ON FAIRY DUST

AND RUPTURE

andlinear framework: this event sparks that movement, leadsto this rebellion. Thirty years ago UK politics was transformed

that movement

by a series of riots that

On fairy dust and rupture

~

1981, eruptions in London, Liverpool, Birmingham

ragedacross every major town and city, In the space of 10 days in July and Leeds were mirroredby street battles in less glamorous locations like Cirencester, Market

Harborough and Dunstable. The ferocity of the riots was stunning, But even more shocking, for the state, was the speed with which they spread. Newspapers talked of outside agitators traveling the country on motorbikes, but more tellingly they warned of the "copycat effect", Fast forward
)0 years, and the Arab Spring saw oppositional

movements

emerging and

It began with the suicIde a seif I who has been do ' - mmolation by fire of a rna wngraded to un ,n was forbidden the mI b employment, and to whom
.
survIve,'

spreading with an awesome speed, Their effects were not confined to North Africa. Think, for example, of the slogans on the March 26'" demonstranon in London, "walk like an Egyptian", "strike like an Egyptian", "riot like an Egyptian". A timeline on YouTube gives some sense of the global
20lD

ace for not understandIng what. Ice ~tficer slapped him in the beco . m this world is real, In a few of mes wider and' peop~escream their joy on ad' in a few weeks millions the begmning of th rstanr square and th' . e catastrophe for th 15 entails e powerfui potentates. - Alain Badiou 2011 I
days this gesture

and because a t

sera le carom emale pol'

erce that allowed him

'

to

Before, 1watched telev' .

lSlOn'no W
I

t elevlsion' .

15

. watchmg me,

'

spread of protest and uprising over the three months between December and March 2011.3 Social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook clearly played a role in expanding those movements and the speed of that exchange was signincant. But in itself that's not enough to explain the power of these events. Struggles have always circulated one way or another. In the 1790S the Black Jacobins in Haiti and revolutionaries in Pariscouldn'trely on tweets but news went back and forth on the ships that crossed the Atlantic. So the question is this: why are some events taken up, re-interpreted and re-played elsewhere? What connects a suicide and millions of people screaming their joy? Capital and the state tend to treat popular movements as a virus that must be purged from the system. It's a narrative that' we too have often adopted. Rebellion is contagious and there's an infectious joy to be found in a collective "no", a refusal to accept the world-as-it-is. Developing this medical analogy further, we can talk about viral models, the way a practice developed in one context can be reproduced worldwide. Protest can be seen as a memethat self-replicates across a range of environments. For example, in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere, the occupation of public space (Tahrir Square, Pearl Roundabout) became a central theme in shaping opposition to those regimes. We can trace a connection here to other sirUple acts of disobedience or resistance that rapidly take off, like Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus, or the mass refusal of

- Egyptian rebel, 2011' e "980s security effectto talkabout so:?erts in the West used the id Nicaragua G al movements in Ce tral ea of the domino uatemala H n Arne' vletOry by "coznm .. ,onduras, the US nca. El Salvador unist '( , ) c gave ' ests,lfoaegov SIC wrces would tbr ' rnmenr feared that . . ernment we 11 eaten Its 0 . llJg regtmes would re a owed to fall to 1 wn strategtc intertion was at th topple, one after the oth popu ar power, neighbo egatesofth U ,er, untilth urthe laughable notion th e S Itself, Underlying th de spectre of revo1ut . atouts'd ' e roin h ramedrevoluti'o narles ) we . I eagttators(in.L u_us case M at eorywas . natlooalliberation re somehow respons,'bl c' oscoWorCuban 'd moveme t B e wrtb . WI erOlJtlookthaltr' 11. utthedOminoth enseofpopular Jes to squeeze social I'M eory was also part of ovements int oa mechani .a

n th

I
.

SOc

OCCUpy

EVERYTHING ON FAIRY DUST

AND RUPTURE

the Poll Tax, These acts are usually low-cost entry points in~~ a move. rnent. people can "do" them, and so become part of a "movement, WIthout rislcing very much (to join the anti-Poll Tax movement, all you had to do was not pay something that many of us couldn't afford to pay anyway).

But talking about memes or viruses doesn't get us far enough, As people active in social movements, we are not neutral transmitters of information and practices. Those practices first have to make sense to us, We see or hear something that speaks to Our lives. We then interpret It, apply it and pass it on. It's more useful to think of movements spreading by resonance rather than Contamination. An insurrection

, d ,"Ever ' ce O rill Samuel Bec 1 tt s war s: ' 'al ff " campaigns,acts that didn t t TCryeo ag'ain, Fail again, Fail behtter. music can f il d No matter. , then per aps tried,Ever a ec. ak the shape of music, bootleg tape . ction t es , famous If insurre thin b ut how to fa il better. There s a ry argum ent at a tellussome gao h ving a hilariously swea stop on the 6 of 19 0s band The Troggs a . er who failed to press s any , 6 The sound engine , asp what turn recordingsession. d trvi ng desperately to gr h d is now leg1 tured a ban tryi , they reac e " tapepayer, cap . d The conclusion the bastard. . t a hit recor . . d st over particularsong m 0 li I bit of fucking fairy u , an only take

is not like a plague or a forest fire _ a linear process

which spreads from place to place after an initial spark It rather takes the shape of a music, whose focal points, though dispersed in time and space, succeed in imposing the rhythms of their own vibrations, always taking on more density. 4 How does an insurrection resonate? How does a social uprising take on more density' In Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, riots immediately followed. A few days later, Hussein Nagi Felhi climbed an electricity pole, shouted "no for misery, no for unemployment", and then electrocuted himself. That cry of "no for misery, no for unemployment" spoke to the lives of Working-class Tunisians and made sense to them in a way that it could never make sense to the Ben Ali regime. In exactly the same way, the rupture created by the July 19 1 riots 8 was seized upon by an angry alienated and Youthful worlcing class who felt its meaning. In Luton, for example, a mob began by attaclcing a pub fre'luented by racists, and then moved on to attack the police and the local Tory party HQ As a rioter in Brixton later explained: "It Was the thing to do." Again, spealcing about the response of Italian workers to news of the Russian Revolution of February '9'7, Wu Ming say this: "Those proletarians asked themselves, 'What does this remote event 1001<1ike' What does itfee/like?' And :hey anSwered, 7t feels like what I'd like to do myself! "'; Of course, ,t s easy to read history backwards in this way, as if action X inevitably produced result Y. As if things Could only have turned out this way, But at anyone point there are infinite Possible futures and events don't always resonate so clearly or qUic1dy. We remember Rosa Parks, but not Claudette Colvm, History
1S

endary:"Yougot to put :n: ~hat seems possible, a~al~~~\~e element of When we seek to go bey f f iry dust as a stand in I' g a wider the idea 0 a, channe in ussofar, We can use. P haps The Troggs were 'ft h reoister from ' liti I acnon er if e shi t e echance ill po iuca . . After all" w f the elusive th ess of creatIOn, . h problem 0 pointabout eproc litical analysis. t e if resistance ge1 popmusic to revolutionary po, like: how do isolated acts a more likely to g hit record could read somethm hat conditions make them ' b Wons' An d w to become mass re e 1. '? h we can use 1 ji a short tIme. h Per aps succeed,even if on y or han iust a nice metap or. mally evade analyFairy dust IS more t ill bout things that nor b Spring is that . I' Y tota c a h zon Are . d it in a matena 1St wa,. th 1981 riots or t e ible is constralne ' f ts like e . pOSSl e . sis The power 0 even ti on of what IS f ',maginatIOn . hty Our no i 1 an acto d they puncture norma 1 . lif Sometimesitta<es j' gourunderstan ~ "f0 everyday' e. potentia. I By brea<m I".- The bythe "reality the real he "supernatura (offiction, even) to reveal h events introduce t I dented belief m the ing of what is natural, sue in 2007, has severe, Y of revolts that have ' hi h began The series d us economic crisis, w lC ib al worldview. . Cairo, have allowe "naturalness" of the neolio ~ondon, from TU~ISI:~hiS, perhaps, a glimpse followed, from Athens t potentialised worl . s I' se a different, rembie state seem to g 1ll1p 1"1 , current zo '1. confthe"supernatura. . isn't dead; ,ts " 1 and med,a e Ites o Of course neoliberahsmnwhile our pohtlCa as if such events never ersistent. Mea. old worldVlew, cratic system (or stubbornly Pd ast from withm the arliamentary-demo f killing politics tmueto broa c ... ns withm the p ht up in the log'c a . s to 'natud "politma I caug I ' that a,m happene " lents) are entire Y italism.lt is a ogIc al decisions.'7lt is its near e'lUlva . te with cap l'r cise _ paIr tIC 'b'lities l 1 oic we can] assocra te and de-po" 'ty The political pasS! I a b automa, fy austen . ra I'Is.e'- and hencethat . use d to JUStl . IS this natural lOgiC 27

