I’m reading one of those great Very Short Introductions to… from Oxford University Press at the moment about Anarchism. I cannot recommend it highly enough as a thought-provoking bridge between political theory and changes the internet is creating for business and society.
For example, it's fascinating to learn that at the core of anarchist thinking about healthcare, education, business etc is the notion of small, self-organising communities with little or no central control. Compare this to how the internet operates and a number of parallels become clear.
Tellingly, the author – noted British anarchist Colin Ward – writes:
“anarchist concepts will be continually reinvented or rediscovered, in fields never envisaged by the propagandists of the past, as people in so many areas of human activity search for alternatives to the crudities and injustices of both free-market capitalism and bureaucratic managerial socialism.”
Building on this drive for an alternative perspective for organisational theory, Ward outlines what he believes would be the four defining pillers for an anarchist theory of organizations:
- Voluntary
- Functional
- Temporary
- Small
I find this mind blowing. Every single one of these fits almost perfectly the different types of organising taking place on the internet.
- Voluntary – read Benkler’s Wealth of Networks: the idea of people giving their time and expertise for free or on a voluntary basis is revolutionisng production – both of knowledge and physical goods.
- Functional – slightly more vague, but suffice to say that while design is important to an extent, good functionality and usability are key to the success of internet tools. Take for example the basic simplicity of sites like of Wikipedia and del.icio.us – they might not be pretty but they do the job successfully.
- Temporary – While this may seem an odd choice of criteria at first fi you clarify what Ward means then it makes perfect sense. Rather than meaning short-lived, Ward uses the term to indicate a willingness to change; to be shaped by the ends of the user or community. This is a key proponent of web 2.0 tools. All ‘social’ websites by their definition are open to the requirements of the community.
- Small - again this criteria needs further clarification. As Ward suggests in the quotation about, the ideas of anarchists are perpetually being re-shaped to meet current social, political and economical conditions. Ward specifies small as a key criteria as he talks only of the offline world where anarchist initaitves need to remain small in order to be sustainable. The internet reduces all barriers to scalability and supports many small-scale communities or one large one.
So what does this all mean for us as digital strategists...? I haven’t yet worked that out (and would welcome any suggestions) but ultimately I think this starts to offer us ways of applying established political (anarchist) theories to the online world.
Perhaps we can even use this information to guide our clients more successfully through the social and business changes they are experiencing. Maybe not mention that it is based on anarchist theory, eh?
Technorati tags: anarchism, political theory, internet, organisational change
I think the most interesting aspect of this comes from anarchism's rejection of a central authority or governing body, and what that teaches us about the digital space. Historically PR or marketing has acted as that central authority, 'governing' 'conversation' through tight control of messaging, completely owning relationships with the old broadcast-style media and never getting anything in return. New media necessarily means that there is no more central authority in these online communities; the PR person can only hope to be a member of the community no more or less respected or authoritative than any other member until the PR person demonstrates their value to the community by providing transparent, accurate and relevant information.
Without sounding too much like an iconoclast, as more and more media shifts online and online conversations continue to grow in importance for brand perceptions there are a lot of old media types who are going to be very surprised as how irrelevant they have become [read: already are, they just don't know it yet] in the digital space.
Posted by: Jason Mical | April 09, 2008 at 07:26 AM
Simon, I'd agree there are parallels, but I',m wary of strtching it too far. If big business pulled the plug on the 'pipes' that makes up the internet, the vast pools of knowledge that allow us to be "small and beautiful" would dry up.
I would argue that the internet is extremely capitalistic in a very classical sense. Free barriers to entry, perfect knowledge, etc. It does however, open up the opportunities to decentralise masssively, (ironically) on a massive scale.
Besides I like those free-market crudités, especially with a garlic dip.
Posted by: Andrew Arnold | April 09, 2008 at 10:23 AM
@Jason - yeah, you've nailed neatly what this means for PR/marketing! much appreciated.
@Andrew - I see your point re. the big players who facilitate mass internet access, but the internet's infastructure was created neutral and can function without the involvement of big corps - hence the drive to protect net neutrality.
Good point about the crudites/crudities!! That's Word auto-correct fot you.
Posted by: Simon Collister | April 09, 2008 at 01:19 PM
As someone involved at a radicalised libertarian anarchist social space in my spare time, and Tech PR in my work time, this is a really interesting point to me. While I don't self-identify as an Anarchist, and hold serious reservations about applying this kind of theory wholesale, the benefits of organising autonomously in the real and in the virtual are undeniable.
I think the underlying involvement of outside corporations in the dominance of social media is where this argument falls down. While, as you correctly state, the internet can function without the big corps, would, say, social networks have taken off in the way that they have without their infiltration and monetary backing? Sure, while a network will begin as a single idea in a single bedroom, it's important to face the distinction here, I think, between autonomy by choice, or by necessity.
