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How Do You Institutionalise a Swarm?- Tadzio Müller and Ben Trott.

this is a repost | 23.01.2010 17:57 | Analysis | Globalisation | Social Struggles | World

Here's a funny text:

For French Philosopher Alain Badiou, an event is a break, a moment of rupture with a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’, where the ‘after’ could not be foreseen even from within the event itself, and whose meaning is primarily ascribed in retrospect. ‘Seattle’ was an event in this sense, creating an unexpected disruption within an apparently hegemonic, imperial structure by a newly emergent, multitudinous, antagonistic social subject. This was a subject which, later, would have many names, but was best described with the French term mouvement altermondialiste – the movement for a different globalisation.

The promise of Seattle

But the significance of Seattle lay not simply in the fact that a new social subject had emerged, had had its ‘coming out party’, but also in how this new subject was composed, how it moved, how it fought. The Seattle protests, it was widely remarked, bore the characteristics of a swarm: a seemingly chaotic ensemble that self-organises in real-time; disparate, dynamic and rhizomatic in structure. What better way to explain the success of this ephemeral convergence of tens of thousands of protesters – trade unionists and environmentalists, anarchists and communists, nuns and queers – around the Third Ministerial of the WTO? In many ways, the swarm was one of the defining characteristics of the early days of the alterglobalisation movement, and not just its counter-summit mobilisations. By 1997, the term had already been used to describe the social movement- and civil society-convergence on Chiapas following the Zapatista uprising in 1994. The campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, successfully defeated in 1998, took many by surprise when it managed to mobilise across national, linguistic and other barriers without relying on a centralised or centralising structure. The traditional institutions of the left played a relatively minor role in the early days of the movement against neoliberal globalisation. It was the heterogeneous composition of the movement, it’s ability to communicate and coordinate across different kinds of borders, and to converge (swarm) around both spaces and issues that constituted the promise of Seattle.

However, contrary to what was often argued at the time, the tactical and strategic deployment of the ‘swarm’ was not necessarily motivated by a strong ethico-political commitment to independence from organisations per se. The movement’s initial anti-institutionalism should rather be understood as arising from a specific historical conjuncture within which few other strategies made sense. The alterglobalisation movement emerged in the context of a well-established neoliberal hegemony. At the turn of the century, neoliberalism had a firm hold even over ‘progressive’ forces: many social democratic parties, trade unions and development NGOs had accepted the dictum that there was no alternative. As a result, there was little room for manoeuvre within these institutions, and few opportunities for fruitful collaboration with them for a movement that loudly proclaimed that other worlds were possible.

The promise of today

Today, the world has changed. Not only is neoliberalism in a deep ideological as well as material crisis, but there are indeed numerous alternatives, visible on different levels and scales. A ‘Pink Tide’ has swept across Latin America, breaking with the policies of the Washington Consensus, and the alterglobalisation movements themselves have started to ask the question: how to institutionalise a swarm? In other words, how can (more) permanent form be given to the diverse struggles of the movement? How can counter-power be built without sacrificing that which can be won by anti-power? What would it take to make a multitude, ‘an internally heterogeneous social subject that is capable of political action’ (Hardt and Virno: 2009)?

Among the most ambitious attempts to offer answers to these questions have been the Zapatistas’ Caracoles and Juntas de Buen Gobierno, and the World Social Forum (as well as its manifestations at other levels). Moreover, there is today an increasing acceptance within the global movements of rather more complex relations between movements and institutions (including political parties both in power and opposition), not reducible to simple exteriority. The relationships between the Movimento Sem Terra and Lula’s Worker’s Party in Brazil, between (post-)autonomous social movements in Germany and DIE LINKE, and even between radical labour and anti-war activists in the US and the Obama administration, are of course very different. Each of them, however, has been characterised by the following. On behalf of those ‘constituted’ forms of power: a recognition that there are limits to the degree of change that can be achieved on the level of representational politics alone. And on the behalf of movements: that there is little to be gained from indifference towards electoral politics, and that their role is to try and keep open the ‘constitutive’ moment for as long as possible. By constitutive, we mean the combined practices of both disassemblage and creation that produce the new logics and laws by which we live.

