Networked Politics: lines of inquiry

Contents

Networks / movements

During the period 1999-2003, the world witnessed the
emergence of a metamorphic, multifaceted, intermittent
worldwide movement: during a short period of intense
mobilisation, what is commonly referred to as the “antiglobalisation”
movement produced a series of surprising
innovations, breaking with the past in a manner that led
many people, perhaps rather naively, to speak of a “new
beginning”, albeit rather unsure, “beyond” the constraints
of existing 20th century forms of political organisation.
The quick-fire success of a difficult term such as “subjectivity”
in the self-reflexive terminology of the new
movement – an expression used to define this unusual,
multifaceted new social force – revealed the need to move
away from traditional models and stereotypes, and to reflect
the open, incomplete nature of the movement itself.
Within this context, the Networked Politics project focuses
on the more recent cycles of social movements as fertile
terrain for an examination of the transformations that have
taken place in the fields of political action and organisation.

The movement that we learnt to recognize at Seattle has had
efficacy and it continues to have it, even though it may not
always be obvious how we are to measure this efficacy. To
stay to the simplest facts, it is clear that the anti-globalisation
or ‘alter-globalisation’ movement – as it is also called – has
transformed the public’s perception of the new globalisation
of the world economy; it has succeeded in creating a closely
interwoven series of networks, connections, links and alliances;
it has invented and spread a new range of actions and
forms of organisation, and created a unique, permanent system
of worldwide cooperation in the form of the World Social
Forum; it has organised a worldwide anti-war movement,
and has even been called the “second global superpower”
following the demonstrations involving millions of people
around the world held on the 15th February 2003.
Reflecting on the independent forms of organisation
generated by social movements also gives us the opportunity
to reflect on the deeper nature of this new cycle of social
movements. A question that has never been answered, and
which appeared even more pertinent after the 2003 events, is
that of how to interpret change when its borders and effects
are increasingly blurred by its “re-immersion” in the social
body. Are we to see this change as a form either of dispersal
or of spreading, either of ebb or of metamorphosis ?

The aforesaid “wave” of social movements has been characterised
by a number of surprising features, first and foremost
that of the ability to welcome diversity and transform it into a
force capable of generating a new inclusive, expansive form
of identity. Another important feature of the social movements
has been their exalting of the ideal of the “openness” of organisational
forms, as was previously promoted by the free
software movement (this organisational principle is currently
feeding a series of important experiments in the digital network
community, which lie well beyond the confines not only of political
militancy but also of the state and the capitalist market).
Moreover, it imposed a mass training to the use, both practical
and metaphorical (and, at times, rhetorical) of the networks;
to the emergence of a dispersed, multicentric, always open to
negotiation, concept of power; to temporary convergent actions,
for specific purposes; to organisational “galaxies” and to
multifaceted, “ecological”, living forms of rationality.

“They resemble events.
The networks are dense
social structures on the
point of collapse, and
it is doubtful whether
any sustainable models
capable of freezing them
actually exist”.

The innovations have not been completely linear of course:
the “anti-globalisation” movement has been fed by a
variety of different sources, some of which are clearly
rooted in the (recent and not so recent) past. The movement
has always maintained a complex relationship with
pre-existing organisations (political parties, trade unions,
NGOs and governmental institutions, to name but a few).
Its organisational complexity, while successful in creating
an interwoven pattern of networks, designed to guarantee
communication between a series of very different realities,
is also clearly resistant to any form of unification,
and as such restricts the degree to which the said realities
cohabit and cooperate. The resulting construct is a highly
uncertain, unstable “we”, one that is exposed to the risk of
having to define its own boundaries – thus excluding and
smothering diversity and creativity – or to the risk of being
a simple receptacle for a multifaceted reality bordering on
indistinctness, where the loose, fragmented, rather unstable
structures present in real life are simple reproduced
in other shapes and forms. The risk is one of excessive
information with no real communication; a multiplicity of
relations with no real commitment. While, a new series of
asymmetries, inequalities, forms of exclusion and foci of
power have emerged in the same movements dynamics,
hidden in the informality of an opaque framework, that
lacks clear rules.

“The most open system
theoretically imaginable
perfectly reflects the
foreseeable inequalities
of the world within which
that same system lies”
(Rodrigo Nunes).

There is now a real need within this multiplicity of movements
for an exploration of the new aspects and contradictions
of these emergent organisational forms. One cycle
has come to an end, and in the rather confusing current
impasse, the risk is that of being reabsorbed into spent
political forms filling what otherwise appears a void, or of
remaining a marginal, non-influential presence within the
political arena.

The present study is designed as part of a wider analysis
of the limits of networked politics, and as such hopes to
constitute a genuine contribution towards future attempts
to overcome the said limits.

Marco Berlinguer

TRANS MOVEMENTS – image!!!!!

http//www.euromovements.info/yearbook/index.php/Movements_subgroup_report

The “map” represents the report of a working group on “social movements” within
the framework of a seminar organised by the Networked Politics Project (Barcelona,
October 2006). Alex Foti, Brian Holmes, Christophe Aguiton, Gemma Galdon Clavell,
Lluc Peláez and Marco Berlinguer contributed to the work of the group. In the final
report, Brian Holmes has attempted to provide an account of the brief, albeit intense,
brainstorming session lasted two hours.

The chronological history is somewhat fragmentary, becoming more intense from the
1960s onwards, but nevertheless reflects the need to elaborate and even to selectively
re-appropriate the past. The two-columned diagram attempts to represent those opposing
elements that characterise the present-day and the former subjectivity. The
chronological reconstruction of a brief history of the social movements, designed to
enable an interpretation of the “anti-globalisation” movement, revealed a common
awareness about a cut between 1999 and 2003, together with more uncertainty
regarding what happened thereafter.

