THE REVOLT OF THE USELESS FURNITURE

 

THE REVOLT OF THE USELESS FURNITURE

I.

On the 14^th June this year the Bulgarian parliament appointed Delyan Slavchev Peevski as head of the State National Security agency. Mr Peevski is a difficult individual to translate into British a British context, however imagine if you will a combination of Rupert Murdoch and Ronnie Kray, though without the formers strong sense of morality and the latter’s humanistic compassion. Mr Peevski had previously been sacked from a government post for blackmail and lack of ‘morals.’
It is difficult though to find criticism of Peevski in Bulgaria, even in those elements of the media that he does not own, and this reticence is not just down to fear of libel. Now let Ivan Krastev take up the story.[1]

'Just hours after the decision was announced thousands of people mobilised via social media ended up on the street demanding his resignation. He resigned but this was not enough for the protesters. People then asked for the resignation of the government that had the perverse idea to appoint him. So every night since 14 June thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Sofia asking for only one thing – early elections. But their protest is not just against this government but against any government that treats people as useless furniture.'

Bulgaria a participant in events that have been sweeping the globe, from Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Brazil, Turkey, Bahrain, and much elsewhere.  A new dynamic, that manifested in the US and UK as Occupy and in numerous other, sometimes little reported, spontaneous actions in a range of locations across the world. It is this world wide phenomenon that Paul Mason both chronicles and analyses in this book.

Mason is a sympathetic reporter, who understands the concerns of the poor Coptic Christian community in Cairo, the students without a future in Greece or Spain, the workers who have taken over their factories and thrown out the corrupt government officials in Cairo and Alexandria, and the despair of the middle class across the Euro-zone thrown suddenly into poverty. He not only interprets but he sympathizes and sometimes openly supports.
There was an interesting moment on Newsnight[2] when Mason was reporting, admittedly rather breathlessly from Athens, when this style crashed into that of Jeremy Paxman. Paxman’s trademark cynicism, the sceptical body language, the raised eyebrows, suddenly seemed out of place, outdated, as if for a moment the light had suddenly fallen in just such a way to reveal the dust on a shelf.

II.

The financial crash of 2008 coincided with the growing ascendancy of social media. As ruling elites sought to inflict austerity on ‘passive’ populations, they suddenly found that ‘ordinary people’ had not read the script and were not prepared to play a passive role. In short people took to the streets.

One key factor was social media. As Mason chronicles protest groups now had the tools to mobilise mass numbers; to paraphrase Stalin, one protester can be intimidated, whilst thousands are just statistics.
Through Facebook, Twitter and e-mail people can suddenly be brought together, avoiding the immense effort previously required to assemble protests, efforts of course always liable to infiltration and disruption. Thus the ‘online community’ can suddenly generate real life communities that can occupy a square or descend upon a police headquarters. All that is required is for a tweet or Facebook post to go viral. ‘Screw the government, meet in Square X tonight at 20:00.’

This of course is a paradox, since the internet in many ways has led to a decline in community activities in general and engagement in political parties in particular; that is to a greater atomisation of society. The mass protests, revolts and revolutions that have gripped the world since 2008 are replete with paradox and contradiction, it is these very elements, that Mason explores, that have made them so difficult to predict and control.[3]  Out of anomie social media has given birth to anarchy.

Mason gives 20 reasons why things are ‘kicking off,’ and I don’t intend to rehearse them all here. You can read the full 20 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2011/02/twenty_reasons_why_its_kicking.html.

Several factors I would particularly pick out would be, a) the end of the myth of endless economic growth and the creation of the phenomenon of ‘the Graduate Without a Future,’ b) the free flow of information and the capacity this creates to mobilise against repression, poverty and austerity, c) ‘new’ more democratic forms of protest that are non hierarchical, thus allowing for greater flexibility and denying elites the possibility of decapitating groups by singling out ringleaders.[4]

Once virtual communities become real ones however a significant change occurs as people experience real feelings of solidarity and camaraderie. As feeling of powerlessness begin to diminish a new found confidence is born that governing elites increasingly find difficult to combat, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul, from the streets of Rio and the squares and Piazzas of Athens, the same components have come together to create real forces of resistance.  

Whilst the tools remain the same the shape and form that resistance takes varies from country to country to country and evolves in the light of prevailing circumstances. For example the greater degree of repression the more important the anonymity provided by social media.

We are blessed to be living through interesting times and Mason’s book is a rather wonderful description of the front line.

