nettime China's New Left
Any consideration of the state of the worldwide anticapitalist movement necessarily faces, at some point, the question of China, which is rapidly becoming the workhouse of the world. George Bush may be right when he says his policies are creating jobs -- jobs in China. This story makes mention of Wang Hui's book, China's New Order, which is available in English from Harvard University Press, and is an excellent account of the fallout from the student/democracy movement of 1987 and Chinese political/intellectual life today. McKenzie Wark New York Times Week in Review http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25kahn.html?pagewanted=printposit= January 25, 2004 LOSING GROUND China's Leaders Manage Class Conflict Carefully By JOSEPH KAHN BEIJING If Karl Marx were alive today, Guangdong might be his Manchester. Like England's 19th century industrial center, 21st century Guangdong, China's southern commercial hub, is the world's factory. And like Manchester, Guangdong is also creating a stark divide between labor and capital, a split that once became the ideological basis for revolutions around the world, including China's own. Tens of millions of industrial workers are struggling toward basic rights, to earn enough to send their children to school, for laws that would allow them to bargain collectively. And they are losing. If Marx could see Guangdong today he would die of anger, says Dai Jianzhong, a labor relations expert at the Beijing Academy of Social Science. From that perspective, China is speeding in reverse. Even more than England or the United States in their industrializing heydays, China's growth relies on cheap labor. The foreign-invested factories here, including production centers for most multinational companies, depend on a flexible work force that actually grows cheaper by the year. Guangdong has grown by more than 10 percent annually for the past decade. But its factory workers, mostly migrants from the interior, earn no more today than they did in 1993, several Chinese studies have found. The average wage of $50 to $70 a month also buys less today than it did in the early 1990's, meaning workers are losing ground even as China enjoys one of the longest and most robust expansions in modern history. This is partly a paradox of globalization. China has attracted more foreign investment by far than any other developing country, nearly $500 billion since it began internationalizing its economy. But it continues to draw capital essentially because it is willing to rent workers for falling returns. The free-market economic policies have not left China worse off on the whole. They have lifted it out of the ranks of the world's poorest countries, created a nascent middle class of service industry workers in the big cities, and made China the largest Asian exporter to the United States. But China is living through a Gilded Age of inequality, whose benefits are not trickling down to the 700 million or 800 million rural residents who live off the land or flock to the cities for factory or construction jobs. The situation has given rise to a new group of Marxist critics who call themselves China's new left. Wang Hui, a new left thinker, published a book late last year, titled China's New Order, attacking China's leaders for using state interference and even violence to enforce its vision of international capitalism. He says the leaders have colonized their own citizens. Not surprisingly, Chinese officials do not put it that way, and few here believe that China needs another Marxist revolution. Nor would Communist Party officials say that democracy, rather than an authoritarian political system, is needed to bring greater social justice to China. Still, Communist leaders increasingly seem convinced that neither economic growth nor China's tattered legacy of socialist laws will prevent social unrest, even violent upheaval of the kind that helped bring the party to power in 1949. President Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, have vowed to raise peasant incomes and stop the most egregious abuse of workers. Executives of multinational corporations say they have a harder time getting appointments with Mr. Wen and Mr. Hu than they did in the past. Inequality these days is too stark to be ignored, says Kang Xiaoguang, a leading political analyst in Beijing. The party has begun to recognize that its legitimacy cannot come from economic reform as such. It needs to stress fairness and justice. Doubts remain, though, whether Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen have the power, or desire, to do much about it. The capitalist road China has traveled since the latter years of Deng Xiaoping's rule in the early 1990's is Darwinian by the historical standards of the United States, England - even East Asia. The British working class first got the right to vote in the 1880's, amid England's industrialization. American industrial unions trace their roots to the early 20th century, when hazardous work
nettime Learning from Al-Quaeda
Bruce Hoffmann, Vice President for External Affairs, Director of RAND's Washington, D.C. Office, and extraordinarily prolific contributor to the roster of its pubs [1], suggests that we need to learn from the way Al-Quaeda turned itself into a global brand: Indeed, what bin Laden has done is to implement for al-Qaeda the same type of effective organizational framework or management approach adapted by many corporate executives throughout much of the industrialized world over the past decade. Just as large, multinational business conglomerates moved during the 1990s to more linear, flatter and networked structures, bin Laden did the same with al-Qaeda. Additionally, bin Laden defined a flexible strategy for the group that functions at multiple levels, using both top-down and bottom-up approaches. On the one hand, bin Laden has functioned like the president or CEO of a large multinational corporation by defining specific goals and aims, issuing orders and ensuring their implementation. ... On the other hand, he has operated as a venture capitalist by soliciting ideas from below, encouraging creative approaches and out-of the-box thinking, and providing funding to those proposals he finds promising. ... Al-Qaeda, therefore, deliberately has no single, set modus operandi- which makes it all the more formidable. Instead, bin Laden built a movement that actively encourages subsidiary groups fighting under its banner to mix and match approaches, employing different