The Tao symbol succinctly encapsulates present-day ambivalences: from one side, the
conservative stiffening, the dark “after 11 September”, the arising fundamentalisms
promoting the “clash of civilizations”; from the other one, a global class conflict, that
seems to follow a “strategy of the weak”, asymmetrical, micro-political and to tend
toward a new living, manifold, open idea of society and rationality. The concept of the
“open-source for the operating system for the planet” attempts to propose an horizon,
vision and catalyst, even of institutional type (see discussion of open source operating
systems as a metaphor for new institutions that ended the seminar of Barcelona).

New principles in practice

The movement in France in 2006 of young people
fighting a casualising employment law provides an
exemplary illustration of how democracy is being reappropriated
through practices of self-organisation,
where people are being linked horizontally through
co-ordination rather than vertically through traditional
modes of representation. Sophie Gosselin analyses
the process based on a longer input she gave to a
network politics seminar held at the European Social
Forum in Athens in 2006.

In March 2006, a new wave of social protest rushed
across France giving new generations the experience
of politics, self-organisation, collective decision-making,
conflicts of interest, power relationships, purposeful
use of information and language – in short, what is
called “democracy”. It began when a group of undergraduates,
secondary school students, unemployed
people and activists called a general assembly at the
University of Nantes. They voted to occupy the university,
stopping classes while they organised a protest
against the proposed CPE (Le Contrat Première
Embauche – law on first employment)1. They posted
blogs on the Internet and spread the word through
Indymedia sites and e-mail contacts.

This insurrection was totally spontaneous. It took political
activists by surprise and unfolded regardless of
us. At the same time, France was also rocked by the
Clearstream affair - a forged document purporting to
show secret bank accounts held by the French political
elite in a Luxembourg finance company, Clearstream.
These two events followed the revolts of suburban
youngsters in November 2005. Taken together, all the
eruptions constituted a major crisis in the French republican
system. They also shaped the contradictions
of the protest movement as it struggled with issues of
representation and new forms of organisation.

On the one hand, in the media, we could see trade
unions negotiating or discussing with the government,
whereas on the other, there was the battlefield of the
general assemblies and the blockaded universities.
Here, other alliances were formed, most importantly
between youngsters and the ‘precarious’ (the unemployed
and part-time workers). This hiatus between
“representative” organisations and informal groups
highlighted the tension which currently drives social
struggles, the tension between traditional structures,
which stem from the struggles of the 19th century, and
the emerging social forms based on network practices.

This is a crisis of representation. Who represents the
“people” of a democratic state, how is that representation
arrived at? In the general assemblies in the universities,
the formal unions of students and of wage earners were
sharply criticized and rejected. Thus, it was laid down as
a rule that those who spoke in a general assembly should
say from the start if they belonged to a trade union or a
political party. Who spoke and from what standpoint s/he
spoke, became the increasingly momentous question.
If trust is the foundation of and legitimation for authority,
then trade unions have lost much of their authority and
legitimacy. Their strength is based only on the institutional
workings of the system itself, which has recognised and
integrated them, the better to neutralise their anti-establishment
potential. This loss of trust was caused by the practice
of trade unions fulfilling their role of representatives,
but actually having answers confined to their role as trade
unions. Students and the ‘precarious’ waited desperately
for unions to fulfil their promise of a call for a renewable
strike. The call has never been issued.

The media all hunted for the head they could set up as the
“leader” of the movement, denying the multiple forms of action.
They focused on spectacles, presented a pseudo-debate
around the red herring of the pros and cons of the blockade.
Meanwhile, blogs and websites were created to diffuse other
representations and analyses of what was going on, a virtual
conflict. These non-specialists used the media not only as a
way to convey information, but also as vectors of collective
consciousness and as a means of self-organisation.
A process of convergence has started between the traditional
social movements and the political activism linked to
the process of re-appropriating the media. This is transforming
the practices of the struggle.

Some students from the University of Nantes created a
union called Sud étudiants (South students). Interestingly, it
does not pretend to be the students’ representative. It functions
in parallel to the student movement and intervenes to
inject necessary elements (techniques, finance…) for the
self-organisation of the student movement. But above all,
it works as an organ for the transmission of self-organisation
practices and as the disseminator of these practices
inside the movement. Sud Etudiant of Nantes works with an
informal network of individuals rather than with a hierarchy
whose frontiers of belonging or not belonging would be
strictly established. There have been several possible levels
of belonging to Sud Etudiant, from being the totally committed
activist, bringing the union alive and giving it legitimacy
through practical experience, to somebody who is committed
through affinity, neither completely inside nor completely
outside, who is very motivated for one action and less for
another. Those who “lead” this union are not those who have
a privileged position by reason of their representative status,
but those who bring it alive by their activity. Support came
not for its ideology but for its practice: from what they did
and how. And it’s this practice, by an effect of “infectious”
affinity, which will attract new people.

One of the conclusions, which emerged from my interview2
with these students, is that the movement was
centred on the re-appropriation of democratic space by
the new generations. How has this re-appropriation of
democratic space manifested itself in practice? First, it has
manifested in the general assemblies of each university
and through their national and regional co-ordination. This
means that the political organisation of the struggle has
been done outside the local associations in the networks,
which weave together the levels of co-ordination. Any
student appointed by a general assembly could participate
in the co-ordination meetings. But above all, the dynamic
of self-organisation stretched beyond the multiple micro
blockades at the universities to blockades of stations,
roads, shops, airports, etc3. The inactivity of the trade
unions and the paralysis of the working world triggered
off a process of “flying blockades”: in place of a general
strike by workers in production, resistance was moved to
a blockade of the flow of transport.

