1: The Lost Utopia

The Net is haunted by the dream of revolution. Once again, humanity

appears to be on the brink of a new epoch. The convergence of media,
telecommunications and computing is transforming the ways in which we
work, play and live together. Even nation states and corporate
monopolies cannot control this chaotic process of technological
transformation. Excited by the potential of the Net, contemporary
prophets predict the imminent arrival of a new paradigm. This hi-tech
future possesses many names. One guru foresees the Third Wave while
another proclaims the network society.1 For some, digital convergence
will lead to post-industrialism and post-modernity. 2 According to others, it
heralds the advent of the virtual community or the telematic society. 3
Despite their differences, all these seers agree on one core concept: the
future will be a radical break with the past. In the age of the Net, the
revolution must be permanent.

Yet this vision of the cybernetic future is already over thirty years old.
Back in the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan was the first prophet of the coming
of an information age. He claimed that the new technology of television
was forcing a dramatic change in human consciousness. Many centuries
1
Alvin Toffler explains that: ‘The reason that we chose the phrase “third
wave”... is that changes that we denominate as third wave are changes in
every aspect of civilisation’. Alvin Toffler and Peter Schwartz, ‘Shock
Wave (Anti) Warrior’, page 63. Manuel Castells makes comparable claims
for his futurist slogan: ‘In a... historical perspective, the network society
represents a qualitative change in the human experience. ...we are
indeed in a new era.’ Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society, page
477.
2
Mark Dery argues that the Net is hurtling humanity into the post-
industrial age: ‘We are moving, at dizzying speed, from a reassuringly
solid age of hardware into a disconcertingly wraithlike age of software, in
which circuitry too small to see and code too complex to fully
comprehend controls more and more of the world around us.’ Mark Dery,
Escape Velocity, page 4. Similarly, Sherry Turkle declares that: ‘The
Internet... is the symbol and tool of a post-modern politics.’ Sherry Turkle,
Life on the Screen, page 243.
3
Howard Rheingold claims that: ‘...whenever CMC [computer-mediated
communications] technology becomes available to people, they
inevitably build virtual communities with it, just as microorganisms create
colonies.’ Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, page 6. The
European Commission uses the telematics neologism to promote the Net
and other convergent technologies. A committee involved in this task
asserted that: ‘Tide waits for no man, and this [process of convergence]
is a revolutionary tide, sweeping through economic and social life.’ Martin
Bangemann and others, Europe and the Global Information Society, page
1.

1
earlier, the introduction of printing had transformed the spiritual warmth
of medieval community life into the cold-hearted rationalism and
atomised individualism of industrial society.1 Now the electronic media
promised redemption from such psychic emptiness. The emotional
involvement with events taking place on the screen encouraged greater
empathy with other people. The common experience of watching the
same programmes broke down the national and social barriers imposed
by print culture.2 After a long period of fragmentation and loneliness,
humanity was coming together into one electronic tribe. The ‘global
village’ was about to be born.3

Above all, McLuhan believed that the demise of industrialism would lead
to a spiritual renaissance. While analytical methods of print culture had
spread scepticism, the immersive nature of electronic media was
encouraging a renewal of faith. Although constructed by advanced
technologies, the ‘global village’ would realise ancient mystical dreams.4
According to McLuhan, this shift to new ways of thinking was already
evident among the young people of the 1960s. Growing up within the
emerging ‘global village’, they were the first generation experiencing the
higher state of consciousness created by electronic media. Impatient with
the old-fashioned customs of industrial society, they were increasingly
attracted to radical politics, psychedelic experiences and alternative

1
McLuhan claimed that people’s attitudes were determined by the
psychological environments created by different forms of media. Just like
Pavlov’s dogs, a change in stimuli would completely alter their behaviour.
According to this analysis, the invention of printing imposed the
‘...linearity, precision and uniformity of the arrangement of moveable
types...’ upon the human mind. As the oral culture of tribal societies
disintegrated, ‘...the typographical extension of man brought in
nationalism, industrialism, mass markets, and universal literacy and
education.’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, page 172.
2
By again changing the stimuli coming from the media environment, the
fuzzy colours and low definition of 1960s television broadcasting were
supposedly remoulding human consciousness: 'The mosaic form of the TV
image demands participation and involvement in depth of the whole
being...' Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, page 334.
3
According to McLuhan, '...the speed-up of the electronic age is... an
instant implosion and an interfusion of space and functions. Our specialist
and fragmented [print] civilisation... is suddenly experiencing an
instanteous reassembling of all its mechanised bits into an organic whole.
This is the new world of the global village.' Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media, pages 92-93.
4
Like Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin, McLuhan adapted the
Catholic concept of the transcendental union of all believers for the
modern age: '...might not our current translation of our entire lives into
the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of
the human family, a single consciousness?' Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media, page 61.

2
cultures. By replacing the rational individualism of literacy with a hi-tech
form of tribal empathy, the spread of television had sparked off the
hippie revolution.

‘Youth instinctively understands the present environment - the

electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth. This is the reason
for the great alienation between generations. Wars, revolutions,
civil uprisings are interfaces within the new environments created
by electric informational media.’1

McLuhan was not alone in believing that the world was on the verge of
fundamental social transformation in the late-1960s and early-1970s.
During this brief moment of time, many people were convinced that
traditional hierarchies were disintegrating and collective subjectivity was
about to be realised. The New Left was creating an inclusive form of
politics, social movements were building an equal society and hippies
were liberating everyday life. For the first time in human history,
everyone would soon enjoy individual freedom, economic empowerment
and cultural self-expression.2 However, the great change never
happened. Despite marches, strikes, riots, occupations and terrorism, the
system was able to defeat the challenge from the New Left. During the
1980s and 1990s, even the social gains of the post-war settlement were
rolled back by triumphant neo-liberalism. Yet, after decades of
reactionary rule, the folk memory of May ‘68 still remains an inspiration
for the present. Although ‘really existing socialism’ disappeared, the
democratic ways of working, cultural experimentation and emancipatory
lifestyles initiated in the 1960s survived - and even flourished - into the
harder times of the 1990s. From raves to environmental protests, the
lasting legacy of hippie radicalism permeates contemporary DIY culture.3

Nostalgia for this stalled revolution is not confined to political and cultural
dissidents. Crucially, the memory of May ‘68 also mesmerises the
prophets of the information age. During the last thirty years, McLuhan‘s

1
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, page 9.
2
Just after the May ‘68 revolution in France, the Situationists proudly
proclaimed that: ‘The movement was a rediscovery of collective and
individual history, an awareness of the possibility of intervening in
history, an awareness of participating in an irreversible event... It was a
generalised critique of all alienations, all ideologies and of the entire
organisation of real life...’ Situationist International, ‘The Beginning of an
Era, pages 225-226.
3
DIY stands for ‘do-it-yourself’. This slogan is used to emphasise the need
for people to tackle social problems and organise cultural events through
collective action rather than waiting for someone else to provide for
them. See Elaine Brass and Sophie Poklewski with Denise Searle,
Gathering Force; and George McKay, DiY Culture.

3
predictions have been repeatedly revived to celebrate successive waves
of convergence. Each new technology is supposedly proof of the
imminent demise of industrial society. The fusion of telecommunications,
media and computing will soon realise the most utopian demands of the
New Left: global unity, direct democracy, economic participation, spiritual
fulfillment and creative work.1 However, such prophecies are founded
upon a faith in technological determinism. Far from being the result of
the New Left’s subversive activities, McLuhan had claimed that the
‘global village’ would emerge from psychological changes caused by the
spread of new media. Humanity could only be saved from industrial
society by a mechanical redeemer. Despite repeated postponements,
McLuhan’s followers have sustained his belief in the imminent arrival of
the information utopia. When one particular technology fails to fulfill the
prophecy, their hopes are quickly transfered to the next advance in
convergence. Not surprisingly, the advent of the Net immediately inspired
yet another revival of McLuhan’s prophecies. This powerful catalyst of
social change must finally realise the much delayed promise of the
1960s: the ‘global electronic village’.2

This identification of hippie radicalism with convergent technologies is

particularly pronounced on the West Coast of the USA. During the 1960s,
Californian activists pioneered a distinctive synthesis of community
politics and cultural rebellion which inspired New Left movements across
the world. Many of these radicals were involved in highly innovative
media projects. Using the latest technologies, they set up alternative
newspapers, progressive rock bands, community radio stations, video
collectives and home-brew computer clubs. Excited by McLuhan’s
predictions, some even thought that their experimental media were
creating a New Left version of the ‘global village’. 3 Many years later, the
emergence of the Net revived this optimistic prediction. For instance,
Howard Rheingold believes that the spread of information technologies is
implementing New Left ideals. Despite its commercialisation, the Net is
still widely used for building 'virtual communities' where common
interests are discussed and collective solutions discovered. In this

1
For instance, see the optimistic forecasts in Daniel Bell, The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages; Simon
Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerisation of Society; Alain Touraine, The
Post-Industrial Society; and Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave.
2
This remix of McLuhan’s catchphrase can be found in Douglas Rushkoff,
Cyberia, pages 51-61.
3
During this period, McLuhan’s theories were often used to celebrate the
subversive potential of media produced by hippie radicals: ‘By
transcending what they saw as the rigidity of print, underground media
activists believed they were transforming the physiological, psychological
and spiritual basis of Western culture.’ David Armstrong, A Trumpet to
Arms, page 64. Also see Charles Reich, The Greening of America, pages
184-221; John Downing, Radical Media, pages 35-157; and George
Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left, pages 73-82.

4
updated version of McLuhan, the aims of the hippie revolution will finally
be achieved through the convergence of media, computing and
telecommunications.1

On the West Coast, the legacy of the 1960s counter-culture is not only
claimed by advocates of community networks. Most famously, Wired was
launched with a graphic style derived from alternative newspapers of the
period and with Marshall McLuhan proclaimed as its patron saint. Just like
Rheingold, this magazine’s founding editors believe that the ideals of
their youth are about to be realised through digital convergence. They
even hope that the Net will allow humanity to reach a more advanced
level of consciousness.2 However, these old hippies no longer advocate
political rebellion and collective provision. Instead, in their Californian
ideology, individual freedom and cultural innovation can only be achieved
through unregulated competition between hi-tech entrepreneurs within
cyberspace. By emphasising the technological determinism of McLuhan,
the founding editors of Wired are able to ignore the social implications of
his prophecies. In their Californian interpretation, the ‘global village’
increasingly resembles the inner-city dystopia found in cyberpunk novels.
Instead of sparking off a social revolution, the technological
transcendence of industrialism leads towards cybernetic neo-liberalism.3
One Wired founder even claims that the 'invisible hand' of the
marketplace and the blind pressures of Darwinian evolution are both
mystical forces of nature.4 Funded by Silicon Valley, the politics of ecstasy
now justify the economics of greed.

Within Europe, it is much more difficult to pull off the Californian scam of
camouflaging New Right policies for the Net underneath New Left
rhetoric. A long history of class-based politics and compulsive theorising
makes such ideological chicanery seem much more implausible. Above

1
For Rheingold, the archetype of the ‘virtual community’ is the WELL,
which was founded by veterans from a 1960s commune, see Howard
Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pages 38-64.
2
Echoing McLuhan, one of the leading lights of Wired claims that the Net
is helping humanity evolve into the ‘...collective organism of mind... a
consciousness so profound that it will make good company for God
himself.’ John Perry Barlow and Jon Katz, John Perry Barlow Interview,
page 1.
3
Louis Rossetto, the founding editor of Wired, aggressively opposes any
form of state economic intervention: ‘Keeping the government out of
cyberspace is crucial to the Net’s development, and to the development
of the New Economy and global consciousness.’ David Hudson, ‘There’s
no government like no government’, page 34. For a critique of the neo-
liberal policies advocated by Wired, see Richard Barbrook and Andy
Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’.
4
See Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, and, for a critical analysis of this Social
Darwinist manifesto, see Richard Barbrook, ‘The Pinnochio Theory’.

5
all, the EU lacks the main driving force behind the Californian ideology: a
world-dominant computer industry. Instead, debates around the impact
of the Net are dominated by its cultural potential. While the commercial
sector lags behind in the competition with American software companies
and Asian hardware manufacturers, Europeans are at the forefront of
exploring the artistic possibilities of information technologies. Pioneered
by computer-generated dance music, this digital aesthetic now embraces
fashion, art, graphic design, publishing and video games.1 Not
surprisingly, members of this flourishing techno-culture enthusiastically
welcomed the arrival of the Net. Using this new tool, they could not only
more easily distribute their works, but also invent new artistic forms.
Within the EU, economic weakness ensures that the Net is seen as much
as a means of self-expression as a way of making money.2

The conservative politics of Wired are unable to provide a credible

explanation of what is happening within European techno-culture.
Although invoking the memory of the radical 1960s, the Californian
ideology carefully omits McLuhan’s prediction that the information society
would realise the collectivist dreams of the New Left. Until recently, his
1960s utopianism had also almost been forgotten within Europe too.
During the 1980s, the gurus of post-modernism reinterpreted McLuhan’s
writings to justify their loss of faith in New Left politics, especially within
the media. Far from rescuing humanity from the evils of industrialism,
they instead claimed that the spread of new information technologies
would intensify atomisation and alienation within contemporary society.3
However, the pessimism of this post-modern version of McLuhan now
seems very dated. In the age of the Net, information technologies are
celebrated rather than feared. Reflecting this change in attitude, cutting-
edge intellectuals are rediscovering the promise of social redemption
contained within McLuhan’s prophecies. Once again, European
academics, artists and activists can believe that the convergence of
media, computing and telecommunications will create a better world.

1
Although many of its pioneers were American, the dance music scene’s
enthusiasm for chemical hedonism, sexual tolerance and racial
miscegenation means that this style has never had the profound impact
on popular culture in the USA as it has in the EU. See Mathew Collins with
John Godrey, Altered State.
2
An American commentator exiled in Berlin notes that: ‘Because Europe
is not crowded with netrepreneurs, because the movers and shakers on
the business end are almost all in the US... digital culture in Europe is
precisely that: culture...’ David Hudson, ‘The People are the Party, page
3.
3
The denunciation of the false emancipation offered by information
technologies reached its apogee in the work of Jean Baudrillard: ‘...it
really seems that interaction, taken in the communications sense, markes
the end of action taken in its political sense.’ Jean Baudrillard, La Gauche
Divine, page 142.

6
 ‘With each journey, each on-line adventure, the network of
interconnections expands... If these communicative connections,
communication acts, up and down-loads, acts of sending and
receiving.. combine with object orientated hypertext programs,
then the most disparate data forms, information carriers, cultural
production forms mix on a communal surface: the utopian vision of
a comprehensive telematic network, in which individual production
change[s] into social communication.’1

Within the EU, McLuhan’s revelations are being appropriated for very
different purposes than those of their advocates on the West Coast.
Instead of wanting to build a corporate empire, European Net pioneers
are much more interested in reforming the avant-garde.2 For generations,
committed activists and innovative practititioners in Europe have
organised movements championing radical politics, bohemian lifestyles
and experimental art. However, this subversive tradition almost
disappeared during the last two decades. From 1917 onwards, the
European avant-garde closely identified itself with the utopian future
promised by the Russian revolution - and by its variants subsequently
found in the Third World. After May ‘68, young militants continued this
seditious tradition by forming the New Left movement. However, first the
defeat of the hippie revolution in the late-1970s and then the collapse of
Stalinism in the late-1980s completely discredited avant-garde attitudes
among radical intellectuals. With all possibility of social progress ruled
out, there appeared to be no alternative to post-modern nihilism.3 Yet,
with the advent of the Net, such 1980s pessimism has in turn become
unfashionable. From the mid-1990s onwards, a new generation began
reviving the heroic traditions of the European avant-garde. Just like their
celebrated predecessors, members of the techno-culture dream of
combining political revolution and personal libertarianism with artistic
innovation. Above all, this reborn avant-garde has discovered a new
vision of utopia: McLuhan’s ’global village’.

1
Heiko Idensen, ‘From Hypertext Utopias to Cooperative Net-Projects’,
page 129.
2
For instance, one Russian exile recently told a leading Dutch cyber-guru:
‘Like you, I also believe in digital... avant-gardism... The new avant-garde
is about new ways of accessing and manipulating information. Its
techniques are hypermedia, databases, image-processing, search
engines, data-mining, and simulation.’ Lev Manovitch and Geert Lovink,
‘Digital Constructivism’, page 1.
3
As two critical observers noted: ‘Generalising their own sense of
isolation and hopelessness, extreme postmodernists declare the end or
bankruptcy of liberal and radical values. ...passing from the extreme of
1960s revolutionary optimism...to the opposite extreme of a 1980s-1990s
revolutionary defeatism that cynically derides political committments...’
Steve Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory, page 285-286.

7
Inspired by the Net‘s cultural potential, European intellectuals embrace
the radical implications of the prophet’s revelation. In its Californian and
post-modern variants, the information society prediction paradoxically
rules out all possibility of fundamental social change. In contrast, the new
European avant-garde emphasises the emancipatory potential of
McLuhan’s vision of a hi-tech utopia. Technological convergence doesn’t
simply mean improvements in media, computing and
telecommunications. The Net represents the reawakening of hopes for
social transformation. According to the contemporary avant-garde, the
advent of the information age will finally realise the revolutionary dreams
of the New Left. What was impossible in the past can now be achieved
with new technologies.

The European avant-garde can only be revived by a new utopia: the

information society. After the defeat of the New Left and the implosion of
the Soviet Union, radical intellectuals could no longer believe in the
redemptive power of political activism, alternative lifestyles and artistic
innovation. Even the subversive implications of McLuhan’s predictions
were forgotten. The arrival of the Net finally ended this long period of
stagnation. Once again, dissident intellectuals can have faith in political
progress and cultural experimention. Above all, they can hope that
technological convergence will catalyse profound social changes. In its
avant-garde remix, the information society prophecy reveals the path to
an earthly paradise. While all that remains of hippie ideals in Wired is its
psychedelic layout, European TJs - and their overseas imitators - can still
champion the lost utopia of May ‘68. The revolution will be digitalised.

8
2: Techno-Nomads@Rhizome.Net

The European avant-garde needs to distinguish its utopian vision of the

information society from more conservative interpretations of McLuhan’s
prophecy. For instance, the founding editors of Wired notoriously claim
the ‘global village’ will primarily be an on-line marketplace. In contrast,
avant-garde intellectuals want to emphasise the emancipatory potential
of the Net. They celebrate the importance of artistic innovation, political
radicalism and DIY production within European techno-culture. They
rejoice in the more bizarre aspects of the Net, such as cybersex and
virtual identities. In order to stress these non-commercial components of
cyberspace, avant-garde intellectuals have combined the revelations of
McLuhan with subversive ideas sampled from Situationists, Autonomists
and other New Left theorists. Like someone spinning tunes in a club, TJs
cut ‘n’ mix different philosophies from the 1960s and 1970s to produce a
new avant-garde credo for the age of the Net.1 More than anywhere else,
they have found the concepts and buzzwords needed for a specifically
European version of the information society prophecy in the writings of
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

‘Inspired by...Deleuze...and Guattari, this [theoretical] work looks

forward to the fully cybernetic functioning of digital interactive
communications - namely cyberspace as its more or less universally
assumed future...’2

McLuhan’s prophecy can now be translated into the language of May ‘68.
During the last few years, European TJs have repeatedly sampled Deleuze
and Guattari to produce an avant-garde remix of his ‘global village’
prophecy. The writings of these two New Left philosophers contain a rich
source of potential material. Their most famous book - A Thousand
Plateaus - is a weird pot-pourri of anarchism, therapy, mysticism, art
theory, musicology, bizarre science, imaginary history and drug
references. Rejecting reasoned sociological arguments, Deleuze and
Guattari created free association meditations written in their own
inimitable style. As they explained in its opening pages: ‘A book...is a
multiplicity - but we don’t know yet what the multiple entails when it is no
longer attributed, that is, after it has been elevated to the status of a
substantive.’3

Despite this warning from its authors, A Thousand Plateaus has been
turned into a sacred text: the Kabbala of European techno-culture.
Apparently free from the taint of both Leninism and neo-liberalism,
1
A TJ is a ‘theory-jockey’: Amsterdam slang for leftfield intellectuals.
2
Suhail Malik, ‘Is the Intenet a Rhizome’, page 14.
3
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, page 4.

9
Deleuze and Guattari’s writings provide a distinctive set of theoretical
metaphors for celebrating the subversive possibilities of the Net. Above
all, their approach is used to connect the process of technological
convergence with renewed opportunities for radical social change.
Echoing their hippie predecessors, avant-garde TJs believe that the
emerging information society will completely tranform the world. No
longer are New Left theories seen as relics from a defeated revolution of
the past. In the age of the Net, they have become anticipations of a
cybernetic future which is only just being born. More than any other New
Left text, A Thousand Plateaus is identified with this radical interpretation
of the information society prophecy. Deleuzoguattarian discourse is now
the default setting for ‘cutting-edge’ discussions about on-line politics and
culture across the continent.1 Precisely because it comes from the EU,
this remix of the prophecy has also become fashionable from New York to
Tokyo. Among avant-garde intellectuals, the ideas of McLuhan can only
be spoken in the words of Deleuze and Guattari.

Crucially, A Thousand Plateaus contains a powerful synonym for the

‘global village’: the rhizome. As a metaphor derived from grassroots, this
phrase captures how the Net is organised as an open-ended, non-
hierarchical, spontaneous and horizontal system. Without needing either
money or the state, people already work and play together within
autonomous network communities. According to Deleuzoguattarians,
these rhizomes of the Net are digital ‘Temporary Autonomous Zones’.
Like squats, pirate radios, underground raves and environmental protest
camps, network communities create social spaces liberated from the
control of political power and corporate capitalism. 2 Far from intensifying

1
For instance, there are numerous websites promoting the teachings of
these two philosophers: Web Deleuze; Tempòs; Deleuze and Guattari
Homepage; How to Make Yourself a Plane of Consistency; The
Deleuzeguattarionary; and WWW Resources for Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari. Uncritical enthusiasm for Deleuze and Guattari’s work even led
one group of DJs to set up a label named after the original French title of
their revered book. See Mille Plateaux Records; and David Hudson, ‘The
People are the Party, pages 2-3.
2
Hakim Bey invented the phrase ‘Temporary Autonomous Zone’ as a
more comprehensible way of saying rhizome. Although hostile to
industrial society, he includes such hi-tech activities as ‘...the BBS
networks, pirated software, hacking, phone-phreaking...’ within this
definition. Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., page 109. ‘Temporary Autonomous Zone’
was first popularised as a description of techno-parties. For instance,
Debbie Stauton - a rave promoter - explains that: ‘the whole point of
festivals is that they are temporary autonomous zones...they are self-
organising... Nobody is told where to go or what to do, everyone just does
their own bit.’ quoted in Elaine Brass and Sophie Koziell with Denise
Searle, Gathering Force, page 89. Ironically, Hakim Bey admits that: ‘...I
don’t go to raves and I don’t enjoy the music or staying up all night
taking crypto-speed and dancing my head off...’, Geekgirl, ‘Interview with

10
market competition, avant-garde Tjs believe that new media technologies
encourage rhizomic collaboration among people. Social movements can
organise themselves freely using the Net’s decentralised structure.1
Cyber-feminists are embracing digital technologies to transcend
patriarchal oppression.2 Community media projects can distribute their
output without fear of censorship or other restrictions. 3 Even
parliamentary democracy will soon be replaced by mass participation in
social decision-making over the Net: the ‘virtual agora’.4

‘What people are creating on the Internet is a conversational,

demassified, non-representational democracy that transcends the
nation-state.’5

During the last few years, rhizome has been widely adopted as an
evocative metaphor for websites, listservers, IRC channels, bulletin
boards, MOOs and other on-line forums where people come together
without needing the direct mediation of money.6 Following the latest
fashion from Europe, one hip New York listserver and website even chose
Rhizome.Org as its name.7 Although its wording is different, the growing
popularity of the rhizome phrase represents a return to McLuhan’s
original concept of ‘global village’. In most mainstream interpretations, a
technological revolution within the media paradoxically reinforces
existing social conditions. In contrast, rhizome comes much closer to the
Canadian prophet’s own vision of a communal and participatory future.
Writing in a time of social turmoil, McLuhan claimed that all aspects of
human experience were being transformed by the emergence of the
‘global village’. Despite his distain for its revolutionary politics, this

Hakim Bey’, page 207.

1
See Pierre Lévy, L’Intelligence Collective, pages 50-64.
2
‘Feminist women have a long history of dancing through a variety of
potentially lethal mine-fields in the pursuit of socio-symbolic justice.
Nowadays, women have to undertake the dance through cyberspace...’
Rosa Braidotti, ‘Cyberfeminism with a Difference’, page 11. Also see the
sci-fi fantasies in Sadie Plant, Zeroes + Ones .
3
See Andreas Broeckmann, ‘Next Five Minutes: Tactical Media’, pages 8-
12.
4
See Pierre Lévy, L’Intelligence Collective, pages 65-94. The agora was
the meeting-place where Athenian citizens decided the policies of their
city-state in person.
5
Dan Thu Nguyen and Jon Alexander, ‘The Coming of Cyberspacetime
and the End of Polity’, page 111.
6
IRC means Internet Relay Chat: a CB-style channel for text-based
conversations. MOO means Multi-User-Dungeon Object Orientated: a text-
based virtual environment.
7
On its website, Rhizome.Org describes itself as ‘...an organisation
dedicated to fostering communication and community in the field of new
media art.’ See Rhizome.Org.

11
Catholic futurologist shared the New Left’s belief that industrial capitalism
was about to disappear. By identifying the rhizome with the ‘global
village’, contemporary intellectuals are completing this process of
ideological synthesis. As in McLuhan’s original prophecy, the aims of the
New Left revolution will be realised through mechanical means.1

A Thousand Plateaus is also appropriated to update the Canadian guru’s

prediction that the advent of the ‘global village’ would lead to a spiritual
renaissance. Just like the hippie generation, many contemporary
intellectuals have a contradictory fascination with both scientific theories,
such as quantum physics and Darwinian genetics, and with mystical
beliefs, such as New Age and UFO cults. Combining these opposites, some
Californian followers of McLuhan already claim to have found spiritual
illumination through the advanced technologies of the Net.2 By sampling
A Thousand Plateaus, European avant-garde intellectuals - and their
overseas imitators - are now able to invent forms of mystical positivism
which are as wacky as anything found on the West Coast.3

For example, many TJs think that on-line dating is more than just a fun
way of finding romance. Fulfilling a central motif of A Thousand Plateaus,
someone who talks about sex on an IRC channel or in a MOO becomes a
Body-without-Organs - an erotic mind freed by digital technologies from
the restrictions of the flesh.4 Similarly, Pierre Lévy claims that the Net is
forming a ‘collective intelligence’ out of our individual minds - a notion
derived by combining Deleuzoguattarian philosophy with Islamic
theology, chaos theory and quantum mechanics.5 According to Manuel De

1
See Pierre Lévy, L’Intelligence Collective, pages 137-140, 173-176, 183-
185, 190-197, 202-207.
2
For example, leading proponents of the Californian ideology reduce the
complexities of human society to the simplicities of biological evolution
and then try to find religious meaning within the blind operation of these
Darwinian natural laws. See Kevin Kelly, Out of Control; and Jànos Sugar,
‘Interview with John Perry Barlow’, pages 96-99.
3
Like other post-structuralist philosophers, Deleuze and Guattari
unashamedly borrowed precise terms from the natural sciences to use as
dodgy socio-cultural metaphors. See Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont,
Impostures Intellectuelles, pages 141-142. Following in this pseudo-
scientific tradition, the new avant-garde transforms the exact
mathematical theories of chaos and complexity into impressionistic
buzzwords which supposedly explain not just the impact of the Net, but
also the whole of human history. See Pierre Lévy, L’Intelligence
Collective; Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History;
and Sadie Plant, Zeroes + Ones .
4
See Mark Lipton, ‘Forgetting the Body: Cybersex and Identity’.
5
Pierre Lévy, L’Intelligence Collective, pages 95-117. It is no coincidence
that his concept of the ‘collective intelligence’ has a strong resemblance
to the ‘group mind’ experienced by people tripping together. See Jay

12
Landa and Sadie Plant, A Thousand Plateaus proves that computer
networks emerge from mystical ‘flows’ which determine everything from
the weather to human behaviour.1 Even these transcendental visions are
not irrational enough for Hakim Bey. Promoting his own incoherent mix of
Sufism, anarchism and cyberpunk, this Deleuzoguattarian disciple openly
denounces: ‘...all born-again knee jerk atheists & their frowsy late-
Victorian luggage of scientistic vulgar materialism...’2

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari also provided the evocative

buzzword needed for revitalising McLuhan’s myth of hippie tribalism: the
nomad. From crusties to cyberpunks, contemporary youth subcultures
retain the 1960s belief in the redemptive power of bohemian lifestyles.
European intellectuals are particularly attracted by a nomadic version of
this hippie tradition. Being relatively privileged, they already enjoy
greater mobility as employees and as tourists than most of the
population. Across the continent and beyond, academics, artists and
activists are making business and forming friendships at conferences,
openings, festivals, exhibitions and parties. Now, in their imaginations,
avant-garde intellectuals can even be in motion when sitting in front of
their computer screens. They are the ‘hunter-gatherers of CommTech’ - a
cyber-tribe who follow the ‘flows’ across the open spaces of the virtual
world.3 Within the rhizomes of the Net, the Deleuzoguattarians are
forming their own distinctive subculture: the techno-nomads.4

D&G now symbolises more than just Dolce & Gabbana. Like the youth
subcultures studied by many of them at college, members of the new
avant-garde are united by a distinct set of Deleuzoguattarian ‘signifying

Steven, Storming Heaven, page 276.