tactics and varying means of attack and operational styles in a number of locales. Underpinning al-Qaeda's worldwide operations is bin Laden's vision, self-perpetuating mythology and skilled acumen at effective communications. So we better listen up as bin Laden not only rehearses but implements the orthodoxies of neoliberal management and public relations theory. Says Hoffmann. As with many RAND reports (check their earlier pubs on what they call the Zapatista netwar, for example), what intrigues me is the extent to which the semi-sober professionalism of these commentaries betrays a fair amount of respect for the organizations they describe (or perhaps for the very capitalist logic they are thought to exemplify, suggesting that its arch-enemy is in fact its mirror image.) Implications? Not sure. Maybe follow the increasing employment of 'competitive commercial wargaming' as a consulting strategy, which continues to soar in the appreciation of competition-squeezed corporations and does strike me as an appropriate corporate counterpart to the official war on terrorism. [3] But there is more, given that commercial wargaming continues to filter back into military simulation etc., a really interesting circuit [4], sz [1] http://www.rand.org/news/experts/hoffman.html [2] Hoffmann, Bruce. What we can learn from the terrorists? (16 Jan 2004). http://www.rand.org/commentary/011604GA/learn_from_al-qaeda.pdf [3] Oriesek, Daniel F., and Roman Friedrich. Planspiele: Blick in die Zukunft. Harvard Businessmanager 5 (29 April 2003). [4] http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/9-3-wpw.htm # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime China's New Left
Worker organization may not be the only social-movement dynamic to look at, nor will class most necessarily be the primary vector along which such self-organization is likely to articulate itself. Consumer activism, much-despised by authentic leftists for its lack of a radically transformative vision, might just as well serve as an initial lever of a newly-found political assertiveness. Anyway, a story that's been all over the mainstream press is the one below, widely interpreted as an indicator of an awakening Chinese 'civil society'. Who knows, maybe No Logo will come in a distinctly Chinese format and take it from where these court cases leave off? [2] Greenpeace Int'l supports the anti-GM/Nestlé case by Eileen Zhu Yanling, and in this context, maybe also see the recent (and somewhat suprising, only makes sense to me in terms of the precedent this process will most definitely create) US attack on Greenpeace. [1] It's all civil society to me..., sz [1] http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9525 [2] access via Greenpeace International, http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/] Zhu Yanling's Long March for consumer rights Chinese consumer challenges Nestle Wed 07 January 2004 CHINA/Shanghai What motivated a mother from Shanghai to travel half way around the world to global food giant Nestlé´s HQ in Switzerland? In March 2003 Eileen Zhu Yanling was shocked to discover from the internet that Nestlé´s Nesquik milk powder, a product she had been buying regularly for her three-year-old son, contained GE ingredients without this being indicated on the label. Zhu's shock turned to anger as the thought of unknowingly feeding her son GE food preyed on her mind and she decided to sue the company for violation of her consumer rights. Zhu wrote to Nestlé headquarters in September last year about inconsistencies in their labelling policy but was not satisfied with their reply. Zhu's anger was compounded by her previous trust in Nestlé's products. Nestlé was one of the first foreign food companies to become established in China and Zhu grew up with Nestlé products. She had also studied in Switzerland and was even taken on a tour of Nestlé's Vevey headquarters by a friend. Zhu is aware of the strict GE labelling regulations in Europe and feels very strongly that large global companies like Nestlé, irrespective of national variances in these regulations, should give the same information about ingredients to consumers whether they're in Europe or China. I am angry because Nestlé has not been truthful. This is disrespectful to Chinese consumers. I believe Chinese consumers have the right to know and to choose what they are buying for their families, said Zhu in a letter she delivered personally on her visit to Nestlé's Swiss headquarters on 16th December last year. In June 2003, Shanghai 2 People's Intermediate court accepted Zhu's case and in August, with Nestlé China's agreement, the court commissioned a laboratory to test Nesquik for the presence of GE ingredients. The test was positive and was accepted as evidence by the court. Nestlé subsequently commissioned another laboratory independently without notifying the court. The results this time were predictably negative. The court has refused to accept the results of the second test as evidence. The date for the court hearing has yet to be set. Zhu is demanding compensation of 13.6 yuan (about US$ 1.6) - twice the price of the product. Greenpeace has been campaigning globally to eradicate GE ingredients from food products for many years. Many food products already contain GE ingredients, so until these can be phased out and replaced by natural ingredients we have been pushing for those products containing GE to be labelled so that consumers can make an informed choice. We heard about Eileen Zhu Yanling's case in September and committed to helping her take her concerns directly to Nestlé´s top management on December 16th last year. At the meeting a Nestlé representative told Zhu that they would continue to sell GE products worldwide with the exception of Europe where consumer rejection is strong. Nestlé's response has only strengthened her resolve to continue her fight. I am very disappointed by Nestlé's response. I have travelled to Switzerland to tell them the concerns of Chinese consumers, but Nestlé does not seem to care. Zhu said after the meeting. The meeting was conducted after Zhu gave a press conference in Lausanne. She demanded that Nestlé adopt the same policy in China as in European countries and eliminate GE ingredients from its products. She is also calling on the company to respect consumers' rights to an informed choice by properly labelling its GE products during the process of phasing out GMOs. Nestlé rejected both demands during her meeting. My demands were met with outright rejection.