Essentially, whether that idea was originally profit-driven or not, bring in a takeover offer of the right $$$, and another online venture is rebranded under the highest-bidders umbrella. I'm not suggesting for a second that all developers should start wearing berets and chaining themselves to their local exchange, but it would be folly not to recognise that most internet venture is ultimately capitalistic in essence. Nothing to be cynical about there, either, like Danny DeVito said in Heist ‘everybody needs money, that’s why it's called money!’ The boom/bust cycle might have left a more wary internet economy in its wake, but the concept of a truly not-for-profit online space has been unachievable since the first pop-up. Even ad-free Wikipedia must pay for its hosting.
I have noticed a similarity between early-adopter/heavy web-user/'tech nerds' (© The Register, ha) culture and the attitudes and ideals of activists and those involved in organising outside of mainstream society. I’m talking about scepticism towards ‘the man’ and resistance to change – to pluck an example, the dissidence over Yahoo's Flickr buyout. People nurture these communities lovingly, visiting everyday, forging friendships, meeting people, committing their personal information and data, and in Flickr's case, snapshots of their lives – only to find out it was all up for sale to highest bidder. Organic growth gets the big 'Y!' slapped on it was no surprise, neither was the displeasure. Social networks under heavy use become an extension of people’s private lives, perhaps the last space yet to be branded, no wonder the ‘big corps’ face resistance. What I do find exciting and intriguing is that people are more willing to organise and protest online than in the real world. That people are less likely to, in Ward’s words, ‘consent to be governed’ in the online sphere, is very revealing. I know I’m straying into Clay Shirky territory here but the guy’s got a point.
Still, As dressed up in wide-eyed ‘online futures’ idealism as it might be, the endless buzz about 'exploiting' social media for PR/marketing always comes back to getting messages across to a (more and more) tailored demographic in the hope that they’ll spend, spend, spend. It’s for this reason that connecting anything that goes on with web 2.0 (a term which, after all, was the product of a damage limitation brainstorm post-dot com crash…) with Anarchy in its purest sense would make a lot of punks I know spit. That’s not to say that widespread application of the big-A principles wouldn’t make the Internet a much, much nicer place. Sorry to ramble, I’m inspired!
Posted by: Bryony | April 11, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Wow. There’s a lot going on here. I’ll try to unpack some of it and give you my answers /responses.
Firstly – totally agree: there are huge benefits of self/autonomous organisation. But I would love to know your reservations for not applying similar ‘anarchist’ thinking on a wider scale?
Next up – I take issue with your argument that social networks wouldn’t have taken off without backing or “infiltration” of big corporate players. In fact I’d argue the opposite: big finance got involved when it smelled the success of what n. Facebook had already delivered – a self-organising, committed, sustainable community. You can argue that actually Facebook was put under strain after big money and marketing made it ‘big’. The amount of spam from marketing and opportunities for id theft increased hugely after it developed mass appeal.
I also think that a distinction needs to be made about the concept of ‘voluntary’. Although I used this term to imply giving time and knowledge freely or willingly, I want to clarify that this doesn’t mean you can’t make money or gain value through your actions. So while you argue that most internet venture is capitalist in essence I would suggest that anarcho-capitalism is just as much anarchism as anarcho-socialism. The methods are the same, the outcome different. The problem may lie when social tools that have grown on the back of self-organisation are bought by big corps when then insist on returning top-management to the community. This risks destroying the ethos that made the site desirable to the corp in the first place.
In your last paragraph you refer to the idea of web 2.0 as a term created top-down as post-dotcom damage limitation. I’m not so sure about this. I kind of believe the term was created by the users and then appropriated by big companies.
Plus I’m not trying to link web 2.0 with Anarchism per se. Merely suggesting that a lot of the social web’s features (ie. loosely connected autonomous networks) fit entirely with Anarchism.
Also, are Punks necessarily the best examples of anarchism? Or are they traditionally associated with decrying order and demanding chaos?? That isn’t *technically* anarchy.
In a nutshell what I’m saying isn’t that anarchist ideas will make the internet a better place. The internet is – at its roots – a potentially great place based on loosly connected autonomous networks. We need to make the real world more like the internet!
Posted by: Simon Collister | April 14, 2008 at 09:13 AM
Sorry it took me a little while to reply, Tim only just alerted me to this! First off, when I talk sceptically about applying anarchism on a wider scale, it’s because I suppose I see society in less black-and-white terms than many anarchists that are actively waiting for ‘the revolution,’ and I take exception to notions of Class War that are bandied about (seriously, it happens) which are often bundled up in so-called anarchist action. In my experience, as a group they tend to be as bad when it comes to sloganeering as any over-zealous PRO you might meet ;) My involvement, in spite of those who might decry me as a bleeding-heart rubber-spined liberal, stems from a belief in…well, just what you described as ‘a self-organising, committed, sustainable communities’ ..except they’re even more rewarding in 3D. Which brings me to your next point about Facebook – I feel like this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Yes, it was still massive before the big corps got involved, and I suppose that proves your point, but the way its morphed into zeitgeisty lifestyle mag fodder has a distinctly corporate-backing whiff. Maybe because developers don’t necessary sniff out those kind of opportunities for their site, and are more interested in grassroots development?