1
In De Landa’s view, the semiotic fluxes celebrated in A Thousand
Plateaus demonstrate that ‘...human culture and society (considered as
dynamical systems) are no different from the self-organised processes
that inhabit the atmosphere and hydrosphere (wind, circuits, hurricanes)
or, for that matter, no different from lavas and magmas...’ See Manuel De
Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, page 55. Also see Manuel
De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, pages 7-9; and Sadie
Plant, Zeroes + Ones, pages 156-164.
2
Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., page 50. The Luther Blissett project wickedly
describe Bey’s style as ‘...one part Hippie bullshit and cheap oriental
trinkets, one part Post-structuralism and pithy intricacies, one part cyber-
crap....’ Luther Blissett, ‘Why I Wrote a False Hakim Bey Book and How I
Cheated the Conformists of Italian “Counter-Culture”’, page 147.
3
Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., page 109.
4
One Deleuzoguattarian proclaims that: ‘On this plateau, users [of
computer-mediated communications] are virtual nomads, phantoms who
circulate in the structures of the labyrinth.’ André Lemos, ‘The Labyrinth
of Minitel’, page 46. For a metahistorical defence of the techno-nomad
myth, see Pierre Lévy, L’Intelligence Collective; page 156-157.

13
practices’.1 The techno-nomads are entranced by A Thousand Plateaus,
they love computer technologies, they’re fans of techno music, they’re
excited by bizarre science, they crave mystical experiences, they’re part
of the chemical generation and they adore cyberpunk novels. There is
even an esoteric version of Deleuzoguattarian language which is almost
incomprehensible to the uninitiated. 2 Above all, techno-nomads possess a
radical optimism about the future of the Net. Intoxicated by reading too
much Deleuze and Guattari, avant-garde TJs are confident of being able
to intervene within cyberspace to maximise its emancipatory social and
cultural potential. The development of the Net won’t just undermine the
power of the state and capital, but also create a whole new libertarian
way of living. The wired future is there for the taking...

‘What we want to do is what we can do: cut new channels, create

new temporary autonomous zones, defuse cathecting power. More
than any other writers, [Deleuze and Guattari] ...have developed a
coherent set of conceptual tools that help us understand our
situation and act upon it.’3

1
As Dick Hebdige says in his seminal text: ‘...it is through the distinctive
rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals
its ‘secret’ identity and communicates its forbidden meanings. It is
basically the way in which commodities are used in subculture which
mark the subculture off from more othodox cultural formations.’ Dick
Hebdige, Subculture, page 103.
2
For example, Deleuze and Guattari’s jargon is being used to write this
sort of theoretical gobbledygook: ‘Antioedipus is an anticipatively
assembled inducer for the replay of geohistory in hypermedia, a social-
systematic fast feed-forward through machinic delirium. While tracking
Artaud across the plane it discovers a cosmic catatonic abstract body that
both repels its parts (deterritorialising them {from each other}) and
attracts them (reterritorialising them {upon itself}), in a process that
reconnects the parts through deterritorium as rhizomatic nets conducting
schizogenesis.’ Nick Land, ‘Meat (or How to Kill Oedipus in Cyberspace)’,
page 191. Not surprisingly, one of the ‘winners’ of the third annual Bad
Writing competition for academic texts was a fan of Deleuze and Guattari.
See David Cohen, ‘Pseuds in a Corner’, page ii.
3
James Flint, ‘Harvesting the Tubers’, page 15.

14
3: The Politics of May ‘68

It is not entirely surprising that avant-garde intellectuals have elevated A

Thousand Plateaus into a cult text. For decades, European universities
and artistic circles have been dominated by French formalist philosophy.
Although Paris is no longer the centre of avant-garde art, the city has
retained its predominance over radical cultural theory. In earlier times,
Barthes, Althusser, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida and Baudrillard provided
the latest intellectual fad. Ever since the mid- 1990s onwards, Deleuze
and Guattari have become the hippest philosophers to quote. Although
sometimes included within the inner circle of French post-structuralism,
these two thinkers were usually considered far too radical to receive
widespread academic or artistic recognition during their own lifetimes.1
However, in this current period of social change catalysed by the Net, the
subversive ideas contained within their writings now add to their
fashionable appeal. The pessimism and detachment of post-modernism
was 1980s style. The techno-nomads much prefer the passionate
approach of A Thousand Plateaus for the new digital age. Although
they’re both dead, Deleuze and Guattari have become the cutting-edge
of contemporary avant-garde theory.

Using A Thousand Plateaus, techno-nomad TJs can identify McLuhan’s

information society prophecy with the revolutionary optimism of the
1960s generation. Yet, they themselves are denied such certainty of
faith. Following May ‘68, radical intellectuals could credibly believe in the
imminent overthrow of capitalism. For an intoxicating few weeks, millions
of people across France participated in strikes, demonstrations,
occupations and other insurrectionary activities. In contrast, revolutionary
politics have now almost disappeared in contemporary Europe. As a
substitute for the missing masses, avant-garde intellectuals are instead
forced to project their utopian hopes onto the Net. What was once
imminent within popular struggles is now emergent from technological
convergence.

For the contemporary avant-garde, the lost utopia of May ‘68 now
represents the emancipatory potential of the hi-tech future. A Thousand
Plateaus has become a prophecy of the emerging information society.
Yet, most TJs carefully avoid discussing what exactly were the politics of
the New Left. For instance, Rhizome.Org blandly announces that:
‘...rhizome is...a figurative term...to describe non-hierarchical networks of

1
Even after the success of Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze could still credibly claim
that” ‘...neither Félix nor I have turned into little leaders of a little
[philosophical] school.’ Gilles Deleuze, ‘Letter to a Harsh Critic’, page 9.
Ironically, this fate eventually happened to these two philosophers in the
1990s.

15
all kinds.’1 But, at no point does this website explain either the historical
origins of this strange phrase or how its principles might be applied within
the Net. On the contrary, rhizome is just a cool European buzzword
borrowed to celebrate the bohemian spontaneity of the New York cyber-
arts scene. For the symbolic rejection of corporate capitalism,
Rhizome.Org never needs to examine the precise meaning of the
Deleuzoguattarian concept which it has adopted as its name. In the age
of the Net, the politics of May ‘68 no longer exist as a living practice.
Instead, avant-garde intellectuals appropriate the legacy of the New Left
to construct a revolutionary dreamtime.2

This virtualisation of 1960s radicalism is aided by the peculiar writing

style of Deleuze and Guattari. Despite having an audience educated in
the discourse of French structuralism, the hermetic language and
tortured syntax of A Thousand Plateaus often causes as much confusion
as elucidation. Some admirers have become even more befuddled by its
idiosyncratic discourse than Rhizome.Org. For example, Hari Kunzru
claims that Deleuze and Guattari are on the same side as proponents of
the Californian ideology in the ‘libertarian-communitarian opposition’
within debates about the Net. Just like Wired, these two philosophers are
supposedly champions of the ‘emergent properties’ of individual initiative
against the evils of state domination. 3 Such misapprehensions can be the
consequence of political naiveté among the new avant-garde. Because
the two philosophers didn’t use stilted left-wing jargon, many of their
admirers fail to understand the specific political positions which inspired
A Thousand Plateaus. For Deleuze and Guattari weren’t just advocates for
avant-garde art. These two gurus certainly never acted as apologists for
neo-liberalism. Above all, Deleuze and Guattari were ‘soixante-huitards’:
supporters of the May ‘68 revolution.

‘May ‘68 was a demonstration, an irruption, of a becoming in its

pure state... Men’s only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the
only way of casting off their shame and responding to what is
intolerable.’ 4

1
This brief description is then supplemented by a series of enigmatic
quotations from A Thousand Plateaus. See the FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions) section on Rhizome.Org.
2
Thanks to David Garcia for this phrase describing the symbolic role of
May ‘68 for the new avant-garde.
3
See Hari Kunzru, ‘Rewiring Technoculture, page 10. Kunzru was an
associate editor of the short-lived British edition of Wired.
4
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Control and Becoming’, page 171. Guattari similarly
praised May ‘68 as ‘a great awakening, a thunderclap’ which sparked off
a worldwide process of ‘molecular revolutions’ led by the new social
movements. Charles J. Stivale, Pragmatic/Machinic, page 4.

16
During their lifetimes, Deleuze and Guattari passionately believed that
the utopian demands of May ‘68 were about to be realised in practice.
They both enthusiastically participated within high-profile New Left
initiatives. Deleuze was involved in the Groupe d’Information sur les
Prisons - the anti-prisons movement led by Michel Foucault. Guattari was
the leader of most influential community radio organisation in France. 1
Although it has confused their contemporary disciples, Deleuze and
Guattari’s idiosyncratic writing style was inspired by their participation in
these New Left campaigns. According to the two philosophers, the
problem with the ‘wooden language’ of Leninism was its lack of
radicalism not its revolutionary aspirations.2 In its place, they decided to
compose theoretical poetry which would express the new subversive
practices initiatied by the May ‘68 uprising. Far from supporting
Californian neo-liberalism, Deleuze and Guattari championed the most
revolutionary form of New Left politics: anarcho-communism.

Like other members of their generation, Deleuze and Guattari wanted to

escape from the rigid orthodoxies of Stalinism which had dominated the
French Left since the rise of fascism in the 1930s.3 Trying to find a radical
alternative, they took their inspiration from an eclectic range of sources.
Along with other young militants, the two philosophers participated in the
rediscovery of revolutionary ideologies which had been discarded by their
elders, such as anarchism, Trotskyism, Surrealism, council communism
and Freudo-Marxism.4 At the same time, these philosophers also drew on

1
For Deleuze’s involvement in the anti-prisons movement, see Didier
Eribon, Michel Foucault, pages 224-237. For Guattari’s leading role in the
French community radio movement, see chapter 6 below.
2
In colloquial French, the stilted jargon used by the French Communist
Party and other Leninists was called ‘langue de bois’.
3
It is difficult for people today to comprehend the huge influence which
Stalinism exercised over the childhood and adolescence of Deleuze and
Guattari - as well as other French structuralist philosophers from the
babyboomer generation: ‘In 1947 the PCF [French Communist Party] was
a political party claiming close to a million members and the electoral
choice of over five million (mostly working class) French voters. Basking
in the prestige of its Resistance record, its obvious working class support,
and its marxist legacy, the PCF exercised a strong attraction on leftist and
liberal intellectuals. It was a political party which confidentally claimed to
be in sole possession of a philosophically rigorous and scientific theory of
history and society. It was a party that claimed to fight for social justice
for the downtrodden and social progress for all. And despite its many
shortcomings, it was a party that compared quite favourably with the
other political groupings of the postwar period.’ Arthur Hirsch, The French
Left, page 10. Also see Annie Kriegel, Les Communistes Français; and
R.W. Johnson, The Long March of the French Left.
4
For the intellectual forerunners of the 1960s New Left, see Arthur
Lehring (ed.), Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings; Leon Trotsky, The
Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (the

17
the new ideas and practices which were emerging from the ferment of
the New Left, such as Maoism, structuralism, Situationism, urban
terrorism, feminism, pacifism, gay rights, community media, psychedelic
culture and the anti-psychiatry movement. Despite the profound
contradictions between them, all these different currents were united in
their disillusionment with the parliamentary parties and trade unions of
the mainstream European Left. Instead of promoting gradual reforms, the
founders of the New Left wanted to develop revolutionary strategies for
social change.1

During the 1960s, many young people were attracted to radical solutions
for the historically novel problems facing them. Because of the struggle
against fascism and the development of Fordism, the babyboomer
generation grew up in a period when the Left in Western Europe was
dominated by Stalinist and Social Democratic parties. Although divided by
the Cold War, both movements prioritised representative politics and
economic growth over more radical concepts of human liberation.
However, with the arrival of consumer society, the policy of unrestricted
modernisation appeared to have reached its limits. Once almost everyone
had annual rises in income and mass unemployment had disappeared,
the problems of everyday life took on increasing importance, such as
restraints on sexual and cultural freedom. As the traditional Left had no
interest in these issues, young militants created their own revolutionary
political movement: the New Left.

For Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-communism was the most radical

expression of hippie politics. As its name suggests, anarcho-communism
stood for the destruction of both state power and market capitalism. After
the revolution, political bureaucracy would be replaced by direct
democracy and money-commodity relations would be superseded by a
gift economy. Initially, anarcho-communists thought that their utopia
would be created by workers’ councils based in the factories. But, after
May ‘68, they increasingly identified anarcho-communism with the social
movements founded by the New Left.2 Echoing McLuhan, many activists
believed that new media technologies would help them to realise their
utopian dreams. In their version of the ‘global village’, direct democracy
would be extended electronically beyond the confines of a general

Transitional Programme); André Breton, What is Surrealism?; D.A. Smart

(ed.), Pannekoek and Gorter’s Marxism; and Wilhelm Reich, The Mass
Psychology of Fascism.
1
For an analysis of the New Left as a ‘world-historical movement’, see
George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left; Richard Gombin, Les
Origins du Gauchisme; and Arthur Hirsch, The French Left.
2
For the historical antecedents of New Left anarcho-communism, see
Richard Gombin, Les Origins du Gauchisme; pages 99-151. For its later
influence on the internal structure of the new social movements, see
George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left, pages 204-212.

18
meeting. For the first time, everyone would able to participate personally
in political decision-making.1

The popularity of anarcho-communism among the hippie generation

demonstrated how many young people wanted a say in the decisions
shaping their lives. They were no longer willing to accept leadership from
above without some form of dialogue. Responding to these historically
specific circumstances, young militants rediscovered and updated
anarcho-communism not just as a theory, but also as a practice. Unlike
their parents’ parliamentary parties and trade unions, the New Left could
articulate their contemporaries’ demands for more participation. Within
the universities, factories, offices and cultural life, young people were no
longer content to have others deciding their lives for them in return for
the commodities of consumer society. Instead, they wanted to do things
for themselves.

‘[Anarcho-]communism is not a new mode of production; it is the

affirmation of a new community. It is a question of being, of life...
men and women... will not gain mastery over production, but will
create new relations among themselves which will determine an
entirely different activity.’2

1
Ever since the 1789 Revolution, even admirers of Rousseau have
accepted that the direct involvement of all citizens in political assemblies
was impossible in a large country, such as France. Instead, national
governments could only be organised as representative democracies.
However, after May ‘68, the New Left believed that the electronic media
offered a technological solution for overcoming these physical limits on
direct democracy: '...the abundance of telecommunications techniques -
which might at first sight appear as a pretext for the constant control of
delegates by specialists - is precisely what makes possible the constant
control of delegates by the base, the immediate confirmation, correction
or repudiation of their decisions at all levels.' Raoul Vaneigem, ‘Notes to
the Civilised Concerning Generalised Self-Management’, page 288. In the
USA, Valerie Solanas was making similar predictions about the subversive
potential of technological convergence: ‘With complete automation, it will
be possible for every woman to vote directly on every issue by means of
an electronic voting machine in her home.’ Valerie Solanas, SCUM
Manifesto, page 30.
2
Jacques Camatte, The Wandering of Humanity, pages 35-36.

19
4: The Romance of ‘Schizo-Politics’

The current aestheticisation of 1960s radicalism obscures the precise

nature of Deleuze and Guattari’s politics. The new avant-garde
appropriates rhizomes, nomads and Body-without-Organs as evocative
phrases for celebrating the libertarian possibilities of the Net. However,
contemporary TJs never examine the specific historical circumstances of
thirty years ago which shaped the ideas of their intellectual gurus. After
May ‘68, many radicals thought that both corporate capitalism and
traditional left-wing politics had become obsolete. As government
bureaucracies and big business lost power, social movements would
create a new society founded upon direct democracy and the gift
economy. Like many others from their generation, Deleuze and Guattari
believed that this New Left revolution was imminent. A Thousand
Plateaus wasn’t just a work of inspired theoretical poetry. This sacred text
was written to propagate a rigid political line: anarcho-communism.

Like the traditional Left, Deleuze and Guattari also thought that modern
society was the culmination of thousands of years of social conflict.
However, these two philosophers rejected the policies for economic
modernisation championed by both the Stalinist and Social Democratic
parties. Growing up during the post-war boom, they thought that poverty
and unemployment were no longer major social problems. Along with
other anarcho-communists, Deleuze and Guattari didn’t just think that
this strategy was a betrayal of the revolutionary heritage of the Left.
Above all, they claimed that the reformism of the parliamentary parties
had become ‘a historical absurdity’ after May ‘68.1

While the mainstream Left still sought political power, the Deleuze and
Guattari denounced the state itself as the source of all oppression.
According to their foundation myth, the state and its allies had been
using top-down tree-like structures to subjugate people ever since the
dawn of agrarian civilisation. 2 Described as a process of
1
Félix Guattari, ‘Institutional Politics and Practice’, page 127. According to
the two philosophers, the differences between the Stalinist and Social
Democratic strategies for taking state power amounted to: ‘...either the
proletariat prevails and transforms the apparatus in conformity with its
objective interest - but these operations are carried out under the
domination of its... party vanguard, that is, for the benefit for a
bureaucracy or technocracy that stands in for the bourgeoisie as the
“great-absent” class - or the bourgeoisie keeps its control of the State
and is free to secrete its own technobureaucracy and above all to add a
few more axioms for the recognition of the proletariat as a second class.’
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, page 256.
2
Crucially, Deleuze and Guattari never offered any materialist
explanations of why the oppressive power of the state was created in the

20
‘territorialisation’, they claimed that the media, psychoanalysis and
language were the primary ‘machinic assemblages’ used by the state to
control everyday life in the modern world.1 According to Deleuze and
Guattari, economics was only one manifestation of the state’s primordial
will to dominate all human activity.2

Facing the transhistorical enemy of the state was a new opponent: the
social movements. Both Stalinists and Social Democrats believed that the
organised working class was the principle enemy of capitalism. In
contrast, Deleuze and Guattari thought that this traditional style of left-
wing politics was now obsolete. As part of the ‘guaranteed’ sector of the
economy, private and public sector workers not only had been bought off
by the system, but also had their desires manipulated by the family, the
media, the dominant language and psychiatric institutions. 3 Like much of
the post-‘68 New Left, the two philosophers instead looked to the new
social movements of youth, feminists, ecologists, homosexuals and
immigrants to ‘deterritorialise’ the power of the state. Forming the ‘non-
guaranteed’ sector, people in these movements were excluded from the

first place. For them, the origins of political power were completely
mystical: ‘The State was not formed in progressive stages; it appears
fully armed, a master stroke performed all at once; the primordial
Urstaat, the eternal model of everything the State wants to be and
desires.’ Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, page 217. This
myth was derived from the writings of Pierre Clastres - the anarchist
anthropologist - who claimed that the ‘mysterious emergence’ of state
power had destroyed the egalitarian idyll of primitive societies and
instituted a new order based on social oppression. See Pierre Clastres,
Society against the State, pages 189-218. Also see Marshall Sahlins,
Stone Age Economics.
1
This analysis echoed the pessimistic interpretation of modernity
proposed by Michel Foucault, who was their close friend and political ally.
Far from being progress towards emancipation, this guru claimed that
historical development consisted of the refinement of repressive controls
over individual freedom. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilisation;
Discipline and Punish; and History of Sexuality.
2
The two philosophers explicitly rejected the supposed ‘economism’ of
Marxism: ‘We think that the material or machinic aspect of assemblage
relates not to the production of goods but rather to the precise state of
intermingling of bodies in society, including all attractions and repulsions,
sympathies and antipathies, alterations, amalgamations, penetrations,
and expansions that affect bodies of all kinds in their relations to one
another... An assemblage has neither base nor superstructure...’ Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, page 90.
3
Influenced by Reich’s heretical Freudian explanation of the popular
appeal of Nazism, Deleuze and Guattari emphasised that: ‘...psychic
repression is a means in service of social repression.’ Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, page 119. Also see Wilhelm Reich, The Mass
Psychology of Fascism.

21
system and were therefore supposedly eager to fight for the revolution.1

While the parliamentary Left wanted to unite all workers around common
concerns which could be satisfied through reforms, Deleuze and Guattari
advocated a ‘micro-politics of desire’ which resisted such homogenisation
of individual needs by the state and its left-wing allies.2 In A Thousand
Plateaus, the nomads poetically symbolised the ‘molecular’ social
movements who were making this anarcho-communist revolution against
the ‘molar’ tyranny of political power. Like McLuhan, the Californian
founders of the New Left had predicted that: ‘...the children of the ants
are all going to be tribal people...’ in preference to being docile workers
and contented consumers like their parents.3 Echoing this hippie
fascination with American Indians, Deleuze and Guattari claimed that
nomadic tribes had prefigured the small-scale and non-hierarchical
structures adopted by social movements. Far from trying to seize political
power, nomads used their mobility to avoid the ‘territorialised’ control of
the authoritarian state.4 Inspired this example, social movements should
therefore reject all attempts to unify them behind the programmes for
legislative reforms proposed by the Stalinist and Social Democratic
parties. Instead, they should form a multiplicity of tribes which were
autonomous from all centralising and hierarchical tendencies, especially
those supported by the mainstream Left.5

1
‘[The]... dichotomy between social production and the production of
desire must be a target of revolutionary struggle wherever familialist
repression works against women, children, drug-addicts, alcoholics,
homosexuals or any other disadvantaged groups.’ Félix Guattari,
‘Molecular Revolution and Class Struggle’, pages 257-258. Also see Félix
Guattari and Toni Negri, Communists Like Us, pages 75-84.
2
See Félix Guattari, ‘Social Democrats and Euro-Communists vis-à-vis the
State’, pages 242-252.
3
Gary Snyder in 1966 explaining how the USA - dominated by ‘straights’
organised like an ant hill - would be transformed into a tribal society by
the hippie counter-culture. See Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven, page 448.
4
‘If the nomad can be called the Deterritorialised par excellence, it is
precisely because there is no reterritorialisation afterwards as with
migrant, or upon something else as with the sedentary (the sedentary’s
relation with the earth is mediatised by something else, a property
regime, a State apparatus).’ Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus, page 381. According to Clastres, nomadic tribes and
other primitive societies supposedly organised themselves to prevent the
emergence of the only institution threatening their freedom: the state.
See Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State, pages 207-212.
5
Deleuze and Guattari created their nomad myth around a crude
polarisation between statism and anarchism: ‘In social terms, the contrast
is between... on the one hand, States with their insistence upon
centralised power... and their hierarchical separations between States
and classes; on the other hand, looser organisations of smaller groups,
without territorial limits, without hierarchy. The best example of the latter

22
Being anarcho-communists, Deleuze and Guattari advocated the
replacement of the state by direct democracy. However, because they
distrusted the organised working class, the abolition of political power
was no longer to be achieved through the rule of the factory councils.
Instead, the two philosophers believed that the bottom-up organisations
of the social movements should supersede the top-down authority of the
state. In A Thousand Plateaus, the rhizome therefore acted as a poetic
metaphor for this updated vision of direct democracy. Along the ‘lines of
flight’ mapped out by the New Left, the oppressed would escape from the
control of the authoritarian state into autonomous rhizomes formed by
the social movements. While the parliamentary Left was still committed
to its arboreal, top-down organisations, the New Left was creating
rhizomic, bottom-up groups which prefigured the anarcho-communist
future.1

‘To...centred systems, the authors contrast acentred systems, finite

networks of automata in which communication runs from any
neighbourhood to any other, the stems and channels do not pre-
exist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their
situation at a given moment - such that the local operations are co-
ordinated and the final global result synchronised without a central
agency.’2

According to Deleuze and Guattari, the overthrow of political power was

only the beginning of the anarcho-communist revolution. As ultra-leftists,
they didn’t just want to replace one type of social organisation with
another more sophisticated form. Above all, they sought to create a fully
libertarian way of living. Consequently, these two philosophers advocated
the destruction of not only the state and the market, but also the family,
the media, the dominant language and the asylum. The only truly free
individuals were those who had freed themselves from the common
sense rationality of bourgeois society. In their critique of official

is a society of nomads, whose main value is not authority (which implies

stability and order), but flight.’ Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy Through
the Looking-Glass, page 169.
1
Like the nomad myth, the concept of the rhizome was primarily aimed
against the reformist policies of the Stalinists and Social Democrats.
Although Deleuze and Guattari realised that constant changes in forms of
production and consumption under capitalism were ‘deterritorialising’
people’s lives, they still claimed that proposals to regulate this economic
process by the mainstream Left could only aid big business: ‘Never before
has a State lost so much of its power in order to enter with so much force
into the service of the signs of economic power.’ Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, page 252.
2
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, page 17.
Translation altered.

23
psychiatry, the ‘delirium’ of schizophrenics was something to be
celebrated rather than cured. Escaping from their oppressive lives under
capitalism, the insane expressed their desires at an intensity which went
beyond the social limitations imposed by conventional language.1 Freed
from all fixed conventions, mad people promised a nomadism of the
psyche.2 Crucially, this meant that anarcho-communism could no longer
be expressed through rational arguments used by the mainstream Left.
Because language itself was a form of social domination, ‘schizo-politics’
had to be proclaimed through the ‘delirium’ of theoretical poetry.3

According to Deleuze and Guattari, political domination was only made

possible through personal repression. The anarcho-communist revolution
therefore had to liberate the libidinal energies of people from all forms of
social control. The individual ‘delirium’ of schizophrenics prefigured the
chaotic spirit of collective revolution. 4 This meant that radicals not only
had to detonate a social uprising, but also personally live out the cultural
revolution. The New Left revolutionary was symbolised as the Body-
without-Organs: a person whose spontaneous desires were no longer
‘organised, signified, subjected’ by the rationality of the state.5 Such

1
‘...schizophrenia is not the identity of capitalism, but on the contrary its
difference, its divergence and its death.’ ’ Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, page 246. These two philosophers derived this
vision of the revolutionary potential of schizophrenia from the social
explanations for mental illness popularised by Ronnie Laing and other
members of the anti-psychiatry movement. See R.D. Laing, The Politics of
Experience and the Bird of Paradise, pages 84-107; and Michel Foucault,
Madness and Civilisation.
2
Denouncing the confinement imposed by modern mental hospitals,
Foucault romanticised the mobility of the insane who sailed around
medieval Europe on the Ship of Fools. See Michel Foucault, Madness and
Civilisation, pages 3-37.
3
According to Guattari, ‘...there is an urgent need to... forge new
paradigms which are... ethico-aesthetic in inspiration.’ Félix Guattari,
‘Three Ecologies’, page 132. As Lecercle points out: ‘The first comment
one can make about délire [delirium] is that the truth of it cannot be
grasped from the outside; it requires a degree of involvement and
renunciation on the part of the philosopher. He must abandon his normal
processes of thought, proceed by paradox... he must become delirious.’
Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy Through the Looking-Glass, page 165.
4
‘...délire [delirium] is itself a form of political expression, as the history
of ranting shows: the exaggerated reaction of délire [delirium] carries
with it both the political contents of a revolt and its violence.’ Jean-
Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy Through the Looking-Glass, page 167.
5
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, page 161. While
rejecting the supposed economic determinism of Marxism, the two
philosophers themselves advocated their own form of libidinal
reductionism: every aspect of human activity - from personal
relationships to capitalist production - was a direct or indirect expression

24
individuals were forerunners of the new type of human being who would
emerge after the anarcho-communist revolution. Liberated from the
repressive culture of the old order, this post-revolutionary person would
be the New Left equivalent of Nietzsche’s Superman: a sovereign
individual who could constantly ‘...create new values which are those of
life, which make life light and active.’1 For Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-
communism was therefore not just the realisation of direct democracy
and the gift economy. In their ‘schizo-politics’, the revolution had to
culminate in the destruction of bourgeois rationality. Only then could
each individual become a holy fool.

