Free Admission.
What does it mean when the most free, progressive forms of government increasingly appear like the totalitarian states of dystopic science fiction novels, when political activists who do not fit within mainstream political categories are prosecuted as terrorists?
The author of How Nonviolence Protects the State and Anarchy Works will talk about how democracy functions not as an egalitarian system that guarantees freedom for all its members, but as a more effective form of social control that upholds hierarchy and authority by winning the symbolic participation of the majority.
The basic values of Western democracy-- equality, rights, plurality, the individual-- though they appear liberatory are in fact wrapped up with the basic alienations of state and capital. Horizontal, decentralized network societies, on the other hand, not only can function effectively but can also allow the creation of a level of freedom unattainable under democratic government.
|
