beyond jihad

Beyond Jihad



By now its becoming clear that the Pakistani government doesn't really control the country's northwest - the area next to Afganistan. Powerful, non-governmental organizations, many quite friendly to the Taliban, largely determine what happens in civil society.

Is this so different than what happens in Medellin or Northern Ireland? Jakarta has often become a city "where chaos reigned" - or is it that various networks, mobs and crews took over for a while? The Zapatistas declared the independence of a whole section of Mexico. The Brazilian government has had to send the army into Rio to re-take control of the favelas. Many states in southern African no longer are very effective at guaranteeing "domestic order". There just not in control. Nation-states are having a bad time.



How about India, a country that, Interestingly enough, we hear little about? The country is beset with social turmoil, violence, corruption, "chaos and mob control". You can get the flavor of the political turmoil by reading William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali (1998). He travels modern India to tell the stories of the lawlessness and violence which have become endemic to that country. Here are a couple of short vignettes:

A visitor that wants to visit the tree that Buddha sat under in the state of Bihar is advised not to go at all. There are no local police; you have to pay off a series of gangs who control the highways of the state if you expect to get there. You might have to give up your car. Bihar has collapsed in corruption, violence and caste warfare, where untouchables mob up to get their SUVs by any means necessary. At the time of publication, 33 members of the State Assembly had criminal records, one with 50 cases of murder pending. In 1962, 60% assembly members were from the top 2 castes; by '92, the number was 10% while 53% came from the lowest castes - most were considered "gang leaders".

Bangalore is the country's "Silicon Valley". It hyperdeveloped from a population of 1.6 million in 1971 to 6 million in 1996 to become the most modern city in the country. Attacks against the agents of consumer capitalism are a city tradition. In the '90s, the Karnataka State Farmers Association repeatedly invaded offices of Cargills (a global corp pushing sterile seeds), threw computers and desks through the windows and burned everything on the street. Other farmers invaded KFC and did likewise. When the government announced that the Miss World contest would be held there in 1997, the state almost erupted into civil war. Strikes, bombs, dumping carloads of cow dung, marches and protests became a daily occurance.

The massive social disruption that exists in India is further evidence of a profound and international class conflict that increasingly is beginning to dominate countries around the world. The traditional and accepted avenues for political power are shrinking, while there is a steady increase in new forms of political struggle that originate and are organized from the outside of what is usually accepted as "society". This process is objective - at its root, one effect of cyber-technology.

So what's really going on? Global capitalism is rapidly increasing the already surging economic polarization throughout the world. Some 40% of the world's people - 2.5 to 3 billion - are shut out of the productive process and survive on less than $1 a day. They cannot work. The global economy, driven by computers and robots, has no use for their labor. It cannot exploit them so it won't pay them. They live as best they can by selling whatever they can find or doing anything to get enough to eat with. They face starvation, slavery and disease. Most of these people are urbanized and concentrated in cities.

The face of globalization is an ever-spreading consumer capitalism anointed with the glitz of pop culture, symbolized by the golden arches and plastic trinkets, advertising everywhere and malls. The dispossesed come into contact with this form of globalization every day. However they cannot access it, since they have no money to buy things with.

Functional or not, nation-states are bound to enforce a law which isn't written down - an economic law of capitalism - which dictates that no one may consume if they cannot pay for it. This law determines how everything is distributed in McWorld. In fact it is simply a social relationship that is fundamental to the continued existence of capitalism. Those that cannot buy are denied access to even the cheapest and most essential products that sustain life.

Our carefully managed news spends little time discussing the ramifications of the polarization of wealth. Are we really supposed to believe that this huge section of the world is sitting around doing nothing? What is generally characterized as "chaos" is often the result of the world's economic outcasts beginning to out-organize their local governments and address their "distribution problems" independently. In the last decade, one major expression of this impulse is the demand, raised in country after country, that the government spend money on social programs to guarantee the necessities of life. South Africa's demand for inexpensive AIDS medecine, reguardless of cost, is an expression of this.