The alterglobalisation movement has always experimented with radical forms of democracy, its job today is to take this a step further with the creation of (open and ephemeral) institutions. But it will also depend on developing a way of relating to ‘constituted’ forms of institutional power that force them open for constituent processes. Perhaps such a relationship can be founded on the strategy of directional demands. These are demands that encapsulate collective human needs and desires, and which emerge out of constituent processes. Examples would be the demand for a guaranteed basic income de-coupled from the requirement to produce for capital, or the right to global citizenship, or for ‘climate justice’. Each of these demands, if won, would carry closer the promise of making another world possible. Of course, there would be no monopoly on whom could place these demands, how many there could be, their content, or how they should be articulated. Maybe it is partly on the more cacophonous than symphonious practice of articulating such demands that the institution of the swarm is to be founded.

Tadzio Müller is a precarious political scientist and writer in Berlin. He is a co-editor of the journal Turbulence: Ideas for movement (www.turbulence.org.uk) and author, along with Stefan Kaufmann, of Grüner Kapitalismus. Krise, Klima, Wachstumswahn (Berlin: Dietz Verlag). He is active, within the international Climate Justice Action network, in the mobilisation to this year’s Climate Conference in Copenhagen. His political and research foci are, on the one hand, the ‘Green New Deal’ and other projects of green capitalist modernisation, and on the other (the movement for) climate justice.

Ben Trott is a PhD candidate at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. He is an editor of Turbulence: Ideas for movement (www.turbulence.org.uk) and was on the Board of Editors of the eight volume International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 – Present (2009). In 2007, he co-edited a special issue (7.1) of the journal ephemera: theory and politics in organization on immaterial and affective labour. He is a semi-regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ pages, and co-editor of wir sind ueberall: weltweit. unwiderstehlich. antikapitalistisch. (2007) as well as Shut Them Down!: The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements (2005).

Note: This article draws on some of the ideas developed in Life in Limbo?, published in Turbulence: Ideas for Movement 5.

this is a repost
- e-mail: http://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/?p=412

Comments

Hide the following 16 comments

well well

23.01.2010 18:18

you can institutionalize yourself but you can't institutionalize me or the people who make up this movement. our strength is that we are uncontrollable. our weakness is that people are always trying to box us in.

get it over with and join a party and then you can talk about how radical you used to be.

mikael


translation please!

24.01.2010 01:58

i know both tadzio and ben and have been friends and comrades of them both, and inspired by them in different ways. My comment is- please if you read this tadzio and ben re write this article or give us a similar version for those of us that don't have a masters degree. i would like to do this for both our understanding and your reputations. i would like to believe that somewhere in this academic soup are some interesting points. presumably 'we' less wordy people are important in this movement you talk about, so we should at least understand. or does you being institutionalised mean we won't need to?
ps i have a degree in social science. notice how high the bar of exclusion is set!

old friend


summary

24.01.2010 16:00



'there is little to be gained from indifference towards electoral politics, [the social movement's] role is to try and keep open the ‘constitutive’ moment for as long as possible. '

'By constitutive, we mean the combined practices of both disassemblage and creation that produce the new logics and laws by which we live.'

...In other words lets start a new political party and get everyone to vote for us by claiming to represent everyone's views -then we can create some new laws.

Note the age old political management technique-


first - run the protest movement

second - run from the police

third- run for election

Finally- run the police

Conclusion:

NO. I'm not voting for you or any other fucker.


*


They wish to be the intermediaries between movements and States/Parties/NGOs

24.01.2010 17:19

Contrary to what the first comment says I very much doubt they believe they can be leaders of some new left party. They know they do not have the contacts, the capital or the constituencies to do so. Rather they want movements that have used libertarian methods in the global north to discard what they see as outdated ideas about 'exteriority' to states, political parties and large NGOS.