nettime Strategies for Freeing Intellectual Property by Rick Prelinger
Yes, Information Wants To Be Free, but How's That Going To Happen?: Strategies for Freeing Intellectual Property Rick Prelinger Why Worry About IP While Chaos Rules? As I write in late February 2002, the United States has declared itself to be in a state of war. But even as our government asserts anti-terrorism as its first priority, corporations hustle to make the world safe for business. The courts are clogged with intellectual property lawsuits. Lawyers are busy churning out cease-and-desist letters to alleged copyright infringers. Entertainment conglomerates are consolidating their control over the fibers, cables and switches on which programming is distributed. Hackers are equated with terrorists and are forced to defend their ability to explore, reengineer and retool hardware and software. Content and advertising continue to combine into a tediously promotional happy meal. The limits of permissible speech in the mass media tighten every day. Not a quiet time, not a happy time, and under wartime cover decisions are now being made that will affect all our futures as producers and consumers of information, culture, and the arts. Today, products of the intellect are copyrighted at the moment of creation, patented before release to the world, and trademarked before sale, born not as contributions to a shared body of knowledge or heritage, but as intellectual property. Wars are raging over the ultimate control of IP, and the terms of engagement seem to change almost weekly. This conflict is likely to envelop us for a long time, and as such it's hard to know how it will play out. But this isn't an excuse for waiting to act. If there's any chance that anti-capitalist models for the distribution and control of content will ever work, we need to be thinking beyond today's ruling paradigms. In this essay, I hope to convince you that although a critique and restructuring of copyright law (and the concept of copyright in general) is immensely valuable, focusing exclusively on changing copyright law is a smokescreen. Copyright reformism focuses on fixing copyright law, rather than articulating a more fundamentally radical vision about how information, ideas, art and culture might be produced and exchanged. It constrains us into thinking in limited terms, terms that might not necessarily be our own, and most especially forces us into defensive positions. When copyright infringement is equated with stealing and terrorism, when the free exchange of content is criminalized, and when intimidating legal letters fly freely, it is easy to feel defensive, and worse, to behave reactively. When we are obliged to defend ourselves against assaults motivated by someone else's agenda, we are fighting for freedom of expression on unfriendly turf, and are unlikely to win what we deserve. Reformism is one of the first questions that arises when we think about anti-capitalism ways of seeing intellectual property. Is it really worth our time trying to solve problems created by capitalist economics while capitalism still prevails? What do we stand to gain by challenging capitalist control over IP while other kinds of property remain under the same owners? Why even bother trying to synthesize a new theory of IP, a progressive version of copyright law, or a strategy to overturn the carefully woven net of legislation that benefits the owners of IP over the rest of us? Perhaps most important, does liberating IP benefit the many, or just the relatively few heavy content users in the developed world looking for free music and movies? There are good reasons to develop anti-capitalist perspectives on intellectual property. We might, for instance, think of freer content as an end in itself, as a radically different way of thinking about the distribution of knowledge and culture, and as a utopian wedge that might lead to freer ways of circulating other goods and services. We might imagine a future where content functions to increase consciousness, improve the quality of life, and integrate culture into daily life, and consider how we might get there. And, even as most high-demand IP remains under high-level corporate control, there are a few equalizing tactics that could tip the balance towards a different kind of IP landscape a shared, profit-free body of knowledge, culture, and entertainment whose very existence might challenge long-lasting concepts of property ownership and control and stimulate popular alternatives to winner-take- all thinking. We might even imagine content that is not simply created to distract or entertain (though distraction and entertainment can be noble objectives too). Culture can illuminate and demystify property relations, and changing the way that culture is distributed can lead the way to changing how property is distributed. And all of us have an interest in halting current trends towards increased corporate control