littered With discarded

leaflets, dead

26

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ON FAIRY DUST AND RUPTURE

opened up by the crisis have disappeared behind .j f The mantra of neolibe 1. . a vela apparent necessity. Destroyin thi ral,sm remains the same: There Is No Alternative. indeed the restgof us)mas c of nhaturalness is far from easy. Politicians (and s are nat! efre 1 h . liberal ideology Thev ar eye oosmg agents presupposed by . ey are caught up i tho 1 .. even if they wanted t . h m IS ogre of killing politics and o escape Itt ey simpl ld ' 1 Engels captured th . h ywou n t mow how. Marx and IS pomt w en the hId . Manifesto. "Mod b . Y c anne e Faust m the Communist . em ourgeOls society is 1il h . able to control th ... ce t e sorcerer who ISno longer e powers of the neth ld his spells." Capitalism. ,. er wor whom he has called up by isn t Just greed .. d plans of individual ca it 1. ; nor IS It re ucible to the nefarious pI a IStS or polinc, I all caught up in a ser-i f b rcrans. t is a set ologics that we are , nes 0 a stract d . th forth but which dur-i h. ynarrucs at have been summoned ) unng t err operati eternal. Isn't this wh . ion, come to appear as natural and atwemlghtu d d We are all caught . f n erstan as Capitalist Sorcery' b up m orces that ' a out our everyday liv we can t quite get at. As we go f . es, as we go to wo 1 h or mstance, that money will be th T< or to t e shops, we presuppose, presuppose these things th e baSIS of our interactions. Because we kno th ey seem beyond w at our interactio . Our control. Of Course we also thi h ns contain sam thi . ng uman, but we are cant. 11 e ng m excess of capital, someSuch dyna . mua yencoura d d ' . rules are facets of c . Ii ge to iscount this excess. 1 apira ISm but th I Iberahsm A . spa lticians impose c .. ey are made Worse by neoaf 1ire. As we ompetltlve rna 1 . fi are put into situatio h r cets In ever more areas fe It0 T5, as We repeat behaviours 0ns t at force us to see others as com. 1 o rna ce out wh ver and ave th . it. "E h d ere capital ends and b. r, en It becomes harder . ac ay seems 1"1 We egm As th G capital be h. 1 'e a natural fact" Th e ang of Four put come ldd . e paradox th limit OUrlives. en and ungraspabie and et th IS at the effects of Antic . 1. Y ey act concretely to apIta 1Stpolitics is b about re-potentialisin a Out breaking With t ... e time, anticapitalist 19the world. However to hes lImItatIOns, it is po ltlcs d '. most pea 1 nents might be se .bl On t qUIte mal,e s p e, most of the liSI e eno hb ense The d d It is, after all an" ug ut as a wh 1 ... III lVI ua1 compo, unnatural". a e It Just d ' day lives arguing a. . pOsItion to take .h oesn t seem viable. . gamst It. Ev ,Wlt so mu h . aben of Ourprevia ents and crises h us everyd r ' oweve C In OUf everyf the current state of thO a ay IVes into doubt Wh r, put the continue " mgsbe . enth" up tor Supe1uatural" l' gIns to lose its' e naturalness" so utlOns. grIP, then the Space Opens
'8

Despitethe disappearance of the crisis behind the veil of necessity, we stillfeelsomething changed in
2008.

It is hard to make out what that somelargely mute. Opinion polls,

thing consists of; it has, after all remained,

however,continue to report sizeable proportions disagreeing that the free market economy is "the best system", even in countries such as the United States.With some analysis though we can begin to guess at its contours. The"natural" state of things once seemed to promise an improved life - if notforus then atleast for our children. Now that promise appears empty andthe "natural" state ofthings seems more Iike a trap. If the path to what we currently understand as "the good life" becomes blocked, then we can cometo question whether it was such a "good life" after all. This is why it has been so hard to make out the something that has changed; it is a change in the underlying structure of contemporary desire. What we once desired, and the mechanisms that produced those desires, have lost their coherence. This means that new desires are being produced and with them new political possibilities. We can be sure ofthis because ofthe cliange in recent struggles. We have seen the unexpected resonance of previously minority ideas. We have seen the emergence of the kind of movements not seen for ageneration. We have seen cascades of events that have broken forty-year stalemates. Yet we still don't know how far the new possibilities go because they have not been given full expression. Only collective political action can do this and our task, if we have one, is to see if we can trigger It. The . 1 h t a greater or lesser extent, problem, of course, ISthat we are a so caug t, a .. .. . hi f thi A h as anticapItalist militants, Wlt n the current sense 0 thlngs. s suc we, . . p something beyond ourare also sorcerers. We are tryIng to conJure u . . , thOng beyond the eXIstmg selves, something we can t wholly know, some 1 " "natura 1"1 0 fSOCiety; some thng'supernatural. IIDltS lb 1 lil f ry dust egm to mace It is in conditions like these that concepts <e al d f ble arollofthe Ice, anexpersense. Fairy dust invokes the need or a gam , "'W d 't lmow' thus f ty zones e on iment. For this we need to leave our sa e . f f nsl, the . of 'udgment or one 0 . mal<es us leave the safety of the regIme. J "8 B . v lving the element reatlOn ut In 0 risk of failure that accompames a c 1 W think of the process , . f gtolucc ecan of chance doesn t mean Just truS m th bastard" as a kind of ". . ff 1 fairy dust over e of putting a lIttle bIt a uc ang . . dpr to exceed it. Even the t xpenence m or incantation that draws on pas e I. b teen lmowledge and cliche: f dust ,05 e w h to aIry Troggs lmew that the pat " w '''I lmow that it needs strings, that I do lmo .

. n

)0-

'9

OCCUpy EVERYTHING

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Given this, we can see the occupation demonstration of defiance militancy. as boots went through By doing so it conjured

of Mill bank Towers during the

against tuition fees as an invocation. windows up a movement

Tbat jubilant show

crystallised a new mood of no one was expecting.

Yet that movement has stuttered as it bas failed to generalise. Another example of actions sprinlded with fairy dust can be found with UKUncut. Who could have predicted that occupations ofVodafone shops would res'
onate so Widely and spread so virally? cumstances? Was it the result of fortuitous cirfacilitate its spread? Or did the specifics of its incantations

y lement of our mcantaNowwe can make out the third necesshar ems or moments that set . lude mec ams ces tions.Our forms of actionmust me. Perhaps they must build in spa n ' theconditionsfor collective analysIs.. . ollectivity wh,le slow, g al hich can maintain c h b tween the physical nd tempor ,w a d that familiar rhyt me. It's I a fmtens ity . We nee downthe leve f discussion an d analysis h
highintensity of action and the cooler pace 0 push further through t e onlyby maintaining th is r hythm that we can l' In such conditions mo vements . dynamicsof capita I th at limit our rves. I' e During t h e s tudent . moved . der to genera is . the" own canchange and a apt in or hi of this role but on di. Iaye d somet mg ave it must excee d the con i mentthe occupations p ill , theyweren't enoug h . For am ovement to U group might stum ble across a 1
o

UK Uncut certainly shows us some of the elements needed for a contemporary invocation of politics. Firstly it manages to capture a spreading desire to talce part in direct action. There is a deeply felt need for a new collective, participatory politics to counter the parliamentary-democratic system's killing of politics. Yet UK Uncut's actions also spread because they are easily replicable. They have a low entry level. Taking part isn't too difficult. It doesn't require too much preparation or specialist knowledge_ The risks involved are nottoo high_ Secondly; although the actions contain a "supernatural" element, they also make immediate sense. The argument is instantly grasped: austerity is a political decision and not the result of a "law of nature" It is a political decision not to tax corporations and the rich as rigorously as the rest of us. It is a political decision to impose the costs of the crisis onto the poorest of society and those who did leastto cause it. The UK Uncut actions, and the police response they provoke, reveal Some of the dynamics of capital that neoliberalism seeks to deny. They reveal, for example, that capital contains different and antagonistic interests and that politicians, the police and contemporary structures of power align themselves with certain interests and against others. It is a political decision to do so. Yet there is a danger here. Because actions must be instantly understandable, they can only push so far into the boundaries of what it is currently possible to say. They must by necessity still Contain many of Our society's hidden presuppositions to thought. If the actions don't Contain a dynamic that pushes further and generalises wider, tben the movement risks collapsing back into the sense oftbe old world. We are all toot jJ' th thi ", am Iar WI s. Of course we d love to tax the banlcers", says the government "but if We did they'd simply move to Geneva." Tbe parliamentary_demo~ cratic system seeks to kill every revelation of a political deCiSionWith a new "naturalisation".
30

tionsof its own emergence. While a smae up forces that ma 1<e themse .