‘...knowledge, so inaccessible, so formidable, the Fool, in his

innocent idiocy, already possesses. While the man of reason and
wisdom perceives only fragmentary and all the more unnerving
images of it, the Fool bears it all intact as an unbroken sphere: that
crystal ball which for all others is empty is in his eyes filled with the
density of an invisible knowledge.’2

of sexual desire. See Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy Through the

Looking-Glass, pages 160-194.
1
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, page 185.
2
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilisation, page 22. Also see Félix
Guattari, ‘Students, the Mad and Delinquents’, pages 208-216; and Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, pages 273-382.

25
5: The Moment of Radio Alice

After two decades of domination by neo-liberalism, it is not surprising

that contemporary avant-garde intellectuals are reluctant to ‘come out’
as anarcho-communists. It is much easier to transform the two
philosophers’ theoretical poetry into a revolutionary dreamtime about the
Net. However, this fear of being overtly anarcho-communist has led to a
curious - and revealing - omission in the new avant-garde’s appropriation
of Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. Although they eagerly adapt the
poetical metaphors of A Thousand Plateaus to praise the Net, the techno-
nomads almost never mention that one of their own gurus had published
articles praising computer-mediated communications.

For, as well as being a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, Félix Guattari

was also a prominent community media activist. From the mid-1980s
onwards, he became one of the main proponents of the use of computer-
mediated communications by new social movements. Over a decade
before the Net became popular in the USA, the French government had
set up the world’s first public access computer network: Minitel. 1 Guattari
thought that this proto-Net was a harbinger of a new ‘post-media’
civilisation. In his philosophical writings with Deleuze, the media had
always been condemned for imposing capitalist subjectivity on people. In
particular, Guattari detested television for stupefying its audience and
isolating them from their fellow humans. 2 However, he believed that the
domination of the mass media was almost over. Using a Minitel bulletin
board, group Eros - an anti-psychiatry organisation - was already
pioneering new interactive forms of communications among its
members.3 Following this example, other social movements would soon
be forming their own ‘collective assemblages of enunciation’ over the
public computer network.4 Instead of being brainwashed by a few
television channels, people would then be able to participate within a
multiplicity of information spaces. According to Guattari, the New Left

1
For the origins and development of the Minitel network, see Marcel
Marchand, The Minitel Saga.
2
When writing about the impact of television, Guattari often sounded like
Neil Postman or other patrician critics of the electronic media: ‘The
television ends by functioning like a hypnotic drug, cutting people off
from their environment, contributing to dissolving family relations which
are already very strained, diminishing the role of reading and writing in
favour of cultural and information events so superficial that they
contribute to a phenomenon which has been characterised as ‘short
attention span’.’ Félix Guattari, ‘Pour une Éthique des Médias’, page 6.
Later in the same article, he even claimed that video games and cartoon
books were causing ‘psychopathy’ among young people in Japan!
3
Félix Guattari, ‘Three Ecologies’, page 143.
4
Félix Guattari, ‘Remaking Social Practices’, page 263.

26
was imminently going to replace top-down, homogenising media with
bottom-up, rhizomic ‘post-media’.1

It is indeed very strange that the techno-nomads almost never mention

Guattari’s computer network utopia. Although he condemns television
rather than printing, the philosopher’s futurist vision was clearly
influenced by McLuhan’s information society prophecy. Just like the
‘global village, the ‘post-media’ civilisation was supposedly emerging
from the spread of convergent technologies. Yet, contemporary TJs
largely ignore Guattari’s own synthesis of New Left ideas with those taken
from McLuhan. Whether consciously or unconsciously, most of them
realise that discussing Guattari’s theories about computer-mediated
communications would inevitablely lead to an examination of his
involvement in earlier media experiments. Back in the late-1970s and
early-1980s, the philosopher had made similar utopian claims about
community radio broadcasting. Like Minitel bulletin boards, New Left
pirate stations were also praised as a participatory form of
communications which was about to replace the mainstream media.
However, when Guattari’s theories were put into practice within
community radio broadcasting, the consequences were disastrous. The
examination of this embarassing failure doesn’t simply show why A
Thousand Plateaus cannot provide ‘a coherent set of conceptual tools’ for
understanding the Net. Crucially, this anarcho-communist adventure
within radio broadcasting provides - paradoxically - the answer to why
contemporary avant-garde intellectuals are gravitating towards the neo-
liberal positions of Wired. The problems of applying Deleuzoguattarian
theories within the new media can only be understood by examining their
historical origins within the old media.

Like many other innovations of the New Left, the community radio
movement began on the West Coast of the USA. The protests against the
American invasion of Vietnam didn’t just politically radicalise a
generation, but also popularised the hippie counter-culture. Alongside
conventional political activism such as marches, election campaigns and
sit-ins, young militants showed their opposition to the murderous policies
of the US government in South-East Asia by rejecting the puritanical
lifestyle of their parents. This fusion of political and cultural radicalism
found its clearest expression in the alternative media. Utilising the latest
technologies, hippie lifestyles were celebrated in innovative and exciting
ways, such as underground newspapers and rock music. Inspired by this
outburst of creativity, some New Left activists even dreamt of realising
McLuhan’s information society prophecy.2

1
For Guattari’s enthusiasm for the use of Minitel by social movements,
see Félix Guattari, ‘Three Ecologies’, page 142-144; ‘Pour une Éthique
des Médias’; and ‘Subjectivities: for Better and for Worse’, page 194.
2
For the influence of McLuhan on the Californian New Left, see chapter 1
above.

27
The development of community radio broadcasting was an integral part
of the 1960s cultural revolution against the American military-industrial
complex. As with many other New Left initiatives of the time, community
radio broadcasting was organised in ways which supposedly prefigured
the anarcho-communist future. For example, stations democratically
elected their managements and all important tasks were rotated among
their workers. As no money was raised from advertising or any other
commercial sources, community stations economies relied on gifts of
time and money from their listeners. Above all, New Left media activists
were committed to breaking down the separation between programme-
makers and their audience. For instance, community radio stations
encouraged listeners to make programmes about their own concerns. By
fostering two-way communications over the airwaves, hippie radicals
believed that community radio broadcasting was creating a truly
democratic form of media within the USA.1

Across in Europe, young militants were quick to learn from their American
contemporaries. The May ‘68 French revolution had catalysed a wave of
New Left activism across the continent. In particular, Italy was convulsed
by increasingly violent protests against the corrupt rule of the
conservative Christian Democrats and their clerical allies. However the
mainstream Left could not benefit from this popular desire for change.
Because of the Cold War, the Italian Communist Party was blocked from
coming to power at a national level and was therefore forced into an
implicit acceptance of the status quo. 2 With electoral politics frozen, many
young people adopted New Left positions. Rejecting existing party and
union structures, they not only organised wildcat strikes and sabotage
within the universities and the factories, but also created new social
movements of feminists, youth, ecologists, homosexuals and other
minorities. These hippie radicals sparked off a cultural revolution against
the oppressive and patriarchal morality of the Catholic church. By the
late-1970s, the Italian New Left had successfully pioneered a exciting and
innovative counter-culture which ranged from national newspapers to
community theatres.3
1
See David Armstrong, A Trumpet to Arms. pages 74-81; and John
Downing, Radical Media, pages 35-157.
2
This situation was the specifically Italian reflection of a wider European
phenomenon. See Kees van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling
Class. As the more perceptive New Left analysts pointed out at the time,
the military hegemony of the USA was slowly being superseded by the
more effective disciplines of the global marketplace. In the late-1970s,
this transformation was reflected in the unquestioning acceptance of neo-
liberal solutions to the crisis of Fordism by all Italian parliamentary
parties, including those of on the Left. See Sergio Bologna, ‘A Tribe of
Moles’.
3
See John Downing, Radical Media, pages 215-303; and Red Notes, Italy
1977-8.

28
Félix Guattari was closely associated with this political and cultural
ferment in Italy. Being a prominent New Left psychotherapist, he worked
with the Italian anti-psychiatry movement. More importantly, he was
proclaimed as the theoretical guru of the Italy’s most celebrated
community station: Radio Alice.1 For decades, the nationalised
broadcasting company had been used to disseminate propaganda from
the ruling Christian Democrats. Although they complained about political
bias, the Left parties didn’t oppose the state’s monopoly over the
airwaves. Instead, they campaigned for more ideological pluralism within
the existing nationalised system. Just at the point where the opposing
parties were edging towards a compromise, some New Left activists
decided to undermine this emerging consensus by setting up their own
unlicensed radio stations. When the police tried to close them down,
these pirates challenged the legality of the state’s monopoly over the
airwaves.

Much to their delight, the Italian supreme court decided in 1975 that this
situation was indeed a violation of the right of free speech guaranteed in
the constitution. Following the collapse of the regulations against
unlicensed broadcasting, thousands of ‘free radios’ were set up all across
Italy. While most of these were commercial, about a fifth of these stations
were run by New Left activists. Like their American counterparts, the
radical ‘free radios’ not only elected their own administrators, but also
encouraged listener participation in their broadcasts. From phone-ins to
community programme-making, these stations allowed their audience to
describe their own experiences in strikes or other social struggles.
Refusing corporate advertising, they survived through gifts of time and
money from their listeners. No longer hindered by the state, the Italian
New Left had discovered how to propagate the cultural revolution over
the airwaves.2

Radio Alice was set up as a political ‘free radio’ in 1976. The station was
based in Bologna whose reforming local authority was run by the
Communist Party. Its name was an ironic reference to how the city was
portrayed as a ‘wonderland’ in the party’s propaganda.3 Like other radical
stations, Radio Alice broadcast news about the social struggles led by the
New Left and encouraged community groups to make their own
1
Guattari wrote the introduction and provided the philosophical language
for the book summing up the practical and theoretical achievements of
Radio Alice. See Collectif A/Traverso, Radio Alice, Radio Libre.
2
See Mark Grimshaw and Carl Gardner, ‘Free Radio’ in Italy’, pages 14-
17; Peter Lewis and Jerry Booth, The Invisible Medium, pages 138-147;
and John Downing, Radical Media, pages 273-301.
3
For a sympathetic account of the achievements of the Communist local
administration in Bologna, see Max Jäggi, Roger Müller and Sil Schmid,
Red Bologna.

29
programmes.1 However, the provision of ‘counter-information’ was not
the sole purpose of this station. According to Guattari, Radio Alice was
replacing the corrupt system of representative democracy with an
electronic form of direct democracy. Instead of having their views
represented by politicians or other elected officials, people could now
directly express their own opinions on the programmes of the community
radio stations. Once the ‘immense permanent meeting’ over the airwaves
was formed, Guattari claimed that the social movements would then be
able to ‘deterritorialise’ the hierarchical power of the state. Although
initially limited to community radio stations, this electronic agora
supposedly prefigured the imminent reorganisation of the whole of
society around direct democracy after the anarcho-communist
revolution.2

‘The social entity is enabled to speak for itself without being obliged
to look to representatives or spokesmen to speak for it.’3

Even this ultra-left utopia didn’t go far enough for Guattari. The ultimate
aim of Radio Alice was the subversion of bourgeois rationality and
repressive sexuality within everyday life. When people were able to
express their own views over the airwaves, Guattari hoped that the
‘delirium’ of libidinal desire would be released within the population. By
broadcasting ‘poetical-frenzied’ speech, these radio rhizomes were laying
the foundations for a truly libertarian way of living. Soon all its listeners
would become holy fools.4 Not surprisingly, Radio Alice’s commitment to
converting the inhabitants of Bologna to ‘schizo-politics’ was not
appreciated by the reformists at the city hall. When the station helped to
organise a student rebellion in the centre of Bologna in 1977, the local
Communist council finally had a legal excuse to shut down Radio Alice.
The first experiment in Deleuzoguattarian media was over.5

1
As well as news reports, Radio Alice also broadcast regular programmes
made by feminists, conscripts, lesbians & gays, ex-prisoners, young
workers and children. See Claude Collin, Ondes de Choc, pages 100-102.
2
See Félix Guattari, ‘Les Radios Libres Populaires’, pages 159-160; and
‘Plan for the Planet’.
3
Félix Guattari, ‘The Micro-Politics of Fascism’, page 220.
4
See Félix Guattari, ‘Les Radios Libres Populaires’. The members of Radio
Alice declared that they wanted: ‘To break the dictatorship of the
Signifier, to introduce frenzy into the order of communication, to speak of
desire, anger, madness and refusal. This form of linguistic practice is the
only method adequate to the complex practice needed to destroy the
dictatorship of the Political, to introduce appropriation, the refusal of
work, freedom and collectivism into everyday life.’ Collectif A/Traverso,
Radio Alice, Radio Libre, page 102.
5
The police raid which finally silenced Radio Alice was transmitted live
from the station’s studios, see Red Notes, Italy 1977-8, pages 311-32.
The closing down of Radio Alice was part of the rapid escalation of the

30
 ‘The police have destroyed Radio Alice - its activists have been
hunted down, condemned, imprisoned, its premises have been
ransacked - but its revolutionary work of deterritorialisation
tirelessly carries on right into the nervous systems of its
persecutors.’1

conflict between the Communist party and its left-wing critics which
culminated in the almost complete suppression of the Italian New Left by
the early-1980s. See Red Notes, Italy 1980-81 - After Marx, Jail.
1
Collectif A/Traverso, Radio Alice, Radio Libre, page 12.

31
6: Guattari Goes Bankrupt

Back at home, Radio Alice’s dramatic martyrdom had turned Guattari into
the putative leader of the ‘free radio’ movement in France.1 As in Italy,
the French electronic media was controlled by a state-owned
broadcasting monopoly which shamelessly promoted the interests of the
ruling conservative parties. However, like the Italian Communist party,
the parliamentary Left in France initially didn’t support opening up the
airwaves. On the contrary, they wanted the nationalised broadcasting
corporation to be reformed along public service lines.2 This impasse
created an opportunity for direct action by New Left activists. In 1977,
some Greens in Paris set up the first pirate radio station in France.
Inspired by this example, many other groups started to experiment with
unlicensed radio broadcasting. Despite state repression, soon almost
every political movement in France had its own pirate station. Even
François Mitterrand, the leader of the Socialist party, was busted for
illegal radio broadcasting!3

Although some pirates were commercial, most of the ‘free radios’ were
run by New Left activists. Before the May ‘68 revolution, the Situationists
had advocated the replacement of ‘the society of the spectacle’ by the
electronic agora. This ultra-left organisation believed that creating direct
democracy within the media was the precondition for the victory of
anarcho-communism across France.4 By the late-1970s, many members
of the New Left had concluded that pirate radio broadcasting was the
most effective and fun way of putting this revolutionary theory into
practice. Instead of being represented by others, people could now
express their own views over the airwaves and organise collectively to
realise common goals. According to this analysis, ‘free radios’ were
prefiguring the electronic agoras which would run society after the
coming revolution.

‘Free radio has the effect of allowing people to be aware of the

1
The example of Radio Alice inspired the first wave of ‘free radio’ pirates
in France: ‘Italy is a machine which exports dreams.’ Annick Cojean and
Frank Eskenazi, FM, page 22.
2
See Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom, pages 75-90.
3
See Collectif Radios Libres Populaires, Les Radios Libres, pages 21-31;
Thierry Bombled, “Devine Qui Va Parler Ce Soir?”, pages 77-166; Claude
Collin, Ondes de Choc, pages 24-42, 109-146; and Annick Cojean and
Frank Eskenazi, FM, pages 9-71.
4
See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, theses 203-211; Raoul
Vaneigem, ‘Notes to the Civilised Concerning Generalised Self-
Management’, pages 288-289; and Situationist International, ‘The
Situationists and the New Forms of Action against Politics and Art’, page
214.

32
 upheavals which are about to happen. But it is above all the proof
that our fate is not determined and that citizens are able to be
actors of these transformations rather than forever being (TV)
spectators...’1

As in Italy, Félix Guattari was associated with one of the leading stations
of the ‘free radio’ movement. Along with Gilles Deleuze and other New
Left philosophers, he set up Radio 93 in Paris. Like Radio Alice, this
radical pirate didn’t just broadcast news about revolutionary struggles
and programmes made by community groups. Radio 93 was also
committed to the ‘deterritorialisation’ of state power and the subversion
of sexual-linguistic oppression. Although repeatedly raided, the fame of
Guattari and his colleagues ensured that this radio project received
considerable attention from the mainstream media. With all this
coverage, Guattari soon became accepted as the ‘voice’ of the radical
pirates. Crucially, his celebrity status allowed him to win support for his
own particular theories about the media within the French ‘free radio’
movement.2

When pirate radio broadcasting started, the lobbying campaign to open

up the airwaves was led by pragmatic members of the Socialist party.
Although involved with community radio stations, they were willing to
form a tactical alliance with the advocates of commercial broadcasting to
obtain licences from a conservative government. However, when a
compromise was rejected by the ruling parties, this consensual strategy
appeared to have failed. Radicalised by police repression, the surviving
pirate radio stations moved towards the policies advocated by Guattari
and his colleagues at Radio 93. Rejecting any collaboration with the
commercial pirates, these ‘soixante-huitards’ argued that ‘free radios’
should concentrate on prefiguring anarcho-communism within their
organisations. Above all, this meant that these stations had to refuse any
funding from advertising. In order to consolidate this militant position, the
radical pirates came together to form a new lobbying organisation: the
Fédération Nationale des Radios Libres (FNRL).3

According to Guattari, the principle task of the FNRL was to make clear
the community radio movement’s opposition to ‘advertising pollution’. As

1
An activist from Radio Clémentine, a pirate station in Paris, quoted in
Thierry Bombled, “Devine Qui Va Parler Ce Soir?”, page 166. As Collin
points out, one important reason for the fascination with radio among
New Left militants was their treasured memories of live broadcasts from
the barricades of the Left Bank during the May ‘68 revolution. See Claude
Collin, Ondes de Choc, page 38.
2
See Annick Cojean and Frank Eskenazi, FM, pages 34-36.
3
See Claude Collin, Ondes de Choc, pages 26-29; and Annick Cojean and
Frank Eskenazi, FM, pages 49-51, 103-108.

33
the state’s monopoly crumbled, the philosopher feared that control would
be reimposed over radio broadcasting by commercial organisations.
Instead of electronic agoras flourishing within a gift economy, private
corporations and their political allies would dominate the airwaves with
‘disco radios’ promoting the values of consumer society. The ‘free radios’
therefore had to maintain their anarcho-communist principles. In place of
advertising, community radio stations had to be exclusively funded by
donations of time and money from their audience. They could then exist
within a gift economy rather than become dependent on the
‘territorialising’ forces of capitalism. For the FNRL, the refusal to take
advertising became the main symbol of a pirate station’s radical
credentials. A rhizomic ‘free radio’ could never compromise with arboreal
powers from the commercial sector.1

Yet, despite its New Left politics, the FNRL still welcomed the Socialist
victory in the 1981 elections. Because Mitterrand himself had been
arrested for radio piracy, the Fédération knew that the new government
would rapidly open up the airwaves. When legislation was being
prepared, the anarcho-communist FNRL ironically emerged as the
principle advocate of tight state regulation over this new sector.
Determined to prevent the commercialisation of radio broadcasting, the
Fédération argued that only voluntary organisations should be granted
licences and all on-air advertising should be banned. Despite warnings
from more pragmatic ‘free radio’ activists, the FNRL managed to
persuade the Socialist government to include these measures in its 1981
broadcasting law. According to this statute, the new stations could only
be run by social movements and organised as gift economies.2 As well as
winning this victory, Guattari and his comrades were also granted one of
the much coveted radio licences for Paris once they agreed to fuse their
project with other New Left pirate stations. After years of struggle, they
now controlled their own legal ‘free radio’: Fréquence Libre.3

While many philosophers have theorised in a vacuum, Guattari now had

an unrivalled opportunity to turn his and Deleuze’s abstractions into
practice. Fréquence Libre had been granted a licence to broadcast to the
millions of inhabitants of Paris. It had its own studios, support from
leading members of the New Left and even a small subsidy from the

1
See Félix Guattari, ‘Les Radios Libres Populaires’, page 160. As another
supporter of the radical ‘free radios’ remarked: ‘These electronic
“jukeboxes”, far from encouraging creativity and understanding, only
promote an ideology of passivity and consumerism.’ Thierry Bombled,
“Devine Qui Va Parler Ce Soir?”, page 62.
2
See Annick Cojean and Frank Eskenazi, FM, pages 115-119, 127-132,
139-152; and ‘Loi no. 81-994 du 9 novembre 1981 portant dérogation au
monopole d’État de la radiodiffusion’, pages 3,070-3,071.
3
See Annick Cojean and Frank Eskenazi, FM, pages 183-188; and Jean-
Paul Simard, Interview with the Author.

34
government. This ‘free radio’ was a potential rhizome where social
movements could make their own programmes, where the gift economy
could be developed and where the ‘delirium’ of libidinal desire could be
released. Yet it soon became obvious that launching the revolution of
holy fools over the airwaves was much more difficult than Deleuze and
Guattari had ever imagined. In February 1982, the first major survey was
made into the popularity of the new local radio stations in Paris.
According to its results, the most successful service was a pop music
station with a weekly audience of over 500,000. In complete contrast,
Fréquence Libre only had 30,000 listeners tuning in each week. During
the next three years, Guattari and his comrades were never able to
reverse these disastrous results. By 1985, Fréquence Libre was still only
twenty-first out of a total of twenty-three independent radio stations in
Paris. The two stations below Guattari’s station in the ratings both
broadcast in languages other than French! 1

According to Guattari, the electronic agora would be built through the

active participation of increasing numbers of people within community
radio broadcasting. However, soon after Fréquence Libre was launched, it
was obvious that only a minority of activists from the New Left were
interested in making programmes for the station. Crucially, the sectarian
politics of these militants actually discouraged other people - including
many on the Left - from getting involved in this community radio station.
For instance, leading Fréquence Libre presenters insisted on ‘talking the
same way as in political meetings’ when they were on-air. 2 Despite the
promise of community involvement, Guattari and his colleagues were
more interested in lecturing the audience rather than engaging in
discussions with them. Instead of encouraging the ‘delirium’ of desire,
Fréquence Libre was often broadcasting in its own ultra-left version of
Stalinist ‘wooden language’.

This revolutionary elitism could even be found in the musical policies of

the station. Although they were from the babyboomer generation, many
New Left activists were hostile towards what they perceived as a
mindless and consumerist pop culture. The FNRL habitually used ‘disco
radio’ as a dismissive term for commercial broadcasting. So when some
rappers approached Fréquence Libre about the possibility of making
some programmes, the station’s leadership completely failed to realise
why the emergence of this multi-racial style of music in the suburban
ghettos of Paris was a major cultural event in France. Unable to
appreciate the music, they refused to let any hip-hop crews on-air until
their lyrics had been politically vetted! Although much of the station’s
airtime was filled with the sounds of punk, reggae and other alternative
rhythms, the New Left militants who ran Fréquence Libre never really

1
See Pierre Gavi and Xavier Villetard, ‘La premier hit-parade de la FM
Parisienne’, page 9; and Jean-Paul Simard, Interview with the Author.
2
Jean-Paul Simard, Interview with the Author.

35
understood the cultural importance of promoting innovative styles of
popular music on their community radio station.1

Despite being theoretically committed to two-way communications

among people, Fréquence Libre had in practice become the megaphone
for the viewpoints of Guattari and his disciples. However, the station
could not survive in the long-run depending on such a limited number of
people. Committed to refusing all advertising, Fréquence Libre had to
raise most of its income as gifts from its listeners. As well as help in kind,
it needed a constant flow of money to pay for its premises, studios,
transmitters and other running costs. The station also had to employ a
few people to provide essential engineering, broadcasting and
administrative support for its volunteer programme-makers. Out of
political commitment, people did work for the station for nothing or for
very low wages. However, as they acquired family responsibilities or
discovered other interests, the first generation of activists slowly started
to drift away. Because they’d alienated most of their potential audience,
Guattari and his comrades soon discovered that they could neither raise
sufficient cash nor recruit enough volunteers to operate the gift economy
successfully within their ‘free radio’ station.

Fréquence Libre now entered into a vicious circle of decline. Without

more resources, the station couldn’t produce better programming.
Without an interesting service, more listeners wouldn’t tune into the
station. Without more listeners, the station didn’t receive enough
donations of time and money to survive. Despite Guattari’s optimistic
predictions, the gift economy was no longer working at Fréquence Libre.
Reluctantly, the station’s management eventually agreed to start raising
money from advertising. But this compromise with economic reality had
come far too late. Hardly anyone was interested in buying commercials
on an anarcho-communist station with a tiny audience. In 1985,
Fréquence Libre finally went bankrupt. To complete the humiliation, the
station’s frequency had to be sold to a commercial radio network to pay
off some of its debts. Guattari’s attempts to turn theory into practice
within the ‘free radio’ movement had ended in tragedy.2

‘...the movement [was confined] within the old methods of

militancy which came from ‘68, while the radio phenomenon proved

1
Jean-Paul Simard, Interview with the Author. While avant-garde classical
music is discussed in detail, there are no references to any style of
popular music within Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand
Plateaus.
2
Jean-Paul Simard, Interview with the Author. Also see Annick Cojean and
Frank Eskenazi, FM, page 325. By the time that Fréquence Libre went
under, the regulations against commercial broadcasting had collapsed.
See Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom, pages109-111.