The double struggle, of resistance in the world of work
and of appropriation of images and information via the
Internet, corresponds to a transfer in the forms of power
distribution and operation. This connects technology and
power in a new way, condensed in the idea of network as
a means for organisation and a technological device. This
raises the question of the form of “political power” we give
to technologies? To quote Michel Foucault, we can think of
the power as technology (that is to say, as social struggles
fixed in procedures and techniques of domination) and,
conversely, technology as a social struggle fixed in a material
structure. A technical tool is only one of the elements
in a network of a technology of power. This implies that the
functioning of some procedures or techniques propels the
user into a network of determined social struggle.

Inside the traditional social movement against the CPE, we
were able to see the emergence of new political practices
as regards resistance and representation. The crisis of
representation is related to the obsolescence of the traditional
model of political organisation, which supposes a
homogeneous body (the nation, the people, the workers,
etc.) creating its own image, delegating its power to some
representative authority. On the contrary, what has been
shown recently is a fragmented and multiple representation,
tied to the practices of self-organisation, with links
between autonomous cells coming from co-ordination and
not representation. This re-appropriation of democracy has
occurred through a re-arrangement of the relation between
collective consciousness and ways of organisation. Central
to this re-arrangement is the space – the “agora” as
the open space in the heart of Athens was known. We had
multiple new spaces in which to speak where everybody
is considered equal, spaces in perpetual transformation
according to new bonds and networks into which the cells
enter. As a movement against the CPE, this process of
democratic space re-organisation was underground and,
to some extent, latent since it didn’t have time to develop
and to express itself as such. But today, this alternative
continues to be invented by the new paths opened up by
this eruption.

Sophie Gosselin

Notes

1 To know more details about the events chronology:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouvement_anti-CPE
2 The interviews are available online at:
http://www.nomadfkt.org/ressources/doku.php?id=politiques_alternatives_
libertaires:l_engagement&s=cpe
3 Some unexpected relations were weaved between the students in fight
and the movements of squatters or punks.

State / Public Institutions

Institutional crisis and transformation

In the institutional sphere we have diverse and serious
problems. There is a clear disproportion between the ability
and formal powers of institutions, and their real capacity
to transform and change at a time when the economy and
the market have managed to “escape” political-institutional
control, maintaining and even increasing their ability to
blackmail and condition public action. In this sense, the
obsolescence of the political foundations of the nation-state
(which linked power to territory, population and sovereignty)
is highlighted, at a time when the three elements
mentioned present very different profiles to their traditional
ones. The contradiction of political legitimacy based on a
popular plebiscite every x years is also highlighted when
the political dynamic and the actions of the media submit
institutional actions to daily referenda. The institutions
insist that the only means of democratic political action is
representative democracy, while there are evermore people
that are separated from this representative politics through
legal inability (immigrants), by indifference, by verifying that
it changes nothing in their lives. This very political weakening
leads institutions to take refuge in legality, increasingly
confusing legitimacy and legality. In this context, institutions
tend to a biased utilisation (unidirectional, hierarchical and
controlling) of technology in order to maintain their hegemony
in a drift that is increasingly authoritarian and autistic.

How can institutional transformation be tackled? It is not
about improving what already exists. That cannot be the
objective, although the reforms may be instrumentally
necessary. Today, the main objectives are the improvement
of the institutional system that sustains representative
democracy: the electoral system, laws of political parties,
entralisation, the role of parliament etc. On the other
hand, a policy of transparency and good government
in such areas as access to information, management
of government assistance, the ethics of administrative
actions, the behaviour of the top ranks etc is spoken about
and publicised. While at operative level, the source of
inspiration for changes to public administration is sought
in the “New Public Management” from ideas inspired in the
way non-public organisations function.

Institutions and administrations should be something
else. They should be an essential part of implementing
policy in a non-exclusive and non-hierarchical manner.
Their work cannot be “monopolistic”. Without popular
leadership there will be no transformation “from above”.
The legitimacy of institutions and administrations
lies in their capacity to respond to popular needs and
expectations, without that meaning dependency, clientilism
or submission. This means that in today’s complex
society, our institutions and administrations should be
capable of affecting the transformation of our societies,
incorporating the diversity and transformative capacity
of people and collectives. Inclusion and creativity should
therefore be two central factors. How should they work?
The responses of New Public Management are of no use
to us. We suggest certain working approaches. We must
advance towards a deliberative administration in which
dialogue substitutes for specialisation. This could become
concrete by making transversality effective, breaking the
myths of specialisation and segmentation, as well as by
incorporating new management concepts such as trust
and collaboration. Operationally, this creates the need to
formulate mechanisms of citizen participation and new
forms of intergovernmental relations. To do this, we believe
it is necessary to generate belief in another administration
being possible (salvaging the value of the public and
the prestige of its institutions) and having new reference
points in relation to time (more patience), sentiment (more
affection) and collaboration (less competitiveness).

Joan Subirats and Quim Brugué

“Today, political leaders throughout
Europe are facing a real paradox.
On the one hand, Europeans
want them to find solutions to the
major problems confronting our
societies. On the other hand, people
increasingly distrust institutions
and politics or are simply not
interested in them”

White Paper on European Governance, EU
Commision, Brussels, 2001, p.1

How to build up new (social) institutions

Graphics missing!!!!!!!! Page 38

Life networks (neighbourhoods, consumers, labour
environments, people affected by some conflict, etc.)
are the breeding ground for social networks that develop
grassroots institutions such as associations for mutual
aid or to protect their rights, formal gatherings to press
authorities, social centres, non-commoditized markets,
etc. They coexist, from cooperation to conflict, with other
institutions more embedded in representative public
frameworks (local or national authorities) endorsed by
organizations as parties and trade unions.

Graphics missing!!!!!!!! P 39

Globalization tends to render more and more powerless
these public institutions as market forces (multinationals,
financial groups) seems to be ahead in the control of
international agreements (from WTO to EU). Citizens
perceive also that these forces colonize part of their
life, where and how they get by (if they can). Radical
democracy could be envisaged as a driving counter-power
aiming to promote horizontal and bottom-up experiences
in the satisfaction of human needs: material, expressive or
environmental.