There is one sentence in the book that really stood out for me, ‘Up until now talking about the end of capitalism felt no more credible than talking about the end of the world.’

III.

We may be a long way from hearing the death rites of capitalism however the kind of free market capitalism that has been in the ascendant since the fall of the Berlin Wall no longer feels either so secure or so inevitable. New models of how society might be shaped are beginning to evolve, the power of solidarity is being re-discovered and ordinary people starting to discover how they might take power back into their own hands.

However it is important to note that  not every people’s movement has been successful, and Mason deals less with these instances than I think he should.

Iran and Russia stand out- Putin demonstrating a particular capacity for ruthlessness, adopted a strategy of picking off anyone involved, in the weeks following protest, Putin recognising the diminished importance of ringleaders. Charging participants with tax fraud, dismissing them from public sector posts, or placing pressure on private sector companies to dismiss them; spells of imprisonment have been handed out for ‘hooliganism,’ defaming the state, unlawful assembly, tax evasion. It really doesn’t matter what the charge,  it is the message that is clear, ‘there will be no Orange Revolution in Russia.

IV.

China is the sleeping giant in this scenario; already a nascent workers movement is stirring, though we hear little of its activities here in the west. The middle class are closely monitored and the state employs online ‘activists,’ whose job it is to sow confusion, act as agent provocateurs, and spy on would be protesters  One suspects that this model is already being adopted elsewhere, perhaps even here in the UK.

The fear of the growing power of social media is now also beginning to trouble ruling elites in the more ‘stable’ states of Western Europe and the US. One can already see the line of attack they are taking, cyber bullying and child pornography providing the rationale for greater censorship and control.[5]  Already e-mail, internet and Twitter traffic is being monitored by the NSA in the US and at GCHQ in Cheltenham in the UK and I would not place much weight to the assurances given by Parliament respecting this matter.  It is also worth noting that Cameron was calling for the temporary closure of Facebook during the 2011 riots.

The revolutionary events of 2010 across the Arab world are still working themselves out; revolutions are processes not events, they are organic and have a life cycle of their own. How things will develop in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya we do not know. Whilst the wider crisis of capitalism across Europe in general and the Euro-zone in particular continues to wreak havoc in people’s lives and austerity to meet with increasingly stubborn resistance. Revolutions are never completed in one bound, setting the people to live happy ever after; progress is made, reaction then fights back, seeming defeats can be seen, with hindsight, as victories , whilst ‘victories’ can turn out to be hollow and empty.

Social Media has turned out to be a game changer, though it is very far from guaranteeing victory to progressive forces.[6] Governments are quickly seeking way to neutralise the impact of the internet, Twitter and Facebook.

In countries like the UK much will turn on how the disenfranchised, the unemployed, those on low wages and zero hours contracts, respond to further austerity. If they can link up with the graduates without a future and those in the public sector who see services cut and their own standard of living drastically reduced, a true force to be reckoned with would be born. It is this force that Mason describes as it confronts governing elites in Spain, Greece, Brazil and Bulgaria and it is the spectre of this force that haunts David Cameron and the governing elite here.

V.

Austerity, we are told, is the new orthodoxy; here in the UK the government spending plans have been agreed beyond the next election,- the Labour Party broadly accepting these plans. The framework within which we will all be forced to live out our lives has been set by ruling elites across the continent, the people viewed as so much furniture to be arranged as required.

As I say the framework has been set, only perhaps people may have other plans. 

---

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/30/bulgaria-protests-europe

[2] A popular BBC current affairs programme, often fronted by Jeremy Paxman, noted for his acerbic and cynical style.

[3] Although the great crash of 2008 has marked the starting point for the outbreak of protest and revolt, the roots go back much further and can be traced back to the WTO demonstrations in Seattle and the Orange revolution in Ukraine.

[4] However non hierarchical working is not quite as new as some protesters might imagine. Having worked in a non hierarchical  collective between 1987 – 1994 I can testify to that. The myths that surround non hierarchies and collectives are put about by those who a) never worked outside of hierarchies and b) those who wish to push the omnipotence of the hierarchy as the sole practical form of human organisation. In practice non hierarchies are no more demanding as organisational structures than hierarchies, though from the perspective of quality of life they are very much greatly to be preferred.

[5] Nobody is of course going to object to fighting child pornography and steps could be taken without the intrusion of the state, though watch the card trick being performed that will cast the net suitably wide.

[6] And of course the same tools being used so effectively by the left at the moment can just as easily be adopted by the right.

Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.