The struggle for distribution takes the form of a new popular, impulse towards networking, which is proving quite effective in shifting power from weakened, local governments. Often cyber-enhanced, networking operates across society - on the organizational level, the social level, the doctrinal level and which is grounded in narrative.

Humans have always organized their experience by telling stories. Stories tell who "we" are and how different we are from "them". Stories communicate a sense of cause, purpose, mission and vindicate values that hold "us" together. Both Bush and bin Laden spend a lot of time trying to establish their stories to justify their jihads.

Jihad is another form of social struggle that rises on the efforts of the dispossessed to get the stuff they need. It is far from an Arab phenomenon. The conservatism of the Saudis is matched by the narrowness of the Militias. Skinhead nationalism and fascism coexist with massive drug cartels that work on their image and portray themselves as local benefactors. A thousand ideologies of regionalism, racism, insularity, sectarianism and identity politics create their stories to attack the form - but not the content of - globalization. This impulse ranges worldwide.

The outcasts begin, of course, to fight with the ideas available to them. These generally are ideologies of past eras - male dominance, religion, regionalism, parochialism, etc. Bin Laden, after all, has never said anything against capitalism. Perhaps because he has a mere $300 million, this is not an issue for him. But its irrefutable that the driving cause of the world's misery are the limitations on work, cooperation and distribution that capitalism imposes. To direct the attack against the forms of modernism is to mislead and confuse.

The destructive vortex that is threatening humanity can be reversed by one simple change - and none of the jihads dare even discuss it. The simple and obvious solution is to give everything away for free. It's all so cheap anyway. This means establishing the principle that distribution is based on need, not money. Studies of the US medical system have shown that it cheaper (not to mention more efficient) to simply provide universal medical care for free than it is to maintain the current system. The California electricity crisis has also shown that capitalism inevitably gravitates to the most expensive system, since their plans are driven by the need for maximum profit.

What prevents us from taking the next step forward? The answer is that a specific social relation - really just a way that people are expected to treat each other - is hidden behind the shibboleth of private property. This is the supposed right of corporations to own the technology that creates the wealth of society. This should not be confused with the notion of personal property - the things each person uses every day. Personal property is a fundamental human right.

Private property is just another story - a narrative of how things are supposed to be - and not a very good one at that. When you examine this narrative closely, it is full of absurd, infantile myths and foolishness that we are simply supposed to accept, and which justify and laud downright anti-social behavior. Capitalism has done a very poor job with the technology they claim is theirs. They don't deserve to own it. When these tools become the collective property of us all, it will be a lot easier to cooperate and do it right.

In one respect, the situation is similar to China from 1840 to 1910. The massive destruction of the old society is resisted at first with the decrepit ideologies of a previous age. China experienced never-ending social turmoil as imperialism graduated pushed in. The conflagrations, often massive, took the form of two Opium Wars, the Taiping rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion and numerous warlord ventures. Nothing could move forward until Sun Yat Sen articulated a story of a new, modern, democratic China in 1910.

It really doesn't matter whether the form is the imperialism of the past or globalization today, capitalism coexists quite comfortably with and has vast experience encouraging warlordism. In fact, the first of what's come to be known as "jihad" was organized by the US itself in 1979 to fight the Soviets in Afganistan. Any story works if it serves to misdirect and keep the locals divided. One of the most important tasks of war, well studied by Colin Powell, is to define the enemy to himself:

"You're not workers, you're middle class."
"You're not poor, you're Americans (or Germans, Russians, Egyptians, etc)."
"You're not fighting against capitalism; you're fighting for jihad".

If there really wasn't an Osama bin Laden, the US would have to invent him.

Sooner or later it will be abundantly clear that we cannot win by fighting back, by responding with old ideologies that reflect a world that is rapidly passing out of existence. The only solution is to fight forward to a new world by telling the story of our interdependence and our common values as humanity. This story runs through every religion. It is as old as human experience and as new and as hot as the latest salsa step. Then we will quickly remove the absurd social blocks that prevent the distribution of economic and social abundance to all.


Steven Miller, Oakland, 10-27-01


Check out: Barber. Jihad vs McWorld.

Fulford. The Triumph of Narrative