Could both type of institutions (State, grassroots) to build
up common tools, strategies to involve citizens or to offer
alternatives to their common “enemy” from this radicaldemocracy
perspective? In this graph we offer some hints
about it. When both public and social networks interact
aiming to construct a social and horizontal world against
neoliberal globalization, possible outcomes could lead (or
not) to a better mutual understanding.

Political Representation / Political Parties>

Rethinking political representation
and political parties

Five themes underpin this line of the inquiry – themes that
arise out of the social movement left of the last three decades
or so.

1. A critique of the predominant notion of politics
reflecting the declining legitmacy of the
traditional political institutions and the definition
of politics that underpins them and collapsing
allegiance to political parties.

The classic definition of political parties is organisations
that aim to be in government or to be in a strategic relation
to government. Since the late 1960s – though with many
precursors – an understanding of politics has developed
as far broader than matters of state, government and legislature.
This breaks the monopoly of political parties over politics;
it also produces a situation where many of the functions
traditionally carried out by political parties, and carried out
in a particular way, are done by a multiplicity of actors in
innovative and independent ways. Even electoral activity
is no longer the exclusive preserve of political parties.
Political parties are not a necessary condition of electoral
activity; and electoral activity is not the only activity of a
political party.

The narrow definition of politics exclusively in terms of
government, state and legislatures is associated with a
degeneration in the meaning of representation. It has slid
from the aim of “making present” within the legislature
the demands, ideas and knowledge of active citizens down
to merely “symbolising” the people as an electorate that
merely chooses between competing symbols. In the visions
of the early, radical campaigns for democracy e.g.
before the end of the 19th century, representation meant
“making present”. This implied a causal relationship
between a presence in the political institutions and the autonomous
force which it represented, based outside these
institutions; an autonomous force or forces expressing
popular feeling, opinion, activity, organisation, deliberation.
In most of today’s “representative democracies” repre-
sentation has a primarily symbolic function, to symbolise
the people or particular sections of the people, with the
implication that those who are represented are generally
passive in the process of the organisation of society, only
periodically assenting or dissenting to how they are thus
represented. Electoral politics is the competition for this
symbolic role. As parties become absorbed in this process
they lose any connection with the people as actors for
social change in their own right. The idea of representation
becomes associated with alienation, separation and frequently
a presumption of superiority.

If representation means “making present”, it is only one
ofr many moments of politics, understood as purposeful
transformation of society. This broader understanding of
politics leads to theme 2.

2. The importance of distinguishing two senses
of power:
Power 1: as transformative capacity
Power 2: as domination, as involving an asymmetry
between those with power and those
over whom power is exercised.

The recent reassertion of power as transformative capacity
first by the feminist and also radical trade union student
and community movements of the late ’60s and ’70s and
more recently by the global justice movement of the late
’90s underpins and sustains a far wider understanding of
the scope of politics beyond the traditional focus on state,
government and legislation.

This recognition of the importance of power as transformative
capacity and an associated enlargement of the
definition of politics, also lays the basis for rethinking
representation. It suggests a direction of strategic thinking
about social transformation which goes beyond the counter
position of movement forms of democracy on the one
hand, and representation – as “making present” – on the
other. It implies the need to inquire into forms, conditions
and limits on representation as a way of “making present”
within the political system, movements and struggles and
the sources of transformative capacity that they contain or
indicate.

This implies that rethinking political organisation must be
guided by investigating and understanding the present
sources of transformative capacity; and this in turn requires
recognition of:

3. The multiplicity of levels of creative human
activity – all of which are potential locations of
transformative capacities.

This involves an understanding of social reality as consisting
of at least four levels:

• interactions/relationship between people;
• enduring social structures that pre-exist particular individuals
and relationships;
• the formation and character of human personality and
consciousness;
• transactions and relations with nature.

Social movements and struggles involve all these levels
of social being but their importance will vary from case
to case, as will the appropriate forms of political organisation.

Just to list these indicates the dramatic enlargement of
politics which flows from a recognition of power as transformative
capacity and also points to the importance of a
multiplicity of autonomous levels to politics. It also indicates
the complexity of giving organisational reality to the
idea of representation as “making present” autonomous
forces for democratic transformation.
The other side of this enlargement of politics and recognition
of the different levels at which transformative activity
takes place is:

4. A radical development in our understanding
of the mechanism of social change.

The assumption dominant on the traditional left was that
leadership or political action – the state, government or
party – the social subject, acted on the rest of society, the
social object. It was a model which takes no account of
the way in which change is coming from within society,
the ways those who were previously considered the objects
of change are themselves actors for change and the
ways in which the would-be external subjects of change
are themselves drawn into processes of change – not necessarily
in ways they intend (for example, political parties
like the British Labour Party have been completely transformed
– hollowed out – by a process of imposing, in this
instance backwards, pro-market change, on a membership
that was expecting public reconstruction).

Amongst mechanisms of progressive change are people’s
conscious efforts at change to live their lives consistently
with, for example, values of co-operation, ecological sustainability
or egalitarianism. They do not necessarily have a
full picture of the structural causes of the obstacles to these
values or a full vision of social change, but they act in a way
which creates conditions for these structural changes.

In the past it was the party which claimed to concentrate
and co-ordinate this purposeful activity and plan its character.
Now purposeful efforts at change are very diffuse.
The task to strengthen its impact is less to concentrate or
co-ordinate it and more to stimulate and support its interconnection
and self-co-ordination.

This implies a very different view of knowledge from that
which has dominated political organisation in the past.

5. We are working with a knowledge of open
systems, an incomplete knowledge; we are increasingly
aware of knowledge as tacit, practical
and experiential as well as scientific.