An example of putting the ideas of this text into action was the inside-outside position at the Copenhagen Climate conference of which Tadzio was a major face. I am sure Ben and Tadzio believe their authoritarian drivel and they are no doubt helped in this by the emerging rewards gained in acting as the intermediaries between the movements and 'institutions'. They are neither particularly successful activists nor academics (I don't incidentally highly value either) but if they can increasingly assume this intermediary position between movements and institutions they will increase their stature in both roles.

One of many problems facing them in their ambitions is that the outdated 'exteriority' to institutions is for many - especially us outdated anarchists - a fundamental ethic not an accident of history.

It matters little how much they dress up their positions in the language of flowery leftist academia - the central message remains - assimilation.

It's saddening to see people go down this road whoever they are but Ben is an old friend so it weighs heavy.

For those mystified by the last few paragraphs of the Turbulence text here is a quote from ‘You are Now Fucked' written by someone else:

“There is a growing and disturbing trend that has been lingering around radical circles over the last few years, based on the idea that blind positivity can lead to interesting and unexpected successes. Michael Hardt and Tony Negri’s books have provided some of the theoretical bases for this, and it has been taken up by some who want to unite the masses under the banner of precarity, organise migrants and mobilise for summits. For many coming from the left wing tradition, it has been the message of hope that they were wanting to hear at a time when their ideologies seemed more moribund that ever.

...Theoreticians who should understand capitalism well enough to know better, write that a global basic income or free movement for all is an achievable goal. They may not believe it themselves, but ostensibly want to inspire others to believe in it, claiming that the ‘moments of excess’ generated by such utopian dreams will give rise to potent movements for change. Climate change... is certainly a suitable testing ground for the politics of manufactured hope, being so alienated from our actual everyday realities. But whilst the new movement politicians – facilitators not dictators – watch their movements grow, there is still a case for living in the real world.”

Taken from: ‘You are Now Fucked’ available at:
 http://www.natterjackpress.co.uk/menu/downloads.php

Anonymous


)-(

24.01.2010 18:14

Here's another funny text:
For over a decade a culture of mass direct-action-inspired protest built up in the ecological movement and ended up taking on economic and political summits, like the IMF and G8. Excited by this sudden interest in what they perceived to be their reason for being – pressuring politicians – NGO’s got involved in mobilisations too.
At no point did this constitute a new movement.
At no point did new views prove themselves to have in any way overtaken the old ones in terms of understanding the economy and the interests of the rich.
At no point did ‘horizontalism’ (finger waggling) become a new organising method as opposed to a neccessary lash-up between groups that had pretty much no common interests beyond summit hopping, and an anarchist movement that had no idea what it wanted.
The interests we really need to be aware of are the interests of those who insist that 1999 onwards does represent a new paradigm, and write lengthy books and articles about how its all interlinked. These people are: A) intellectuals by nature B) intellectuals by trade. It is rather important to them that they are creating ‘new ideas’. As important as laying bricks is to a bricklayer.
Wait i mean, um, the Movement of Movements entered a new strategic dichotomy at Copenhagen, with interlocking dialogues of ’state’ and ‘anti-state’ clashing for control of the narrative; history will tell who dictates the story of these autonomous subjectivities and how post-capitalism will fare in the age of the post-statist climate movement. What is important is not to smash the relation of boss and worker, citizen and state, but transcend these stale unsexy identities and create funky new ones blah blah something about the internet blah blah immaterial underpants blah blah who wants to hear some beats from the global south
Keith Hallack MA/PHD/IRA/BBQ
Author of ‘1000 pages of no answers and photos of girls kissing riot shields’
Notes On Fridge Collective’
this is another repost

-()-


are we anti new ideas as well as anti intellectual?