36
 on the contrary that these were finished.’3

3
Annick Cojean and Frank Eskenazi, FM, page 35.

37
7: From Stalin to Pol Pot

As Fréquence Libre headed towards bankruptcy, Guattari never admitted

any responsibility for the disaster. Amazingly, he instead blamed the
Mitterrand government for the collapse of the community radio
movement in France. Despite being given a statute written to FNRL
specifications, a Paris-wide licence and limited subsidies, the philosopher
still claimed that the Socialists had deliberately destroyed the ‘free
radios’ through the process of legalisation. Being outside the law, the
pirate stations had never been forced to compromise with political and
commercial interests. But, once the 1981 broadcasting law was passed,
the revolutionary purity of the ‘free radios’ had been inevitably corrupted
by the state and the market. Whatever the circumstances, DIY initiatives
had to preserve their complete autonomy from the rest of society. At the
moment of defeat, Guattari portrayed himself as the tragic romantic
hero. His ambitious plans had been thwarted, but his revolutionary
principles remained intact. By reasserting anarcho-communism in theory,
the prophet avoided explaining why its application hadn’t worked in
practice.1

Yet, elsewhere in Europe and in the USA, community radio stations have
managed to avoid going bankrupt. When not dominated by a small group
of sectarians, DIY media projects have been able to adopt more tolerant
forms of left-wing politics. Their programme-makers have instead
achieved pragmatic goals, such as informing, educating and entertaining
their listeners. Most importantly, these activists have been willing to
engage in a real dialogue with their supporters. In these electronic
agoras, the expression of opinions hasn’t been restricted to a
revolutionary minority. By adopting these inclusive policies, community
radio stations have been able to recruit enough volunteers, attract large
audiences and raise sufficient funding, including even from commercial
sources. For instance, Radio Populare in Milan is not just financially
viable, but also has been the most popular station in the city on several
occasions. While Guattari’s radio experiment collapsed after only a few
years on-air, this Milanese community station has successfully broadcast
alternative news and entertainment programmes for over two decades. 2
1
As Guattari explained in a later interview: ‘I think that if a rightist
government had remained in place, we [the ‘free radio’ movement]
would have continued to struggle and achieve things. It sufficed that the
Socialists came to power in order to liquidate all that.’ Charles J. Stivale,
Pragmatic/Machinic, page 8.
2
Radio Populare raises about 40% of its income from local and national
advertising with the rest of its money coming from listeners and left-wing
groups. The most important economic resource of the station is the free
labour donated by volunteers. During the 1991 Gulf War, the popularity
of its critical news reports led to Radio Populare topping the radio ratings
in the Milan region. See Peter Lewis, ‘Neither Market nor State:

38
Yet, techno-nomad TJs can’t get excited by these pragmatic examples of
community radio broadcasting. On the contrary, avant-garde intellectuals
are much more attracted to the uncompromising radicalism promoted by
Deleuze and Guattari. What they are looking for is a revolutionary
dreamtime to project onto cyberspace rather than a practical method of
extending access to the media. As a consequence, the new avant-garde
refuses to recognise that the failure of Fréquence Libre exposed severe
flaws within the theoretical positions championed by Deleuze and
Guattari. Far from succumbing to an outside conspiracy, this ‘free radio’
experiment imploded because of the particular New Left politics which
inspired A Thousand Plateaus and their other texts. Unwilling to connect
abstract theory with its practical application, techno-nomad TJs cannot
grasp that Deleuze and Guattari’s revolutionary rhetoric often hid
reactionary concepts. Although formally committed to opening up the
airwaves to the oppressed, Fréquence Libre collapsed because only a
small minority of committed activists were allowed to become involved in
the project. As the tragic history of this ‘free radio’ demonstrates, the
celebration of direct democracy in theory can act as the justification for
intellectual elitism in practice.

The exclusionary politics of Deleuze and Guattari were no accident. They

came directly from the existential situation faced by much of the
babyboomer generation. Because of their very different life experiences,
many young people experienced a pronounced ‘generation gap’ between
themselves and their parents. As political rebels, New Left activists
particularly felt that they had little in common with the rest of the
population. This disillusionment extended to left-wing parties and unions
which were nominally dedicated to overthrowing capitalism. Feeling so
isolated, the ‘soixante-huitards’ not surprisingly valued intense
commitment over popular support in their politics. With enough
determination, a small group of people could change the world. After May
‘68, many young radicals therefore believed in two completely
contradictory concepts. First, the revolution would create mass
participation in running society. Second, the revolution could only be
organised by a committed minority.

The New Left militants were reliving an old problem in a new form. For
over two hundred years, radical politics in Europe have been caught
inside the contradiction between popular freedom and intellectual
authority. Back in the 1790s at the peak of the French revolution, the
Jacobins had simultaneously supported both republican democracy and
political repression. For instance, their leaders always advocated the

Community Radio - a Third Way?’, pages 202-206; and John Downing,

Radical Media, pages 283-301. For examples of other successful
community radio stations, see Peter Lewis and Jerry Booth, The Invisible
Medium, pages 89-162; and Richard Barbrook, ‘Choice or Participation’.

39
most libertarian interpretation of press freedom in parliamentary
debates. Yet, when they were in power, the Jacobins not only
reintroduced political censorship, but also closed down opposition
newspapers. Under attack from internal and external enemies, they
claimed that a revolutionary dictatorship was needed in the short-term to
ensure the safety of the democratic republic in the long-term.1 The
Jacobins didn’t just create an authoritarian state to repress their
monarchist opponents. They also believed that the revolutionary
dictatorship should educate the French people in the principles of
republican democracy. Therefore state money was given to subsidise
patriotic newspapers, song-writers and theatres.2 In Paris and other cities,
regular public festivals were organised to celebrate republican virtues.
For a brief moment, minority leadership and mass participation appeared
to be symbiotic. As one journalist commented at the time: ‘Popular
festivals are the best education for the people.’3

Although the Jacobins only held power for a few years, almost every
nineteenth-century revolutionary movement was inspired by their
example. Across Europe, radicals faced the same problem of transforming
traditional peasant communities into modern urban societies. Although
they fought for political democracy and cultural freedom, these heirs of
the Jacobins were also fearful of popular attitudes. As in 1790s France,
substantial sections of the population remained passionately opposed to
the modernisation of society. The followers of Jacobinism claimed that the
minds of these people had been corrupted by the Catholic church, the
media and the education system. Many radicals therefore accepted that it
was impossible to hold democratic elections immediately after the
overthrow of the old order. Instead, a revolutionary dictatorship was
needed to crush any violent opposition from conservative forces. Once
this military struggle was over, the primary of task of the new regime
would be changing public opinion. Using education, media and other
cultural institutions, the Jacobin state would ensure that everyone
accepted the principles of republican democracy. The process of
indoctrination had become the precondition of participating in political
decision-making.4
1
As one leading Jacobin explained: 'In England, liberty of the press is
necessary against a despotic government, but in France, the press is not
free to curse liberty- i.e. democratic government.’ Crane Brinton, The
Jacobins, page 146. For an examination of Jacobin cultural policies, see
Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom, pages 28-36.
2
Norman Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre,
pages 227-8.
3
David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic, page 66.
4
In the late-1790s, Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals called for the
immediate nationalisation of all printing presses by the revolutionary
dictatorship. Under state control, publishers would no longer be able to
'... promulgate opinions directly contrary to the sacred principles of... the
sovereignty of the people.’ Instead, books and newspapers would only be
printed ‘...if the conservators of the National Will shall judge that their

40
At the beginning of the twentieth-century, the era of Jacobinism appeared
to be over. Marxist parliamentary parties and anarchist trade unions
seemed to offer more effective strategies for social transformation. Yet,
two decades later, the Jacobin tradition once again dominated
revolutionary politics across Europe. During the First World War, both the
Social Democratic and Syndicalist movements had discredited
themselves by their support for the fighting. In contrast, Lenin and his
fellow Russian revolutionaries had not only opposed the war, but also
seized state power. As in 1790s France, their revolutionary dictatorship
was soon confronted by both foreign invasions and internal revolts.
Echoing their French predecessors, these new Jacobins claimed that
participatory democracy in the long-run could only created by imposing
authoritarian rule in the short-term.1 For instance, Lenin’s regime
enforced strict censorship and suppressed all opposition publications. At
the same time, the revolutionary dictatorship also directed its own media
towards the political education of the Russian people. With the support of
avant-garde intellectuals, these new Jacobins were able to produce
highly-effective propaganda which utilised advanced technologies and
modernist aesthetics.2

‘Art is a powerful weapon of agitation, and the Revolution aspired

to adapt art to its agitational objectives. ...the Revolution had a
great deal to give artists - a new content - and the Revolution
needed artists.’3

Across Europe, radicals were inspired by the apparent success of the

1917 Russian revolution. Abandoning parliamentary Marxism and
anarchist Syndicalism, they revived the Jacobin tradition in its updated
form of Leninist Communism. Their path to the future was also the road
to their past. According to Lenin, militants had to prefigure the
revolutionary dictatorship in their own political organisation: the

publication may be useful to the Republic.' Phillipo Buonarroti, Babeuf's

Conspiracy for Equality, page 210. Fifty years later, Auguste Blanqui was
still advocating that the revolutionary dictatorship should take-over the
media for propaganda purposes. See M.J. Villepontoux and D. Le Nuz,
'Révolution et dictature'.
1
Replying to orthodox Marxist criticisms of his decision to dissolve
Russia’s first democratically-elected parliament, Lenin proclaimed that:
‘...in an epoch of desperate acute war, when history has placed on the
order of the day the question whether age-old and thousand-year-old
privileges are to be or not to be - at such a time to talk about majority
and minority, about pure democracy, about dictatorship being
unnecessary and about equality between exploiter and exploited!!’ V.I.
Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, page 36.
2
See Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State; Charles Bettelheim,
Class Struggles in the USSR; and John Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-
Garde.
3
Anatolii Lunacharsky, ‘Revolution and Art, 1920-22’, page 194.

41
vanguard party.1 Like his Jacobin predecessors, he argued that the
majority of the population was trapped within a ‘false consciousness’
imposed by newspapers, churches and other cultural institutions.2 As a
consequence, society could only be changed by the determination of a
minority of revolutionary intellectuals. Lenin called on these activists to
unite into a single disciplined organisation: the prototype of the Jacobin
dictatorship. Before an insurrection could be launched, this vanguard
party had to concentrate on disseminating propaganda. By producing
their own media, revolutionary intellectuals could claim leadership over
all popular struggles.3 Once the support of the masses was won, the
Communist party would be able to overthrow the old order, establish the
revolutionary dictatorship and begin the rapid modernisation of society.

By the 1960s, this Leninist model had lost much of its credibility.
Whatever illusions had been held by their parents, young people within
western Europe were well aware of the horrors of Stalin’s rule. In the
name of a better future, millions of people had been slaughtered for
resisting the programme of forced industrialisation organised by the
totalitarian state. For the 1960s generation, the Soviet Union could no
longer be regarded as a potential utopia. Ignoring this disillusionment,
their local Communist parties refused to develop any new revolutionary
strategies. On the contrary, these organisations had long accepted their
subordinate role within the political system. While Europe remained
divided, their leaders feared that any attempt to seize power within the
American sphere of influence would spark off a nuclear war between the
rival superpowers. Instead, the Communist parties concentrated on
forming the parliamentary opposition and retaining control over the trade
union movement. Despite the Cold War, these organisations were even
able to influence the decisions of national governments within western
Europe. For instance, the French state adapted some Stalinist economic
policies, such as central planning, nationalisation and price-fixing.
Inspired in part by the Russian revival of Jacobinism, the government also
intervened within the cultural sector, including nationalising all radio and
1
The vanguard was a military term used for soldiers who opened up the
way forwards for the main army. Popularised by Lenin, the political use of
this phrase emphasised the leading role of intellectuals within
revolutionary movements. See V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?
2
In the founding text of the Bolshevik party, Lenin bluntly stated that:
‘...the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to
its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology... for the spontaneous
working-class movement is... the ideological enslavement of the working-
class by the bourgeoisie.’ V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, page 49. A
more sophisticated version of this patrician analysis can be found in
Georg Lukàcs, History and Class Consciousness.
3
According to Lenin, '...the press is the core and foundation of political
organisation...' V.I. Lenin, 'Letter to G. Myasnikov, 5th August, 1921',
page 505. From the 1920s onwards, the principle activity of members of
the French Communist party was selling their daily newspaper. See Annie
Kriegel, Les Communistes Français, pages 190-8, 248.

42
television broadcasting. Even under conservative administrations, the
French state directed the modernisation of the country. From Left to
Right, all political parties had become Jacobins.1

What had once been revolutionary was now an integral part of the
system. The post-war boom had been guided by government
intervention. The population were educated and enlightened by state
institutions. Growing up under this new dispensation, young radicals
increasingly questioned the continued relevance of such mainstream
interpretations of Jacobinism. Since conservative governments already
planned the economy and organised cultural activities, the Communist
party didn’t appear to be a real revolutionary alternative to the
established order. Therefore, the new generation of militants started
looking for other ways to transform society. For some, the New Left had
to revive the radical Jacobinism of the early Soviet Union.2 Many others
believed that a revolutionary form of Leninism could only be found in the
anti-imperialist struggles within the Third World. During the 1950s,
leading French intellectuals had courageously supported national
liberation movements in their own country’s colonies, such as Algeria.
When the USA invaded Vietnam in the early-1960s, these militants joined
in the worldwide campaigns against this act of brutal aggression. Inspired
by Mao, Fanon and Castro, some of them invented ‘Third-Worldism’: a
belief that the imperialist sins of metropolitan society would be punished
by a revolution of the poor peasants in the periphery. Ironically, in this
new interpretation of Leninism, some European intellectuals claimed that
the vanguard party was now needed to resist the imposition of
modernisation on developing countries by the West.3

Admiring the heroic struggles of Vietnamese and other Third World

guerillas, young activists tried to set up their own more radical versions
of the Communist party. Although sceptical about continued
modernisation, they still copied both the hierarchical structure and
pedagogical media of their Stalinist predecessors. However, many other
militants believed that only anarcho-communism could express their
desire to abolish all forms of political and economic oppression. 4 Had not
the experience of the Soviet Union proved that any compromise with
1
See André Gauron, Histoire Economique et Sociale de la Cinquième
République - Tome 1; Firmin Oulès, Economic Planning and Democracy;
and Ruth Thomas, Broadcasting and Democracy in France.
2
For instance, see the contributions of Ernest Mandel and Pierre Frank in
Tariq Ali (ed.), New Revolutionaries, Left Opposition, pages 47-53, 176-
189.
3
See Jean-Pierre Garnier and Roland Lew, ‘From The Wretched of the
Earth to The Defence of the West’, pages 301-317; and Patrick Kessel
(ed.), Le Mouvement “Maoïste”” en France.
4
Anarcho-communism was seen as the heir of those Left Communists in
early-1920s Russia who had fought for direct democracy against the
dictatorship of the Leninist party. See Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks
and Workers’ Control; and Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising 1921.

43
Jacobinism would inevitably lead to the reimposition of tyranny? If they
were going to be truly revolutionary, New Left activists must abandon
Leninist methods of both political organisation and media production.
According to these anarcho-communists, the hierarchical structure of the
vanguard party had to be replaced by the spontaneous communalism of
the new social movements. Above all, they believed that revolutionary
dictatorship could no longer be trusted to direct cultural life. Instead, the
New Left must develop its own participatory forms of media, such as ‘free
radio’ stations. The rejection of Stalinism had apparently culminated in
the demise of the Jacobin tradition.

However, as the experience of Fréquence Libre showed, the New Left

never really escaped from the contradiction between popular freedom
and intellectual authority. While community groups were supposedly free
to express themselves through this rhizomic ‘free radio’, a small group of
activists actually decided who could - and could not - broadcast over the
airwaves. Despite abandoning the discipline of the vanguard party, the
elitist attitudes of Leninism still persisted. Ironically, the New Left had
rejected Stalinism only to return to the positions advocated by the
founding father of Russian Jacobinism: Mikhail Bakunin. Back in the
nineteenth century, this charismatic revolutionary had celebrated the
primeval force of spontaneous uprisings by the people. Yet, at the same
time, he also claimed that popular rebellions could only succeed when
directed by a secret conspiracy led by himself. The rhetoric of anarchy
justified the practice of elitism.1 After May ‘68, the New Left often echoed
Bakunin’s version of Jacobinism. For instance, the lack of formal
structures didn’t prevent Fréquence Libre from being dominated by a few
individuals. On the contrary, anarchy and spontaneity were the
preconditions for unchecked domination by the intellectual elite: the
prophets of the anarcho-communist revolution. As in other social
movements, vanguard politics survived in a diffuse form. 2 The centralised
Leninist party had been replaced by the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’.
1
As this Russian revolutionary admitted: ‘We...must forment, awaken and
unleash all the passions, we must produce anarchy and, like invisible
pilots in the thick of the popular tempest, we must steer it not by any
open power but by the collective dictatorship without insignia, titles or
official rights, and all the stronger for having none of the paraphernalia of
power... If you set up this collective, invisible dictatorship, you will
triumph, the revolution, properly guided, will triumph. If not, not.’ Mikhail
Bakunin, ‘Letter to Albert Richard, April 1st 1870’, page 180. Shortly
before writing this letter, Bakunin had helped to draft the programme of
the forerunner of the Leninist vanguard party. See Sergei Nechaev,
Catechism of a Revolutionist; and Paul Avrich, Bakunin and Nechaev. For
analysis of how Bakunin could simultaneously advocate ‘absolute liberty’
and ‘absolute tyranny’, see Aileen Kelly, Mikhail Bakunin.
2
While the Stalinists wanted to dominate the ‘molar’ politics of party and
trade union struggles, Guattari advocated that the New Left vanguard
should instead exert its leadership over the ‘molecular’ social
movements. See Félix Guattari, ‘Plan for the Planet’, pages 268-272.

44
 ‘If the movement continues deliberately not to select who shall
exercise power, it does not thereby abolish power. All it does is
abdicate the right to demand that those who do exercise power and
influence be [democratically] responsible for it.’1

Yet, along with many other New Left activists, Deleuze and Guattari
claimed that the diffuse vanguard was the solution to the long-standing
contradiction between democracy and elitism within revolutionary
politics. Like the public festivals of the French revolution, ‘free radio’
stations and other community media supposedly enabled ordinary people
to participate in cultural activities under the helpful guidance of
enlightened intellectuals. However, as demonstrated by the experience of
Fréquence Libre, this synthesis of opposites was much more difficult to
achieve in practice than in theory. As the rappers who wanted to make a
show for this ‘free radio’ quickly discovered, the ‘tyranny of
structurelessness’ could even involve the censoring of musicians from the
ghettos before allowing them on-air. Although supposedly committed to
enabling the uninhibited expression of popular desires, Fréquence Libre
instead became the megaphone for a small group of revolutionary
intellectuals. Just like Bakunin, Deleuze and Guattari believed that the
spontaneous feelings of the masses had to be directed by the chosen
few.2

In the writings of the two philosophers, this deep authoritarianism found

its theoretical expression in their methodology: semiotic structuralism.
Although they rejected the ‘wooden language’ of Stalinism, Deleuze and
Guattari still accepted its elitist assumptions. Above all, they retained its
most fundamental premise: ordinary people were incapable of
determining their own destiny. According to Lenin, the minds of the
masses were controlled by a conservative ‘false consciousness’ imposed
by the media and other cultural institutions. During the 1920s, some of
his admirers claimed that the social power of authoritarian ideologies was
derived from repression of individual sexuality.3 In the early-1960s, this
combination of Leninist politics and Freudian psychoanalysis was updated
through the addition of Lacanian structuralism by Louis Althusser, the
chief philosopher of the French Communist party. According to his
analysis, ideological domination was an inevitable feature of all societies
because of its psychic origins in the unconsciousness.4 For Deleuze and

1
Jo Freeman, ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’, page 13.
2
The pride which Fréquence Libre took in its vanguardist politics can be
seen in its slogan: “plus gauche que moi tu meurs” (if you were more left
than me, you’d be dead - i.e. it is impossible to be more left-wing than
me). Fréquence Libre, Publicity Poster.
3
See André Breton, What is Surrealism?; and Wilhelm Reich, The Mass
Psychology of Fascism.
4
According to Althusser, Lacan’s reinterpretation of Freud had provided a
supposedly scientific explanation of how the minds - and therefore the

45
Guattari, Althusser had explained why only a revolutionary minority
supported the New Left. Brainwashed by the family, media, language and
psychoanalysis, the majority of the population supposedly desired
fascism rather than anarcho-communism.1

Despite their libertarian rhetoric, Deleuze and Guattari’s theoretical

poetry perpetuated the authoritarian attitudes of Leninism. Like other
structuralists, they never accepted that ordinary people could make their
own history without leadership from the intellectual vanguard. All
theories celebrating individual and collective subjectivity were suspect
because they assumed that the mass of the population could possess
some form of ‘free will’. Instead, these philosophers claimed that semiotic
‘machinic assemblages’ controlled the development of society, including
the production of human subjectivity.2 By adopting this analysis, Deleuze
and Guattari were tacitly privileging their own role as intellectuals: the
producers of semiotic systems. Just like their Stalinist elders, the two
philosophers believed that only a minority of revolutionaries were
capable of freeing themselves from ideological domination. Illuminated
by the revolutionary spirit, the vanguard of intellectuals had the right to
lead the masses - without any explicit consent from them - in the fight
against capitalism.

‘...the speculative notion of the domination of the speculative ideal

in history [turns] into the notion of the domination of the
speculative philosophers themselves.’3

For two centuries, admirers of the Jacobins had claimed that the
authoritarian rule of the intellectuals was needed to organise the rapid
modernisation of traditional peasant societies. In contrast, Deleuze and

actions - of the majority of the population were controlled by the media

and other instititutions. See Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological
State Apparatuses; and ‘Freud and Lacan’. For a critique of the Stalinist
roots of Althusser’s philosophy, see E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of
Theory.
1
‘Psychic repression is such that social repression becomes desired: it
induces a consequent desire, a faked image of its object on which it
bestows the appearance of independence.’ Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, page 119. Their uncritical appropriation of
Althusser’s theory of ideological control can also be seen in Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, pages 130, 458-459.
2
As Althusserians, Deleuze and Guattari believed that most individuals
were psychically controlled by semiotic structures: ‘Subjectivity does not
only produce itself through the psychogenetic stages of psychoanalysis or
the “mathmemes” of the Unconsciousness, but also in the large-scale
social machines of language and the mass media - which cannot be
described as human.’ Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis, page 9.
3
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, page 144.

46
Guattari wanted their New Left vanguard to lead a revolution against
modernity. Like the admirers of Third World guerilla movements, many
anarcho-communists had also decided that opposing the oppressive
features of economic development was not radical enough. Echoing
Bakunin, they denounced the domestication of humanity by the industrial
system.1 Desiring a complete transformation of society, these anarcho-
communists rejected the transcendent ‘grand narrative’ of modernity
altogether, especially the left-wing versions inspired by Hegel and Marx.
For them, the whole concept of progress had become a fraud designed to
win acquiescence for the intensification of exploitation. While the
mainstream Left still advocated further economic growth, the New Left
should instead resist the process of modernisation.2

This dream of returning to a pre-industrial past had deep roots within the
babyboomer generation in France. At the end of the Second World War,
nearly half of the French population still lived in the countryside working
in small businesses or as peasants. During their childhoods, the ‘soixante-
huitards’ had lived through the rapid completion of the urbanisation and
industrialisation of France.3 While most of their parents had welcomed the
increase in their material well-being, many of the younger generation
reacted against the superficiality of the new consumer society. Following
the May ‘68 revolution, support for rural guerrillas resisting American
imperialism soon became mixed up with hippie dreams of tribalism,
green concerns about environmental degradation and nostalgia for a lost
peasant past. Some militants expressed their opposition to modernity by
praising Third World versions of Leninism.4 Like many others, Deleuze and

1
This revolutionary prophet unfavourably compared the ‘...respectable,
hierarchical world of middle-class civilisation and cleanliness, with its
Western facade hiding the most awful debauchery of thought, attitude
and actions...’ to the nomadic freedoms enjoyed in ‘...the Cossack world
of thieving brigands, which contained in itself a protest against the State
and the restrictions of patriarchal society...’ Mikhail Bakunin, ‘Letter to
Albert Richard, April 1st 1870’, pages 185-186.
2
For example, one ‘soixante-huitard’ claimed that: ‘...Marx’s work seems
largely to be the authentic consciousness of the capitalist mode of
production... Historical materialism is a glorification of the wandering in
which humanity has been engaged for more than a century: growth of
the productive forces [of industry and science] as the condition sine-qua-
non for liberation.’ Jacques Camatte, The Wandering of Humanity, pages
22-23. A much diluted variant of this attack on the oppressive ‘grand
narrative’ of economic development later formed the theoretical basis for
the self-styled post-modernists. See Jean-François Lyotard, The Post-
Modern Condition; and David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.
3
For an examination of this profound social transformation, see André
Gauron, Histoire Économique et Sociale de la Cinquième République -
Tome 1, pages 19-47; and Henri Medras with Alistair Cole, Social Change
in Modern France, pages 15-48.
4
According to another student of Althusser, the Cuban revolution had

47
Guattari instead championed a primitivist vision of anarcho-communism.
If the centralised city could be broken down into ‘molecular rhizomes’,
direct democracy and the gift economy would spontaneously reappear as
people formed themselves into small hippie tribes. Freed from the
corrupting influences of modernity, humanity would rediscover the
untamed freedom of the nomad warrior. For Deleuze and Guattari, the
anarcho-communist revolution could only have one goal: the destruction
of the modern city.1

‘Make the desert, the steppe grow; do not depopulate it, quite the
contrary. If war necessarily results, it is because the [nomadic] war
machine collides with States and cities...from then on the [nomadic]
war machine has as its enemy the State, the city, the state and
urban phenomenon, and adopts as its objective their annihilation.’2

In this primitivist interpretation, anarcho-communism was no longer the

‘end of history’: the material result of a long epoch of social development.
Instead, the liberation of desire was a perpetual promise: an ethical
stance which could be equally lived by nomads in ancient times or social
movements in the present. Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘schizo-politics’
celebrated the moments of ‘delirium’ found in intense political, sexual,
chemical, psychotic and mystical experiences. For them, the achievement
of these ‘becomings’ wasn’t the result of a Hegelian transcendence
across time. On the contrary, the immanence of liberation from social
controls was Nietzschean: something which always existed potentially
within the here and now.3 Although there was a hermetic history of

proved that the only true militants were found in the countryside: ‘...any
man, even a comrade, who spends his life in the city is unwittingly a
bourgeois in comparison with a guerillo.’ Régis Debray, Revolution in the
Revolution?, page 68. Anticipating Deleuze and Guattari’s tribal fantasies,
Debray also lauded the ‘hardening’ of revolutionary intellectuals through
the ‘absolute nomadism’ adopted by rural guerilla groups, see page 31.
1
For instance, Camatte emphasised that: ‘[Anarcho-communism]... is the
destruction of urbanisation and the formation of a multitude of
communities distributed over the earth.’ Jacques Camatte, The
Wandering of Humanity, page 37. In some classic New Left films, rebellion
against a repressive and alienating urban society was represented as a
return to primitive simplicity. In Weekend, the heroine finally escapes
from traffic jams, road rage and car accidents by joining the hippie rural
guerillas of the Front de Libération de Seine et Oise. Similarly, in
Themroc, the eponymous hero turns his flat into a hunter-gatherer’s cave
by sealing up its doors and knocking down the outside wall. Curiously,
both films portrayed cannibalism as the ultimate expression of liberation
from bourgeois morality! See Jean-Luc Godard, Weekend; and Claude
Feraldo, Themroc.
2
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus; page 417.
3
Deleuze admitted that: ‘“Becomings” are much more important than

48
‘delirium’ within dissident politics and art, ‘becomings’ could only be
experienced as particular moments rather than as steps towards the
good society. With enough libidinal intensity, anyone could overcome
hierarchical repression to become a fully-liberated individual: the New
Left militant, the nomad warrior, the Body-without-Organs, the
Nietzschean Superman and the holy fool. 1

According Deleuze and Guattari, the destruction of the city wasn’t just
necessary to free humanity from oppression by the state and the market.
Above all, they believed that the end of industrial civilisation would
emancipate people from the mental controls imposed by the media,
family, language and psychoanalysis. What was only immanent in
moments of ‘delirium’ at present would become a fully libertarian way of
life within the nomadic tribes of holy fools. However, as the experience of
Fréquence Libre proved, this rhetoric of unlimited freedom ironically
contained a deep desire for ideological control by the New Left vanguard.
Nowhere was this contradiction more intense than in the two
philosophers’ opposition to the process of modernity. Living within the
comforts of an advanced industrial society, Deleuze and Guattari could
indulge in ‘orientalist’ fantasies about the untamed lifestyle of wild desert
nomads.2 However, far from expressing the most radical concept of
freedom, the implementation of such anti-modernism in practice actually
implied authoritarianism in its most regressive form.

history in A Thousand Plateaus.’ Gilles Deleuze, ‘From Anti-Oedipus to A

Thousand Plateaus’, page 30. In place of the supposedly oppressive
historical analyses of Hegel and Marx, Deleuze and Guattari resurrected
the ahistorical theory of ‘eternal return’ proposed by Nietzsche. Over
time, the negativity of social controls would disappear as positive
moments of ‘delirium’ came back through the process of ‘eternal return’.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for
Life’; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pages 237-238, 244-247; and Gilles
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition pages 1-27; Nietzsche and Philosophy,
pages 186-194.
1
‘Men’s only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of
casting off their shame or responding to what is intolerable.’ Gilles
Deleuze, ‘Control and Becoming’, page 171. There is a particular acid
sensibility underlying Deleuze and Guattari’s disdain of modernity as a
historical process. As someone peaks, a few hundred years either seems
like an unimaginably long period of time compared with the next five
minutes or as ridiculously short compared with the cosmic nature of
eternity.
2
As Edward Said points out, successive generations of European anti-
modernists have projected their own political passions onto the lifestyle
of tribal warriors: ‘...such un-self-conscious primitive simplicity as the
Arab possess is something defined by the observer, in this case the White
Man.’ Edward Said, Orientalism, page 230.