These understandings of knowledge are closely associated
with the understanding of power as transformative capacity
and with the diffusion of efforts at social change. The
implications for political organisation point towards an emphasis
on horizontal sharing and exchanging of knowledge;
co-operative attempts to build a common memory; the
self-consciousness of action and struggle as also an experiment
and therefore the importance of ensuring spaces
for reflection, debate and synthesis.

6. Implications / questions.

These conceptual themes are intended to sum up the direction
of innovations and developments in the practice of
social change with their associated implications for political
parties and representation over the past thirty years or
so. These developments effectively turn upside down the
role of political parties in social change, challenging their
monopoly, transforming the nature of their relationship with
social movements, questioning the very nature and need
for political leadership, radicalising the idea of representation
and dramatically enlarging the notion of politics.
The first phase of this line of the inquiry was to explore
critically the experience so far of attempts to change the
nature of political parties in the direction indicated by these
conceptual and practical shifts.

Hilary Wainwright

A sobering experience: the German Greens

The attempt to rethink political representation and political
parties is not new. In 1970 the German Greens, a
new party created as the voice of social movements in
the political institutions of Germany, tried to transform
the nature of political representation. It is an experience
that contains many lessons for us now. Frieder Otto
Wolf, a founder member of that party presented this experience
at a workshop in Manchester. Here he writes a
brief version of his analysis.

In the late 1970s, the West German Green party
adopted a series of principles of ‘grass roots’ or ‘base’
democracy to guide their organisation. The aim was to
enable emancipation from domination, practise gender
and ecological responsibility, and to design the building
of a counter-power capable of changing the course
of events. What were these principles of grass-roots
democracy, why were they given up, and what would
still be relevant about them with a view to realizing the
same aims? These are the questions I, as someone
involved in the party, try to answer here, by retrospectively
examining each principle in turn.

1. Beginning with oneself

This principle is based on the argument that a constituent
element of the structure of domination is the
complicity of the dominated. Recognizing this element
and learning to withhold one’s complicity is therefore
a necessary first step. It has been the starting point
for the massive rediscovery of consumer action, such
as the boycott of products that entailed ecological
destruction or child slave labour. It has also led to the
insistent moral questioning of male-dominated gender
relations.

This principle of refusing complicity seems to be derived
from the feminist principle ‘the personal is political’ or, in
another formulation, “the private is political”. The first can
be understood as “politics in the first person”, which claims
the “political” character of personal initiatives and relations.
It can also mean the principle of “beginning from oneself”,
which adds the idea of going beyond one’s immediate personal
domain to all kinds of political issues, ideally developing
a practice of self-determination at all levels, but always
beginning with refusing complicity. The principle of ‘the
private is political’ seems to be more specifically geared to
feminist uses because it addresses the specific problematic
of the private household, which shields male-dominated
relations from outside scrutiny or intervention – by public
authorities as well as by those acting in solidarity with oppressed
and exploited housewives or daughters1.

In practice, this principle has turned out to be ambivalent:
On the one hand, it has inspired creative work on consumer
action, community-organised child-care and even foreign
policy, where a strategic conception of unilateral disarmament
has invoked this principle. On the other hand, it has
occasionally reinforced a regressive tendency to favour individual
whims, which may stop any movement towards collective
‘really’ political action. And, most importantly, it has
been found to be difficult to adapt to electoral policy, which
is necessarily aimed at getting the votes of many people who
were a long way from “beginning with themselves”.
Despite an elaborate camouflage of references to later feminist
debates on the ambiguities of “the private is political”,
the electoral imperative – in which the principle played no
part – led to its being abandoned. This began when the
Greens became established as a complete electoral party in
West Germany in the mid-1980s and was cemented when
they fused with the electoral organisation created by the
dissident “citizens’ movement” of the GDR, who suspected
this principle of being “totalitarian”.2

2. Consensus before majority decisions

Majority decisions are potentially an act of domination (as
Thomas Hobbes said). It became a principle of political practice
to avoid this danger by asking all participants to seek
consensus before taking majority decisions. This principle
was adopted in the euphoria of an historical new beginning
that seemed to promise imminent emancipation from all
structures of domination. Its premise was also that anxiety
in the face of imminent common destruction would create a
new solidarity among all human beings. It has, in fact, helped
make possible rather improbable alliances – e.g. between
rural peasants and urban queer groups in the face of an escalation
of nuclear armaments. The principle infused the new
party with a powerful cultural dynamic, perhaps the strongest
vector of transformation the party has carried.

On the other hand, the intensity of conflicts within modern
bourgeois societies, especially in those shaken by the crisis
of Fordism, did not make consensus easy to reach even
within a party broadly agreed on its political programmes.
Once the utopian moment or the moment of common
anxiety had faded, competing “alternative” or “traditional”
identities effectively blocked almost any kind of meaningful
debate on possible areas of consent. In practice, the principle
of arriving at consensus became a process of negotiating
compromises via intricate voting procedures, proceeding
from a “snapshot of opinions”, through several rounds
of amendments, to a final definitive vote. The corollary
principle of minority protection through, for instance, the
introduction of minority statements into party programmes,
has never been put into practice. A formal minority would be
unable to survive over time because of the majority principle
built into the election procedures for party offices or for
parliamentary mandates. This principle therefore has been
largely forgotten by newer generations of party activists
since the mid-1980s.

3. Primacy of common action
over individual projects

This principle was devised to counter spontaneous tendencies
towards fragmentation. In practice, however, it has
worked as a tyranny of common politics in which the individual
duties of ordinary life – bonding, family building, or
passing examinations – were neglected. The principle also
fomented hypocrisy. Individuals would present their very
particular concerns as an occasion for common action.
It has been largely forgotten now, and slipped out of use
without major conflict. The problem of an adequate balancing
of individual concerns with the needs of common strategic
action remains, however, high on the agenda of any
political organisation with transformative aims.