ves ad

workableincantation, they must cO;J~~e mass its own analyst, t~ sP~~er redundant. The aim must be to m:t~e whole of the coUectlve bo l~lways thepotential for leadership acros h your last request shaul .. allif a geme gIVesyou three wishes, t en befor another three wishes.
in Leeds, in the north of NOTES . e eriment loosely based here). The Free Association is an ongomg XPh me nowhere (and everyw rselves at 0 the UK although we find ou , www.freelyassociating org " t http IIWWW 1aca n f popular Uprismgs , a

h U iversal Reach 0 " "Tunisa, Eygpt- T ~ n Id"'1031 of popular Upnsmgs com/thesymptomJ pege., The Umversal Reach ) CIted by Badiou, 'Tunisa, Eygpt 1 _ SemlO , 2009 text D 3 http l/blt ly/wlmxr Commg InsurrectiOn (Los Ange Thousand]u Iys (httpII h a es The Invisible Committee, The ts are LIRe aSummerwlt d We W"ntto Riot, Not 4 Twobnlhant accounts ofthe 198wo d_Julys_other-seasons) an wulUmgfoundatlon 5 hbcom org/hbrary I5ummer~thousan , 11February of 1917" ' at http I!WWW W Mmg1 "Werea to Work, u , I' -1810 5 ell g g corn/en hsh/\N11mm blm/0g ~~ch?v"'En4ase-l~FAI t Sorcery Breakll'19 the p Youtube co w CapIta IS ) 6 http Ilwww. d Isabelle Stengers, MacmIllan, 2011 _ 7 PhiU1pe Plgnarre an 1 Hampshire- Palgrave (Hounchmlls, Basmgstocre, tahst Sorcery, 44 8 Plgnarre and Stengers, apl

31

THE REVOLUTION

IS MY BOYFRIEND

woman ith alust for change have in the recent wave of struggle? w

We are

awarehatthe explosiveand viral character of the past year of struggle has t undoubtedlyenerated transformative images and political interactions. g Analysing composition of the struggles the we discover young, and graduates taking precarito the ousworkers,intellectuals, school children

The revolution is my boyfriend

..

..

streets. hiswavebroke through more than geographical borders as town T aftercity after country after continent became infested with this passion. Amongst he many visual and textual accounts littering both social and t professional edia were striking images and words of the women within m thesestruggles,Photo after photo of women in Middle Eastern and North Africancountries facing down lines of riot police or marching in nijabs withfistsraised in the air.' The second is of the prominence of women in Europe rotestmovements, be it women on microphones in Plazas across p Spain,or of girls linking arms around a police van to protect it from the rageofyouth. Differences in access to education and labour markets, different cultural norms and gender roles will be reflected in different roles women playin these distinct struggles. While recognising differences, contradictions and complexities within the multitude of movements that jorrned this year's uprisings we are focusing on - broadly - the Arab Spring and the (mostly) student dominated movement in the UK. We are particularly interested in _ and have attempted to weave this narrative throughout the chapter _ the way the overt involvement of women links with some of the other" reasons" Paul Mason refers to: the educated pers,~n WIth ~o . ThO . terweaving of reasons IS IS in has no weight on Its own, . future, the increase in social medIa, etc. f not because the question of the role .' 0 womendf .. h of an oppOSltlOn paper, but rather, as can be seen by the stnlang ea me women stand with multiple ld' the protester, the jourShe is the Muslim, the mother, the so ier, nalist, the volunteer, the citizen. guises:

he revolution is my b ayf rierid!" . archetypal protest leader' B . , declares Gudron, the parodied Reich Adm ruce LaB ' Mahfo '" n it is her we think a ruce s 204 film Raspberry th Z uz who sparked the Arab S . f:, not a real woman like Asmaa to

~~~:;~;:s;

:~om the opening sC:~:~~f

~:r~:mandante

Ramona

01

sloganeeringabo~t~~droom, onto the streets!" h angumgherboylriend as "cornflakes are c e SIXth generation Red;;' er co~stant monotone my two men in h ounter-revolutiona"," t h Faction, as ludicrous er group t h - J , ate seen h indeed leader . ill 0 omosexuali few ere she orders finally she de' lorgamser, faCilitator and s tyl or the revolution. Gudron is c ares the R po <espers U d do so. evolution post di on. n eniably, when pone It feel if i We laugh with b s as I It ISher place to I othsym h mow from history, from pat y and recognition " tune activist th d films, from our . This IS a Woman we , e e Ucated own exper, and always. This' young woman h zences This is the full , IS not a eli W a po I ,:,e re not saying the two a reet comparison to the pu ates struggles now ~quiry into the way our r re t~e same. Gudron's woman We see todaytton of images, slogans an~atlOn to movement is ~chetype aids us in an the roles weplayandh compOsitions b am out of theproduc'. oww I - ut als pass.ion Iike the most' ere ate to strug I a expressed through b fri Intens f g e. W'th oy riend _ as it has bee eo romances th I a commitment and lAT n our ' e rev I . vve arefamiliar.th s. a utlOn is indeed h I' WIthil er o unon. But what role , I anyS TO e, this passi on and thO . 'f d'd , I this fem a I archetyIS Intensity f or reve 68 pe of an educated

. h t untU(e our Gudron, us real With this we share an understandIng t a, r identities constructed . l'd tity Norareou women do not have a SlUgu ar' 1 en le against and alongside. . . th f the men we strugg in isolation from ose 0 d ws us not to answers, but to . . . th statement ra . OurinvestlgatlOnluto e.. B friend then the RevolutIOn . 'b . overs more questions. 1f th e Rev olutlOn IS My oy tal;e care of, but t elr 1 . wid that women ' is Not Me. It is not lust c ren
69

OCCUpy EVERYTHING

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too . Th IS carmg, supportive role rna i . . merit, but it is not th . Y provide the backbone of a mevee same as taking in I d see women exc1 uded f 1 d ' part In ea ership, wherewestill rom ea ership d k t h erolethemaj'orityof ,an spa esperson roles. Thisechoes women play in ' ali ta 1 on the function of ce duci a capit st market, wherewomen repro ucmg . 1b th e upkeep of labour-po . capita y being heavily involvedn i wer, as pnmary c ' an d services industries, which bot are givers for both the family productive, Women as 1 ' h help to reproduce and keepcapital . t h'ISISbecause women C WOHers vvi11 of course playa key role in struggle h hi h rorrn t ecore f inf ' w IC is under attack from th a 1 ormal and reproductivelabour place around the world e many neoliberal encroachments taking Th ' , , , , ese roles are paralleled . , slb,11tJes WOmen often hav ' in the crucial and indispensable responreports from the Arab Sprin~ ~~a~:o::; st
Women Were involved'
'

10 theyoungfemalesuicidebombers

of Palestine, to the poster that turned manyofus ontopolitics as teens, that of Vivian during the Poll Tax Riots going foracopwith apole,These images of rebellious, and often beautiful women, rovideperfect propaganda for the Left, Far from the claims that p womenhave gone unnoticed it seems these portraits of women in strugglehavedominated the imagery from movements even though women havemadeup the minorities in street protests, If the Revolution is My
1

movements

today, For example

In arrangin f dd ' age and medical help ... The g 00 eliveries, blankets, the and nursed them in their h y treated the injured in the streets to hospital.' omes when they were too afraid to go

However w e a1so reco . struggles there is gmse that Within the social ' backbone. Wh the blurring ofboundari b dynaIDlcs of the current woman lead' at IS exciting about thi es etween leadership and the lng rnst d IS resurge . persons, key di ea of the man b nee in movement is not " me ra org , ' ut rather th 1 j f archetypal" amser and th di , e ac (0 key spokes' protest 1 d e ISmtegr t' many. We are wit ea er as We know it Thi a ron of the need for the I nessmg . IS ISP li ' , . t h e structures a d I . a more collect' a tICSWIth a face of . n re atlO f IVeand ge ali rn power, This ha ns a OUreveryda I' ner ised rage against tIS created y rves and th ' s rugg egoing beyond h an outburst in e IDlStrust of those t en d extra-parI' we d onotwish to . h ee 1Ortrad,'t' 1 lamentary forms of . ,etls i h lOna p I' , prOVIdesa potent' 1 ze orizontalor ' 0 Itlcalleadership, Again .. la lor ch ganlsat" b '
I

Boyfriend, e want to look good on his ann, w Accordingto estimates, "at least 20%" of the crowds that thronged TahrirSquare in the first week were women,' But "at least 20%" seems lowwhen considering other struggles, For example, In the Liberation Tigersof Tamil Eelam (the "Tamil Tigers") women were active in up to 40% of the group's suicide attacks and this level of participation is commonamongst Kurdish and Syrian terror groups, 4 Likewise, within the UK, women have been heavily involved in the direct action movements from the 1970S through to the 19905, sometimes in dominant numbers and often with more than "backbone" roles, This is also true of more recent direct action groups across the UK. If the numbers and rolesofwomen have meaning, perhaps we can detect some here: through the UKenvironmental and anticapitalist movements, women taking the role asfacilitator, organiser and full time activist together with an explicitly feminist politics perhaps changes the structure of how we organise, This can make those involved question privilege and male-dominated spaces, and start implementing structures that allow for greater and
more inclusive involvement.

IrOnIcallybecome instit

.ange and flux in

10~,

ut We accept that it

Our second questjo~tJonalised, p aces It has not already and Who ISthis femal " ISarOund wh , e archetyp o. Who' hi a~e lumerous in the curre n al protest leader?":~ t s backbone woman? . FlTst y' wo men have alway ntWav e a f struggle b lOUn g, ed ucated women ' h b t e masked and ann d Seen the pinut they have al b e womenin . ups for sOcial ways een!
guerrilla armies
70

Ah, but let us return to the educated young woman! As explored previously, educated young women have often inhabited a role within movements that is not definitive of woman in her different stages ofhfe, Before the relatively hkely (though of course nation-, race- and class-dependent) event of Motherhood women's position is ennrely dIfferent both wlthm , ' d' t sonal ofrelationships, Both eduour pohtical circles an In our mas per . . . . d h 1 I'n a unique P051tlOnamongst their less catIon an yout P ace women are numerous than the educated young 'U d' h f pnv ege 51sterS,w a are ar m kind on t h e fr ont- [' Ine. woman who often represents woman . meanwhile often remams that of Mother, The roldor 01d er women ents Mothers protectIng theIr sons or ' ' , 1
even within our
SOCla

movements. From

across the Global South,

their husbands throug h d emon

movem strations .
7'

' anger and tears. Th'1S IS not to

'

OCCUpy EVERYTHING

THE REVOLUTION

IS MY BOYFRIEND

downgrade the role f M h b face women with' a ,olt er ut ratherto illustrate the limitationsthat In SOCIamovements F; . d .. create new ways of b' , ' aang own traditional roles to of riot police, emg ISsomewhat more of a project than facing aline As Sina Gabil voca1ises, People have been conditioned intelle ' religiously to dis ' , , ctually, psychologically and cnmmate against a lot harder than tti women, ,0 change this will be ge mg rid of Mubaralc 5
T

whoprotectedproperty from rioters - and not just any old property but thepolice van, a symbolof state power - became the hero of the Dally Mail anditslike,which noted with, one imagines, little critique: Theteenager,a first-year History of Art student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, previously attended the 12,500-a-year Colfe's School n south-eastLondon where she left with four A grades at i A-level. 7 Sheseemsperfectforthe role of educated, young woman who exemplifres thesocialmovements, rather than her streetwise working-class counterpartswho were kicking in the windows, What then can we conclude? Our truthful answer is: nothing, We can onlyask more questions and that questioning must not end, To believe in conclusions is to believe in utopias, We watch and act keenly though, to seeif our voices gobeyond the need for political representation and an equalitybased on neoliberal market-based rights, We suggest that women
as workers ~ as students, as mothers - as our many different productive

Recognising the limitations women f and class play within ' ace and the role youth, education OUT socia] move t he question, so what' If ments, we would also like to ask th: . women are num . . IS a process of strug 1 ." erous ill SOCIal movements is " g e creatmg gend litv" mg outside the confines f 1 er equa Ity , new forms of relat, , 0 to ,en stat 1" esrs Within social mav e po icies changing? Women's interements are diff example, the midd1e-cla erenr, and often contradictory, For f ' ss women ithi oeusmg their political energ' ,WI rn the Arab Spring have been on laws affecting women' rualir, ISsues of political representation and call s equa rty Th I' y more concerned with ,e wor eng-class women are typistruggles against violence a::~es and workers' rights, 6 There are shared ~ay conflict Within women's lor voice, but the expression and demand ass t eric to Gudron when she de:la '~,terests, We are again wryly sympaaremored , esprca ble than others" res: Allr 01es ali ' , Ienate equally but some It ISImperative to a . within so ' I nalyse exactly h ofwomen:1a movements. Using tradit' w at the function of women is when w s role has been credited WI'th ,ronal limitations and stereotypes caution with h pea ed for their menfoll t mlgmuch of the Arab Spring ow tnum h < a ta ce to th sions. Workin ' h' P antly We sho ld e streets, We urge gwIt m th Usee th the meanings im e constant dynanu' f ese apparent subverposed upo co pow L'l as peacemal<ers . n us to rise up th er Will e we subvert , negotrator ' e coopti f the potential of th s and carers w'll b On 0 women's roJe e moveme tIe Con tin 11 It is interesting tn, ua y used against policevan that had jou:;:~:~t On that image of the ' UK. What were th ' pantmg dur' h grrls surrounding a , Osegrrlsd' mgt est d paId homage to the w OIng' And wh t u ent uprisings in the f omen as th a were th d' o manageable protest' Z e correct and erne Ia doing who , OeW'll' lams, the Upstand' Ing representation 1 mUch-exalted d
72

