Social media is here to stay

Submitted by AWL on 20 May, 2014 - 5:16

The replies to my article in Solidarity from Jodi Dean (318), Martin Thomas (319) and James Doran (320) centre around questions of the impact of the internet, and particularly Facebook, on political organisation and activism.

I agree with Jodi and Martin that the internet does not replace older forms of organising, both in terms of on-the-ground union and political organising, and in terms of organisational forms such as the union and party.

Network forms of organisation that emerge from social media lack long-term commitment and organisational structure, structured democracy and accountability, an ability to formulate and execute strategy and organisational memory. (For more on this, see my article “The Party’s Not Over”).

So I do not take the Internet to be a technological fix that will solve the political impasse of the left. There are a range of important things it cannot do. As I said in the article, it amplifies some of the problems of the left and acts as a mirror to others.

Accordingly advocating networked culture as a replacement for “vertical” organisation is wrong. Making the Internet part of our activity does not provide a substitute for formulating a political strategy or creating a durable organisation. Nor does a refusal to ditch vertical forms of organisation imply a rejection of democracy, as many have concluded from the implosion of the SWP’s Stalinoid caricature of democratic centralism – rather the opposite.

The Arab Spring was not a Facebook or Twitter revolution. However where the Internet did play a role was in coordinating protests, giving people confidence that they were not alone and enabling the spread of information in real time. It also enabled international solidarity – for example, the AWL made contact with the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services in Egypt, circulated their material and organised practical solidarity by inviting its leader, Kemal Abbas, to tour the UK.

It is not just that “it may not be impossible to build solidarity online” as Jodi grudgingly admits. There are many similar examples where online complement offline methods of organising and have had a practical impact on the outcome of struggles. (I discuss some examples and problems in relation to trade unions in my article “Solidarity across cyberspace: Internet campaigning, labour activism and the remaking of trade union internationalism”). They can, for example, be a means of showing support for and so boosting the morale of workers on strike. They can bring people together to report on and thus counter police tactics on the street. The key advantages are being able to act at a distance and enabling easy direct contact and flows of information. James Doran is right here. So it's wrong to counterpose the offline work of organising using old methods to online activity which is seen as only being a distraction from the hard tasks facing the left.

Where I disagree with Jodi then is whether what she calls the context of Internet use, “the larger set of media practices involved in networked communication” are so all-embracingly negative as to reduce scope for serious use of the Internet by the left to the trivial or preclude their use for projects of solidarity and political action that would not otherwise be possible. My answer, despite recognising many of the negative symptoms and the dominance of capitalist interests in shaping the net, is “no”.

As long as it enables direct two-way communication, virtual connections do not form an absolute obstacle to promoting the goals of the left, though some forms may make it more difficult through limitations imposed by the tools used and their owners. It is possible to create (cyber)spaces which support organising and solidarity or provide a basis for a collectivity that could not exist otherwise.

I am not advocating 'clicktivism', though I think it's probably an exaggerated problem, at least amongst committed activists – does the left really have a culture “dominated by Facebook and smartphone” as Martin suggests? The Internet is obviously not a substitute for traditional forms of left politics from the demonstration and strike to the newspaper and meeting. Jodi is right that some forms of Internet activism such as the use of petitioning do reflect a bourgeois liberal concept of politics though I don’t think that means their use should be absolutely rejected any more than standing in parliamentary elections. We should be critical of organisations such as Avaaz and Change.Org who promote them as the way to obtain change but not reject them as such.

As to the individualistic nature of Internet action, I did refer to the “me-centric” nature of Facebook and also accept that decisions to act are more atomised and individualised online than they would be, say, in a mass meeting. However this does not preclude the building of active and effective online communities which may either be the product of or spill over into offline action.

I did not intend to portray Martin Thomas as a technophobe. He may well agree with much of what I've written here. However, in pursuit of our shared belief that Marxists should be outwardly-oriented, informed and prepared to study seriously, Martin has over the years written articles that picked up on a varied range of critics of the Internet including Malcolm Gladwell's view that the net can only produce weak inter-personal ties, weak claims one cannot read in depth from a screen and Nicholas Carr's argument that computer use reconfigures brain circuitry.

Nowhere does he provide an explanation of why the Internet has the impact he sees that is rooted in the social and economic changes that occurred alongside its growth. The consequence is that the problems he talks of appear as tied to individual forms of behaviour and the availability of particular technologies. In his original article, Martin identifies “continuous, partial attention” as a cause of the decline in the culture of the left without further explanation as to where it has suddenly come from. There follows a bemoaning of students who play with their mobile phones during lectures but no reason given for why this might be the case beyond “the always-on, wraparound character of Facebook.”

It is necessary to understand the broader social and economic causes, which I tried to outline in my article, if we are to develop an analysis of the potential and problems the Internet poses for the left and what to do about them. Martin suggests “the balance will change with livelier class struggle” with shifts to technologies he sees “as almost unqualifed boons”. I think this is mechanical and ignores the way social media have become embedded in all sorts of aspects of everday life. It is this view I referred to as utopian: “expecting things to improve automatically as a result of an upturn in class struggle”.

The best activists will, as ever, go onto the streets when the time comes but, as every major struggle of the last years has shown, social media will accompany them there. The choice between online and offline activity and organising is not an 'either-or' choice as Jodi Dean suggests. Rather we should advocate a mix that minimises the detrimental effects on the culture of the left, while building on the proven benefits for left organisation, even though these do not mean jettisoning older, established methods of organising.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.