4. Respecting individual conscience

Given the variety of backgrounds of Green activists, this
principle has been invoked to address problems of discipline
and common action without crushing individuals. This was
adopted in more or less conscious opposition to the traditional
practices of “democratic centralism”, which forces the
minority to carry out the actions it has opposed. In practice,
however, it became the traditional liberal principle of ‘liberty
of conscience’ of deputies that served to diminish the control
of the party over persons elected to parliamentary mandates

5. Gender parity

The existence of this principle is the most direct impact
of the women’s movement on the principles of party organisation,
forcing other political parties to introduce similar
principles. It has deeply shaped the “alternative” political
culture of the German Greens, although it has also served
the instrumental strategy of winning a larger share of power.
In spite of strong media pressure against this principle, especially
when it involves prominent male figures having to
stand back, it has generally been upheld. Since unification
and the fusion with the East German citizens’ movement organisation,
however, important exceptions have been made
which were previously unthinkable. The main ambivalence
of the principle has turned out to be its compatibility with
the neo-liberal notion of career women putting themselves
forward in open “political markets”.

6. ‘Rotation’ in mandate and in office

This principle was introduced to avoid the emergence of
professional politicians. Its inherent disregard for parliamentary
and, more generally, political experience have
made it difficult to defend though. Furthermore, the difference
between this principle and the liberal, inherently
middle-class critique of “professional politics” has been
neither sufficiently explained nor understood. In the current
practice, it has either been dropped entirely or reduced to
requirements of stronger reselection after two legislatures.
In part, it has been replaced by requirements of a quota for
“new candidates”.

7. Public character of all party proceedings

This principle was introduced to prevent secret proceedings
of party committees undermining party democracy. In practice,
however, it has led to an increased tendency towards
informal preparations and conspiracies. It also made it possible
for observers from organised sub-groups to exercise
disproportionate control over the deliberation of party organs.
It is now largely discontinued – although it still offers
an important challenge for transparency as a first step to an
enhanced internal democracy within a political party.

8. Separation between party office
and parliamentary mandate

This principle was introduced to counter the ‘sucking in
effect’ of parliaments and governments. It has delayed the
effect, but not countered it because of the absence of clear
political projects of transformation. It did not provide, most
especially, a counter-weight to the strength of parliamentary
leaders in relation to party representatives, nor prevent the
emergence of positions of informal leadership (Joschka
Fischer) based upon media presence and media intervention.
Nor could it prevent the long-term influence on party
recruitment of the “realist” majority of the parliamentary
group. This has led to the dominance of the realists even
at the party base.

The principle could be effective in a situation where the party
organisation turned away from the (almost impossible)
task of ‘controlling’ the activities of its parliamentary wing,
and focussed instead on developing links to social movements
with a view to longer-term changes in public opinion.
Then it could function as a principle for institutionalising a
realistic division of labour between different departments of
party politics. In spite of strong contrary pressures from
the media and from coalition partners, this principle is still
largely in place though modified by exceptions for party
leaders and a ‘mixed institution’ acting as a forum for strategic
consultations.

9. Imperative mandate

This principle of the accountability of representatives has a
long and well-documented history within the ‘councils’ of
19th and early 20th century revolutions and especially within
organisations of the workers’ movement. The green movements
and parties have made this a distinctive principle of
their political organisation without, however, adequately
distinguishing between a prior mandate and consequent
accountability and, most fatally, without clearly defining to
whom this accountability is due: to local party members, to
delegating party bodies, to social movements, to the general
public, to the electorate at large…

This principle has largely been discredited. It was open to
tactical uses and abuses and implemented in a mechanistic
and dogmatic way without regard to existing conditions. Yet,
there seems to be something essential about it for reclaiming
effective democratic accountability and participation. It would
certainly be worth distilling something of this principle of direct
involvement in democracy out of the muddle of anarchist
ideologies and incompetent practices that has overgrown it.
This principle is now totally discontinued in party practice,
not counting ordinary practices of reporting back.

10. ‘Ordinary wage’ for parliamentarians

Introduced as a measure for reducing the distance between
the elected and their electorate – as practised in the 1870
Paris Commune, this principle meant an income reduction
for activists relative to better paid professions. Inflexible
implementation plus arbitrary exceptions further discredited
the principle.

If freed from workerist austerity and implemented with
flexible adaptations to specific life situations, the principle
would still have the potential of limiting careerism within the
party. And it would help to raise sizable funds in the form
of donations, which could be put to good use, especially
in financially reinforcing social movement infrastructures
and institutions. This principle is now discontinued, though
party levies are still higher than in most other parties.

11. Autonomous administration of party finance

This principle was introduced to heighten the difference
between the Greens and other parties. In practice, this
has put great stress on internal practices of financial selfcontrol.
The alleged risks of slipping into illegal practices
of tax avoidance etc. have been avoided, although often at
the high price of internal conflict. There were successful
attempts at making scandals about practices implementing
the internal rules.

This principle contained a valuable kernel, of making explicit
the political criteria underlying an alternative system of controlling
of party finances. This could be rethought, although
this practice is now discontinued.

12. Primacy of social movements
over parliamentary politics

This principle has often been illustrated by the metaphor of
the “standing leg” (the social movements) vs. the “playing
leg” (the parliamentary practice). That image grossly
underestimates the weight of parliamentary and electoral
practices in a political party. It also obscures the tasks of
political integration and alliance building, which are most
closely linked to the informal workings of parliaments as
organs of political representation. Yet, it is a principle of
continuing great importance: at the very least, it marks the
need to find forms of co-operation between social movements
and parliamentary parties as autonomous organisations.
This is a key issue in contemporary debate on political
organisation.