Def. agree with what you said about anarcho-capitalism. Unfortunately the union of what are too often considered polar opposites raises hackles very quickly, the problem being that the prefix in itself is stigmatised, its so tied up with the ‘chaos punx’ image that people rarely get further than that. Also agree that volunteering needn’t be exclusive of profit, it’s just all about doing it in a way that doesn’t exploit anyone. To use a very basic example, at the social centre we’d buy £30 worth of food from the farmer’s market, make 30 (huge) portions for £2.50 each, and have a lump of profit to donate to the club. That’d either go on repairs or go towards paying off (very slowly) one of the bonds that had been used to buy the space, or buy the next days food – and so it goes. When you try and relate those principles back to the Internet, it gets a little shakier though - i.e. you could argue that there’s no real justification to make more money than it costs to host your site, but then you’d have a lot of irate bloggers. There are always going to be the Cluetrain idealists who see the bigger picture, or a bigger picture, anyway, and those who make what they can out of a situation. Which, like you say, is precisely where that top-down management problem comes in.
For me, there’s something innately more satisfying (to me, anyway) in using sites like twitter.com and muxtape.com that deliberately keep their interfaces almost crudely simple, and I think it says something quite important about what people want out of their Internet usage now, that these sites are flourishing in that stripped-down state. Saying that, I literally just noticed that muxtape now have a ‘buy-it-on-Amazon’ link on every upload. Sigh. NOW they look crude, ho ho.
Re: the origins of the phrase Web 2.0, I’ll take your word for it, to be honest it was less a statement of fact than a ‘that’s what someone told me once!’ To make an obvious closing point, user-generated content is only as good as the users and their content though, which is where the problem with Facebook arises for me, for all the coverage, the content is not very… interesting? I guess I prefer the more outwardly creative platforms, but put a thousand monkeys infront of a thousand iBooks and one of them has to blog something vaguely inspiring, right?!
Posted by: Bryony | April 16, 2008 at 05:48 PM
Woah - again, a lot going on. I think in a nutshell I am trying to think constructively about anarchist models and bow they mirro a lot of what is happening online. However, I do disagree with you when you say that the real-world ("3D") manifestations of anarchism are more rewarding. It's not about on/offline but the end result; plus if the interent is helping manifest essentially anarchist outcomes then isn't that the ultinmate reward - even if you don't call it 'anarchism'.
Also, re. your point about facebook becoming "zeitgeisty lifestyle mag fodder" highlighting its corporate backing - re-read Ward's point about anarchist structures being 'temporary'. They morph into something else to maintain their usefulness. Is this is what has happened FB?
However, you rightly highlight the people advocating class war are largely ill-informed and base thei ideas on naive/teenage reactionism rarther than wanting a tangible beneficial outcome.
Re. anarcho-capitalism - I think you're being guided by experience/perceptions on a lot of these points (some I agree with; others I don't - but let's save that discssion for another time ;o))
But I don't believe that your real world vs online example works for me. I don't really understand how you suggest "there’s no real justification to make more money than it costs to host your site" because "you’d have a lot of irate bloggers." Why. Says who. Isn't that a pre-judgement?
HOWEVER - a big thank you for the tip-off on muxtape.com. All I need to do know is find a way of downloading the mp3's ;)
Posted by: Simon Collister | April 19, 2008 at 06:09 PM
Nice to see some enthusiasm for anarchist principles from within the bear pit of PR :)
Isn't that one of the most interesting aspects of the social web - that it's invoking new-old models that have otherwise been erased from popular history?
Another concept that stalks the world again largely thanks to the net is 'The Commons'; partly incubated by open source, partly an emergent value of online culture.
Rock on.
Posted by: dan mcquillan | May 29, 2008 at 01:03 AM
Hi Dan. Thanks for your comments. Anarchism is alive and well in the world of PR - at least within edelman's digital team :)
What is fascinating for me is the idea that attempts at anarchism in the past have foundered due to their inability to scale beyond small-scale, localised/regionalised groups.
the itnernet is truly taking the older original concept and allowing it to be applied across a much wider - and geographically dispersed sphere. Having read (some of) Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks which looks at the future of economy, democracy and culture - a lot of what he argues for can be described - and is by Benkler himself - as anarchism or libertarianism is practice, if not theory.
I also like your idea about a return to relevance of The Commons. I also like to think that William Morris' notion of small, niche communities of artisan producers is also due a come back via the internet too.
Posted by: Simon Collister | May 29, 2008 at 10:34 PM
ignore the signs
Posted by: emma | September 19, 2008 at 11:41 PM