25.01.2010 00:21

fair enough there is a load of crap spouted about 'our movements'
but also as i look at the state of our movements, (-the rise of the right, major global and national crises etc ) i don't really feel like we are in any position to reject questions and criticism and act like we have all the answers or that anyone that doesn't totally support/agree with principles that we work by is neccesarilly selling us down the river.
as long as the debate stays accessible to people to understand what is being said and is backed up by people's reasons for saying what they do, then i think we need to learn how to listen and engage in debate and not limit our thinking/ our actions by fixed identities as anarchists, academics etc.
we need to get over ourselves. let's reject ideas we don't agree with clearly and explain why. but let's remember that there are many thousands of other people out there to engage with about the billy basics of why we choose to oppose the system as it is. so maybe not best use of out time to sink in to too much online arguing between our broadly anti-capitalist selves. i am totally up for having these debates. i just dont know that open internet forums are going to be very productive place to do it.
happy working it out!

sam


No borders?

25.01.2010 13:17

According to neoliberal ideology people are only interested in personal gain, the idea that there can be other, collective or political motivations is unthinkable. If you want to know how deeply neoliberal mentality has penetrated just look at the level of critique in some of the comments here.

There is also a touch of anarchist tourettes at work, where certain words will trigger off a pre-set response fighting a phantom argument rather than the one being made. In any ideology certain words come to stand in for good and certain words come to stand for bad. They become wooden words, where we no longer think about what they mean. Of course “institutions” is one such word in certain UK anarcho scenes, which want to see themselves as magically outside of politics.

Look, we have always had institutions internal to our movements and we have always had relationships with external institutions, like left political parties and the state (even open conflict is a form of relationship, indeed one that quickly becomes institutionalised). It’s just that most of the time we haven’t thought this through so we haven’t been in control of our own processes of institutionalisation or our relationship with external institutions.

The “(open and ephemeral) institutions” being talked about in the article aren’t political parties (political parties aren’t open and ephemeral). In fact classic anarchist organisations such as the Anarchist Federation are very much modelled on the party form, although democratised (that is precisely what platformism is). But the other forms we have experimented with, such as Social centres, Indymedia, local anarchist groups, Climate Camp are also institutions and suffer from the common processes of institutionalisation. These are processes of solidification, which close the institution off from the outside world. You get the development of markers indicating an in-group and an out-group (style of dress, use of certain words,) and the borders of the institutions get closely monitored, just look at the comments above to see the anarchist border guards at work. At worst the aim stops being wider transformation and becomes the self-perpetuation of the institution.

We have two options, we can pretend that these processes don’t exist or that because we have special, magic words, like anarchist, that these processes don’t happen to us, or we can try and develop counter-processes that keep institutions open. The argument here is that we need to experiment with forms of institutions that can keep opening themselves to the wider world and start to have a real effect there. And you can’t do that by closing your eyes to the problem of institutions.

The other argument is that we have to start intervening to make real differences in the way people live, into the way society is composed, into the balance of power between capital and labour. One way to do this is getting commons institutionalised into people’s lives. An example might be tool shares,etc, not just amongst your scene but spreading that institution into working class communities. Part of the reasoning behind this might be ecological but the effect could be much wider. Just as being forced into competitive markets trains you into neoliberalism so participating in commons trains you in Commonism. Of course sooner or later we come up against the problem of resources and resources are in the hands of the rich and the state.

This takes us into the difficult area of relations between movements and external institutions such as the state and parties that participate in the state. Of course no matter what pose we have struck we have never been indifferent to the effects of electoral politics. We have always campaigned around laws and known that different laws, etc, can have a big effect on what’s possible. Anti-Poll Tax anyone? The point is even when we “win” how do we avoid demobilisation by the introduction of a similar law where nothing has changed and the movement just evaporates into thin air?.

Our relationship to left parties has been to mirror them, tail end their campaigns and use the idea that they sold us out as an excuse for not thinking about where we failed (the trots do exactly the same with the Union leadership). The situation in the UK is different to other countries, there isn’t much of an electoral left, not much to have any relationship to in any form but the phenomena the article is pointing to has been taking place in relation to other institutions - the media and NGOs. We learnt some hard lessons with Make Poverty History and Gleneagles. If you don’t talk to the media then someone will talk to them in your place. If you don’t engage with other actors and drag the agenda towards your politics then someone else sets the agenda for you and you play on their ground. There are big, big dangers here but that is precisely why we need to crack the dogma open and start talking about it. The question is how do we avoid being dominated by representative politics? As things stand we are completely dominated by it.

