Cybernetic Hypothesis (2001) it is easy to see how anarchisms ambivalent relations with technology can become actualised as highly problematic. New Luddism and Post-Anarchism Having mapped out a rudimentary account of a number of possible anarchist engagements with technology, we arrive at the question: where do we go from here? Returning to our start point, Gordon (2008) draws inspiration from the Luddites, whose resistance was not against technology per se, but against technology that further establishes dominant power relations (predominantly those of capital). Building on this original resistance, Gordon proposes the development a new luddism, more specifically a contemporary anarchist Luddism [] understood as a heading for all forms of abolitionist resistance to new technological waves which enhance power-centralisation and social control (Gordon 2008, 129). But does this new luddism offer a desirable position? Is an engaged resistance to bad as opposed to good technology an adequate response? Given the ubiquity of technology and its embeddedness in day-to-day life it can be argued that this abolitionist resistance offers a limited engagement with technology on two counts: Firstly, given the complex meshing of technology and social practices - is it a productive use of energy, or even feasible, to attempt to monitor and police the adoption and uses of technology in an emergent environment? Secondly, and arising partly from the first point, its possible to argue that viewed through the lens of a range of contemporary theories, such as post-structuralism, feminism, post-marxism and neo-materialism, any reductive distinctions between good and bad or technology and society become increasingly problematic. From an anarchist perspective such theories can be broadly reconciled under the heading of post-anarchism (Newman 2011; Rouselle and Evren 2011) characterized by a number of attributes that potentially offer us a way out of the impasse of new luddism. 10

Firstly, post-anarchism accounts for reality as an immanent space in which hierarchical ontologies or categories of existence become irreducible to fixed or generalizable concepts or processes. Such a space, then, is in a process of continual emergence and creation. As a result, political resistance must be instantiated in response to the contingent circumstances in which fluid models of power or authority emerge or become generated. More specifically, this immanent domain of social reproduction and political struggle is inseparable from the relations and forces of capital which dominate contemporary society. Attempts to step outside of technology and capital to occupy an objective watchdog role become not only undesirable but unfeasible. In place of this watchdog role I would tentatively suggest that the most potent response is to produce or assemble new configurations of resistance from within the immanent milieu. Bruno Latour (2004) articulates the reality that in the contemporary social domain: The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the nave believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather. (246) This is a critical theory rooted in praxis, drawing on the rich potential for creating rich socio-technological solutions out of this irreducible space. Von Busch and Palmas (2006) call it abstract hacktivism that is, an adoption and application of a hacking mindset and methodology to broader social domains while Dan McQuillan (2012) terms such theories and practices, critical hacktivism. Regardless of the nomenclature, this is the other half of the debate we had hoped to bring to todays conference but unfortunately were unable to deliver. What we have been able to bring to the party, however, are a set of papers from Aaron Peters and Thomas Swann that draw on a number of fecund approaches to social media, technology and political action that in the true ethos of the Internet hack existing theories to account for contemporary radical projects or events. Aaron Peters takes Paolo Virnos Soviets of the Multitude an extremely far-sighted perspective that appropriates Marxs notion of the general intellect and uses it to account for the decentralised and autonomous techno-social organising that were witnessing through 11

the social web. Thomas Swann, meanwhile, draws on cybernetic theory to account for the decentralised organising seen during last years riots, which is then linked to the potential for extending the non-hierarchical, federated structures of traditional anarchist organising. Finally, the ultimate goal of this conference stream is to firstly kick-start a wider debate about the role technology plays and the potential it possesses in political resistance and social struggles. Secondly, it is to stimulate renewed theoretical as well as practical engagements drawing on existing or new approaches. The papers presented today, combined with the ensuing discussion, will play a valuable but minor part of this initiative. What this initiative - or any emerging subprojects - will ultimately look like remains to be seen. Ideally, it will include a greater level of scholarly and activist reflection - and I would welcome any suggestions or ideas that participants in this stream might have. One thing is certain, however: going forward the most powerful achievements will emerge if we work together to create the arenas in which researchers and activists can gather, imagine and assemble new futures.

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References Beradi, B. (2009). The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Los Angeles, Semiotext(e). Busch, O. v. and K. Palmas (2006). Abstract Hacktivism. London, Openmute. Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford, Blackwell. Deleuze, G. (1992). "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October 59(Winter): 3-7. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Escalate Collective (2011) This is Actually Happening. [Online] Available at: http://www.escalatecollective.net Firger, J. (2012). Occupy 2.0: Protesters Go High-Tech. Wall Street Journal. New York. [Online] Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577285793322092600.ht ml Gladwell, M. (2010). Why the revolution will not be tweeted. The New Yorker. New York. 4. [Online] Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?printable= true Gordon, U. (2008). Anarchy Alive: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Theory to Practice. London, Pluto Press. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA & London, Harvard University Press. Juris, J. (2012). "Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation." American Ethnologist 39(2): 259279. Latour, B. (2004). "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern." Critical Inquiry 30(2): 225-248. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Lyon, D. (2003). Surveillance Technology and Surveillance Society. Modernity and Technology. T. Misa, P. Brey and A. Feenberg. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Marx, K. (1867). Section 5 - The Strife Between Workman and Machine. Capital. (Volume 1). McQuillan, D. (2011). New Social Networks With Old Technology - What The Egyptian Shutdown Tells Us About Social Media. Internet Artizans. [Online] Available at: http://www.internetartizans.co.uk/socnets_with_old_tech_egypt 13

McQuillan, D. (2012). Critical Hacktivism. Internet Artizans. [Online] Available at: http://www.internetartizans.co.uk/critical_hacktivism Morozov, E. (2011). The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World. London, Penguin. Newman, S. (2011). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Pierre-Proudhon, J. (1847). The Philosophy of Poverty. Boston, Benjamin Tucker. Rouselle, D. and S. Evren (2011). Post-Anarchism: A Reader. London, Pluto Press. Rovira, J. (2011) Interview with Manuel Castells: "The popular uprisings in the Arab world perhaps constitute the most important internet-led and facilitated change". Open University of Catalonia. [Online] Available at: http://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/sala-depremsa/actualitat/entrevistes/2011/manuel_castells.html Schlinkert, S. (2011). The Technology Propelling #OccupyWallStreet. The Daily Beast. [Online] Available at: www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/06/occupywall-street-protests-tech-gurus-televise-the-demonstrations.htmlx The Economist. (2011). Sukey Take it Off Again. Babbage. 2012. [Online] Available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/01/demonstrations Terranova, T. (2004). Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London & Ann Arbor, MI, Pluto Press. Tiqqun (2001). "The Cybernetic Hypothesis." Tiqqun 2. [Translation available online] Available at: http://cybernet.jottit.com/

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