This principle has now clearly been inverted in the present
practice of the German Green party – as could be seen
by the Green parliamentary group’s criticism of the nonrepresentative
character of NGOs in the “alter-globalist”
movement.

13. Programmes based on projects,
not on theories

In the face of the sectarianism of the 1970s, in which dogmatically
received theory played a central role, this principle
at first seemed a liberating stroke. In the longer run, however,
it has led to the utter neglect of theoretical debates,
effectively abandoning all efforts at an in-depth analysis
of established relations of domination. This has led, in the
longer run, to a thinning of theoretical debates within the
party and of real substance in its programmatic debates.
These degenerated into rhetorical exercises without any basis
in evidence. This principle has now been totally forgotten
– as, in actuality, both theory and programmes have been
increasingly replaced by political marketing.

14. Authentic concern for political culture
over mere ideology

This principle, harking back to pioneers like the concept
artist Joseph Beuys and embodied by strongly moralizing
leaders like Petra Kelly, was meant to maintain a fundamental
difference between the Greens and ‘traditional parties’. It
has, without doubt, suffered from not being linked to strong
theoretical analysis and strategic thinking. This has made
it susceptible to wild illusions about the effects of the apparatuses
of dominant ideology. It remains true, however,
that such a principle of a strategic break with established
culture should be at the heart of any transformative movement
with a strategic perspective. The unsolved problem
in this respect seems to be how to achieve such a break
without, as it were, closing the windows to the world of the
others and shrinking into a cultural ghetto. This principle
does not seem utterly beyond reach, but it has, again, now
largely been forgotten. Instead, the cult of media presence
as an element of power is holding the political culture of the
party in its sway – probably even more so than in other parties
where they have established arenas for a practice of an
internal party culture.

Frieder Otto Wolf

Notes

1 In retrospect, this idea of “public” conceals a harmful ambiguity – defending
privacy against the disciplinary practices of public authorities is
quite different from defending the “private space” of the male-dominated
household against women’s solidarity. But at the time, nobody could entertain
the idea that the “institutions” of the establishment were anything other
than an external support of male domination within the “private household”.
The neo-liberals made use of this ambiguity in their counter-attack
in the 1980s and 1990s, helped by the lack of clarity in these elementary
theoretical issues about gender relations, families and households as well
as the state and politics.
2 The objection to the very idea of ‘basisdemokratie’ as a kind of “basisdiktatur”,
a dictatorship of the grass roots activists with ‘totalitarian’
tendencies, had been the staple of the ‘liberal’ or ‘libertarian’ party right
wing since the foundation of the Green Party. They were defending the
principle of the “free mandate”, based on the ‘liberty of conscience’ of
all representatives, which is, in fact, explicitly enshrined in most Western
constitutions of liberal democracy.

Techno-political tools

Techno-political tools have emerged from the practice and
social transformations of the recent cycle of social movements.
The term “techno political tools” refers to strategies
and a rich variety of experiences that seem to have
something in common. For example, they apply the new
technologies to political goals, putting an emphasis on decentralised
“swarming”, placing a high value on a collaborative
and open environment, stressing the importance of
the systematisation of the knowledge generated by social
movements and, through this systematisation, the collective
building of a shared memory.

Some of the questions for discussion are:

i) What are the characteristics of a techno-political tool?
ii) What kinds of tools are there? (Conceptual tools and
metaphors; networking tools (directories of groups);
search tools; visualisation tools and maps; communication
tools etc.)
iii) How could technological tools be designed and used
to improve the possibilities for, and the means of achieving,
more direct, more transparent, less mediated forms of
democratic organisation?
iv) What are the socio-economic conditions necessary for
widespread access to and use of techno-political tools?
v) Can we extend the Free Software organizational model
to other fields of social organisation?
vi) How far do the activist/movement networks correspond
with networks of users of techno tools? For example,
amongst networks involved in the WSF there is a low correspondence
between the two networks and therefore a
low use of the techno tools built around the WSF.
vii) Which are the key event/moments that make a technopolitical
strategy useful?
viii) Does the movement around technological innovation
go beyond the market?
ix) How does the nature of Internet Global Governance affect
the strategy of techno-politics?
x) Is there a problem of the individualisation of the users of
techno-political tools and how can it be addressed?
xi) What would be the classic tools of techno-politics and
why they would be “classic”?
xii) Could the visualisation tools afford new forms of representation,
different from the classical organisational view?
xiii) What have been the experiences of technical tools created
for transformative political propose

Initial list of people participating at the discussion on
techno-politics: Franco Berardi (Bifo); Jaime King; Jaume
Nualart; Branca Curcic; Ines Pereira; Luciana Castellina;
Dominique Cardon; Mayo Fuster. Presentation of the people
is available at the wiki.

Steps planned and done at the Techno-political team

Building a chronological map of key developments/
moments historically

An initial map map of the main issues and a chronology
of key developments/moments historically and specifically
over the past 20 plus years has been developed by Jaume
Nualart and further developed with input from Branka
Curcic: http://www.networked-politics.info/index.php/Map_
on_techno_-_politicals_tools

A reflection on meaning of the concept of techno-political
tool concept – a draft entrance to Wikipedia

A first draft of techno-political terms for an entry to Wikipedia
is being developed (initially by Mayo Fuster), which
explores several meanings: Techno-Political Tools.

– By political, we mean tools used and/or built for political
ends. That they be built for political ends is a sufficient
condition; that they be used for political ends is a necessary
condition. This term would include new technologies
already circulating in society which are put at the service
of a political end or cases where programmes are built or
technologies developed with this intention. An illustrative
example of the first case would be when mobile phones are
used for swarming, for example, the use of SMS messages
in Madrid to call for street demonstrations after the bombings
of 11th March 2003. An example of the second case
was the establishment of Indymedia. This is a reason for
the considerable variance in the weight of political identity
or the logo of techno-political tools. But what politics? We
mean the politics that proposes and prefigures the global
movement. The politics for a participatory democracy with
more direct, less mediated mechanisms for participation.