We could look at the space that has opened up by the police taking a media hammering after the G20 as another lesson here. Sometimes it’s best to take engage in direct conflict and sometimes it’s best to refuse conflict on their ground and work to establish different grounds for conflict. Of course you never know in advance and often you try all the avenues on the ground and try and adapt from how things pan out. That’s why it is a cacophony not a symphony.

This sort of politics is a form of experimentation, it could easily fuck up, that means there is always a role for anarcho purists who are happy just to keep the faith, enjoy their scene and not rock the boat. If certain experiments fuck up we might need to be reminded of that ever-constant point so we can start new experimentation. But in this cacophony it probably pays for all sides to keep lines of communication open, to try and avoid hard splits and to try and keep it political not personal. After all when things start moving those positions you’ve taken can suddenly seem completely irrelevant.

Free Associator


Isn't recuperation an academic word?

25.01.2010 14:05


Quote: "We don't need a translator for this, we already know the language of recuperation and of the party political.
Academic parasites Fuck off!! "

Come on that is funny as fuck. As if recuperation isn't an academic word. When did the Situationists become the voice of the people?

Can't wait for Guy Debord's Soceity of the Spectacle to be serialise in the Sun.

So go on then explain recuperation in a sentence without losing any of Debord's meaning.

Practice what you preach.


"Give us a similar version for those of us that don't have a masters degree"

25.01.2010 16:58

In case there are people interested in the content, I'll offer a babelfish on the article without using insults to stand in for ignorance. A lot of the language used has certain nuances that won't carry in this simplification. I'll take a quote and explain it, and I have also restructured it. Incidentally, institution is used in two different ways in the article, which I will highlight.

1. "The alterglobalisation movement has always experimented with radical forms of democracy".

As people who want an egalitarian world, we have experimented with different ways to organize ourselves. This means different ways of making political decisions, different ways to organize production etc. This has been called 'prefigurative' politics by some.

2. "How can (more) permanent form be given to the diverse struggles of the movement?" or how do we create "(open and ephemeral) institutions" or "how to institutionalize a warm"?

This is the same question asked in three different ways. It also uses the first meaning of institution - a given set of social relationships.

The experiences of the alterglobalisation movement have, thus far, tended to be fleeting moments rather than lasting examples of a different world. This is no good if we want to replace the existing ordering of the world with something better. How can we organize ourselves, for the rest of time, in a way that respects our differences and allows the world to change, without curtailing liberty? We need to try and create ways of organizing our social relationships in a way that doesn't lead to us fucking ourselves.
The reason (more) is used, is to indicate that there is no Utopia, no fixed world where everything is perfect. Instead, we need to make sure that the way we organize ourselves is able to respond to a world of relationships that are always changing.

3. How can counter-power be built without sacrificing that which can be won by anti-power?

Counter-power often ends up being the very thing it was opposed to in the first place. The caricature would be Russian revolution in 1917, where the oppressed became the oppressor. How do we make sure that any form of movement we are part of doesn't fall into this trap of becoming the thing we hate? How do we make sure these movements don't mimic existing power and productive relationships, only giving them a different name?

4. "There is today an increasing acceptance within the global movements of rather more complex relations between movements and institutions".

This is the second meaning of institution - meant as a political party, either in power or not.

This may be an assumption based on the authors own opinions - it hasn't been backed up, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. What it means is that it is possible that political parties, either in power or not, can open up space which the alterglobalization movement can fill with its own way of organizing. These political parties may be able to facilitate the opening up of space for social movements, but they aren't capable of actually bringing about the better world, that is down to us. The reason being, the 'democracy' of the better world is based on us all participating in every aspect of our lives, where as the State will always be a 'representation' of democracy.

That's pretty much it.

(As a disclaimer - I think the article is a highly inaccessible piece of writing, but it does make sense, whether you agree with the ideas or not).

