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Harbingers of revolution: economic crisis or General Consumption Strike?

Paul Raven @ 13-10-2008

A significant factor in the current financial crisis, so the newspapers tell us, is people spending less money in the marketplace. Conventional economic logic describes this as uncoordinated and irrational behaviour, a kind of emergent phenomenon that pushes the system into recession. [image by BdR76]

The culture-jamming movement would like to suggest otherwise, though. To these economic activists, what we’re seeing is a conscious decision by a growing section of the population of the world to drop out of the consumerist lifestyle to a greater or lesser extent. And they see it not just as positive, but as a prerequisite to the revolution:

Ours is not a purely nihilistic campaign, we do not revel in economic collapse out of spite but instead because we believe that only after an economic decline will it be possible to bring about the necessary changes to capitalism that will assure a sustainable future. We are also taking steps to insure that the money we save by decreasing our consumption goes to organizing mutual aid societies that will provide services to our needy compatriots.

To join the General Consumption Strike is easy: spend less, live more. Consider doing without your high-speed internet, cell phone service, beer or wine, restaurants, gasoline, new clothes, fancy electronics and tourism. Think of the money you will save, the fewer hours you’ll need to work, and the more time you’ll have to live. [...] Stay strong, this is a once in a hundred year opportunity!

I’ve a fair amount of sympathy with what’s being said here, but the language and rhetoric of revolution always sticks in my throat, no matter how close I am to the philosophy behind it - and imagine there are people with more to lose than myself who will be even more riled by it.

But maybe the culture jammers are right; tough times breed strange behaviours, after all, and rebranding a crisis as an opportunity is just one of many. [link via No Fear Of the Future]

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dumpster-dive for my lunch.

Comments (8)

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The Internet is Not Democratising

Tom James @ 03-06-2008

New ideas are always interesting, and they are the bread and butter of good science fiction.

Here’s one: suppose the Internet is not the democratic, equalising, freedom-enhancing system it has been portrayed as? This network of computer networks has supposedly had the greatest democratising influence on freedom of speech and expression since the invention of the printing press.

But wars are still fought, prisoners are still tortured, dictators still grinding their people into the ground, and the oil price is rocketing. We have the Internet now: why hasn’t all that bad stuff stopped yet?

If you only read one lengthy article this month let it be this essay called The Liberizing Ideology of the Internet by a poet called Jesper Bernes.

Bernes’ basic argument is that the idea that the Internet is democratising and liberalising is wrong. A few phrases stand out:

The internet is a screen, a series of screens. It’s true: everyone can have their own blog, can publish their poems online so that the whole world can not read them, can peruse and produce the contents of the internet freely (in all senses of this word). But below this level of freedom, this level of leveling and equalization, the old exclusions and inequalities still obtain—differences in literacy and knowledge, differences in access to free time, differences in positionality with regard to social networks and cultural capital.

The essay is full of high-brow ideological arguments, which are interesting in their own right, but the basic idea is remarkable for the fact that it is not one that is often read or heard. It is that the Internet is just another system of control:

Essentially, with the internet, capitalism gifts the masses with a false commons where people can work, off the clock, creating information and relationships that the ruling class can enclose, appropriate, commodify, and sell back to us at a later date.

This isn’t a luddite argument: the Internet is a valuable and necessary tool, and there’s a lot of stuff in Bernes’ article I don’t entirely understand, and of what I do understand there’s some I don’t agree with. I’ve never felt comfortable talking about politics in terms of ideologies like socialism or capitalism, or of economics in terms of class. I prefer to discuss politics in terms of policy and pragmatism.

I’m aware of the irony of suggesting the Internet isn’t a force for freedom of speech in a blog: but it’s always worth bearing contrarian opinions in mind.

What is the reality of the Internet? Is it genuinely revolutionary, or does it “virtualise and disembody resistance” as Bernes suggests? These are perfect questions for science fiction to explore.

[via Jon Taplin's Blog][link to Little Red's Recovery Room][images by MR+G and renatotarga]