roles we claim and use to relate to one another, need to question how we , , d 'I lives and strugrelate to one another and recognise how we, In our ai y

omen ap

lnspir'

gle, both challenge and confirm the status quo, We can challenge by ,, d dis as part of a WIder colrecogruslng our role as repro ucers an war cer , .' . \ mg into identIty POht1CS, lectivity and struggle, but can can frrm by s Ippm " ' I' these questIons regardmg biological determinism and f ear. U n d er ymg , th Madrid-based Precanas a la limitations ,equality, roles and strugg I e, e Deriva collective argues that, , I. d to extract value, we join capital fragments the SOCIa In OT er 8 , d d' I ce it toward other places,
together in order to elevate It an an ISPa

d
Women are indeed numerous .'

dynamic

exciting and crucial

are h'l b _ but as workers 'ngacrosst ego e ' parts of the recent upnsmgs spanIll 'd eradicate a value . . w need to questIOn an as women, as revolutlOnanes, e . d ctivity so that collec, . nd economIC pro u

system based on competItIonfr a for what we tru Iy d eS1re, ' d ht tively we can frgure out an g I 's lives will not be changed, " t' gin strugg e women Without partlClpa In 'epresent our participation in " te and the way we r But the way we partIopa 'b tween changing and colluding , tantly in tenSlOn e . . these strugg I IScons , es ' bel '0 we take to the streets but It IS with dominant ideologres ' WIth re 1Y
73

emonstrator

OCCUpy

EVERYTHING

asmuch in the transformation of the . rejoice. We have faith in the f occupiers as the occupationthatwe critiica I th ought. Indeed thi power 0 action ' bu t 0 n1yw h encoupledwith . h IS IS one marri . enoug to be the girlfriend of th R 1 age we WIshto uphold. Itisnot cere1y declare the Revolution p e evo unon. If this is all weget wesinostponed. '
J

NOTES
http;//muftah.or j? _ Latin A . g . P-928 , Dotsen - Renta L "R I menca & The Arab W Jd'' ' , evolutionary Women' M' . Ittp: I/www' or . IITonng "Ut .guardian co uk/ ld vvomen have emer '. war /2011lapr/22/wome ~ . 3 http://www th ~ed as key players in the Arab . ~ arab-spring, Riceet al, . enanon co I . spnng Shahin "An A . m article/ioory I b 4 Dugdale-Po' Tab Spring for Women" 9 ara -spnng-women , Cole, Juan and mton TDP 5 .. articles! ,-, uicide Attacks weapons_suicide htmJ - terrorist, httpJ/wwwhi fw ttp://WWW.worldcru . . . storyo aT.org! 5 h Sprin Th nch. com/arab . 6 http;;;: e Female Factor" -spnng-female-faetor/2999, 1, Mandraud "AI b . ~. thenation. c . ' a Shahm An Arab S . om/artlcle/l60179/arab . 7 http://WWW:d.J Ptmg for Women" -spnng-women, Cole, Juan and S d . ai ymall.co uk/ " tu ents-streets-' '. news/article-l 33 28 Tuition Fees Prot glrls-.leadmg-charge. htm 1#' Il!T~TION-FEES-PROTEST1 est: Britai , S lXZZISJcJ8] are eading the char " 10 students Take to th 4m , R, Camber et al, http.I'I..ge.estreetsaghi til . Izmehbrary' f am - t s time women 8 la Deriva "Th .zn 01 eslA%2oVe , e Silent 5trHce " rY%2oCareful%2oSt n tlceopdf, The Precarias a
1

Dothe entrepreneuriat ofelectric sheep?

dream

Why contemporary activists talk about power

= :

T'

isperhaps an exaggeration to suggest, as Paul Mason has, that those t blockadingeither Tahrir or Parliament square are well versed in their Hardt & Negri, much less their Deleuze, Guattari or Foucault. Yet it doesn'ttake a bookworm to realise that the forms of struggle witnessed overthepast six months surpass any simplistic"us and them" binary, and that amore nuanced understanding of power is required if we are to come

to terms with the battles we are fighting.

The authors Mason refers to are, in our opinion, indispensable in

helping us understand the shifting arrangements of power and its relation to the changing forms of capitalist accumulation. Things seem significantly different now for a variety of reasons, with recent uprisings in

Tunisia, Egypt and Libya among others, as well as an upsurge in struggle in the UK and across Europe - things seem to have started to move.
Despite claims to novelty or "newness", to a greater or lesser extent,

all of the authors Mason mentions belong to the Marxist tradition, albeit in abastard form. Marx' s"old mole" - the movement which abolishes the present state of things _ has not gone away, but has just been lying low, experimenting with new concepts, drawing from the commonwealth of different intellectual traditions and struggles. Far from substituting a iti f" I " itu" wer" per se as Paul Mason has suggested, they en lqueo C ass h d;;l; W1 po t orms of class struggle are needed - forms ' . d mstea 11 suggest t th lJJeren J' at f t ry walls and political partleS to take account . b d t h at Spl ff eyon h ed aC 0 h ch capital "accumulates our souls" . conb m otelUsemetosywl . . h. h ter we wish to outltne some af the ways f h d temporary sOClety.In t IS C ap
74

75

OCCUpy

EVERYTHING

DO THE ENTREPRENEURIAT

DREAM

OF ELECTRIC

SHEEP?

we think capital and class composition have been transformed. Theyare tentativ- Ideas and suggestions, to be developed further 1. The late 1960s and "9 0 th b . hni 7 S saw e eginning of a substantial shiftin h e tee mcal camp OSI t iti f I the shift f "C' d ,~on,~ c ass. In what is commonly referred to as rom t-or isr to post Fa dist" d abando d h ' , - r rsr pro uction, what began to be of 1 ne was t e orgamsmg of production en masse where thousands war cers were mapp dr' h e out on tactory floors by a handful of 'f " t at operated as min! - diet a t ors Th oremen ' . di rything with' thei s: ,ese rruru- ictarors commanded eve' m eir tactor-v- kingdom' h k they stood ther f h . s, were war ers stood, how long ear, w at their- ha d d' d h c andsoon, The soc' 1 ' , n s 1, oWtasttheirhandsmoved, ia compOSItIOn of thi F di appearedtoimitate f f ,s or 1Stproduction model hence a arm a sovereIgn hi h . appeared to directl ' power, w c ISto say, the foreman y orgamse and direct th ' f ell under their command, e space, time and bodies that The shift from a Fordistto a ost-' , did not so much ab d P Fordisr orgamsation of production ii an on these forms f di '1' re led on the foreman-d' 0 ISClp mary workplaces that N 1 Ictator rather th di 1 ot on y were these actu 1 F d , ey ISp aced their prominence, 11 h a or isr SItes of ducti , ca y to t e global So th pro ucnon shifted geograpbiti . u and East but th: 1< IOn was dIsplaced by .' IS arm of organising producnew regImes ofpr d ' b contra. I In other Word auctIOn ased on novelforms of rio 5, new forms of 0 .. . n emerged in certain "deve10 ed" rgamsmg the process of producdid not rely on the foreman di P areas of the world that increasingly the e - Ictator to enf mergence of the mana cr'. orce OUT compliance, but rather 3 Unlike the f g magICIan. oreman-dictat h t h e workerthr' or, t e manag d '. ough mformin h er oesn t directly discipline are to be performed, and in wh~cwh atdtasks must be undertaken how they man-dIctato or er they b ' . r operates USing mech' must e performed. The fore;i:~:~eer lSconsidered to be an ine:;~~ or analog forms of power, where pices ~~::ted if they are to perfonn ;:f ~esh a~,d bones that must be thatareperm nager, theworkersareinte y useful task. Under the aus, anentIyeI'fi rpreted as aut can make thin h ectn ed. The "rna ' .. onornous subjects gs appen With gIC of the rna 'h So where the fa Out apparent1 f ' nagens t at she rernan-dict t y orcmg a tho , manager uses m a Or had to use f ny mg dIrectly, .. Ore subtle f orce and ov magic", Given thafth arms of Power g !t' ert coercion, the ese elect 'fi ' e mg thing t Jj'ving beings the t 1 ned-workers a1 s a move as if by , as e of th are ready ct' e manager-rna . . a lye, conscious gJClan is not to force them to'
76

moveWeea wooden puppet, but to create the "fields of sense" within which these electrified-workers then operate of their own accord. The electrifiedworker doesn't perform a task because a foreman dictates what to do; she performs multiple tasks without specific instruction, having been put on we are a general trajectory by the manager-magician. because we are being directly animated the logic set out by our managers, wooden stick but animated within We are no longer in motion

by the foreman-dictator;

in motion because it "makes sense" to perform certain tasks according to

We are no longer being shoved with a digital fields of sense, at times accomalthough it is increasingly difficult

panied by jolts from electric shocks,

4.

to identify their origin, The electrified-worker, rather than an inert vegetal mass put into motion by the foreman-dictator, now appears as a self-motivated and

2:

dynamic "entrepreneur". The worker is no longer primarily valued according to the extent to which she can be efficiently disciplined and have time extracted from her. Instead, the valued worker is one who has learned how to "use her initiative", who is capable of "thinking outside the box", and who can constantly invest (without dictation) in her own capacity to be a flexible, efficient, and dynamic entrepreneur. The old axiom "socialism equals soviets plus electricity" turns out to be the tagline for the Facebook generation. 5. This new entrepreneuriat operates increasingly without any punchcard to register when they are or are not working; this form of measurement and method of delineating work and play belongs to the Fordist organisation of production, As the development of the social factory expanded the field of capitalist production and value extraction across SOCIety,tIme , If b db 'tal The entrepreneuriat is never on or off, Itse ecame saturate y capI . , A h It I' endy in motIon. s tea Ian but permanently e1ectr me d an d perman " ' "autonomous" Marxist Franco 'Bilo' Beradi has suggested, CapItal no longer ' [1 de-personalised tune IS now the recruits people, it buys packets a f tIme ..' , d' h " d de-personalise bIDe as no real agent of the process of valonsatlOn, an . h . ". fmd that we are living in a state of precanty, were nghts . In thIS sense, we I' t" g in ourselves we ' th f fi d selves permanent y Inves In desplte e act we n our 'h t a contract altogether, fix d term contracts or WIt ou increasingly war I con e roup to be disciplined by 6 R th h pearing as an homogenous g . . a er t an ap " 'duals of the entrepreneuriat are sel f-motlthe foreman-dIctator, the mdIVI d' st in themselves with the easure an Inve ' vated to constantly assess, m '
I

or

77

OCCUPY EVERYTHING

DO THE ENTREPRENEURIAT

DREAM

OF ELECTRIC

SHEEP?

purpose of bec~illi~g mgly undertalang mcreasmgly funded

more "dynamic" training" education

individuals. is demanded,

Rather than begrudgactively pursued and

effective, sthere is no longer an inert vegetal mass that requires directing. a Thegood"manager" is now more of a carer and a "friend", someone who helpsyou "fulfil your potential" in your competitive endeavour against others. Perhaps the most developed example of this exists within the urnversitysystem, where managers are increasingly cast as "pastoral" carers, whilstweekly ernails offer you "opportunities" to enhance your individual effectIvely, wnte