49
While the nomadic fantasies of A Thousand Plateaus were being
composed, one revolutionary movement really did carry out Deleuze and
Guattari’s dream of destroying the city. Led by a vanguard of Paris-
educated intellectuals, the Khmer Rouge organised a successful peasant
revolution in Cambodia against an oppressive regime installed by the
Americans. Rejecting the ‘grand narrative’ of economic progress, Pol Pot
and his organisation tried to construct a rural utopia. Determined to
eliminate the supposedly corrupting influences of urban living, the Khmer
Rouge expelled everyone from the cities and forced them to move to the
countryside.1 Instead of leading to the revival of tribal communities, this
anti-modernist crusade massively reinforced the power of the despotic
state. When the economy subsequently imploded, Pol Pot‘s revolutionary
dictatorship embarked on ever more ferocious purges against real and
imaginary enemies until the country was rescued by an invasion by
neighbouring Vietnam. As a first step in rebuilding Cambodia, the new
government encouraged the surviving city-dwellers to return to their
homes. While Deleuze and Guattari claimed that the destruction of the
city would create direct democracy and libidinal ecstasy, the realisation
of this anti-modernist fantasy in practice had resulted in tyranny and
genocide.2

1
Michael Vickery describes the ideology of the Khmer Rouge as
‘Populism’: ‘...a conservative utopianism, a belief in the sacredness of the
soil and those who till it, in the quality of the status of all cultivators, a
belief that their virtue is endangered by the workings of an active, alien,
urban vice... There is a distrust of state and bureaucracy, and peasant
populists would minimise them before the rights and virtues of local
communities.’ Michael Vickery, Cambodia, page 285. Apart from its
emphasis on peasants rather than nomads, Khmer Rouge ideology was
eerily similar to the anti-modernism espoused by Deleuze and Guattari.
2
Although Deleuze and Guattari never directly supported Pol Pot’s
regime, the primitivist tendancy within the French New Left sympathised
with the anti-modernist rhetoric of the Khmer Rouge and other Third
World revolutionary movements. See Jean-Pierre Garnier and Roland Lew,
‘From the Wretched of the Earth to the Defence of the West’, pages 310-
322. Failing to learn from this tragic mistake, their close friend Michel
Foucault enthusiastically championed the 1979 Iranian revolution
precisely because it was led by Islamic fundamentalists rather than by
the secular Left: ‘Modernisation as political project and as a principle of
social change is a thing of the past in Iran...’ Michel Foucault, ‘Le Poids
Mort de la Modernisation’ quoted in Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, page
285.

50
8: The Antinomies of the Avant-Garde

The exposure of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes precipitated a profound crisis

within the French New Left. The end of the long post-war boom had
already weakened the credibility of a political movement which assumed
that poverty and unemployment were no longer major social problems.
Now it was revealed that the anti-modernist revolution had unleashed the
barbarism of the ‘killing fields’ rather than creating a libertarian society of
hippie tribes. The ‘line of flight’ from Stalin had led to Pol Pot.
Disillusioned with ultra-left politics, most activists gravitated towards
either parliamentary reformism or post-modern nihilism as the 1970s
came to a close. The New Left revolution had failed.

Ironically, the current popularity of Deleuze and Guattari comes from

their stubborn refusal to recognise this defeat. In A Thousand Plateaus
and their other texts, Deleuze and Guattari completely ignored both the
harsher socio-economic climate following the ‘74 oil crisis and the
disastrous consequences of the anti-modernist revolution in Cambodia.
Even when Fréquence Libre went bankrupt, they never questioned their
strategy of ‘schizo-politics’. While most of their former comrades adopted
more pragmatic positions, Deleuze and Guattari remained committed to
the 1960s vision of revolutionary redemption. For them, all proposals to
reform capitalism were simply attempts to reinforce the repressive
powers of the state. Despite their own involvement within computer-
mediated communications, the two philosophers even claimed the
primary effect of improvements in information technologies would be the
increased surveillance of personal behaviour. 1 However, such
revolutionary intransigence reflected the utopian dreams of an earlier
decade rather than the harsh realities of the neo-liberal 1980s. Unwilling
to recognise these changed circumstances, Deleuze and Guattari were
forced to transform the historically specific politics of the New Left into
theoretical poetry which existed outside time. What was no longer
credible as practical politics could only survive in a metaphorical form. 2
1
Deleuze warned that: ‘We’re moving toward control societies that no
longer operate by confining people [in hospitals, schools, factories, etc.]
but through continuous control and instant communication.’ Sounding
like Baudrillard, he later concluded that: ‘Compared to the approaching
forms of continuous controls in open sites, we may come to see the
harshest confinement as part of a wonderfully happy past. The quest for
“universals of communications” ought to make us shudder.’’ Gilles
Deleuze, ‘Control and Becoming’, pages 174-175.
2
Their colleague Michel Foucault adopted a similar approach in the
campaign for the abolition of prisons. Because the mainstream Left would
only support reforms of the penal system, he popularised the theoretical
metaphor of the ‘Panoptican’ to promote his much more utopian
solutions. According to Foucault, this concept proved that prison
reformers were primarily interested in imposing ever more sophisticated

51
For instance, they symbolised their rejection of any compromise with
consumer society by mythologising the uncorrupted lifestyle of tribal
nomads. As if the New Left had never been defeated, Deleuze and
Guattari could still live the libidinal intensity of the revolutionary moment
in their imaginations.

‘The victory of the revolution is immanent and consists of the new

bonds which it installs between people, even if these bonds last no
longer than the revolution’s fused material and quickly give way to
division and betrayal.’1

Because they were identified with the ‘Pol Pot tendancy’ of the French
New Left, Deleuze and Guattari remained marginal figures within the
pantheon of post-structuralist philosophers throughout the 1980s.
Despite supporting social movements and denouncing historical ‘grand
narratives’, these gurus were far too closely associated with the
disappointed hopes of the 1960s to be promoted by the fashionable
advocates of post-modernism. During the decade of ascendant neo-
liberalism, avant-garde intellectuals much prefered formal
experimentation to social engagement.2 However, by the mid-1990s,
post-modernist detachment began to look dated. Searching for an
alternative to 1980s apathy, contemporary intellectuals soon
rediscovered the revolutionary passion of the New Left. For cutting-edge
TJs, it is now almost compulsory to sample from the writings of
Situationists, Autonomists and other ultra-leftists of the period. Above all,
they have to quote from the theoretical poetry of Deleuze and Guattari.

Yet, this revival of New Left theories is taking place in very different
circumstances from those which produced the politics of May ‘68. Except
for a few ‘deep greens’, almost no one now believes in the anti-modernist
revolution.3 On the contrary, avant-garde intellectuals are much more

systems of surveillance over inmates rather than improving the

conditions inside jails. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
1
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, page 177.
2
‘[The post-modern artist] ...gains fame and fortune for no clear
accomplishment but simply for being a stylish symbol which is all that his
production testifies to. Novelty is proof enough of his artistic power and
credibility.’ Donald Kuspit, The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist, page 20.
Also see David Harvey, The Condition of Post-Modernity, pages 39-65.
3
The most notorious recent proponent of primitivist politics chillingly
threatens that: ‘Whatever society may exist after the demise of the
industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature,
because in the absence of advanced technology there is no other way
that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or
herdsmen or fishermen or hunter[s] etc.’ The Unabomber [Theodore
Kaczynski], Industrial Society and its Future, page 43. In this passage,

52
excited by the digital future than by the tribal past. Unlike Deleuze and
Guattari, they are unreservedly enthusiastic about the emancipatory
potential of information technologies. Far from desiring the destruction of
the city, these TJs believe that the liberation from industrial society can
only emerge from the process of ‘deterritorialisation’ unleashed by the
Net.1 Ironically, this rejection of Deleuze and Guattari’s primitivist politics
hasn’t discredited their theoretical poetry among radical intellectuals. On
the contrary, the defeat of the New Left has enabled their disciples to
complete the transformation of anarcho-communism from the promise of
social revolution into the symbol of personal authenticity: an ethical-
aesthetic rejection of bourgeois society. Although defeated in reality, the
ideals of May ‘68 can still be used to imagine a revolutionary dreamtime
for the Net. The writings of Deleuze and Guattari are therefore
appropriated more for their emotional intensity than their radical
positions. The political vanguard of the 1960s is reborn as the cultural
avant-garde for the 1990s.

This aestheticisation of revolutionary politics is the founding principle of

the European avant-garde. Until the late-eighteenth century, aristocratic
and clerical patronage determined the content of almost all artistic
production. Suddenly, after the overthrow of the French monarchy, a new
form of cultural activism became possible. Both state institutions and the
general public now wanted art which expressed the hopes of the
revolution. Therefore artists not only had to abandon the styles and
images of the old regime, but also had to discover new ways of making
art. During the 1790s, these changes in artistic practice were pioneered
by Jacques-Louis David. Although he had achieved recognition under the
monarchy, he became a fervent supporter of the revolution. David was
soon elected to parliament and later became a prominent member of the
Jacobin government. Using his political power, David enthusiastically
promoted the creation of a republican culture. As well as subsidising
patriotic newspapers and other forms of propaganda, he wanted the
Jacobin regime to provide a new symbolic order for all aspects of life.
David therefore organised the abolition of the Academy of Art which had
controlled the exhibition of painting and sculpture under the monarchy. In
its place, he founded a state-funded Commune des Arts run by
revolutionary painters and sculptors. Freed from the need to please
feudal patrons, artists could now produce works celebrating republican

‘herdsmen’ is a synonym for nomads.

1
For instance, Plant proclaims that: ‘There is always a point at which
technologies geared towards regulation, containment, command, and
control can turn out to be feeding into the collapse of everything they
once supported... the keystrokes of users on the Net connect them to a
vast distributed plane composed not merely of computers, users, and
telephone lines, but all the zeroes and ones of machine code, the
switches of electronic circuitry, fluctuating waves of neurochemical
activity, hormonal energy, thoughts, desires...’ Sadie Plant, Zeroes +
Ones, page 143.

53
ideals. The political revolution had become a cultural revolution.1

As well changing the organisation of artistic production, David also

promoted the contemporary fashion for neo-classicism as the republican
aesthetic. Rejecting the ornate fashions popular under the monarchy, he
adopted an austere look for his own paintings derived from the ancient
Greeks and Romans. In its simplicity and historical pedigree, this neo-
classical style supposedly embodied patriotism, heroism and other
republican virtues. For David, the themes of this new type of painting had
to be didactic. Before the revolution, he had illustrated famous incidents
from the history of the ancient Roman republic. After the fall of the
monarchy, David made paintings of the martyrdom of Marat and other
important events for the new French republic. In both style and content,
he believed that formal innovation of neo-classicism expressed the
political changes unleashed by the revolution. A new age needed a new
aesthetic.2

Being a committed Jacobin, David saw this cultural revolution as an

integral part of the struggle against the ideological legacy of the old
order. Once they were educated in republican virtues, people would no
longer be fooled by the false promises of monarchists and priests.
Instead, they would enthusiastically support the Jacobin state’s drive to
modernise the country. David and the Commune des Arts therefore didn’t
just produce pedagogical paintings and sculptures. They also applied
their artistic talents to a wide variety of projects from designing sets for
political plays to creating outfits for elected officials. Most famously,
David and the Commune des Arts organised a series of public festivals in
Paris for the Jacobin government. Using their neo-classical style, they
made statues, floats, costumes and paintings which commemorated
revolutionary martyrs and symbolised republican ideals. These
spectacular effects were designed to educate the crowds attending these
events in the values of the new regime. Crucially, David and his
supporters also wanted the population of Paris to participate in the
revolutionary festivals.3 Although the Commune des Arts had provided
the symbols for the event, the centre of the procession consisted of

1
See David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic, pages 28-34.
2
David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic, pages 1-6.
3
The Commune des Arts was inspired by Rousseau’s calls for public
festivals to become the main form of entertainment in the republic. As he
poetically put it: ‘Plant a stake crowned with flowers in the middle of a
square; gather the people there together, and you will have a festival. Do
better yet; let the spectators become an entertaiment to themselves;
make them actors themselves; do it so that each sees and loves himself
in the others so that all will be better united.’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Politics and the Arts, page 126. For the importance of this ideal for
republican celebrations during the French revolution, see Mona Ozouf,
Festivals and the French Revolution, pages 197-216, 232-261.

54
people demonstrating their support for the republic. For a brief moment,
these revolutionary festivals overcame the contradiction between
intellectual authority and popular freedom which confronted the Jacobins.
When helped by innovative artists, a minority of radical intellectuals could
successfully express the hopes of the majority of the urban population.
The cultural revolution had reinforced the political revolution.

‘The people were the regulator, the executor, the ornament, and
the object of the celebration.’1

After the fall of the Jacobins, the heroic example of David and the
Commune des Arts inspired the formation of the first avant-garde art
movements in Europe. Rejecting aristocratic and ecclesiastical patronage,
radical artists instead turned to this new form of revolutionary cultural
activism. Like their Jacobin mentors, they believed that aesthetic
expression should advance political emancipation. As in the 1790s, a
small minority of enlightened intellectuals wanted to create a republican
culture for the uneducated majority. Imitating these pioneers, successive
generations have created their own versions of the European avant-
garde. Although artistic fashions were always changing, every movement
remained committed to the aestheticisation of revolutionary politics. In
the avant-garde tradition, cultural innovation became synonymous with
political dissidence.2

Although inspired by the Commune des Arts, few avant-garde

movements actually experienced the moment of revolution. On the
contrary, most were active during periods of political conservatism.
Confined within their own private world, cultural radicals increasingly
believed that their artistic experiments could act as substitutes for the
missing revolution. Even without the direct participation of the people,
they hoped to create a better world by breaking old conventions and
inventing new aesthetics.3 From the Romantics onwards, avant-garde

1
Jacques Pierre Brissot in Patriote François, 17th April 1792, quoted in
David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic, page 60. Also see
Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, pages 13-82, 197-216.
2
As two commentators have remarked: ‘...a great deal of the best
literature and art of the early-nineteeth century is prolongation of the
revolutionary polemics of the 1790s, a transformation of politics into
aesthetics.’ Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, Romanticism and Realism,
page 18. Also see Hugh Honour, Romanticism, pages 217-244.
3
Novalis proclaimed that: ‘We [artists] are engaged on a mission: we are
called to give shape to the earth.’ Novalis, Blütenstaub, no. 32, in Lilian
Furst, European Romanticism, page 69. As Bürger points out: ‘What
distinguishes... [the avant-garde] is the attempt to organise a new life
praxis from a basis in art... Only an art the contents of whose individual
works is wholly distinct from the (bad) praxis of the existing society can

55
movements have been repeatedly tempted to transform political
struggles into a revolutionary dreamtime. As a consequence, the artists
often saw themselves as the replacement for the absent masses.
Prevented from creating a republican culture for everyone, they became
infatuated with their own personal rebellion against bourgeois
conformity. By becoming emotionally passionate, the individual aesthete
could supposedly live in freedom despite political and social conditions
remaining unchanged. While the Commune des Arts had celebrated the
revolutionary crowd, many avant-garde movements instead idealised the
solitary hero who had escaped from the confines of bourgeois society. In
paintings, books and music, radical artists identified themselves with
nomads, bandits and madmen.1 According to this interpretation of the
avant-garde tradition, the absence of a modernising revolution would be
mitigated by the emotional authenticity of primitivism. The subversive
artist had become the holy fool.

‘The feeling for poetry has much in common with the feeling for
mysticism. It is the feeling for the particular, the personal, the
unknown, the arcane, the revelatory... It portrays the invisible,
senses the impalpable.’2

For over a century, this individualist version was the dominant tendancy
within the European avant-garde. Suddenly, after the 1917 Russian
revolution, the Jacobin original was once again in the ascendancy. As in
1790s France, Lenin’s dictatorship was determined to remove the
reactionary ‘false consciousness’ which has supposedly been imposed on
ordinary people by the monarchy and the priests. As well as creating its
own newspapers, film companies and radio stations, this new Jacobin
state also subsidised the production of revolutionary art. Just like David
and his colleagues, Malevitch, Tatlin, Eisenstein and many other talented
artists enthusiastically participated in this propaganda campaign. Inspired
by the legacy of the Commune des Arts, they founded Constructivism,
Proletkult and similar avant-garde movements to lead a cultural
revolution against the harmful influences of conservative ideologies.
Funded by the new Soviet state, radical artists organised public festivals
combining pedagogical spectacles with popular participation. For a brief
moment, artistic innovation was once again identified with political
emancipation.3

be the starting point for the organisation of a new life praxis.’ Peter
Bürger, The Avant-Garde, pages 49-50.
1
For an analysis of the early avant-garde fascination with these
marginalised individuals, see Hugh Honour, Romanticism, pages 240-244,
271-275.
2
Novalis, Fragmente aus den letzten Jahren 1799-1800, no. 32, in Lilian
Furst, European Romanticism, page 60.
3
See John Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde; David Elliot, New
Worlds; and Vladimir Tolstoy, Irina Bibikova and Catherine Cooke, Street

56
During the 1920s, the revolutionary example of the Russian avant-garde
revitalised cultural activism across Europe. From the Bauhaus in Germany
to de Stijl in the Netherlands, dissident artists hoped that inventing new
forms of architecture, art and design would radically transform society. 1
More than any other group, the French Surrealists perfected the fusion of
artistic creativity with social rebellion. Supplementing Lenin with Freud,
these avant-garde intellectuals claimed that cultural mediocrity and
moral puritanism had imposed a reactionary ‘false consciousness’ on the
masses. According to their analysis, innovative art was the most effective
way of undermining these repressive norms of bourgeois society. This
avant-garde movement is still praised for its artistic innovations, such as
ready-mades, montages, dream imagery and automatism. The Surrealists
are also remembered for their pioneering use of new technologies, such
as film-making and photography. 2 However, they didn’t make their
famous artworks just to transgress the formal limitations of Western
aesthetics. Above all, the Surrealists believed that their experimental art
would radicalise the consciousness of the people. In their Freudian
interpretation of Leninism, the repressed consciousness of the majority of
the population could only be awakened by the revolutionary visions of an
enlightened minority.

‘The essential is always to look ahead...toilingly to go onward

towards the discovery, one by one, of fresh landscapes, and to
continue to do so indefinitely...that others may afterwards travel
the same spiritual road, unhindered and in all security.’3

As well as being inspired by the Russian revival of Jacobinism, the

Surrealists also drew on more individualist interpretations of the avant-
garde tradition. For instance, this movement borrowed techniques from
so-called ‘outsider art’ made by tribal societies, the insane, the
intoxicated and the uneducated. Although these groups had little else in
common, the Surrealists thought that their members lived more
passionately and emotionally than those trapped within the rules and

Art of the Revolution.

1
For instance, the Berlin Art-Workers’ Council proclaimed that: ‘Art and
the people must be united’ and ‘Art will no longer be the pleasure of a
few, but the happiness and life of the masses.’ ‘Conseil des Travailleurs
de l’Art (Berlin 1919)’ in Jacques Aron, Anthologie Bauhaus, page 51.
2
While earlier art movements sought to revive the styles of a lost past,
the avant-garde has always tried to create a modern form of aesthetics
with new technologies. See Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner,
Romanticism and Realism, pages 35-37, 74-110; and Raymond Williams,
‘The Politics of the Avant-Garde, pages 4-5.
3
André Breton, What is Surrealism?, page 118. Also see André Breton,
Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky, ‘Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary
Art’ in Leon Trotsky, Art & Revolution, pages 115-121.

57
regulations of bourgeois society.1 By imitating this ‘outsider art’, they
hoped to inspire an ethical-aesthetic rebellion against the alienation of
daily existence under capitalism. Whether from the primitive past or the
Soviet future, any vision of a more authentic way of living should be used
to subvert the cultural philistinism of the bourgeois present. Even their
own bohemian lifestyles were seen as challenging the dull conformity of
everyday life. Like breaking the conventions of high art, the Surrealists
thought that transgressing conservative morality would weaken the
ideological domination of capitalism. Yet, both their aesthetic eclecticism
and their personal libertarianism always remained underpinned by a firm
belief in Leninism. According to the Surrealists, radical intellectuals
should only make innovative art and subvert repressive morality ‘...in the
service of the revolution.’2

By the early-1960s, this Leninist phase of the avant-garde had almost

been forgotten. For over a decade, revolutionary artists had been
marginalised by the Cold War confrontation between the two
superpowers. Over in the East, formal experimentation and political
committment had long been replaced by traditional aesthetics and
sychophantic careerism.3 Back in the West, modernist art was only
welcome as long as its revolutionary political message was muted.4 As in
earlier periods of reaction, artists were forced to retreat into their studios
and the galleries. Disillusioned with radical ideologies, many American
proponents of the avant-garde hoped that individual creativity could
compensate for the missing social revolution. Echoing their Romantic
predecessors, these artists even proclaimed themselves as mystical
shamens protesting against the banality of consumer society. Once more,
the cultural revolution had been turned into personal rebellion.5

After May ‘68, the cycle turned yet again. The purely formalist
interpretation of the avant-garde tradition now seemed exhausted.

1
For the influence of ‘outsider art’ on the Surrealists, see David
MacLagen, ‘Outsiders and Insiders’.
2
From 1930 to 1933, the Surrealists’ journal was called Le Surréalisme
au service de la révolution. See Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, pages 87-
92.
3
For an account of how the revolutionary rhetoric of the Leninist avant-
garde was used to justify the restoration of traditional styles of art by the
Stalinist regime, see Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art, pages 81-113,
216-265.
4
For a brief period, modernist art was even used as an ideological
weapon by the US government in its Cold War struggle against the USSR.
See Serge Guilbart, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, pages
165-194.
5
For analysis of this shift from revolutionary politics to mystical
individualism within the 1950s avant-garde, see Serge Guilbart, How New
York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, pages 101-163.

58
Instead, young militants looked back to the revolutionary 1920s for
inspiration. Like many others of their generation, Deleuze and Guattari
were particularly drawn to the legacy of Surrealism. In their writings, they
created their own version of this avant-garde movement’s synthesis of
Lenin and Freud. As in the 1920s, conservative politics were equated with
sexual repression. Deleuze and Guattari also revived long-forgotten
Surrealist concepts, such as the Body-without-Organs.1 Once again,
bohemian lifestyles became synonymous with revolutionary politics.
However, these two philosophers remained selective about their
appropriations from their predecessors. For instance, they emphasised
the primitivist side of Surrealism over its enthusiasm for Soviet
modernisation. Like the Romantics, they identified with the emotional
intensity supposedly enjoyed by nomad warriors, mad people and the
intoxicated. Although the Surrealists had joined the French Communist
party, Deleuze and Guattari only remembered their fascination with those
who lived outside the confines of industrial society.2

While the New Left was in the ascendent, the influence of Surrealism
remained primarily theoretical. However, as political and economic
circumstances steadily became less favourable, Deleuze and Guattari
increasingly turned to avant-garde art as a substitute for the lost
revolution. What couldn’t be achieved in practice, they hoped to realise
through the imagination. This aestheticisation of May ‘68 was particularly
expressed in the poetical style of Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. For
instance, in A Thousand Plateaus, the ‘schiz-flow’ of the text continually
jumps between radical psychoanalysis, art criticism, imaginary history,
popular science and several other genres. As in modernist painting, the
‘realism’ of the text has been superseded by a fascination with the formal
techniques of theoretical production. For Deleuze and Guattari, theory
was no longer a tool for understanding social reality. On the contrary,
theory became poetry: a piece of literature expressing authentic emotion.
Having failed in practice, New Left politics could live on as avant-garde
theory-art.

‘The aesthetic power of feeling, although equal in principle with the

other powers of thinking philosophically, knowing science, acting
politically, seems on the verge of occupying a privileged position

1
Body-without-Organs was coined by Antonin Artaud for his articles
celebrating the revolutionary potential of the insane in La Révolution
surréaliste back in 1925. See Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, page 30.
2
The leading Surrealists became Communist party members in 1927, see
Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, page 63. Despite this loyalty to an
organisation which claimed to represent the industrial working class,
Breton could still simultaneously declare that: ‘The European artist in the
twentieth century can ward off the drying up of the sources of inspiration
swept away by rationalism and utilitarianism only by resuming so-called
primitive visions.’ André Breton, What is Surrealism?, page 263.

59
 within the collective Assemblages of enunciation of our era.’1

Contemporary intellectuals are attracted to this version of the avant-

garde tradition promoted by Deleuze and Guattari. After years of post-
modern apathy, they are rediscovering the joy of aestheticising the
revolution.2 Because Leninism is discredited, they’ve instead seized on
Deleuzoguattarian discourse to signify their political and cultural
dissidence. Ironically, this change in language is necessary to maintain a
continuity in practice. For, as in earlier generations, the contemporary
avant-garde models itself on the political vanguard. Experimental art and
bohemian lifestyles are equated with the fermenting of social rebellion.
Once again, radical intellectuals are leading the cultural revolution
against bourgeois society.

Yet, the new avant-garde’s cannot appropriate the legacy of Deleuze and
Guattari without remixing their theories. Although they used the latest
technologies for their media experiments, these two philosophers always
remained hostile to the increasing dependence of humanity on machines.
In contrast, their contemporary followers are defined by their almost
uncritical enthusiasm for the Net. Above all, they believe in the imminent
realisation of McLuhan’s information society prophecy. Ironically, this
futurist utopia has provided the theoretical solution for the abandonment
of Deleuze and Guattari’s primitivist politics. According to McLuhan, the
spread of new media technologies would replace the loneliness of
industrialism with the intimacy of the ‘global village’. Far from being
nostalgia for a lost arcadia, hippie tribalism was pioneering the new
lifestyles of the post-industrial society. The distant past had become the
near future.3

By adding McLuhan into the mix, techno-nomad TJs are able to transform
Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-modernist scriptures into a celebration of
hyper-modernism. The rhizome becomes a metaphor for community
networks. The nomad warrior is turned into a hi-tech employee who can
easily move between jobs and countries. Semiotic structuralism reflects
the digital codes of Net software. The Body-without-Organs is used to
mythologise cybersex. As a result, Deleuze and Guattari’s ultra-leftism

1
Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis, page 101.
2
For instance, the 1997 Documenta festival had texts by Deleuze and
Guattari - along with other ‘soixante-huitard’ philosophers - prominently
displayed on the walls of its art galleries. As shown by the contributions
to their catalogue, the organisers’ vision of the contemporary European
avant-garde was heavily influenced by the legacy of the New Left. See
Documenta X, Politics-Poetics.
3
The Canadian guru claimed that: ‘Specialist technologies [of printing
and industrialism] detribalise. The nonspecialist electronic media
retribalises.’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, page 24.

60
can become an ethical-aesthetic stance opposing the conformity of
bourgeois society. As in earlier avant-garde movements, the missing
social revolution is replaced by the joys of personal rebellion. By
separating 1960s anarcho-communism from its specific historical
moment, New Left vanguard politics can be transmuted into a hip avant-
garde style for the age of the Net.

