Time for Introspection?

In his Direct Action: An Ethnography (2009), the anarchist and intellectual David Graeber recalls an interesting discussion among anticapitalist activists preparing for demonstrations in Quebec City in 2001. The anticapitalists were discussing an activist group from Montreal that they felt had a very different ethos than they did: it was called Operation SalAMI. The group's members were “not anti-capitalists,” just “the usual anti-corporate types,” and they were Gandhian pacifists who preached absolute nonviolence—no swearing, no graffiti, no vandalism, no aggressive gestures whatsoever (5). The anticapitalists had little time for the SalAMI self-righteous types, who seemed to think their supposed moral superiority gave them the right to micromanage the organization of actions. One activist speaks up to denounce the whole concept of pacifism as “fundamentally elitist” (6). This sparks more denouncements: What good to poor people is the moral superiority these activists display by passively accepting a police beating, especially when it is poor people who have to face the rough end of state force on a day-to-day basis? What good does pacifism do except encourage the underprivileged to endure their lowly place in the system's hierarchy? But Graeber finds the whole conversation “a little pat and one-sided” and decides to challenge those present, asking: “What about the poor people's groups that critique militant tactics as a product of middle-class white privilege, that real oppressed groups would never be allowed to get away with?” The response to Graeber is perhaps rather predictable: “Someone changes the subject” (7).It is precisely this type of unreflective discussion within the alter-globalization movement—the movement seeking a radical alternative to the current form of neoliberal globalization—that Hoofd's Ambiguities of Activism attempts to address. Hoofd implores activists to reflect upon their own position within the neoliberal order and to recognize that they are not detached from it—in fact, they are inextricably tied to it. As a result, they carry within their activism the ethos of the system they so deplore, and they inevitably help reinforce and further the ethos of capitalism through their actions. Hoofd's argument is not that alter-globalist activists have nothing valuable to say about social justice and liberty (the above criticisms of Gandhian pacifism clearly have some merit), nor is it that activists have a secret agenda to promote the capitalist system. Nevertheless, Hoofd attempts to deconstruct alter-globalist discourse to demonstrate that well-meaning alter-globalists are unwitting accomplices in the accelerating production and reproduction of the neoliberal order. For Hoofd, it is only by slowing down and reflecting upon their own arguments that alter-globalists can hope to throw a spanner in the works of the capitalist system. If they blinker their vision, ignore criticism, and plow on with an agenda of more and more connections, expanding networks of resistance, and proliferating activism, they can only hope to contribute to a capitalist system that actually favors their emphasis on proliferation, that is, on a certain form of productive action and accelerating growth. Alter-globalism, then, is complicit in the runaway overproduction inherent in the neoliberal order that is driving our civilization to burnout and catastrophe.Like Graeber, Hoofd is well positioned to comment on the dynamics of alter-globalist activism, having spent two decades as an activist struggling against what she perceives as the injustices entrenched within the process of neoliberal globalization (and, like Graeber, she focuses on the type of activism she is involved in, what she calls “viral” activism [4–5]: loosely organized, anarchistic, radically anticapitalist action, as well as the intellectual political ideas that support it). Her aim is not to destroy alter-globalism by picking it apart and dismissing it as an illusion; rather, her well-intentioned critique of the movement is designed to refresh the “quest for global justice” (x). She informs us that she was driven to this critique by her own experience of exacerbation as an alter-globalist activist. She could see that in universities, nonprofit organizations, and on the streets, there were “many good people fighting for a more just world,” so why was it that the world was not becoming any more just? Rather than simply blame the evil Other of the capitalist system, Hoofd felt there was a need for introspection. Commenting on her own experiences, and displaying a humility not always found within activist circles, Hoofd recognizes that the institutions she has often opposed as an activist—for example, the European Union or university bureaucracies—are not as antithetical to the anticapitalist groups as those groups tend to paint them: in fact, the two supposedly oppositional forces often share much in terms of their goals and values (2–3). She does not doubt, for example, that however flawed they may be, many EU polices really are well-intentioned attempts to democratize and increase the opportunities available to disenfranchised people, and what left-wing activist could disagree with the ideals of such a project? Hoofd speculates that these supposedly oppositional groups share an ethos because they are both tied to a global techno-logical