, industrial

at the behest of the foreman-dicitself. The entrepreneuriat

tator, a state of permanent

by the entrepreneuriat

desires constant investment in Me Inc. to raise their personal stock of human capital, ensuring that it can perform better in the market competition between workers.

ability to engage with industry,

10.

deliver presentations

7 As the entrepreneuriat, we increasingly interpret our co-workers not as comrades united in mutual exploitation under the dictates of the foreman-dictator, but as "healthy" competitors. We don't stand united
as a class in the face of capital, we run against each other in the name of self-Improvement. There exists only a modicum of solidarity with fellow co-workers. Of course c h . we care ror t em and share our coffee breaks but we are ultImately a h' ' . ware t at we are m competition with them. Who can IIt h emost Levi SOlS in th se c h h e next rour ours? Who can secure the longest p one contract? Who can bli h h . pu IS t e most articles or guarantee the return custom? The investm . M' ' service trai . . ent In e Inc. IS no longer just in customer mng or gettmg a de but i . ing you b d' gree, ut in whitening your teeth, enlargr reasts an gettmg h . 11' 1 itselfh b . air a IC es implanted/removed. The body as ecome an Investment opportuni 8. The most successful cor or . ty . puttingitto work so th t 1 p. atrons are harnessmg competition and , a e ectrIfied wo I . in the name a" improvi th h r cers compete against each ather " ng e ealth a" thei II . work against each oth d ? etr co eetwe body. We are put to er an wedonte 1'" a myth that this compet't' . f ven rea rse It - mstead we buy into 1 IOn IS or th " Il' " that are not-up-to-scratch '11 h e co ectlve good, and that those WI ave tab co I lective. We are close to th 'ld e amputated for the good of the eWI estofp . entrepreneuriat supports and und er~erslOns where the amputated good of the body". erstands Its own redundancy - "forthe g. If the Post-Fordist tr '. anSltlOn saw a f to th e manager-maaician h . move rom the foreman-dictator . o~ , we avelncr . 1 Into Ourcomrades, offering" eaSIng y seen the latter transform . us pastoral c " mvestment guidance to "he] "us d are and complimentary Me Inc. competihon. We are increa~in 1 ea] WIth the anxiety of full-spectralmous entI~les,investing OUr o~ ~ operatIng as self-managed autonoresources mto OUr OWn t '. mporal, psycholooical and fi 'al ,b' nanCI b.ecommg Superfluo. . h'rammg . Th e oreman-dictato - . . u S, IS analog ill h . r IS mcreasmgly , ec amcal techn' Iques are no longer
,8

successfulgrant bids or increase your "networking" skills. . The manager-magician has ultimately become the new theraptst, attempting to help the worker constantly adjust to a world that ISmovmg increasingly too fast to comprehend. This form of therapy can be understood as the psycho-social restructuring of our fields of sense in the interests of capital. The way we understand ourselves and those around us, the way we interpret and act upon the world, is constantly being refined to ith ensure our emotional compatl "b' li W1 capi"tal - therapy m the name I tty "normalising ourselves, or to overcome th e anxiety , panic, and depres."" of . ". SIanthat results f rom operating In a wor ld in which we don t fit. (and forms of thought) that We need to abandon forms a f t h erapy an ," " bl d i stead construct militant suggest that it is us that IS the pro em, an m ise and b 1 11 ctively recogmse an rea ( therapeutic practices that enab 1e us to co e "" he thera with those "fields of sense" that limit our lives and capaCItIes ..T h PY . e action and analySIS, so t at we we need to engage in is based on co 11ectiv " _ "fields of sense . can learn to create our own - common . ty f the class is now . that the enure a To be explicit: we are not sayIng. ti to the increasing ." h e are draWIng atten IOn orgamsed th,s way. Rat er, w . "h hwhich we are governed " . It hnologres t roug prevalence of the new SOCIa ec h less it is clear that as these , f ita! Nonet e , (and govern) in the mterests a cap 'f' e that assume power still --. "f th forms 0 reSlstanC . . . technologIeS proli erate, e . ff reman-dictators disClplIrung . d' to the logIC a a operate primanly accor mg " ff . Capital began to abandon such . b ' ingly me ectwe. , ., our bodies, Wlll e mcreas f d ways to effectively reSIstIt 10 . when we oun . forms of sovereign dIrectlOn I I t the impotence of recent stnke 1 hasto ooza . the 1960s and 1970s. One on Y . that revolutionary techmques ., 1 de unlOns to see " actionsandtradlhona tra" h 'ngoftheboss . Instead, wemust, d " ny overt rOWI can no longer be foun In a. f llective resistance that operate not hnlqueS 0 co . out of necessity, forge teC . " h e" but against ourselves - agamst ething out t er , .' . against someone or sam .' 1 I systems that orgaruse our deSires. . d the dlgrta va ue the entrepreneunat an
'9

OCCUpy

EVERYTHING

This is a process of exodus, via the exorcism of generalised self-investment in ourselves! This exodus is not a territorial flight, but a desertion of the role and values developed as the entrepreneuriat. Of course, the working class has always been a diabolical category; the purpose has always been to abolish our role as workers, defined as such by our subsumption under capitalist command. Some in the anti-cuts movement see the increased social antagonisms developing within society, anger over the rich evading tax, cutsto social services and increasing fees, and wish to bring back to central stage a certain preordained version of an alternative - an orthodox Marxist. Leninist crystal ball that can inform us that "one last push" will abolishthe present and give birth to a Socialist future. However, we don't subscribeto this idealist conception of how history moves - nobody is willing to give away the ability to write their Ownfutures anymore. The problem weface, however, is that we don't yet Icnowhow to be "in organisation" in a waythat will precisely allow us to move in, against and beyond capitalism. What appears almost certain is that this will necessitate a co-ordinated psychoSOCIal deprogramming - a sort of collective social therapeutic process to extncate ourselves from the new forms of control that capital developed whilst we were still dreaming of cutting off the long's head.

Radicalising the armed forces

the morning of October 30th, 19l8, the beginning, it was the navy. On " " d f mg their commander n hi Ki 1 rrrutrme orct the sailors of the batt I es p e 11 '. days more and mo.re ." the fo owmg , to fleeunder cover of disguise. In '"1 who together with by their SaI ors. , German battleships were ta 1 over . f d" t democratic decisioncen t d councils or tree f workers from the cities, crea e kers and to the rest 0 . uy isr Iead malting. The unrest qUlC 1-' mo ved to factory wor18 the socialist lea er th int th at, on Novemberg f ,1glution an action w hi h , the anny to the point t ic , . dth onseto revO , PhilippScheidemann procla1me e " d of the Kaiserf fmally led to the end of the war an ich inds some of the "spring 0 whic rerm " h Today in the winter a f 2011, h t lays a crucial role in t e , "thar.mytap nations" of 1848, it is once agam e h Africa. In Tunisia and Egypt, mass 'l"tary which success of popu 1ar revo Its acrosS Nor! 1 . ctors of th e fit 1 demonstrations found solidarity marge sedeven helped to bring down 1 "surgency an ry did not oppose the popu ar m ed confrontation against mercena the regim e. In Libya, the mltlal arm ib] by the defection of the police fi ade pasS! e troo s hired by Gadda was m f the protest movement. . and ~heir active and military sUPpo~c~ist Noam Chomsky once said t~~t The American theorist and ana h the State is a suicide attempt, as if

en a 'nginannedconfront~tlOnw:tbackwithatank,

ifyouco~eW1tha

g gi rth rifle they will com ." At a first consideratIon, such YOU come Wl a, . h fighteqet. f h ld ill mebackwlt a 'nmostpartso t ewor , tank, theyw co be irrefutable. The State'f'''l gitimate" violence, but ent seems to the use 0 e a statem 1 h the monopoly on of a military confrontation does not on Y ave 11 possible means
also has exclusive accesS to a
80 8'

OCCUpy

EVERYTHING

RADICALISING

THE AR MED FORCES

with external or internal enemies. However, it is indeed in Chomsky's t nce that is hidden the key of a possible breakthrough. Specifically sene word "they". Who are "they"? It might seem thatfhev'i refers t a in the at t ey re ers the State and its powers. Nonetheless, this is not an accurate Illterpr~:~. ti "They" are the army and the police, that IS, the effective, pracn wn. . I" ~ holders of all the means of military action. In fact, Chams cy s se~ten " holds a deep truth, one that may escape his initial intentions: It IS them who have the power to decide on the result of any imaginable social unres~. Seen with the eyes of the democratic West, and III particular WIt those of people on the left, the army and the police seem to belong to a dimension of existence that has very little to share with that of the CIvil pop' ulation. After the end of mandatory conscription in most European countries, the military has increasingly become a highly specialised, elite force that resembles more the armies of private contractors than the popular armies of the past. Like the caste of warriors of some ancient civilisations, most armed forces of the West have lost any real contact with the livesand desires of those populations that they Supposed to defend. Furthermore, just like in those castes, the level of democracy internal to the armed forces has now reached the all-time-low of a tight hierarchical organisation. Today, after decades of devoted pacifism, it is difficult for most of the European left to remember the positive role that large sectors of the army played in several moments of revolutionary struggle. Also, and more strangely, to remember the experiences of radical politics that often took place within old-style, conscripted armies. We could mention, for example, the Italian groups Proletari in Divisa (Proletarians in Uniform) 6 in the 19 0s and the '970s. During those years, Italian society witnessed an amazing level of social tension, with the radicalisation of the class conflict and the self-mobilisation oflarge sectors of the population belonging to far-left organisations. The young people entering the army at that time brought into the barracks that same revolutionary spirit that was shaking other disciplinary institutions such as factories, prisons and schools. The aim of Pro/etan in Divisa was that of challenging the hierarchical structure of the army, as well as its obedience to the interests of the government and of the rulmg class, and that of SUPPOrtingand connecting With the social struggles happellIng all Overthe country. Despite the clear illegality of it, on several occaSIons thousands of radical soldiers marched in their uniforms, their faces covered by red scarves alongsI'dew I d d