‘For artistic practice, the adaptation of the model of the [nomadic]

war machine can mean that, in order to enhance the transversal
tendencies, insecurities have to be triggered, anti-production has to
be initiated and parasitic behaviour has to be developed as a series
of inversive strategies: infoldings at the boundaries.’1

From the early-nineteenth century onwards, avant-garde movements

promoted the cultural revolution through theory-art. In manifestos,
journals and books, each generation proclaimed its own ethical-aesthetic
vision of political and personal rebellion. 2 Faithful to this hallowed custom,
techno-nomad TJs now sample Deleuze and Guattari to produce their own
specific form of avant-garde theory-art. Yet, something is lost in these
respectful homages to the past. Crucially, the faithful copying of Deleuze
and Guattari’s ‘schiz-flow’ style deliberately obscures the centrality of
New Left anti-modernism in their philosophy. As in earlier periods of
conservatism, the individualist interpretation of the avant-garde tradition
is now increasingly influential. Within Deleuze and Guattari’s own
writings, the rational analysis of society had already been replaced by the
literary celebration of irrational desires. Their contemporary disciples are
much more attracted to this emotional intensity rather than to the actual
politics of May ‘68. By discarding any remaining connections with critical
sociology, the European avant-garde is now able to transform
Deleuzoguattarian discourse into cool multi-media theory-art for the age
of the Net.3

As the new century begins, the techno-nomads proclaim themselves to

1
Andreas Broeckmann, ‘Towards an Aesthetics of Heterogenesis’, page
158.
2
For some avant-garde movements, theory-art even became their main
form of cultural activism: ‘The novelty of Italian Futurist manifestos... is
their brash refusal to remain in the expository or critical corner, their
understanding that the group pronouncement, sufficiently aestheticised,
can... all but take the place of the promised art work.’ Marjorie Perloff,
The Futurist Movement, page 85.
3
From its earliest appearances, theory-art was always multi-media. This
aesthetic form not only involved literature, but also graphic design,
typography, photography, films and public performances. See Charles
Rosen and Henri Zerner, Romanticism and Realism, pages 74-110; and
Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Movement, pages 90-101.

61
be the cutting-edge cultural movement of the moment. Aspiring to be the
new avant-garde, they combine radical politics, bohemian lifestyles and
experimental aesthetics. Imitating youth sub-cultures, they have acquired
their own peculiar ‘signifying practices’. Above all, this new generation
continues the most hallowed folk custom of the European avant-garde:
the cultural revolution. Because the Leninist interpretation of this
tradition has disappeared, academics, artists and activists have
resurrected the rebellion of holy fools against the oppressive rationality
of bourgeois society. By mixing the poetic philosophy of Deleuze and
Guattari with McLuhan’s information society prophecy, the avant-garde
can successfully transform the legacy of May ‘68 into a theory-art project
for the Net.

‘...network-generated operations conclusively undermine political

discourses centred on notions such as agency, action, territory,
progress and development. Usership, operation, non-linearity,
recursivity and chaos appear as traits of computer technology and
of cyberspacetime. These are the characteristics of the breakdown
of modernity itself.’1

After over two centuries of modernity, the potential influence of the

European avant-garde has never been greater. The small number of
individuals involved in subversive artistic movements have already had a
disproportionate impact on popular culture. Since the early-nineteenth
century, radical intellectuals have not only created modernist aesthetics,
but also pioneered libertarian politics and hedonistic lifestyles. At the
beginning of the twenty-first century, the avant-garde now has a much
larger pool of recruits and a much bigger potential audience. The rapid
growth of the Net is the most dramatic manifestation of the increasing
importance of cultural innovation. Many more people are going through
further and higher education. 2 The creative industries have emerged as
major employers.3 Some commentators claim that the ‘virtual class’ is the
most significant sector of the workforce.4 Even the fine arts are

1
Dan Thu Nguyen and Jon Alexander, ‘The Coming of Cyberspacetime
and the End of Polity’, page 107.
2
‘...the growth in the number of students and also of junior lecturers has
been the cause of a quantitative growth in the demand for cultural
products, and of a qualitative transformation of this demand: it is
certain... that all the intellectual ‘novelties’ find their chose audience
among the students of the new disciplines of the arts field...’ Pierre
Bourdieu, Homo Academicus, page 119.
3
For instance, it is estimated that over 600,000 people are directly
employed in Britain making cultural products ranging from TV
broadcasting through software to music. See Independent on Sunday,
‘The Cool Economy’, pages 2-3.
4
The ‘virtual class’ is supposedly being formed by those employed in
computing, media, education and similar sectors. See Daniel Bell, The

62
recognised as a catalyst for local and national regeneration. 1 The appeal
of the European avant-garde is therefore no longer confined within the
narrow confines of political, artistic and academic circles. For an
increasing proportion of the population, continual aesthetic innovation is
the basis for their livelihoods: ‘the creative industries are where the
growth is, where the jobs are.’2

The avant-garde tradition of cultural experimentation is now recognised

as essential for socio-economic development in the highly-developed
countries. A minority of dedicated and talented artists can benefit the
majority of the population by inventing new aesthetic forms, especially
using digital technologies. When large numbers of people work in the
creative industries, ‘all power to the imagination’ becomes more than just
a utopian slogan from May ‘68. A profane economic rationale therefore
underpins the recent revival of the European avant-garde tradition.
Although excluded from serious power, academics, artists and activists do
acquire increased social status through recognition of their theoretical
erudition and creative innovation. Far from marginalising its proponents,
European intellectuals long ago discovered that membership of an avant-
garde movement can be the precondition of social success. As the
creative industries keep expanding, more and more people are choosing
this exciting career path. The rejection of post-modern nihilism is not just
morally preferable, but also can often be financially more rewarding too.3

The increasing social recognition given to membership of the avant-garde

has not surprisingly benefited the techno-nomads. Although expertise in
a particular hardware or software dates quickly, knowledge of an
ahistorical ideology can survive across time. After studying the

Coming of Post-Industrial Society; Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave; Robert

Reich, The Work of Nations; and Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein,
Data Trash.
1
In both European and American cities, avant-garde artists have
pioneered the reclamation of impoverished urban areas for later
colonisation by businesses and residential developers. See Armin
Medosch, ‘Art and Business’.
2
Chris Smith, British Minister of Culture, quoted in Peter Koenig, ‘Is Chris
Smith More Vital Than Gordon Brown?’, page 1.
3
Earlier this century, one cynical commentator observed that: ‘...there
are today two main roads to fortune for a young artist. He may learn to
please that still large and naive public that demands a flattering
handmade photograph disguised as an old master, or he may squirt his
canvas with creosote, scour, scratch, blast and exorciate it until it hangs
in fashionable tatters upon the walls of one of our principal art galleries.
The former method may command a steadier sale than the latter, and it
calls for less salesmanship: but the latter is the true highway to glory and
wealth.’ Quentin Bell, ‘Conformity and Nonconformity in the Fine Arts’,
page 669.

63
appropriate texts, disciples can find employment propagating the new
avant-garde creed through teaching, publishing and the media. By mixing
McLuhan with Deleuze and Guattari, techno-nomad TJs can produce
journalism, academic texts, websites and fiction celebrating the Net and
other aspects of cyberculture. While others fail to adapt to the new
technologies, the Deleuzoguattarians are at the ‘cutting-edge’ of
theoretical and cultural innovation. Already ‘Temporary Autonomous
Zones’, collective intelligence, Body-without-Organs and other phrases
from their mystificatory jargon are entering fashionable speech. Once
again, the aestheticisation of revolutionary politics is a successful way of
breaking into the highly-competitive art, education and media sectors.1

Unfortunately, this latest revival of the European avant-garde can’t avoid

the fatal problem which always haunted its predecessors. Despite their
radical sympathies, artists, academics and activists remain trapped within
the contradiction between popular participation and aestheticised elitism.
Imitating the political vanguard, a minority of intellectuals proclaims the
necessity for a cultural revolution against bourgeois society. At the same
time, this avant-garde also wants to determine the tastes of the majority
of the population. For instance, techno-nomad TJs use Deleuzoguattarian
discourse to celebrate the predominance of DIY culture within the Net.
Everyone should be able to use information techologies for expressing
themselves without any restrictions. However, just by adopting the
obscurantist style of Deleuze and Guattari, these avant-garde writers are
simultaneously asserting their intellectual authority over this popular
movement. According to their gurus, the minds of most people - including
members of the DIY culture - are controlled by semiotic ‘machinic
assemblages’. Yet, when illuminated by the teachings of Deleuze and
Guattari, radical intellectuals can amazingly cast off the ideological
shackles of bourgeois rationality and experience the redemption of
ecstatic immanence. Although everyone could potentially express
themselves across the Net, only an avant-garde minority can lead the
cultural revolution. As in the past, the opposition between participation
and elitism remains unresolved within Deleuzoguattarian theory-art.

From the early-nineteenth century onwards, members of the avant-garde

have seen themselves as the privileged few who can liberate the masses
from ideological bondage. However, as shown by the tragic history of

1
As Pierre Bourdieu points out, new forms of cultural expression present
an opportunity for innovative people to gain a position within the cultural
elite: ‘These arts, not yet fully legitimate, which are disdained or
neglected by the big holders of educational capital, offer a refuge and
revenge to those who, by appropriating them, secure the best return on
their cultural capital (especially if it is not fully recognised scholastically)
while at the same time taking credit for contesting the established
hierarchy of legitimacies and profits.’ Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, page
87.

64
Fréquence Libre, even the apparently libertarian theory of anarcho-
communism can justify the authoritarian practice of vanguard politics.
The continual sampling of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory-art therefore
doesn’t just express cultural radicalism. At the same time, it also reflects
the survival of elitist tendencies within the contemporary avant-garde.
The techno-nomads adopt post-structuralist theories and idiosyncratic
buzzwords as ‘marks of distinction’ to intimidate the uninitiated. 1 The
success of their philosophical claim to authority is shown by the
increasing incorporation of Deleuzoguattarian phrases within the slang of
the techno-culture. Although many are called, only few can become true
disciples of the esoteric doctrine.

‘Beautiful language, artistic style and aestheticism are merely the

end-products of...the alienation of the logos, and the artist has
become the high priest of the logos, its magus, or simply its
mandarin.’2

Within the avant-garde tradition, there has always been this slippage
from libertarianism towards authoritarianism. As well as challenging the
hegemony of the ruling class, cultural activists have also adopted
dissident politics, aesthetics and lifestyles to separate themselves from
the majority of the population. According to the European avant-garde,
the minds of the majority of the population were controlled by repressive
ideologies. Therefore the ethical-aesthetic rebellion against bourgeois
conformity could only be led by the privileged few who had freed
themselves from all forms of cultural conditioning. Despite their
revolutionary rhetoric, avant-garde intellectuals also saw themselves as
an artistic elite which should rule over the philistine masses.

During the late-nineteenth century, Nietzsche developed a reactionary

interpretation of this aesthetication of politics. Despising the majority of
society, he feared that popular enthusiasm for democracy, socialism and
feminism would soon lead to the triumph of ‘timidity’ and ‘mediocrity’.
According to Nietzsche, the avant-garde was the only force which could
prevent the growing influence of the ignorant ‘herd animals’. Instead of
identifying themselves with the revolutionary crowd, artists and
intellectuals had to form themselves into a new aristocracy of culture.
Drawing on the Romantics’ idealisation of solitary heroes, Nietzsche
urged members of avant-garde to become like the ‘wild, free, nomadic
man’ of tribal society.3 As art was fused into life, they would soon evolve

1
As Bourdieu points out: ‘...nothing more rigorously distinguishes the
different classes than the... aptitude for taking a specifically aesthetic
point of view on objects already constructed aesthetically...’ Pierre
Bourdieu, Distinction, page 40.
2
Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity, page 176.
3
For his identification of artists with nomads, see Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil, pages 120-128; and On the Genealogy of Morals,

65
into a superior being: the Superman.1 In Nietzsche’s philosophy, the
contradiction between elitism and participation was finally resolved
through a return to the aristocratic past. Far from leading the cultural
revolution, avant-garde artists had become the fiercest opponents of the
emancipatory process of modernity.

‘Woe to this great city! And I wish I could see already the pillar of
fire in which it will be consumed.’2

In the first half of the twentieth century, Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for

aesthetic elitism inspired some of the earliest advocates of fascism. Most
notoriously, the Italian Futurists looked to militant nationalism for
deliverance from the cultural sterility of modern society. In their theory-
art, the holy fool was soon transformed into a blackshirt. 3 The Nazis also
appropriated elements from the avant-garde tradition for their
reactionary politics. For instance, Romantic myths about tribal warriors
were appropriated to praise heroic stormtroopers who had freed
themselves from the effeminate morality of bourgeois society. Instead of
advancing the cause of social emancipation, artistic excellence now
justified the counter-revolutionary violence of the totalitarian state.4 Not

pages 64-65. While Bakunin romanticised Cossacks as natural anarchists,

Nietzsche remembered that nomadic tribes had founded the warrior
aristocracies which ruled medieval Europe and the Arab world. See Karl
Kautsky, The Materialist Conception of History, page 281.
1
‘For justice speaks to me: ‘Men are not born equal.’ And they should not
become so either! For what were my love for the Superman if I spoke
otherwise.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, page 124.
Championing the evolutionary superiority of his aesthetic aristocrats, this
philosopher claimed that: ‘Artists...are... physically...strong, full of surplus
energy, powerful animals, sensual; without a certain overheating of the
sexual system a Raphael is unthinkable...their lives must contain a kind of
youth and spring, a kind of habitual intoxication.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, The
Will to Power, page 421.
2
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, page 198.
3
What united the fascist Futurists in Italy with the Leninist avant-garde
movements was a common committment to the ‘violent assault on
existing [bourgeois] conventions.’ Raymond Williams, ‘The Politics of the
Avant-Garde’, page 9. In the first Futurist manifesto, Marinetti’s
celebration of war and denigration of women was combined with
ferocious attacks on the failings of the Italian liberal bourgeoisie. See
Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Movement, pages 81-92.
4
For the influence of primitivist ideas on Nazism, see Jeffrey Herf,
Reactionary Modernism, pages 18-48; and Janet Biehl and Peter
Staudenmaier, Ecofascism, pages 4-30. Walter Benjamin pointed out that
this cultural mobilisation of the masses acted as a substitute for real
social change: ‘The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of
aesthetics into political life.’ Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, page 234.

66
surprisingly, the Nietzschean version of the avant-garde tradition was
almost totally discredited by this association with fascism. Even in the
conservative 1950s, few artists openly admitted to wanting to found a
new aristocracy of culture. Ironically, the revival of Nietzsche’s ideas
eventually came from the New Left. Looking for critics of modernity,
young intellectuals rediscovered this guru’s poetic diatribes against
enervating effects of urban living. Needing an alternative to the ‘grand
narratives’ of Hegel and Marx, they seized upon his claim that individual
freedom had already been realised by nomad warriors in primitive times.
In this hippie interpretation, the Nietzchean Superman became a New
Left militant.

Along with Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari enthusiastically participated in

this bizarre revival. Rejecting its previous association with reactionary
politics, they appropriated Nietzche’s philosophy for the anti-modernist
revolution of the New Left. Without fear of contradiction, Foucault could
claim that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was ‘an Introduction to
the Non-Fascist Life’.1 However, the elitist precepts of Nietzsche’s
philosophy were not completely removed in this hippie remix. The
libertarian rhetoric of nomadic freedom still contained deeply
authoritarian implications. For instance, as the activists of Fréquence
Libre discovered, personal commitment to the revolutionary cause was
considered incompatible with having family responsibilities.2 Above all,
Deleuze and Guattari’s writings perpetuated the reactionary vision of an
aristocracy of culture. Adding Nietzsche to their synthesis of Lenin and
Freud just provided further justification for their distain of the stupified
majority of modern society. According to these New Left gurus, only an
elite of illuminated intellectuals could lead the cultural revolution against
bourgeois society. As Deleuze emphasised: ‘...art realises...the genius of
the superhuman.’3

Although they have discarded the anti-modernist revolution, the new

avant-garde remains fascinated by Deleuze and Guattari’s revival of
Nietzschean philosophy. Once again, a cultural elite of cutting-edge
artists are in rebellion against the bourgeois mediocrity which satisfies
the majority of society. Living in more conservative times, this fascination
with Nietzsche has even led some techno-nomad TJs towards a flirtation
with long-discarded fascist positions. For instance, in his New York remix
of the European avant-garde, Hakim Bey preaches a creed of ‘radical
1
Michel Foucault, ‘Preface’, page xiii.
2
Deleuze claimed that: ‘Irresponsibility [was] Nietzsche’s most noble and
beautiful secret.’ Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, page 21 As
Raymond Williams explains: ‘...there is a position within the apparent
critique of the bourgeois family which is actually a critique and rejection
of all social forms of human reproduction. The ‘bourgeois family’... is
often a covering phrase for those rejections of women and children... The
sovereign individual is confined by such a form. The genius is tamed by
it.’ Raymond Williams, ‘The Politics of the Avant-Garde’, page 9.
3
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, page 185.

67
aristocratism’.1 Unlike McLuhan, this Nietzschean doesn’t want the advent
of the information society to liberate the majority of humanity. On the
contrary, Hakim Bey advocates that Net activists should form themselves
into elitist sects of warrior-monks modelled on the medieval Assassin
cult.2 This techno-nomad TJ even suggests that rhizomic ‘Temporary
Autonomous Zones’ should copy the proto-fascist state founded by
D’Annunzio during his seizure of the Croatian city of Fiume in 1919! 3
Although he praises DIY culture, Hakim Bey primarily uses
Deleuzoguattarian theories to perpetuate the most reactionary legacy of
the avant-garde: the artistic aristocracy. Within the revolutionary
dreamtime of cyberspace, the Nietzschean elite of holy fools are leaders
of the pack.

‘These nomads practice the razzia, they are corsairs, they are
viruses... These nomads chart their courses by strange stars, which
might be luminous clusters of data in cyberspace, or perhaps
hallucinations.’4

As shown by Hakim Bey, the revival of the Nietzchean aristocracy of

culture can result in the strange synthesis of anarcho-fascism. However,
this is only one possible ‘line of flight’ towards conservatism being taken
by the followers of Deleuzoguattarian philosophy. Much more popular are
attempts to find some accomodation with the dominant ideology of neo-
liberalism. This fusion of opposites is aided by the popularity of mystical
positivism within European techno-culture. Back in the 1970s, Deleuze
and Guattari were already combining the latest fads from the natural
sciences with ideas derived from religious philosophers. It is therefore not
surprising that their followers enthusiastically embrace the contemporary

1
‘Radical aristocratism’ is one of the ‘Slogans & Mottos for Subway
Graffiti & Other Purposes’ in Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., page 28.
2
See Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., pages 98-99; and Peter Lamborn Wilson [Hakim
Bey], ‘A Network of Castles’, page 27. For someone determined to
confuse anarcho-communism and fascism, the Assassins are an excellent
choice. Historically, they simultaneously defended conservative religious
values and advocated radical social policies. In modern times, their
legacy has been claimed by both political extremes. While Nietzsche
admired their hierarchical conception of freedom, others have compared
the Assassins with the Leninist vanguard party. See Kenneth Setton, A
History of the Crusades, pages 99-132; Friedrich Nietzsche, On the
Genealogy of Morals, page 124; and Frank Ridley, The Assassins, pages
68, 140-156.
3
Hakim Bey is excited by the involvement of avant-garde artists in this
nationalist adventure. However, the Fiume incident not only pioneered
the style and ideology of Italian fascism, but also led directly to the
imposition of totalitarianism on Italy. See Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., pages 125-
126; and Laura Fermi, Mussolini, pages 170-184.
4
Hakim Bey, T.A.Z., page 107.

68
fascination with pseudo-scientific theories. For instance, they can easily
mix Bergsonian vitalism sampled from Deleuze and Guattari’s writings
with the Lamarckian fantasies of the West Coast gurus.1 Above all, the
techno-nomads are delighted to identify the denial of human subjectivity
found in Deleuzoguattarian semiotics with the mind-control theory of
memetics.

‘From the “bio-adaptor” of language as the proto-meme to the

“infosphere” of global networks as the ultimate habitat of the
human mind... The possibility of the emergence of a post-biological,
cyberorganic line of evolution out of universal binary code, of which
the first protozoans have names like Internet, Cyberspace and I-
way... Memes...the identification and integration of virtual
communities that gather only at the interface.’2

The collapse of Deleuzoguattarian discourse into the Californian ideology

through mystical positivism is no accident. The European avant-garde -
and its overseas imitators - could never openly support the free market
fundamentalism of the West Coast. Seeing themselves as cultural
revolutionaries, the techno-nomads want to remain faithful to the
emancipatory ideals of May ‘68. However, dodgy analogies derived from
the natural sciences do provide an indirect method of accomodating
conservative ideas. For instance, if the opinions of most people are really
shaped by memes, then society must be controlled by the select few who
are able invent these ‘mind viruses’. Just like other authoritarian
ideologies, this pseudo-scientific concept supposedly proves that only a
minority of intellectuals can transform society. In the past, the European
avant-garde would have looked to the Leninist vanguard party to fulfill
this role. As this approach is no longer credibile, the techno-nomads are
instead reviving a more reactionary vision: Nietzsche’s aristocracy of
culture.

Despite its revolutionary aspirations, the elitism of the avant-garde

1
Deleuze and Guattari were inspired by the work of Henri Bergson, a
French Catholic philosopher popular in the early-twentieth century.
Although mimicking the language of Darwinian biology, this guru believed
that there was a divine ‘vital force’ driving the evolution of life. Many
decades later, Deleuze and Guattari hoped that ecstatic states of
‘delirium’ would release this spiritual energy from the restraints of
semiotic controls. See Paul Douglas, ‘Deleuze’s Bergson: Bergson Redux’.
This bizarre mixture of Darwinian rationalism and Christian irrationalism
can also be found in Kevin Kelly, Out of Control.
2
Gerfried Stocker, ‘Memesis - the Future of Evolution’. This was the
opening statement for Ars Electronica ‘96 which is Europe’s most
prestigious digital arts festival. For a critical dissection of the full
statement, see Richard Barbrook, ‘Memesis Critique’.

69
tradition is driving forward this ‘line of flight’ towards conservatism. Ever
since the early-nineteenth century, radical intellectuals have created
political, moral and aesthetic ‘marks of distinction’ to separate
themselves off from the philistine masses. For generations, they have
romanticised the solitary genius who rejects the mundane existence of
the majority of the population. Although advocating rebellion against
bourgeois society, these avant-garde positions are remarkably similiar to
the attitudes held by capitalist entrepreneurs.1 This ideological
convergence reflects the privileged socio-economic position enjoyed by
both professions. Unlike most people living within modern societies, these
two groups can still direct their own work and control their own property.
Ignoring the labour of others, many artists and entrepreneurs believe
that their personal success is due solely to their own individual efforts.2

‘The privileges of nobility are not in their origin concessions or

favours; on the contrary, they are conquests.’ 3

From the mid-1990s onwards, the cult of Deleuze and Guattari emerged
as the contemporary expression of this Nietzschean desire. In their
writings, the two philosophers were always ambiguous about the
‘deterritorialisation’ of social and family hierarchies by capitalism.
Although always hostile towards commercialism, they still appreciated
the corrosive effects of market forces upon their main enemy: the
despotic state.4 Among their contemporary disciples, this political
confusion is intensifying. For them, the principle threat to individual
liberty within cyberspace comes from the imposition of censorship and
other legal controls. In the past, both the New Left and the New Right

1
Despite embracing revolutionary politics and bohemian lifestyles, the
avant-garde artist can still be seen as ‘...the ultimate apotheosis of that
central bourgeois figure: the sovereign individual.’ Raymond Williams,
‘The Politics of the Avant-Garde’, page 7.
2
Raymond Williams argued that: ‘.. there are avant-garde political
positions... which can be seen as a genuine vanguard of a truly modern
international bourgeoisie which has emerged since 1945. The politics of
the New Right, with its version of libertarianism in a dissolution or
deregulation of all bonds and all social and cultural formations, in the
interest of... the ideal open market and the truly open society look very
familiar in retrospect.’ Raymond Williams, ‘The Politics of the Avant-
Garde’, page 14.
3
Ortega y Grasset, The Revolt of the Masses., page 48. Back in the early-
1930s, this Nietzchean philosopher urged the liberal bourgeoisie and
radical intellectuals to form a new meritocratic aristocracy which could
impose its leadership on the apathetic masses.
4
For instance, Guattari and Negri appear almost grateful to the
proponents of neo-liberalism for defeating their statist rivals from the
mainstream Left. See Félix Guattari and Toni Negri, Communists Like Us,
pages 47-56.

70
have questioned the legitimacy of such state intervention from very
different perspectives. Nowadays, as hip TJs cut ‘n’ mix these two
interpretations of libertarianism, previously clear distinctions are
becoming increasingly fuzzy. For instance, hostility towards legal controls
over personal behaviour on the Net can turn into a rejection of all forms
of state regulation, including those over the on-line activities of
commercial companies. Within European techno-culture, avant-garde
intellectuals can make left-wing and right-wing forms of anti-statism
seem almost indistinguishable.1

The Net is now catalysing a bizarre convergence between anarcho-

communism and neo-liberalism. In this remix, Deleuzoguattarian
discourse becomes the celebration of the creative opportunities opened
up by the new information technologies. Liberated from the confining
disciplines of the industrial state and the nuclear family, cutting-edge
intellectuals can participate in many different projects and move freely
across national borders. Realising the myths of the Romantics, the artist
has finally become a nomad. However, this privileged form of
‘deterritorialisation’ is only available to a small minority of the population.
Like business travellers, this select few has the luxury of choosing to be
continually mobile. In contrast, many millions of political refugees and
migrant workers have no such option. Their involuntary
‘deterritorialisation’ is imposed by either state persecution or economic
misery. Separation from their families and homelands is almost always
painful. Far from being an escape from all social controls, this other form
of modern nomadism is experienced as a loss of freedom.2

By dismissing the ‘molar’ politics of the mainstream Left, Deleuze and

Guattari have provided the theoretical excuses for their disciples to avoid
questioning these contrasting experiences of cultural and geographical
mobility. Being outside its political and union organisations, most techno-
nomads are unlikely to encounter campaigns in support of political
refugees or migrant workers. For, instead of participating within mass
movements, these radical intellectuals are narrowly focused on their own

1
See Hari Kunzru, ‘Rewiring Technoculture’, page 10.
2
As Slavoj Zizek points out: ‘There are...two totally different socio-
political levels condensed here: on the one hand, the cosmopolitan upper
and upper-middle class academic, always with the proper visas enabling
him to cross borders without any problem in order to accomplish his
(financial, academic...) business and thus able to “enjoy the difference”;
on the other hand, there is the poor (im)migrant worker driven from his
home by poverty or (ethnic, religious) violence, for whom the celebrated
“hybridity” designates a very tangible traumatic experience of never
being able to settle down properly and legalise his status, the subject for
whom simple tasks like crossing a border or reuniting with his family can
be an experience full of anxiety, and demanding great effort.’ Slavoj
Zizek, The Spectre Is Still Roaming Around, page 70.

71
‘molecular’ scene of artistic experiments and bohemian lifestyles. In
some cases, their avant-garde endeavours will even enable them to
become privileged members of the ‘virtual class’. Reflecting these
confining circumstances, techno-nomad Tjs not surprisingly emphasise
the Romantic tradition of personal rebellion. Ironically, the rhetoric of
revolutionary redemption justifies a disengagement from more practical
forms of politics. Why campaign for limited reforms if the whole of society
is about to be utterly transformed by the new information techologies? As
well as being ultra-leftist, Deleuzoguattarian theory-art has now
simultaneously become conservative: the European version of the
Californian ideology.