structure that engenders this ethos. And because both groups are implicated in the system, it is very difficult to decide who is promoting the genuinely liberatory message: the marginal radicals or the establishment progressives.For Hoofd, then, many contemporary activists embrace the hegemonic message of the ruling class, what she calls the emerging global “speed elite,” a class that relies not so much on traditional status markers such as race and gender but on its monopoly of technologies that accelerate the global integration that generates the wealth the speed-elite exploit. She suggests that activists actually fall for the neoliberal fantasy that new media and new transportation and communication technologies empower and liberate humanity, uncritically embracing the technologies in their own struggles for liberation. The activists then recycle the ideological discourse embedded in the technology, preaching “connection, liberation, multiplicity, and overcoming boundaries” (12), a message that ultimately supports the neoliberal cause to open up the world to capitalist production and the development of multiple, diverse consumer markets. Hoofd focuses on three forms of radical contemporary left-wing activism—new media activism, no-border activism, and climate-change activism—in order to demonstrate the contradictions and complicities with neoliberalism found within the melting pot of alter-globalism. Her analysis of climate-change activism is particularly interesting, for she notes that while climate-change activism recognizes the unsustainability of the acceleration of capitalist production and calls, like she does, for a slowing down, it embraces the liberalist-humanist notion (recharged by neoliberalism) that human mismanagement can be overcome by the creative human subject-agent who through effective action can produce positive change. She notes that the climate-change narrative has become represented as a hyperreal apocalyptic melodrama, charged with moralism and impossible to critique without being lambasted as a right-wing fanatic. There is no time for reflection, then; the only solution is action—immediate, transformative action. But, for Hoofd, the call to arms is highly entrepreneurial and ultimately capitalist, reliant on scientific notions of ecological balance, environmentalist romanticizations of nature, and the development of “sustainable” Western technologies and techniques, all of which are intimately tied to neoliberal fantasies of a proactive humanity liberating itself from its wretched life-condition.There is something very refreshing about Hoofd's willingness to push the critique of her own activism to a Derridean deconstructive extreme—indeed, she admits that there is much irony in the writing of her book, especially in that her call for slowing down is ultimately a call for action designed to reinvigorate an activist movement that she does not think can be separated from a neoliberal discourse of freedom and progress. While she holds onto humanist notions of justice and liberty dearly, she accepts that these are liberalist, culturally specific concepts that must be embraced tentatively and with an open mind. Hoofd's argument is made particularly compelling by the way it combines relevant historical analysis, thorough explorations of high-end leftist theory, and well-informed discussions of grassroots activism. The result is a rich and thoughtful discussion that inverts Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's theory of an empowered multitude. For Hoofd, Hardt and Negri's conceptualization of desire-driven liberation is the epitome of dangerous left-wing scholar activism that is bursting with the expansive, unfettered ethos of the neoliberal order (see 70–74). However, perhaps in this analysis Hoofd fails to push the deconstruction deep enough, because in Empire (2001), Hardt and Negri make clear that they are aware they are embracing the productive, diversifying spirit of neoliberalism. Like Hoofd, they accept that there is no longer any hope in trying to find a pure “outside” to a postmodern capitalism marked by its pervasiveness. However, they suggest that the ethos of postmodern capitalism is becoming turned on itself, for in stirring up notions of unbounded freedom, the capitalist class (Hoofd's speed-elite) places itself in an increasingly precarious position, becoming increasingly reliant on the productive activism of a multitude that finds the speed-elite's privileged position intolerable. Could we deconstruct Hoofd's argument further, then, and suggest that her calls for the deceleration of the neoliberal process are ultimately conservative, based on an outdated notion of humanist justice that has become impossible in the age of radical desire-driven liberation? This is not an easy question to answer, and the self-deconstructive statements in her book suggest Hoofd may be all too aware of the impossibility of the call to deactivation she feels she has to make. Regardless, what seems certain is that Hoofd has helped to open up a probing debate on reflection just when it is sorely needed, with the Left too often caught up in its own world of self-righteous or teleological certainty while the neoliberal system continues to plow on, even in the wake of a devastating economic crisis and multiple social upheavals across the world.

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