– By techno, we mean where the content and/or the
mediation of such practices is carried out through technology.
Through the use of technology, meaning the different
forms of new information technology (e.g. Internet, mobile
telephones, etc.) The term contains a novel element in
that, above all, it collects practices around new technologies,
and is used to refer to already consolidated practices,
as was the case with previous technologies, such as radio
or television. What stands out as “new” is the use of technologies
that favour multi-communication.

– By tool, we mean that it is open to being re-appropriated;
to being used for any purpose. The tool can be used for
multiple purposes and is not intended to “direct” the nature
of its use, or to be restrictive, or to exert control over whoever
wants to use it. In this sense, the tool aims to combine
autonomy and a sense of acting jointly. Autonomy insofar as
it does not attempt to limit the autonomy of the user; acting
jointly to the extent that they share the same instrument, the
same practice. When tools are built to favour their re-appropriation
and use, they include user manuals, kits, an open
code, etc. so that the know-how for its use and re-use is
accessible, following the logic of Do it yourself (DIY)1.

Types of techno-political tools

Some significant differences between techno-political tools
can be found around the following fields:

− Whether it concerns a “derived” techno-political tool (the
use of new existing technologies for political ends) or a “built”
one (the conscious construction of the tool for a political end)
− The dimension which they are aimed at: local, regional,
global
− Link with time (particular kinds cases: for a concrete,
lasting etc. action)
− A political project or action that underlies the use of the tool
− Support technology (website, email, mobile telephones
etc.) and whether their use is online or offline.

Call for contribution to a newsletter on techno-political tools

In collaboration with the E-library for and on social transformation,
we are preparing a multilingual compilation of online
material on “Collaborative creation, Free software organizational
model, Techno-political tools and memory”, in an
attempt to give an overview on what is under the umbrella of
those fields and to stimulate the circulation of ideas.
Please send us your contributions as fast as possible. There
are two alternative ways of sending us a contribution:

A) (The best option!!!) To publish the resources
through the e-library form and send us the link of the
resource page (To do it so, go to the register at http:
//www.openelibrary.info and publish it).

B) Send us an e-mail to info@euromovements.info containing
these information: Title; Author (s) name and econtact
(optional); Abstract (maximum 1800 characters);
Keywords; Year; Licences; Language; Number of pages;
Type of text; External link; and, the text or resource itself.

The newsletter will be published under a Creative commons
– non commercial, share alike licence, but if you send us
resources under its own licence, this will be respected.

The resources sent would be included in an organised
compilation newsletter, accessible through the Networked
Politics wiki (www.networked-politics.info), the e-library
on social transformation (http://www.openelibrary.info),
the wiki e-yearbook on and for social transformation 2006
(www.euromovements.info/yearbook), and will be spread
through several e-mails lists, web pages and other networks
of exchange and conversation.

Case studies

The documentation of case studies of experiences is
planned. The case studies identified as relevant for development
in the coming months are “Global Internet Governance
(in comparison with other institutional logic like UN
or WTO)” and the free software development model.

More on techno-political discussion team

More materials (Such as reports of seminars and video of
a debate) are available at the wiki techno-politics section:
http://www.networked-politics.info/index.php/Techno-political_
tools

Waiting for you to develop and discuss them further!!!
Contact us if you would like to participate in the discussion
group at euromovements.info.

Mayo Fuster i Morrell

Map missing (page 54) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you would like to know more about each of the map entries, a good resource on
technological keywords is Wikipedia.org. On http://geuzen.blogs.com/historiography/
you can also find an interface of the main terminology of technical developments at
Wikipedia and other good online resources. Here is an explanation of the main terms
used on the map.

TECHNIQUES: This refers to the different programme languages and techniques.
(For example, P2P is a computer network that relies primarily on the computing
power and bandwidth of the participants in the network, rather than concentrating it
on a relatively low number of servers. Ajax is a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Web_development” web development technique for creating interactive web
applications).

GPL: General Public Licence (also known as GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely
used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman.

Wiki: is a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website”website that allows the
visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available
content, and typically without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and
operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.

Debian: is free software package developed through the collaboration of a community
of volunteers from around the world.

Flickr: is a photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online community
platform, which is generally considered an early example of an application of Web 2.0- the new phase of web development.

Drupal: is a Contain Management System (a whole city of free solfware) developed
by an online community. The CMS look to “democratise” access to web.

Map missing (page 55) !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amarok: is a free software music player. Amarok’s tagline is “Rediscover Your Music”
and its development is based around this ideology.

Del.ici.ous: is a social bookmarking web services for storing, sharing, and discovering
web bookmarks.

Folksonomy: is an Internet-based information retrieval methodology consisting of
collaboratively generated, open-ended labels that categorize content such as Web
pages, online photographs, and Web links. The authors of the labelling system are
often the main users of the content to which the labels are applied. The labels are
commonly known as tags.

YouTube: is a Website for storing and and sharing videos.

Creative Common: Licences based on Copyleft (as opposed to copyright) principles,
mainly for products other than software.

MySpace: is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted
network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos.

Second Life: is an online virtual world. Users, who are often called “Residents”
amongst themselves, explore, meet other users, participate in individual and group
activities or “events”, buy items, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_
property”virtual property and services from one another.

Napster: is an online music service which was originally a file sharing service created
by Shawn Fanning. Napster was the first widely-used peer-to-peer (or P2P)
music sharing service, and it had a major impact on how people used the Internet.

Slashdot: is a technology-related news website which features user-submitted and
editor-evaluated current affairs news with a nerdy slant. It is known for the Internet
forum-style comments section attached to each story. Slashdot was one of the first
popular websites to include so prominently a commentary section.