Folks, Below you will find the URL for a paper I recently wrote on "Computer-linked Social Movements and the Global Threat to Capitalism," together with the abstract of the paper. The way the Zapatistas have become a point of fundamental reference is highlighted but the paper goes beyond Chiapas to consider the implications of various movements linking up at the Global level against the supranational state institutions of capitalism. Harry Cleaver URL: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/polnet.html Abstract: Of all the emerging roles of computer communications in social conflict, this paper argues that the most serious challenge to the basic institutional structures of modern society flow from the emergence of computer-linked global social movements that are, increasingly, challenging both national and supranational, capitalist policy-making institutions. The suggestion is that we are currently witnessing an accelerating circulation of social conflicts whose participants recognize a common enemy: contemporary capitalism. In their increasingly common rejection of business priorities their struggles cannot but recall Marxist notions of "class warfare." Yet the common opposition to capitalism is not accompanied by the old notion of a unified alternative project of socialism. On the contrary, such a vision has been displaced by a proliferation of diverse projects and the notion that there is no need for universal rules. In response to these struggles the threatened institutions are responding in various ways, sometimes by military and paramilitary force, sometimes by co-optation aimed at reinternalizing the antagonistic forces. The problem for us is finding ever new ways to defeat these responses and continue to build new worlds. ............................................................................ Harry Cleaver Department of Economics University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1173 USA Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 478-8427 (off) (512) 475-8535 Fax:(512) 471-3510 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cleaver homepage: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index2.html Chiapas95 homepage: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html Accion Zapatista homepage: http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/ ............................................................................ --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