' or <:ersan stu ents.

. . ide the barracks in sohid anit y with stnkes Soldiers alsocalledfor stnkes ins . wn democratic councils and even happening thefactories: started their a in . issued their own publications . way from today' s expenence b a umverse a . s Ofcourse,this seems to e" a s" de loyed as occupatwn troop _ ofwhatBritishnationahsts call our b ;'i htPbe the case that such a dra in Afghanistanand Iraq. However, It g I f the army for progressIve, a . maticchange in the ro I an d the potentia ed in part on the a pnon . paoe b bl . . revolutionary sana Ich ange has to e f am the QCcaSlOuaI, 0ften shallow, . fismofmost sectors of the left. Apart r:~ workers", there have been vlr~ reminderthat "policemen are the son~ lore the possibility of transfor~ tuallyno attempts in recent years to e p f governmental represswn an n ingthe armed forces fr am a. element a . . h f popu Iar lIberatIOn. people in the army arid in t In subjugationto one a ost d e Today,as much as in the past, "; underprivileged backgroun h:~ as policecorne from workinr~a~~nthey lack of the most batIC ::n and somecases, such as that ate 'for example, British po Ice . trade workers.Since the policde Ofg~':; strike and even the nghto:Og~:ation, Ahct h b denie ten ent-run women ave een b t' tuted by a governm . ecent years . hh been su s 1 Mover mr unions, whie ave I d and Wales. ore , nscientious . f Eng an h . hlloco the PoliceFederation a .' Iicantly eroded t e rig nt from the .. t has Slgn'11 d by a warra the British govemmen hich is guarantee h ir own discreI fficers - w . di . dual att e objectionby po Ice a fficer to act as an in IVl eone if they believe
Crown that allows each
0

tion (therefore, th ey cannot e faction) _ byem ploymg h . ht course a that not to be t eng t officers. d forces from becomPoliceCommunity Suppor h to stop the arrne d rporate domina.' at enoug f S te an co
However, this
IS

b ordered to arrest sam.

non-warranted

ing arguably the strong;oreign populations. ,,~Sthemselves" part of the_ tion over natlOual and ed forces are 10 f th proletariat as a reva fthearm to e .. d the fact that most o. I that they are par f Pro/etari in D'"'Sa an proletariat, does not YExamples such as ~at;h show that this is not lutionaryclass "fontse ."nces before that, t au , of countless other expene . veroents that are now 'mpossible shift to make. f the radical sOClal nahow this could happen. r

st aceo

mplices

ta T

ay

.'

Marxist terms,

It 10

m;r-

an 1

. terest 0 . acnne . s It's in the best In s Europe to lIn b- . tless confrontation 1 here acras . in often poLO springing up eveT. ing at engagtng

Maybe, instead a alm

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with the police, movement participants could make an effort to meet policemen and soldiers out of their workmg hours and engage m fnendly, informal, subtle moments of direct propaganda. They could try and understand what are the tensions and injustices internal to the armed forcesand support the privates in their claims for a decent and equal treatment. They could invite them to political meetings, introduce them to therr fnends
and turn institutional enemies into personal friends.

Some complications
.nnd their political economy
~

This kind of strategy could achieve a number of important results. First of all, it would give these workers, employed in an authontanan structure, the possibility to reclaim their basic rights, both as workers and as human beings, and to perceive themselves as less separated from the civilian members of the community they live in. As French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan pointed out, the essence of perversion is the feelmg of irresponsibility for one's own actions. In this sense, the politicisation of workers in the armed forces, who are institutionally encouraged to embrace perversion in return for immunity, and their integration within the civilian community would discourage this psychotic separation, which is at the basis of most police abuses. Secondly, it would be a gracious twist of irony, as it would mirror the common police practice of infiltrating radical political groups. Despite all possible effort to politicise soldiers and police officers, the very structure of the armed forces will always be deeply embedded within a wider system of economic and social power, privileges and inequalities, of which they are the designated guardians. Thus, the institutions that compose the armed forces are still to be considered and treated as natural enemies. In this sense, it would be advisable for radical movements to create their own system of intelligence and their networks of infiltrators within the armed forces, in order to gather information and possibly to prevent their

little men from elite society ild big sooety telling us to bui a. . take the pin-stnpe dsurtsands then cut the rich, not the poor.

d h w them the a or
a

_ captain Ska . d caprta Ito the current cirvements

. twenty theses -

hat of the respons~s '\vhither these most recen~m:1 Masons culation of strugg es. to be the questions on a theses
t7Theseseem

b the state an

of movemen . plications" to hIS . ti gatio , reflecn ff us "some com . f rther mves 1 mind as he 0 ers . that reqUlre u . this volume are ralisatlOnS f essays In he qualifies are gene . h the collection 0 th ethods the state t to whic ts he rernin ds u s of emfert strUgg tion and refinernen or tes h . ] these cavea , d therefore av hr
a contribution.

strategies of repression.

And finally, but most important, there is no more effective way to disarm a person than to disarm his or her brain. And, which is maybe more important, there is no better way to gain access to military strength, if necessary, than to gain access to the brains that Control it.
Federico Campagna, born in 1984, is an Italian writer and activist, based in London. He writes on radical politics a,nd political philosophy, with special attention to anarchism, He is a member of the onhne multilingual platform Through Europe (httpJlth-rough. eu). He IS a regular contnbutor to the Italian magazines Loop and Alfabeta2.

has available .to It to coWhP her this is through . g movements, or . et h weakenm 1 social transformatton. b erting and t us tactics: cyber-attac (S . satsUV . ndscare d ts a mimicry that, arm .ght represslOn a rveiHance an arres . h gh outn ptive su y whether this IS t rou cess. pre-em . h t continue to OCCup . internet ac . t bodres t a f anand restTictlOnS to . t the disobedlen fetishise forms 0 org as well as violence agams also reminds us ~ot ~~hemsel ves. Networked, s streets and squares. Ma :t70n as ends in an ~on do not "belong"to reSlSdtd orgalUSa nd capita I are as immerse isation an d c ommumc mun ication an . al forms of com ents: the state ~ . n and organisation as virtu ive movem _unlCaUO ance or to progressr I d forms of comm
1

-0

t or repress an

infi1tration or t

oug

in the current n

etwOr {e

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The social investment market is supposed to grow. Rendering social energies productive for capital goes hand in hand with the deregulation of existing markets (such as education, health and housing) to pave the way for a truly corporate Britain in which everyone is enmeshed. The ethical appeals that are so central to the ideology of the Big Society are interestingly spun as being commensurate not only with care, love and compassion as opposed to greed, individualism and selfishness, but also with forms of social organisation that were previously associated with the Left, such as employee-ownership, mutuals and cooperatives. These forms are being made compatible with the values and language of competition and entrepreneurism. The disconnect in the values and language of the state and those of young people that Paul Mason identifies is one that the BigSociety is supposed to close by positing false dichotomies of "good"
versus "bad"human behaviour, of virtues versus vices, of caring versus

Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere

APPENDIX

[&mm
.' .. E t's Mubarak is teetering; e've had revolution m TUlliS,", gyp d in Yemen Jordan and Syria suddenly protests have appear; .
, rofessionals are agItatIng or

being selfish, of communities versus individuals - coming down firmly on the side of the fanner in each case. Their vision is a kind of depoliticised ethical technocracy run by virtuous experts with the help of all of us. What is the political economy of the complications Paul Mason leaves us with at the end of his article? It is our solidarity and creativity in and against the Big Society, the antagonism of our livelihoods versus capital's mcessant search for valorisation, and the role of the state in the struggle to Impose those conditions that make that valorisation possible.

In Ireland young techno-savvy P b I' battled police on " . ". F th youth from an ieues a SecondRepublic": m ranee e Id . I' Greece strikn . t 'ghts of 60-year a s: thestreetstodefendtheretlremen n . A d'nBritainwe'vehad t' Ipastnne. n I ing and rioting have become ana iona I" I mood . h h ged the po inca . riots and student occupatlOns t at c an . ? 'h .der social dynamIC. Wbat's going on? W h at s t e WI b lIet points down for a id me put some u . My editors yester d ay as <e did 'h pen but I am throwmg thatthen I n t ap discussion on the programme . f . s conversations with aca. h the basts 0 vanou them into the mix ere, on .' ts themselves. hi d I 0 the partlClpan demics who study t ISan a sIb . usly: students; westerneop e 0 viousrv ; h At the heart of it alI are youn g P 'th' nstream media as ised; secularised. They use sana. . h porting "they use twitter IS hi s obsesston wit re nowwokenupto-butt . missing the point of what they use It for. d t be found in these different
In so far as there are com situation here's ,
1

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20

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I have spotted,
. e: the graduate with no

. eWsociologIcal typ . At the heart if it aII ISan . I Twitter and egvfrog future . edia such as Faceboo <, . from par2. ...with access to sOClalm .' . t of situations ranging elves in a vane Y so they can express th ems liamentary democracy to tyranny.

go

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Therefore truth moves faster than lies, and propaganda becomes flammable.
3 4

They are not prone to traditional and endemic ideologies: Labourism, Islamism, Fianna Fail Catholicism etc. .. in fact hermetic ideologies of all forms are rejected.