I'm not Tadzio or Ben


Campaign Against Long Words and Pointy Heads

25.01.2010 16:58

Yes anyone that uses long words and complicated ideas must be discarded. The Likes of Marx, the Situationists, Italian Workerists, Rosa Luxemburg, Socialisme au Barbarie and 'academic parasites' like Peter Linebaugh, Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis and John Holloway have contributed nothing to radical theory or action. Indeed, last I heard some of them apparently aren't even vegan or ketamine heads. They rarely make "total destroy" on the streets, or live in grotty housing co-ops or squats.

Let us wage a verbal war on these people and ignore the fact that much of what passes for radicalism and action is total shite at best and reactionary at worst.

Anon


@Practice Preach, and all the other fuckwits

25.01.2010 17:19

"Recuperate" is a verb. This is 2010 not 1968.

We're against the scam of academia and the universities, but we're not illiterate, language is not the preserve of specialists. We know a blag when we see one.

Turbulence = Sell-out new-left mystification and careerism - Need a degree to understand that?

Personally, the first time I ever met Tadzio, he told me "You won't like me, I have terrible politics", and he was right. He has very terrible politics, and prances about like a right primodonna.

If you want to become a new-left activistoid-politician or academic parasite, have thick skin, because you are going to get it big time pushing bullshit like this sooner or later.





anarchists against turbulence


this is really bitchy

25.01.2010 17:52

This is turning into a very futile and personal debate. Whether you agree with ben and tadzio's article or not, at least they have the balls to put their names to their opinions - unlike (apart from Seth Wheeler) most of the people commenting on this.

Ben and Tadzio are not the enemy....

Sylvia Silverstone


Where's my tenner?

25.01.2010 20:17

Fuck me the comedy never stops. Check this out.

Quote:
"Recuperate is a verb. This is 2010 not 1968.
We're against the scam of academia and the universities, but we're not illiterate, language is not the preserve of specialists."

Yes recuperate is a verb it means to rest after illness or exercise. Are you trying to claim you used it in that sense?

Pull the other one you used it in the specialist, Situationist sense. All you mean is that want to use your specialist language but don't want them using their specialist language.

You are a fucking faker and I claim my £10.

Practice what you preach


Guess what

25.01.2010 21:40

Guess what, most of the radicals in the academy also think it is a 'con', maybe you are unaware of ongoing struggles over the university, neoliberalisation etc?

So what not discuss the actual article.

Somebody


Long live the uncontrollable swarm!

27.01.2010 15:08

‘The alterglobalisation movement has always experimented with radical forms of democracy, its job today is to take this a step further with the creation of (open and ephemeral) institutions.’

How can you decide what the ‘job’ of this dead movement is today? The diversity that made it interesting is surely not to be institutionalized. The death of the vibrancy of the movement occurred just as NGOs and governments started to flood the rupture that had been created in the 1990s and the early 2000s. In moments such as the G8 protests in Scotland and recently in Copenhagen this is clear with spectacles such as make poverty history and hopenhagen’s corporate orgasm. Suddenly the movement has nothing to do with other worlds but in creating powerful coalitions to positively influence states and corporations. The hijacking of the movement by the traditional forms of political players; the unions, the parties, the NGOs and the lobbyists has led to a total lack of imagination- the only way to change the world, is to join the existing structures. Now we are in a position where even comrades suggest the inevitable defeat, suggesting we must be institutionalized, but off course better than any previous institutions. And if the movement now has a job and the job is to create institutions, then it is only natural that we will also need leaders-perhaps our dear authors? There are still ruptures and in them we can taste freedom, even though our imaginations are under attack. Long live the uncontrollable swarm!

Yannis


The alter-globalisation movement cannot be instituationalised

27.01.2010 15:09

The alter-globalisation movement cannot be instituationalised – this would be in contradiction to its very spirit and diversity of aims.

Apart from being ridiculous and completely unattainable in the current capitalist system, your suggested ‘directional demands’ (global citizenship/climate justice) and focus on working with existing institutional powers suggests that you are now ready to get a job in die linke or similar constituted forms of power.

Perhaps misguidedly, you are trying to kill an already dying movement.

Katerina Kourabgaides