Over the last few years, these two forms of elitist libertarianism have
converged around common Nietzschean fantasies. On the one hand, the
Californian ideologues claim that a heroic minority of cyber-entrepreneurs
is emerging from the fierce competition of the electronic marketplace.
The covers of Wired portray the bosses of hi-tech companies as Conan
the Barbarian and Mad Max.1 On the other hand, the Deleuzoguattarians
believe that a new cultural aristocracy is forming around the subversive
‘assemblages of enunciation’ of the Net. Their writings romanticise avant-
garde intellectuals as nomad warriors and cyberpunk hackers. According
to both the Californian ideology and the Deleuzoguattarian discourse,
primitivism and futurism are combining to produce the apotheosis of
individualism: the nomadic-cyborg Superman.2

‘... the possibility...to rear a master race, the future “masters of the
earth”; - a new tremendous aristocracy...in which... philosophical
men of power and artist-tyrants will...work as artists on “man”
himself.’3

Impaled on the unresolveable contradiction between popular participation

and intellectual elitism, the new avant-garde is now forced to ossicilate
between radical and reactionary positions. On the one hand, techno-

1
Ray Smith, CEO of the Bell Atlantic telephone company, appeared as
Conan on the front cover of issue 3.02 and John Malone, head of TCI, was
morphed into Mad Max - the nomadic ‘road warrior’ - for issue 2.07.
2
The disciples are reflecting the dubious fantasies of their favourite
philosophers. For instance, Deleuze and Guattari romanticised nomads
for having lifestyles which resembled more that of Clint Eastwood than of
Emma Goldman: ‘...a fundamental indiscipline of the warrior, a
questioning of hierarchy, perpetual blackmail by abandonment or betrayl
and a very volatile sense of honour, all of which... impedes the formation
of the State.’ Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,
page 358. This macho ideal is very similar to the myth of the self-
sufficient cowboy which excites the advocates of the Californian ideology.
3
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, page 504.

72
nomad theory-art continues to be revolutionary: the sanctification of the
Net’s flourishing gift economy. Its poetic phrases and bizarre metaphors
exalt every communal and libertarian possibility provided by information
technologies. Yet, on the other hand, this process of aestheticisation is
also deeply conservative: the ‘will to power’ of a minority of avant-garde
intellectuals. Its mystificatory jargon and semiotic philosophy denies the
ability of most people to do things for themselves on the Net. Just like
their predecessors, the techno-nomads are still trapped within the
antinomies of the avant-garde. Everytime they celebrate digital DIY
culture, the Deleuzoguattarians are simutaneously asserting their
superior status as nomadic-cyborg Supermen. As a result, anarcho-
communism and neo-liberalism can amazingly appear to be on the same
side of a ‘libertarian-communitarian opposition’ within European techno-
culture. The avant-garde Net activist becomes almost indistinguishable
from a fashionable cyber-entrepreneur.

Disillusioned with post-modernist apathy, techno-nomad TJs have

resurrected the avant-garde tradition. As in the past, they
enthusiastically champion the emancipatory potential of aesthetic
innovation. However, like their predecessors, this new generation are also
confronted by the antinomies of the avant-garde. Their hopes for mass
participation are always checked by their practice of intellectual elitism.
Incapable of resolving this contradiction, the techno-nomads are forced
into adopting imaginary solutions for real problems. After the defeat of
the New Left, Deleuze and Guattari transformed their historically specific
strategy of ‘schizo-politics’ into poetical theory-art which existed outside
time. Copying their gurus, contemporary avant-garde intellectuals have
decided to project their hopes of redemption into the revolutionary
dreamtime of cyberspace. Unwilling to overcome the contradiction
between participation and elitism, they can only live the ideals of May ‘68
in their imaginations. Far from solving the problems which confronted
earlier generations, the techno-nomads remain trapped within the
antinomies of the avant-garde.

‘Aetheticisation is an alibi. It pretends to fill the chasm between

unsatisfied subjectivities and increasing unattainable
accumulation.’1

1
Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity, page 217.

73
9: The Retro-Futurist Millennium

During the last decade, the Net has catalysed a revival of the European
avant-garde. Once again, radical intellectuals can celebrate political
rebellion, artistic innovation and libertarian lifestyles. The reborn avant-
garde even has a new vision of the utopian future: the information
society. Yet, at the same time, the central premises of this subversive
tradition are exhausted. Living after the defeat of the New Left and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, cultural activists can no longer devote
themselves to the service of the revolutionary vanguard. Nowadays, their
aesthetic experiments are much more likely to create new products for
hip entrepreneurs. As a result of these changed circumstances,
contemporary intellectuals will never rediscover the intense faith
experienced by members of earlier avant-garde movements. Unlike their
predecessors, they are incapable of fervently believing in the
emancipatory mission of the cultural revolution. For, despite their deep
fascination with New Left philosophers, avant-garde theorists cannot
conceive of any credible alternatives to existing social conditions. In the
age of the Net, even the information society prophecy has been partially
appropriated by boosters for digital capitalism. Deprived of a clear
political goal, techno-nomad TJs can only provide an imaginary solution:
the revolutionary dreamtime of the Net.

The disappearance of ideological certainty reflects the existential crisis

confronting contemporary dissidents. For over two hundred years, radical
intellectuals have cast themselves in a heroic role: the inventors of the
future. While those with power and property feared change, these
outsiders were determined to fight for a better world. Although the
theoretical language has continually changed, successive generations
have remained faithful to one fundamental principle: an enlightened
minority could liberate the uneducated majority from ignorance and
oppression. Continuing this tradition, techno-nomad TJs also proclaim
themselves as prophetic visionaries. They are pioneering the ‘line of
flight’ towards the digital utopia. They are unleashing the ecstasy of
‘delirium’ among the inhabitants of cyberspace. However, these faithful
imitations of past enthusiasms can never acquire the potency of the
originals. After both the French and Russian revolutions, left-wing
intellectuals could sincerely believe in the progressive role of vanguard
politics and avant-garde art. The destruction of aristocratic privilege and
the discrediting of religious authority were essential preconditions for
rapid modernisation. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, the inherent
contradictions of revolutionary elitism are now obvious to almost
everyone. On far too many occasions, the desire for mass participation
has been checked by the temptation of minority rule. Unlike its
predecessors, the techno-nomad avant-garde can no longer ignore that
revolutionary heroes can sometimes turn into totalitarian villians.

The information society prophecy emerges from this loss of political

74
innocence. The tragic history of twentieth century Europe has discredited
the uninhibited enthusiasm for modernist utopias promoted by earlier
avant-garde movements. However, without this faith in progress, radical
intellectuals cannot fulfill their most important social duty: foretelling the
future. Over the past two hundred years, the promise of religious
salvation has been almost completely superseded by possibility of an
earthly paradise. The priest and the astrologer have slowly morphed into
the academic, the artist and the activist. Across the generations,
changing historical circumstances have inspired many different concepts
of the future. Yet, despite fierce theoretical quarrels, every prophet of
modernism has had the same vision: the intensification of current social
trends would eventually create a utopian civilisation. In the age of the
Net, this insight is revered more than ever. Someone has to imagine the
libertarian potential of digital convergence. Somebody has to celebrate
the cybernetic perfection of modernity. Fulfilling their expected role,
cutting-edge philosophers are delighted to provide an updated vision of
technological redemption: the information society.

The popularity of this optimistic prediction has deep historical roots. Back
in the early-nineteenth century, Henri de Saint-Simon pioneered the
identification of political and cultural freedoms with economic progress.
According to this philosopher, the authoritarian rule of the aristocracy
and the clergy was based upon the predominance of agricultural
production. Consequently, this ancient form of domination could only be
removed through the industrialisation of the economy. As agriculture
declined in importance, wealth and power would then inevitably pass to
members of the new ‘industrial’ class: entrepreneurs, workers, politicians,
artists and scientists. Inspired by the Jacobins, Saint-Simon argued that
this enlightened minority shouldn’t just look after its own interests. For
these ‘industrials’ also had a moral obligation to liberate the
impoverished and uneducated majority. Following the example set by the
Jacobins, they had to lead the struggle for political democracy and
cultural liberation. Above all, these innovators had to construct the
economic foundations for a free society. For they were the inventors of
sophisticated machines and the improvers of production methods. When
poverty and ignorance were eventually eradicated, the ‘industrials’ would
have fulfilled their historical mission. According to Saint-Simon, political
and cultural emancipation would finally be achieved through economic
abundance.

Since the early-nineteenth century, every generation of radical

intellectuals has produced its own version of Saint-Simon’s prophecy. The
political programmes of left-wing parties and the cultural manifestos of
avant-garde artists have become hymns to economic progress. For
instance, the founding of the democratic republic has long ceased to be
an end in itself. After Saint-Simon, the extension of the franchise was
always coupled with the acceleration of industrialisation. The modern
state could only represent the interests of all citizens by raising general
living standards and providing welfare services for everyone. From the

75
first socialist sects to contemporary Social Democratic governments,
these economic goals have remained as the core of left-wing politics.
Whatever their ideological differences, all activists must be committed to
improving the everyday lives of working people. Similarly, Saint-Simon
urged dissident artists to move beyond just making revolutionary
propaganda. For him, they had the equally important task of advancing
industrial and architectural design. Following this advice, many avant-
garde artists have devoted their aesthetic talents to aiding economic
progress. For instance, both the Constructivist and Bauhaus movements
were dedicated to developing better products and buildings for everyday
use. In culture as in politics, radicalism has become almost synonymous
with furthering economic modernisation.

Although there have been many setbacks and disappointments, much of

Saint-Simon’s prophecy has been slowly realised. As the number of goods
increased, the quality of their design has become more important. As the
economy developed, rising living standards did lead to the widening of
political and cultural freedoms. However, radical intellectuals have rarely
emphasised these practical vindications of Saint-Simon’s theories.
Instead, they have been much more excited by the elitist potential of his
millenarian visions. Across the generations, the legacy of Saint-Simon has
been repeatedly appropriated to justify the leading role of vanguard
parties and avant-garde movements. By organising the modernisation of
the economy, the enlightened minority was supposedly liberating the
majority of the population from poverty and superstition. Despite
repeated disappointments, every epigone provided the same proof for
this promise of earthly redemption: the emergence of a new technology.
As well as having practical uses, each invention also symbolised the
imminent fulfillment of Saint-Simon’s prophecy. Now they possessed this
particular technology, radical intellectuals would be finally able to create
the material preconditions for the political and cultural emancipation of
the masses. From the late-nineteenth century onwards, this elitist
prophecy even entered the popular imagination through the optimistic
fantasies of science fiction. Exemplified by H.G. Wells, many writers
predicted that a vanguard of scientists and philosophers would soon
invent the advanced technologies needed to liberate humanity. The
future would be built in the image of Saint-Simon.1

The information society prophecy is the latest manifestation of this

modernist creed. Although the language has changed, the basic
assumptions of Saint-Simon’s philosophy have remained intact. For
instance, the contemporary avant-garde perpetuates his infatuation with
an elite of economic modernisers. In the past, innovative entrepreneurs,
workers, politicians, artists and scientists were praised for forming a new
‘industrial’ class. Now, their contemporary equivalents are celebrated for
being cutting-edge techno-nomads: the pioneers of the digital future.
Above all, the new avant-garde still possesses Saint-Simon’s faith in the
emancipatory potential of economic progress. In both social theory and
1
to Edward Bellamy Isaac Asimov and Bruce Sterling

76
science fiction, what was once predicted about steel and electricity is now
expected from the Net. For, just like its predecessors, the contemporary
avant-garde claims that new technologies will soon liberate humanity.
The compromises of the parliamentary system are about to be replaced
by on-line direct democracy. The restrictions on personal creativity will be
swept away by interactive forms of aesthetic expression. Even the
physical limits of the body can be overcome within cyberspace. Echoing
earlier visionaries, techno-nomad TJs believe that utopia is about to be
realised by the latest icon of economic progress: the Net.

Yet, such unhibited optimism can only be momentary. Unlike their

mentors, the contemporary avant-garde is no longer historically innocent.
For, in the mid-twentieth century, the prophecies of Saint-Simon were
eagerly appropriated by apologists of totalitarianism. After the 1917
Russian revolution, the traditions of vanguard politics and avant-garde art
were both reinvigorated. Once again, the enlightened minority were
leading the ignorant masses towards the utopian future. Combining
Jacobinism with Saint-Simon, Lenin and his followers believed that
political and cultural emancipation could only be achieved through rapid
economic growth. As well as defeating reactionary forces and educating
the people, the revolutionary dictatorship had now acquired an even
more important task: the industrialisation of the country. Because
political democracy and cultural liberation were postponed to the distant
future, economic development soon became an end in itself. According to
Stalin, the ever-increasing output of steel, concrete, tractors and other
industrial products proved the utopian potential of the Soviet Union.
Ironically, the drive for economic modernisation now justified the
elimination of all political and cultural freedoms. Yet, after the newly-
industrialised Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany, this Stalinist
interpretation of Saint-Simon was adopted by almost all revolutionary
movements. Within both industrialised and developing countries, an all-
powerful state was supposedly needed to increase the living standards of
the masses. For the next three decades, development was repeatedly
prioritised over democracy. The evils of the present were always excused
by the promise of liberation in the future.

From the early-1920s onwards, the more perceptive elements of the Left
warned about the horrific consequences of separating economic
modernisation from political and cultural freedoms. George Orwell and
other science fiction writers also foresaw that vanguard politics could
create a dystopian future. Yet, the crimes of totalitarianism were ignored
by most left-wing intellectuals as long as rapid economic growth
continued under its rule. However, once the Soviet Union started
stagnating, the lingering ideological appeal of Stalinism quickly faded. By
the late-1970s, many disillusioned believers were blaming the modernist
prophecy of Saint-Simon for encouraging their former gullibility towards
totalitarianism. Entranced by ‘grand narrative’ of economic progress
towards utopia, they had supported political repression and cultural
conformity. If others were to be prevented from making similar mistakes,

77
they demanded that all optimistic predictions about the future should be
abandoned. As demonstrated by Stalinism, any attempt to speed up
economic modernisation would inevitably lead to tyranny. There was no
alternative to the perpetual present of post-modernity.

During the 1980s, the optimism of Saint-Simon did seem like a relic from
another age. Disappointed by the defeat of the New Left and the decline
of Stalinism, post-modernist intellectuals no longer dreamt of
technological redemption. Instead, they feared the consequences of
further economic development. Following Foucault, these disillusioned
ideologues believed that modernity depended upon the ever-increasing
surveillance and control of individual behaviour. According to Baudrillard,
even the spread of computer networking would only reinforce social
domination. Echoing these academic pessimists, many left-wing activists
had also become sceptical about the benefits of new technologies. The
environmental organisations were warning against the damage caused by
continual economic growth. The peace movement was campaigning
against the dangers posed by advanced weapon systems. Far from
liberating humanity, some new technologies now threatened the survival
of the species.

As the Left abandoned the legacy of Saint-Simon, the advocates of neo-

liberalism seized the opportunity to lay claim to the future. Mimicking
earlier socialists, they confidentally predicted that new information
technologies were creating a utopian civilisation. For instance, Ithiel de
Sola Pool foresaw that cable television networks would enable everyone
to make their own media and participate in political decision-making.
Similarly, the Tofflers claimed that technological convergence would soon
free individuals from the clutches of both big business and big
government. Once again, economic growth was inevitably leading to
greater political and cultural freedoms. However, in this interpretation,
the utopian future had ceased to be left-wing. On the contrary, the neo-
liberal prophets argued that information technologies facilitated the
privatisation and deregulation of economic activity. These gurus even
had discovered a replacement for the political vanguard: venture
capitalists. While earlier generations had acted ‘in the service of the
revolution’, cutting-edge intellectuals now worked in the interests of
futurist entrepreneurs. As long as the Left feared further modernisation,
the Right could define the shape of things to come.

The emergence of conservative futurism is a quintessentially modernist

phenomenon. In agricultural societies, the ruling classes feared economic
progress as a threat to their wealth and power. In contrast, capitalism has
always depended upon constant changes in the means and methods of
production. The downward pressure on profits has continually blocked
any attempts to halt economic development. If they want to survive,
entrepreneurs must be always ready to adopt the latest technologies and
ways of working. After the French revolution, conservative philosophers
denounced the economic instability of capitalism for undermining social

78
stability. However, during the nineteeth century, the defenders of the old
order reluctantly reconciled themselves with the new forms of wealth and
power. Although still nostalgic for the fixed hierarchies of the feudal past,
conservative thinkers also learnt to praise the dynamism of capitalism.

On the Left, the followers of Saint-Simon had long predicted that

industrialisation would eventually lead to social equality. 1 Not
surprisingly, conservative philosophers were determined to break this
identification of economic progress with the liberation of the masses.
Instead, they wanted to prove that industrial development would
reinforce class privileges. Echoing Saint-Simon, they claimed that
capitalism was about to evolve into a new historical stage. However,
unlike their socialist opponents, these right-wing gurus argued that this
emerging economic paradigm would be an industrial form of feudalism. In
their conservative dystopia, a new elite of capitalists, bureaucrats and
intellectuals would exercise unchecked power over the enslaved majority
of the population. Far from realising the equalitarian aims of the Left,
they believed that the next stage of modernity would restore the
hierarchical social order undermined by earlier forms of capitalism. The
industrial future could now be identified with the aristocratic past. By the
beginning of the twentieth century, the Right had synthesised this union
of opposites into its most potent ideological weapon: reactionary
modernism.

Ironically, the conservative appropriation of Saint-Simon reflected the

realisation of the socialist aspects of his prophecy. As industrialisation
intensified, the liberal form of capitalism slowly evolved into Fordism.
Under this new paradigm, it became increasingly difficult to exclude the
working class from society. If the economy was to flourish, the producers
had to become consumers of their own products. If enough goods and
services were to be purchased, the workers had to receive sufficent
money to buy them. If employers were to be forced to pay high wages
and the state persuaded to provide welfare services, employees had to
be able to form trade unions and to vote for socialist politicians. Although
necessary for the economic survival of capitalism, the social implications
of this new dispensation frightened the Right. Instead of reviving feudal
hierarchies, continual industrialisation was slowly eroding class privileges.
As their wealth increased, ordinary people could even influence the
cultural and moral values of society. During the twentieth century,
successive generations of conservatives have advocated some form of
reactionary modernism to counter this threat from below. Every right-
wing intellectual has faced the central problem of reconciling economic
progress with social regression. Despite their deep ideological
differences, they have all proposed the same solution: the formation of a
hi-tech aristocracy.

This reactionary fantasy emphasised the hierarchical division of labour

under Fordism. Despite raising general living standards, the industrial
1
also Eiffel Tower and Suez canal.

79
system depended upon removing almost all autonomy from the
workforce. According to managerial experts, factory and office workers
had to be prevented from determining the pace and quality of
production. In most sectors, this aim was achieved by breaking down
complex jobs into repetitive tasks. Once they’d been deskilled, workers
were much more easily controlled by administrative and mechanical
means. However, it was impossible to remove all forms of sophisticated
labour from the industrial system. While some skills were being
abolished, others were simultaneously being created. As a result,
engineers, bureaucrats, teachers and other specialists formed an
intermediate layer between the employers and the shopfloor within
Fordism.

In contrast with the petit-bourgeoisie, this new middle class did not own
its own businesses. Unlike most employees, this new working class was
not disciplined by the assembly-line. The ambiguous status of members
of this intermediate layer found expression in their politics. Being
educated and confident, skilled workers often provided leadership for the
rest of their class. In many countries, they became the most fervent
advocates of vanguard politics and avant-garde art. However, their
privileged position within Fordism also encouraged hostility towards the
equalitarianism of the Left. Although created by economic progress, the
intermediate layer would lose its status if further industrialisation did
eventually emancipate the masses. As a result, some professionals
became enthusiastic supporters of reactionary modernism. Seduced by
conservative philosophers, they dreamt of founding a new aristocracy:
the technocracy.1

During the twentieth century, right-wing intellectuals were obsessed with

the intermediate layer of skilled workers within Fordism. In their
conservative appropriations of Saint-Simon, engineers, bureaucrats,
teachers and other specialists were repeatedly heralded as contemporary
equivalents of early-nineteenth century ‘industrials’. However, unlike
their socialist mentor, these conservative philosophers always feared the
political and cultural emancipation of the masses. According to Saint-
Simon, the historical role of the ‘industrials’ was leading their fellow
citizens towards freedom and equality. In contrast, right-wing
intellectuals urged the intermediate layer within Fordism to transform
itself into a hi-tech aristocracy. Instead of liberating the working class,
these technocrats were supposed to revive the oppressive hierarchies of
feudalism in a new form. The path to the future had to be a return to the
past.

From the early-1920s to the mid-1940s, the predominant version of

reactionary modernism was fascism. If they faithfully served the
totalitarian state, skilled workers were promised membership of the
racial-political elite. Not surprisingly, the defeat of Nazi Germany
completely discredited this interpretation of reactionary modernism. In its
1
the ‘labour aristocracy’

80
place, American versions of this technocratic fantasy soon achieved
dominance. During the boom years of Fordism, managers and other
professionals employed by large corporations and government
departments were supposedly forming the new ruling class. 1 However,
when the economy went into crisis in the early-1970s, right-wing
intellectuals were forced to look for salvation from other sections of the
intermediate layer within Fordism. Inspired by McLuhan, they discovered
the limited number of people who were developing the new information
technologies. Like the ‘industrials’ of Saint-Simon, these engineers and
entrepreneurs were also inventing sophisticated machines and improving
production methods. Above all, these specialists were creating a
replacement for Fordism: the information society.

For almost thirty years, neo-liberal gurus have enthusiastically promoted

this cybernetic form of reactionary modernism. Like their predecessors,
they simultaneously advocate economic progress and social regression.
On the one hand, they always welcome the introduction of new
technologies and working methods. In an ironic echo of Stalin, these
prophets even claim that the ever-increasing ownership of convergent
techologies proves the utopian potential of the USA. Yet, on the other
hand, they repeatedly champion the formation of a hi-tech aristocracy.
Instead of everyone being emancipated by this new stage of economic
modernisation, the information society will only empower a small
minority of ‘digerati’: cyber-entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, hacker
geniuses, media stars and neo-liberal ideologists.

Across the industrialised world, this conservative appropriation of Saint-

Simon now dominates discussions about the Net. Every pundit claims that
technological convergence will soon create the information society. Each
guru predicts that the inventors of ideas will inevitably form a new digital
technocracy. However, these right-wing intellectuals can only produce
corrupted versions of Saint-Simon’s utopian prophecy. Although this
socialist philosopher promised liberation for everyone through economic
progress, the proponents of reactionary modernism are determined to
exclude the majority of the population from their hi-tech future. Perpetual
technological innovation must always identified with an unchanging social
hierarchy. Yet, without the promise of eventual redemption, economic
modernisation can only become an end in itself. The spread of new
information technologies is simply the latest innovation in production
methods under capitalism. Like their religious predecessors, conservative
philosophers are only offering an imaginary future to compensate for the
real present lived by ordinary people.

how to be a radical intellectual if industrial progress doesn’t lead to new

society but is basis of contemporary capitalism. conservative progress.
reactionary modernism. new technology from Saint-Simon utopia to
cyberpunk dystopia. confusion leads to escape into the revolutionary
1
Burnham

81
dreamtime of future technology. reactionary modernism the technocracy
parallels the cultural aristocracy of Ortega y Grasset. Heinlein or Poul
Anderson and Vonnegut. NSK as nostalgia for modernity and avant-garde.
Saint-Simon. the perfection of modernity must now contain its own
antithesis. most social problems come from industrial progress. the loss
of wholeness and more alienation. information society prophecy is both
modernist and anti-modernist. humanity is promised the return of
primitivism. only alternative to the virtual class is artist as hero. anti-
reformist and anti-Stalinist is new version of old Romantic anti-
modernism. Gnostic mystical and unalienated/non-fragmented
authenticity of tribal primitivism. nomad warrior. holy fool. also rule of
ideas as rule of intellectuals. avant-garde revival of McLuhan and d&g are
the fusion of opposites: information society prophecy as both reactionary
modernism and revolutionary anti-modernism. McLuhan thinks that
media is the anti-Christ creating the Catholic millennium. d&g think
deterritorialisation of capitalism leads back to primitivism. media and
infomation society as vitalism. hi-tech tribalism. from cyberpunk to Star
Wars. techno-shamenism in music. sci-fi social theory unites with fictional
science. pop science is proof of religion. non-linear, chaos, memes,
genetics, drugs, cyborgs, evolutionary psychology. mystical positivism.
right and left anti-statism. no state is mafia or Serbian fascist
paramilitaries. rhizomic collaboration and neo-liberal competition. PFF
Magna Carta is Gnostic. USA and EU. abstraction of really existing specific
moment of ideological confusion. not Stalinist but emancipatory
technology. not fascist but entrepreneurial innovation. lack of social
revolution needs a mechanical redeemer. Deprived of a clear political
goal, techno-nomad TJs can only provide an imaginary solution: the
revolutionary dreamtime of the Net. May ‘68 as a revolutionary
dreamtime. everyone believes in the rule of ideas. ethical-aesthetic not
practical. ambiguities of the virtual class. the celebration of direct
democracy in theory can act as the justification for intellectual elitism in
practice. however diffuse and structureless, revolutionary
vanguard/avant-garde is also Nietzsche’s aristocracy of culture. techo-
nomads as hegemonic class fraction and sub-culture and art movement.

surrealist Whether from the primitive past or the Soviet future, any vision
of a more authentic way of living should be used to subvert the cultural
philistinism of the bourgeois present

The primitive and the future are still counterposed against the present.1
1
For instance, one disciple first proclaims that: ‘Despotism introduces an
organising principle that comes from elsewhere - from ‘above’ - a
deterritorialised simplicity or supersoma overcoding the aborginal body
as created as flesh.’ However, a few pages later, he switches from
romantic primitivism to delirious futurism: ‘The industrial-information
body... operates as an input-output flow-switching nexus, defined... ever
more exactly by its migration across the mutant sutures in machinic
continuum...’ Nick Land, ‘Meat (or How to Kill Oedipus in Cyberspace)’,
pages 196, 202.

82
Just like McLuhan, he hopes that the hi-tech future is simultaneously a
return to the primitive past Elsewhere he predicts that: ‘The desire for
wilderness will be gratified at a level undreamed since the early Neolithic
and the desire for creativity and even co-creation will be gratified at a
level undreamed by the wildest science fiction.’ Hakim Bey, Primitives &
Extropians, page 3.
In 1960, McLuhan even predicted the unifying potential of the Net: ‘...the
globe becomes a single electronic computer, with all its languages and
cultures recorded on the single tribal drum.’ Matie Molinaro, Corinne
McLuhan and William Toye, The Letters of Marshall McLuhan, page 261.
‘What is Fashion? A form of utopia.’1
10: The Hi-Tech Gift Economy
Back in the 1920s, the European avant-garde had no doubt about its
heroic mission. The enlightened minority could free the people from
ideological domination through experimental art and libertarian lifestyles.
The cultural avant-garde was an essential element of the political
vanguard. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this Leninist myth
has lost all credibility. The ‘grand narrative’ of history can no longer be
used to justify the leadership of the few. In the late-1990s, revolutionary
elitism must now be expressed in the words of May ‘68. The techno-
nomads therefore remix Leninism into Deleuzoguattarian discourse:
subversive theory-art ‘deterritorialises’ the semiotic ‘machinic
assemblages’ controlling the minds of the majority. Crucially, the
contemporary avant-garde must substitute itself for the missing political
vanguard. Although supposedly possible for everyone, the immanence of
ethical-aesthetic ‘delirium’ can only be experienced by radical
intellectuals. Cultural rebellion, bohemian lifestyles and ultra-leftism are
now the ‘marks of distinction’ for the artistic aristocracy. Lenin is
morphed into Nietzsche.

The current revival of the European avant-garde depends upon the

aestheticisation of May ‘68. Yet, important pioneers of the New Left were
highly critical of this tradition of cultural elitism. Above all, the
Situationists attacked aesthetic innovations of the Surrealists for failing to
remove the ideological domination of the bourgeoisie. These avant-garde
experiments had been too easily incorporated into the fashionable styles
of consumer society. The Surrealist experience proved that innovative art
could never remain subversive for long.2 In place of aesthetic
experimentation, the Situationists instead advocated transforming the
social context of cultural production. Rather than following the avant-
garde elite, everyone should have the opportunity to express

1
Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World, page 163.
2
See Guy Debord, ‘Report on the Construction of Situations and on the
International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organisation and
Action’; and Situationist International, ‘Response to a Questionnaire from
the Centre for Socio-Experimental Art’.