5 Women very numerous as the backbone of movements. Aftertwenty years of modernised labour markets and higher-education access the "archetypal" protest leader, organizer, facilitator, spokesperson now is an educated young woman. 6. . Horizontalismhas become endemic because technology makes it easy: It lolls vertical hierarchi-, spontaneously, whereas before _ and the quintessential experience of the zo'" century - was the killing of dissent within
movements,
7

the channeling

of movements

and their bureaucratisaton

Memes: '}\ meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through wntmg, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard m emes as cu Itura I analogues to genes in that they . self-rephcate, mutate and respond to selective pressures." (Wikipedia] _ sthwhathappens is that ideas arise, are very quickly "market tested" and ei ertake off bubbl d . . d '. e un er, msmuate themselves or if they are deemed ydis(appear. Ideas self-replicate like genes. Prior to the internotgtohothhe ne ISt eory see Richard D I' but you can I I awrcins, 1976) seemed an over-statement 8 Th now c ear y trace the evolution of memes. . ey all seem to know each oth erful than the hi h b er: not on!y is the network more powierarc y - ut the ad h form So if you "f II " - oc network has become easier to . 0 ow somebod f h as I have done you can 'j y rom t e VCL occupation on Twitter, , easi y run mto a di al bl a lecturer in peaceful resista . I' ra IC ogger from Egypt, or nce m Ca iforni h inl Burma so then there are th B ia w 0 mar y does work on urm ese tweets to follow. During the early 20th century people would e d angmgo h . ne th d' nages across borders just t I' n e un ersldes of train earTh' 0 ma <ehnks like these 9, e speCIficsof economic failure. th' . slty-level education is a giv M b . e nse of mass access to univeren. will be not enough. In most f h ay e soon ev en 50 %'m hi gher education . d bot e World thi . b . m e tedess - so people ar I. . SIS emg funded by personal ema ang a rat I' d lley wil1be better paid lat H so t IOna JU gement to go into debt er. owever th retrenc h ment in some COunt . e prospect of ten years of fiscal nes means they now I <nowtheywil1 be poorer
0

than their parents. And the effect has been like throwing a light switch; theprosperity story is replaced with the doom story, even if for individualsrealitywill be more complex, and not as bad as they expect. 10. This evaporation of a promise is compounded in the more repressive societiesand emerging markets because - even where you get rapid economicgrowth - it cannot absorb the demographic bulge of young people fast enough to deliver rising living standards for enough of them. 11. To amplify: I can't find the quote but one of the historians of the FrenchRevolution of 1789 wrote that it was not the product of poor people but of poor lawyers. You can have political/economic setups that disappoint the poor for generations - but if lawyers, teachers and doctors are sittingin their garrets freezing and starving you get revolution. Now, in their garrets, they have a laptop and broadband con~ection. ._ 12. The weakness of organised labour means there s a changed relation ship between the radicalized middle class, the poor and the organised workforce. The world looks more like 19'h century Paris - heavy predom. . ." . matron 0f th e "progreSSIve lute II' Igen tsia , I'ntermixing with the slumdwellers at numerous social interfaces (cabarets then, raves now); huge . b I rags to riches stories eelSOCIal of the excluded poor ut a so many fear .' . ebrated in the media (Fifty Cent etc); meanwhile the sohdanstlc culture . and respectability of orgamze d labour i till there but , as in Egypt, they a our ISs 1 " "b hed on and off the scene of find themselves a stage army to e marc history. h g radica Iso f any movern ent. 13. This leads to aloss of fear amongt eyoun 'f . nf tation they can t retreat rom. they can pick and choose; there ISno co. ron in . whereas twith he g They can "have a day off" from protestmg, occuPY'h 1<5 f battle was o th 'rplacemt eran old working-class based movements, ei hi t rted You couldn't , tncet1ngsSa. determined and they couldn t retrea a I' d in a pit village. " ff" f h . rs' strike If you rve 1 have a day 0 rom t e mine . d rch": I have met people .. ff "mtx an rna . 14. In addition to a day 0 ,you can d th next are on a flotilla to ., nedayan e who do community orgamzmg 0 th' 1 t nl<on sustainable energy; l' gfor a me a Gaza; then they pop up wor an h' mpletely different. I was , .. b 1 bout somet mgco . then they reWTltmg a ooea . d' 'detheUCLoccupatIOn d' terV1ewe 1051 astonished to find people I ha m S are this week. I . t blogging from Tahr Ir qu d D' ctatorships re Y notjus h they use to. 1 h 15 People J'ustknow more t an . of narratives and trut . . b the suppressIon
on the suppression of news ut on
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More or less everything you need to know to make sense of the world is available as freely downloadable content on the internet: and it's not predigested for you by your teachers, parents, priests, imams. For example there are huge numbers of facts available to me now about the subjects I studied at university that were not known when Iwas there in the 1980s. Then whole academic terms would be spent disputing basic facts, ortrying to research them. Now that is still true but the plane of reasoning can be more complex because people have an instant reference source for the undisputed premises of arguments. It's as if physics has been replaced by quantum physics, but in every discipline. 16. There is no Cold War, and the War on Terror is not as effective as the Cold War was in solidifying elites against change. Egypt is proving to bea worked example of this: though it is highly likely things will spiral out of control, post Mubarak - as in all the colour revolutons - the dire warnings of the US nght that this will lead to Islamism are a "meme' that has not taken off. In fact you could make an interesting study of how the meme starts, blossoms and fades away over the space of 12 days. To be clear: 1 am not saying they are wr ong - on I t h at rh e f ear of an Islamisttakeover . y
III Egypt has not been strong enough to swing the US presidency or the media behind Mubarak. 171'ItbiS with international pressure and some powerful NGOs _ possib eta nng down a repressive . .h , he i I government WIt out having to spend years III t e Jung e as a guerilla, or years in the urban underground: instead the oppositiona lyouth - both i h . '. Egypt d b 11' n t e west in repressive regimes like Tunisia/ ,an a ovea InChin live i . through diPit I a - IVein a virtual undergrowth online and o- a comms netwo 1 Th ' example the thi I HS. e mternet is not key here - it is for mgs peop e swap b t with each other etc' th hidd Y ext message, the music they swap . e I enmeanmg' ffiti . those in authority fail to spot. s m gra ti, street art etc which

tounderstand the nature of exploitation, and to this day, we have yet to fullycomprehendthe nature of power," that's probably changed." " 19. Asthe algebraicsum of all these factors it feels like the protest meme , ' if " ' thatISsweeping the world - 1 t h at premIse ISIII deed true - is profoundly lessradicalon economics than the one that swept the world in the 1910S and1920S'they don'I see < a tota 1 overturn. ' they seek a moderation of t , .. h th me is the dissolution of excesses. owever on politics t e common H e " "andpersonal freedom centralizedpower and the deman df or autonomy in addition to formal democracy and an end to corrupt, family based power-elites. . '11 th , f the contraceptive P! 10 e 20. Technology has - III many ways, rom iPod,the blog and the CCTV camera - expanded the space and power of the individual.
SOMECOMPUCATIONS...

18. People have a better understandin 0 ' , their Chomskv and the' H d ' g f power. The actIVIstshave read 'J Ir ar t-NegrI butth .d mimetic:youngpeopleb I' th.' eI easthereinhavebecome e Ieve e ISsues a 1 ics but Simply pOwer' they I re no onger class and econom. arec ever to the . f '. how to mess up hierarcm d pOlllt 0 expertIse III lmowing . esan seethev'" ." lives as part of an "exodu "f anous revolutIOns in their own 'd . ' d1 - as a "diversion intos throm OppreSSion not - as preVIOUS ,,' generations e personal Wh'l F Deleuze, "We had to wait until h .' I e oucault could tell Gilles t e mneteenth century before we began
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' d have to be rea as sue . a) All of the above are genera 1 [sauons. an , mt b) Arethese methods replicable by their opponents? Clearly up thO apOh 1b 1 essive movement t at t err they are. Sothe assumption in the goa progr ld b rong Also wor may e w ' f t h e ne t worked'1 values are aligned with that 0 I' g if a state ever 11this SOCla networ em wehaveyet to seewhat happens to a . h the mobile network h logy' SWItCes seriously pulls the plug on t h e tee no . b tt ks the protesters. off, censors the internet) cy er-a ac hIt et police are paid to h where ten ern c) China is the laboratory ere,,, ..t counteract the opposi. merrt memes 0 . goonlme and foment pro-govern A b wy org says on his website . I ft" t blogger ra a . tional ones. The EgyptIan e IS . I' by default becomes a form . hi . d endent Journa ism . " that' in a dictators p. III ep "ntially an act of agitatIOn. d f' fonnatlOn ISesse of activism, end the sprea 0 III d i many parts of the world, . I" suppresse III , But independentjourna ism IS ff I ba I zeitgeist when It runs up d) What happens to this new, flu Y g h in a death match, where , hi al dIctators ip against t'he old-style hierarc IC l' W may be about to find out. b mstan<s. e . the latter has about 300 A ra . t am politics) Are we creatmg . bl" for maillS re d e) (and this one IStroU mg I d language of the state an een the va ueS an . th a complete disconnect betw 'I SI' Cexample - if you hear e 7 EovntlS aC as those of the educated young, bJ d t to t'heir language compared . warpe aspec I NOP officials there is a tlmethe Square. But there are a so d lawyers on h'd f h t that of young doctors an .' ld'scourse-onbot S1 eso t e a h ofthe politlca 1 examples in the illZ: muC
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House of Commons - is treated by many young people as a barely intelligible "noise" - and this goes wider than just the protesters. (For example: I'm finding it common among non-politicos these days that whenever you mention the "Big Society" there's a shrug and a suppressed laugh - yet if you move into the warren of thinktanks around Westminster, it's treated deadly seriously. Dissing the Big Society has quickly become a "merne' that crosses political tribal boundaries under the Coalition, yet most professional politicians are deaf to "memes" as the youth are to the contents of Hansard.)
Article originally published at-http://wvvw.bbc. 2011/02/twenty_reasollS_why_itsJ<icking.html co. uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/

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