83
themselves.1

‘The situation is...made to be lived by its constructors. The role played by

a passive...”public” must constantly diminish, while that played by those
who cannot be called actors but rather...”livers” must steadily increase.’2

The Situationists proclaimed the end of the cultural avant-garde. The New
Left didn’t just have to radicalise the content of art. More importantly,
young militants had to create opportunities for everyone to express their
own hopes, dreams and desires. The Hegelian ‘grand narrative’ could
then culminate in the supersession of all mediations separating people
from each other. Yet, at the same time, the Situationists never
completely escaped from the avant-garde legacy left by their Surrealist
predecessors. The movement was predominantly composed of radical
intellectuals.3 This revolutionary minority supposedly prefigured the
bohemian lifestyles and ultra-left politics of the future. As with the
Surrealists, the ‘holy idea’ of participation for everyone justified
unaccountable leadership of the intellectual elite. Once again, the
practical transcendence of social oppression had elided into the spiritual
immanence of theoretical enlightenment. Despite their invocation of
Hegel and Marx, the Situationists remained haunted by Nietzsche and
Lenin.4

Unable to break with avant-garde tradition, the Situationists inevitably

aestheticised the social revolution. Fearful of repeating the fate of the
Surrealists, the movement celebrated cultural activities which couldn’t
easily be turned into fashionable commodities. Above all, the Situationists

1
The Situationists were reviving the demand for the abolition of
specialisation in cultural production championed by many nineteenth
century socialists: ‘In a communist society, there are no painters, but only
people who engage in painting among other activities.’ Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, page 418. For the inspiration for
this attack on the division of labour, see Jonathan Beecher, Charles
Fourier.
2
Guy Debord, ‘Report on the Conditions of Situations and on the
International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organisation, page 25.
3
The founding members of the Situationists were architects, painters and
film-makers. According to Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord lived off money
from his parents while Michèle Bernstein composed horse horoscopes for
racing magazines. See Kristin Ross, ‘Lefebvre on the Situationists: an
Interview’, page 70.
4
The growing popularity of the Situationists after the May ‘68 revolution
exacerbated the tension between their theory of mass participation and
their practice of intellectual elitism until the movement finally imploded.
See Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, The Veritable Split in the
International; and Luther Blissett, Guy Debord is Really Dead.

84
looked for ways of living which were free from the corruptions of
consumer capitalism. Like earlier avant-garde intellectuals, they thought
that the path into the future was also the return to the past. Despite their
Hegelian modernism, the Situationists claimed that anarcho-communism
had been prefigured by the potlatch: the gift economy of Polynesian
tribes.1

Within these primitive societies, the circulation of gifts bound people

together into tribes and encouraged co-operation between different
tribes. In contrast with the atomisation and alienation of bourgeois
society, these potlatches required intimate contacts and emotional
authenticity. According to the Situationists, the tribal gift economy
demonstrated that individuals could successfully live together without
needing either the state or the market. Anarcho-communism was
therefore a practical possibility. However, the Situationists remained
trapped within the antinomies of the avant-garde. Once again, the utopia
of mass participation simultaneously justified the leadership of the artistic
elite. Unlike the rest of the population, radical intellectuals could
supposedly prefigure the libertarian future by producing esoteric theory-
art. Anarcho-communism had been transformed into a ‘mark of
distinction’ for the New Left vanguard. The giving of gifts therefore
became the absolute antithesis of market competition. There could be no
compromise between tribal authenticity and bourgeois alienation. After
the social revolution, the potlatch would completely supplant the
commodity.2

‘The crumbling away of human values under the influence of exchange

mechanisms leads to the crumbling of [commodity] exchange itself...new
human relationships must be built on the principle of pure giving. We
must rediscover the pleasure of giving: giving because you have so

1
The Situationists discovered the tribal gift economy in Marcel Mauss,
The Gift. Even before forming the Situationists, Debord and other key
members of the group published an avant-garde art magazine called
Potlatch. As its name suggests, this journal was given away for free. See
Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture, page 20.
2
For instance, in their famous analysis of the 1965 Watts riots, the
Situationists praised looting as the supersession of money-commodity
relations by a revolutionary form of the gift economy: ‘...the Los Angeles
blacks... want to possess immediately all the objects shown [to them by
advertising] and abstractly accessible because they want to use them...
Through theft and the gift, they rediscover a use that immediately refutes
the oppressive rationality of the commodity, revealing its relations and
manufacture to be arbitrary and unnecesssary... instead of being pursued
in the rat race of alienated labour and increasing but unmet social needs,
real desires begin to be expressed in festival in playful self-assertion in
the potlatch of destruction.’ Situationist International, ‘The Decline and
Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy’, page 155.

85
much. What beautiful and priceless potlatches the affluent society will
see - whether it likes it or not! - when the exuberance of the younger
generation discovers the pure gift.’1

After May ‘68, this purist vision of anarcho-communism inspired a

generation of community media activists. For instance, the radical ‘free
radio’ stations refused all funding from state and commercial sources.
Instead, these projects tried to survive through donations of time and
money from their supporters. Emancipatory media supposedly could only
be produced within the gift economy. During the late-1970s, pro-situ
attitudes were further popularised by the punk movement. 2 Although
rapidly commercialised, this sub-culture did encourage its members to
form their own bands, make their own fashions and publish their own
fanzines.3 From punk through rave to the present-day, the ‘cutting-edge’
of youth culture has remained participatory. The permanent innovation in
styles on the dance floor is driven by people doing things for themselves.4

Crucially, every user of the Net participates within a gift economy.

Without even thinking about it, people continually circulate information
between each other for free. They co-operate together without the direct
mediation of either politics or money. During the 1980s, post-modern
pessimists claimed that the gift economy would always be defeated by
market capitalism.5 Yet, at the end of the 1990s, DIY culture is thriving
within the most technologically advanced sector of the economy.
Everyday, Net users circulate gifts of information amongst each other.
What was once revolutionary has become banal. Far from being the ‘holy
idea’ of avant-garde intellectuals, anarcho-communism is now the
mundane activity of ordinary people within cyberspace.

‘Millions of people have been interacting and participating in what they

clearly value... There is no question that there are differences between
the economic logic - the application of basic economic principles - on and
off the Net. To begin with, most of the economic activity on the Net
involves value but no money.’6

1
Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, page 70.
2
For the influence of Situationism on the initiators of the punk
movement, see Fred Vermorel and Judy Vermorel, Sex Pistols, pages 220-
225.
3
‘“This is a chord,” wrote the assemblers of Sideburns [a fanzine] ...in
December 1976, displaying an A, an E and a G: “Now form a band.”
Brilliant.’ Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming, pages 280-281.
4
For instance, this can be seen in the development of drum ‘n’ bass
music. See Martin James, State of Bass.
5
For instance, see Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communications,
pages 77-95.
6
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets’, page 2.

86
The invention of the Net was one of the greatest ironies of the Cold War.
At the height of the struggle of American capitalism against Russian
Communism, the US military funded the creation of anarcho-communism
within computer-mediated communications! From the beginning, the gift
economy has determined the technical and social structure of the Net.
Being a military bureaucracy, the Pentagon initially did try to restrict the
unofficial uses of its computer network. However, it soon became obvious
that the Net could only be successfully developed by letting its users
build the system for themselves.1 Within the scientific community, the gift
economy has long been the primary method of socialising labour. Funded
by the state or by donations, scientists don’t have to turn their
intellectual work directly into marketable commodities. Instead, research
results are publicised by ‘giving a paper’ at specialist conferences and by
‘contributing an article’ to academic journals. The collaboration of many
different academics is made possible through the free distribution of
information.2

Within small tribal societies, the circulation of gifts established close

personal bonds between people. In contrast, the academic gift economy
is used by intellectuals who are spread across the world. Within their peer
group, scientists can receive recognition from colleagues who might
never meet them in person. Despite the anonymity of the modern version
of the gift economy, academics acquire intellectual respect from each
other through citations in articles and other forms of public
acknowledgement. If someone is often quoted, their career prospects
1
‘“Open Systems” architecture [of the Net] by its very nature goes
against the organisational imperatives of the Defence Department. The
threat to this institution from the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons demanded precautions to protect its strategic secrets, its
centralised command and control system, and its hierarchical
organisation. Paradoxically, the only precaution that could be effective
called for a non-hierarchical, decentralised and essentially egalitarian
system.’ Mark Geise, ‘From ARPAnet to the Internet’, page 128.
2
Contrary to neo-liberal dogma, money-commodity relations are not
always the most efficient way of organising collective production: ‘The
rationality of professional services is not the same as the rationality of
the market... In the professions, and especially in science, the abdication
of moral control would disrupt the system. The producer of professional
services must be... responsible for his products, and its is fitting that he
not be alienated from them. The scientist, for example, must be
concerned with maintaining and correcting existing theories in his field,
and his work must be orientated towards this goal. The exchange of
recognition for gifts tends to maintain such orientations.’ Warren O.
Hagstrom, ‘Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in Science’, page 29.
Similarly, the donation of blood by volunteers is less wasteful and more
healthy than paying for supplies. See Richard Titmus, The Gift
Relationship.

87
within the university system are usually much enhanced. Scientists
therefore can only acquire personal recognition for their individual efforts
by openly collaborating with each other through the academic gift
economy. Although research is being increasingly commercialised, the
giving away of findings remains the most efficient method of solving
common problems within a particular scientific discipline.1

When the Yippies proclaimed that ‘information wants to be free’ back in

the 1960s, they were preaching to computer scientists who were already
living within the academic gift economy. What seemed revolutionary in
the rest of the USA was the usual method of working within the
university. From its earliest days, the free exchange of information has
therefore been firmly embedded within the technologies and social mores
of cyberspace. Above all, the founders of the Net never bothered to
protect intellectual property within computer-mediated communications.
On the contrary, they were developing these new technologies to
advance their careers inside the academic gift economy.2

Scattered across the world, scientists from the same speciality needed
the Net to disseminate their research results to each other and to work
together on collaborative projects. Far from wanting to enforce copyright,
the pioneers of the Net tried to eliminate all barriers to the distribution of
information. Technically, every act within cyberspace involves copying
material from one computer to another. Once the first copy of a piece of
information is placed on the Net, the cost of making each extra copy is
almost zero. The architecture of the system presupposes that multiple
copies of documents can easily be cached around the network. As Tim
Berners-Lee - the inventor of the Web - points out:

‘Concepts of intellectual property, central to our culture, are not

expressed in a way which maps onto the abstract information space. In
an information space, we can consider the authorship of materials, and
their perception; but...there is a need for the underlying infrastructure to
be able to make copies simply for reasons of [technical] efficiency and
reliability. The concept of “copyright” as expressed in terms of copies
made makes little sense.’3

Within the commercial creative industries, advances in digital

reproduction are feared for making the ‘piracy’ of copyright material ever
1
This is why the increasing role of commercial funding can hamper as
well as help academic research. See David Noble, ‘Digital Diploma Mills’;
and Warren O. Hagstrom, ‘Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in
Science’.
2
See Mark Geise, ‘From ARPAnet to the Internet’, pages 126-132.
3
Tim Berners-Lee, ‘The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future’, page
11.

88
easier. Almost everyone already copies music, articles, television
programmes and other information products for personal use without
payment. The sampling and remixing of other people’s tunes is
widespread within dance music.1 For the owners of intellectual property,
the Net can only make the situation worse. In contrast, the academic gift
economy welcomes technologies which improve the availability of data.
Users should always be able to obtain and manipulate information with
the minimum of impediments. The design of the Net therefore assumes
that intellectual property is technically and socially obsolete.2

In France, the nationalised telephone monopoly has accustomed people

to paying for the on-line services provided by Minitel.3 Yet, the Net
remains predominantly a gift economy even though the system has
expanded far beyond the university. The attempt to construct computer-
mediated communications around copyright payments ended in failure.4
The commercial providers of information services have never been able
to supplant the free exchange of information amongst the on-line
community.5 Even the porn industry is encountering difficulties in making

1
See John Chesterman and Andy Lipman, The Electronic Pirates; and
Matthew Collin with John Godfrey, Altered State.
2
‘The logic of digital technology leads us in a new direction [away from
the concept of information as a commodity]. Objects, as well as ideas, are
no longer fixed, no longer tangible. In cyberspace, there is no weight, no
dimensions; structure is dynamic and changing; size is both infinite and
immaterial. In this space, stories are written that change with each new
reader; new material can be added, and old material can be deleted.
Nothing is permanent. Neil Kleinman, ‘Don’t Fence Me In: Copyright,
Property and Technology, page 76.
3
See Marcel Marchand, The Minitel Saga.
4
Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project failed for social rather than technical
reasons. Unlike the Net, his program was designed to protect intellectual
property within cyberspace. For years, Nelson tried to promote his
idiosyncratic tracking and payment system for enforcing copyright within
computer-mediated communications. However, far from encouraging
participation, copyright was a fundamental obstacle to collaboration
between on-line users. See Gary Wolf, ‘The Curse of Xanadu’, pages 70-
85, 112-113; and Theodor Nelson, ‘Transcopyright’. In contrast, Tim
Berners-Lee was able to invent the Web because he didn’t need to
include any methods for enforcing intellectual property. As a scientist
funded by EU taxpayers, he was already working within the academic gift
economy. The design criteria for the first version of the Web therefore
included no provisions for copyright protection. See Tim Berners-Lee, ‘The
World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future’, pages 2-4.
5
As Mark Stahlman points out: ‘...people are not paying for information,
very clearly, which is the substantial problem associated with the
economics of the Web - we still haven’t a clue as to the successful
business model.’ Mark Stahlman, ‘The Business Tech Interview’, page 4.

89
money on the Net.1 From scientists through hobbyists to the general
public, the charmed circle of users was slowly built up through the
adhesion of many localised networks to an agreed set of protocols.

Crucially, the common standards of the Net include social conventions as

well as technical rules. The giving and receiving of information without
payment is almost never questioned. Although the circulation of gifts
doesn’t necessarily create emotional obligations between individuals,
people are still willing to donate their information to everyone else on the
Net. Even selfish reasons encourage people to become anarcho-
communists within cyberspace. By adding their own presence, every user
contributes to the collective knowledge accessible to those already on-
line. In return, each individual has potential access to all the information
made available by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out of
the Net than they can ever give away as an individual.

‘...the Net is far from altruistic, or it wouldn’t work... Because it takes as

much effort to distribute one copy of an original creation as a
million...you never lose from letting your product free...as long as you are
compensated in return... What a miracle, then, that you receive not one
thing in value in exchange - indeed there is no explicit act of exchange at
all - but millions of unique goods made by others!’2

Despite the commercialisation of cyberspace, the self-interest of Net

users ensures that the hi-tech gift economy continues to flourish. For
instance, musicians are using the Net for the digital distribution of their
recordings to each other. By giving away their own work to this network
community, individuals get free access to a far larger amount of music in
return. Not surprisingly, the music business is worried about the
increased opportunities for the ‘piracy’ of copyrighted recordings over the
Net.3 Sampling, DJ-ing and mixing are already blurring property rights
within dance music.4 However, the greatest threat to the commercial

1
‘In any new medium, one of the first successful areas of commerce is
sex - stag films, X-rated video cassettes, 900 [premium-rate phone] calls.
But the bad thing sex in a new medium initially sells so well that it sucks
in the amateurs as well as the pros in large numbers... If you have a
million customers and a hundred sites, you’ve got a thriving retail
industry. But if you have a million customers and a hundred thousand
sites, many sites are slated for going out of business sales.’ Gerard van
der Leun, ‘Trouble in Pornutopia’, pages 1-2.
2
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets’, page 10.
3
As bandwidth and computing power increase, it is becoming much
easier to turn copyrighted pop music into gifts within cyberspace. See
Andrew Leonard, ‘Mutiny on the Net’.
4
For instance, a review of the celebrated English hip-hop album
Entroducing explains that: ‘[DJ Shadow] ...samples wildstyle, stealing

90
music corporations comes from the flexibility and spontaneity of the hi-
tech gift economy. After it is completed, a new track can quickly be made
freely available to a global audience. If someone likes the tune, they can
download it for personal listening, use it as a sample or make their own
remix. Out of the free circulation of information, musicians can form
friendships, work together and inspire each other.1

‘It’s all about doing it for yourself. Better than punk.’2

Within the developed world, most politicians and corporate leaders

believe that the future of capitalism lies in the commodification of
information. Over the last few decades, intellectual property rights have
been steadily tightened through new national laws and international
agreements. Even human genetic material can now be patented. 3 Yet, at
the ‘cutting-edge’ of the emerging information society, money-
commodity relations play a secondary role to those created by a really
existing form of anarcho-communism. For most of its users, the Net is
somewhere to work, play, love, learn and discuss with other people.
Unrestricted by physical distance, they collaborate with each other
without the direct mediation of money or politics. Unconcerned about
copyright, they give and receive information without thought of payment.
In the absence of states or markets to mediate social bonds, network
communities are instead formed through the mutual obligations created
by gifts of time and ideas.

from vintage funk, progressive rock, kraut rock (Tangerine Dream etc),
acid rock, punk rock (check the drumming on ‘Stem’) and heavy metal.
He’ll take anything that’s got a reference, any sound that might mean
something when you put it next to another sound, like words making up a
sentence.’ Tony Marcus, ‘Shadowplay’, page 61.
1
A similar phenomenon can be seen in the growing popularity of
listservers. This is a form of Net publishing where a group of people
regularly distribute their writings to each other over email. Because
organising a listserver is cheap and easy, any Net user can now
potentially become a publisher. Crucially, almost all listservers are
organised as gift economies: ‘What is exchanged on a list, where money
rarely is the prime measure of success or failure? Ideas, time and
attention... are all part of a complex ecology in an environment
remarkably separate from traditional markets... It’s a place where
traditional [market] models lose their meaning and power comes not
from wealth, but from thought...’ David Bennahum, ‘The Hot New Medium
is... Email’, page 3.
2
Steve Elliot of Slug Oven quoted in Karlin Lillington, ‘No! It’s Not OK
Computer’, page 3.
3
For instance, one of the major components of the 1993 Uruguay Round
of the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade (GATT) was increased
protection for patents and copyrights, especially within agriculture and
medicine. See John Frow, ‘Information as Gift and Commodity’.

91
‘This informal, unwritten social contract is supported by a blend of strong-
tie and weak-tie relationships among people who have a mixture of
motives and ephemeral affiliations. It requires one to give something, and
enables one to receive something. I have to keep my friends in mind and
send them pointers instead of throwing my informational discards into
the virtual scrap heap... And with scores of people who have an eye out
for my interests while they explore sectors of the information space that I
normally wouldn’t frequent, I find that the help I receive far outweighs
the energy I expend helping others; a marriage of altruism and self-
interest.’1

On the Net, enforcing copyright payments represents the imposition of

scarcity on a technical system designed to maximise the dissemination of
information. The protection of intellectual property stops all users having
access to every source of knowledge. Commercial secrecy prevents
people from helping each other to solve common problems. The
inflexibility of information commodities inhibits the efficient manipulation
of digital data. In contrast, the technical and social structure of the Net
has been developed to encourage open co-operation among its
participants. As an everyday activity, users are building the system
together. Engaged in ‘interactive creativity’, they send emails, take part
in listservers, contribute to newsgroups, participate within on-line
conferences and produce websites.2 Lacking copyright protection,
information can be freely adapted to suit the users’ needs. Within the hi-
tech gift economy, people successfully work together through ‘...an open
social process involving evaluation, comparison and collaboration.’3

The hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software

development. For instance, Bill Gates admits that Microsoft’s biggest
competitor in the provision of web servers comes from the Apache
program.4 Instead of being marketed by a commercial company, this
program is shareware.5 Like similar projects, this virtual machine is being
continually developed by its techie users. Because its source code is not
protected by copyright, the program can be modified, amended and
1
Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pages 57-58. As Mark Geise
points out: ‘...if given an opportunity, people will choose to communicate
interactively with each other, rather than attend exclusively mass
mediated, one-to-many products as commercial interests may prefer.’
See Mark Geise, ‘From ARPAnet to the Internet’, page 139.
2
Tim Berners-Lee, ‘Realising the Full Potential of the Web’, page 5.
3
Bernard Lang, ‘Free Software For All’, page 3.
4
Keith W. Porterfield, ‘Information Wants to be Valuable’, page 2.
5
Shareware also freeware and open source. program is a gift. Douglas
Rushkoff, ‘Free Lessons in Innovation’; The Free Software Foundation,
‘What is Free Software?’; and Eric C. Raymond, ‘Homesteading the
Noosphere’.

92
improved by anyone with the appropriate programming skills. When
someone does make a contribution to a shareware project, the gift of
their labour is rewarded by recognition within the community of user-
developers.1

The inflexibility of commodified software programs is compounded by

their greater unreliability. Even Microsoft can’t mobilise the amount of
labour given to successful shareware programs by their devotees.
Without enough techies looking at a program, all its bugs can never be
found.2 The greater social and technical efficiency of anarcho-communism
is therefore inhibiting the commercial take-over of the Net. Shareware
programs are now beginning to threaten the core product of the Microsoft
empire: the Windows operating system. Starting from the original
software program by Linus Torvalds, a community of user-developers are
together building their own non-proprietary operating system: Linux. For
the first time, Windows has a serious competitor. Anarcho-communism is
becoming the only alternative to monopoly capitalism.3

‘Linux is subversive. Who could have thought even five years ago that a
world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-
time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the
planet, connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?’4

1
Eric Raymond explains: ‘...like all hackers, my most fundamental
motivation is that I want other hackers to think that I’m doing good work.
And I want them to believe I’m effective and fruitful and a good designer
and so forth.’ Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software Go!’, page 4. According
to the Free Software Foundation, work done for money and other material
inducements is often less productive than the results of voluntary effort.
See Alfie Kohn, ‘Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator’.
2
Eric Raymond points out that intellectual property is a major obstacle to
technical efficiency: ‘The central problem in software engineering has
always been reliability. Our reliability, in general, sucks. In other branches
of engineering, waht do you do to get high reliability? The answer is
massive, independent peer review... you wouldn’t trust a major civil
engineering design which hadn’t been peer reviewed, and you can’t trust
software that hasn’t been peer reviewed either. But that can’t happen
unless the source code is open.’ Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software Go!’,
page 5.
3
For instance, the spectacular special effects for James Cameron’s Titanic
film were made on Linux machines rather than on those running Windows
NT or any other commercial operating system. See Daryll Strauss, ‘Linux
Helps Bring Titanic to Life’.
4
Eric C. Raymond, ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’, page 1. From the
1970s to the 1990s, non-commercial software projects have steadily
evolved from toys and demos through Net applications to the
construction of this new operating system. The next stage will be the
invention of ‘programs for non-techies’, such as applications for image

93
11: Beyond the Avant-Garde

For the mainstream Left, the only way out of this contradiction between
participation and elitism was to abandon the concept of violent revolution
altogether in favour of electoral reformism.1

how to be avant-garde without being an avant-garde

gifts seen as new way of living against corruptions of capitalism
consumer society is banal and everyday. gifts are ethical and moral.
Commune is a festival and a Reichian moment. vanguard and avant-
garde not only revolutionary but also fear of masses. yet real rises in
working class living standards creates new possibilities. without any hope
of revolutionary utopia. workers have sold-out and their dreams are
recuperated. the proles are blamed for not being revolutionary. but
greatest success of the Commune is its own existence not total festival.
night-bakers. gifts are banal and everyday. modernity is territorialised
city. Kojeve. Despite all their rhetoric of immanence and non-linearity, the
social revolution has once again disappeared from the present into a
utopian future.

The New Left anticipated the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy.
People could collaborate with each other without needing either markets
or states. Anarcho-communism really did work in practice. However, the
New Left had a purist vision of DIY culture. According to the ‘soixante-
huitards’, the gift was the absolute antithesis of the commodity. There
could be no compromise between the authenticity of the potlatch and the
alienation of the market. For instance, Fréquence Libre refused to raise
money from advertising to prove its ethical-aesthetic integrity. Rather
than compromising with the arboreal powers of commercialism, the
rhizomic ‘free radio’ station preserved its principles to the point of
bankruptcy. The current popularity of Deleuze and Guattari comes from
their romanticisation of this uncompromising form of anarcho-
communism. What had failed in practice can live on as theory-art.

manipulation. See Eric C. Raymond, ‘Homesteading the Noosphere’,

pages 14-15. At the same time, some ‘non-techies’ are now even
inventing their own programs, such as the Web Stalker. See the I/0/D
website.
1
According to orthodox Marxists, the admirers of the Bolsheviks had
confused the violent revolution which overthrew the absolute monarchy
with the socialist revolution which would democratise the economy. In the
latter case, social transformation depended upon the majority of the
population not only becoming wage workers, but also supporting the
Social Democratic party in parliamentary elections. See Léon Blum,
‘Bolchevisme et Socialisme’, pages 451-476.

94
Bored with the emotional emptiness of post-modernism, the techno-
nomads are entranced by the moral fervour of the holy prophets. In their
remixes, the purist interpretation of anarcho-communism is virtualised
into the revolutionary dreamtime of cyberspace. However, as shown by
Fréquence Libre, the rhetoric of mass participation often hides the rule of
the enlightened few. Instead of providing media freedom for all, the hi-
tech gift economy becomes the ‘mark of distinction’ for the cultural
avant-garde. The ethical-aesthetic commitment of anarcho-communism
can only be lived by the artistic aristocracy. In place of the majority doing
things for themselves on the Net, the minority of radical intellectuals
make cool theory-art about the ‘holy idea’ of digital DIY culture.

Yet, the antinomies of the avant-garde can no longer be avoided. The

rapid growth of the Net is undermining the particular ‘marks of
distinction’ adopted by the Deleuzoguattarians. The ideological passion of
anarcho-communism is dulled by the banality of giving gifts within
cyberspace. The theory of the artistic aristocracy cannot be based on the
everyday activities of the ‘herd animals’. Prominent members of the
avant-garde are already starting to distance themselves from their earlier
enthusiasm for all things digital. Their revolutionary dreamtime may even
have to built somewhere else other than cyberspace.1

Above all, anarcho-communism exists in a compromised form on the Net.

Contrary to the ethical-aesthetic vision of the New Left, the boundaries
between the different methods of working are not morally precise. Within
the mixed economy of the Net, money-commodity and gift relations are
simultaneously in conflict and in symbiosis with each other. On the one
hand, each method of working threatens to supplant the other. The hi-
tech gift economy heralds the end of private property in ‘cutting-edge’
areas of the economy. The digital capitalists want to privatise the
shareware programs and enclose the social spaces built through
voluntary effort. The potlatch and the commodity remain irreconcilable.2

Yet, on the other hand, the gift economy and the commercial sector can
only expand through mutual collaboration within cyberspace. The free
circulation of information between users relies upon the capitalist
production of computers, software and telecommunications. The profits of
commercial Net companies depend upon increasing numbers of people
participating within the hi-tech gift economy. Under threat from Microsoft,

1
For an analysis of this recent turn by the European avant-garde, see
Geert Lovink, ‘Current Media Pragmatism’.
2
Some commentators believe that the Net provides the technological
basis for the creation of a post-capitalist society. See Nuret Sen,
InterNETed. Others believe that the Net must inevitably follow the path of
commercialisation experienced in earlier forms of media. See Brian
Winston, Media Technology and Society, pages 321-336.

95
Netscape is now trying to realise the opportunities opened up by such
interdependence. Lacking the resources to beat its monopolistic rival, the
company is allying itself with the hacker community to avoid being
overwhelmed. The source code of its web browser program is now freely
available. The development of products for the shareware Linux
operating system has become a top priority. The commercial survival of
Netscape will depend upon successfully collaborating with hackers from
the hi-tech gift economy. Anarcho-communism is now sponsored by
corporate capital.1

‘”Hi there Mr CEO [Chief Executive Officer] - tell me, do you have any
strategic problem right now that is bigger than whether Microsoft is going
to either crush you or own your soul in a few years? No? You don’t? OK,
well, listen carefully then. You cannot survive against Bill Gates [by]
playing Bill Gates’ game. To thrive, or even survive, you’re going to have
to change the rules...”’2

The purity of the digital DIY culture is also compromised by the political
system. Because the dogmatic communism of Deleuze and Guattari has
dated badly, their disciples instead emphasise the uncompromising
anarchism of the holy prophets. The techno-nomads can then
enthusiastically advocate ‘anti-statism’ as the primary method of
enhancing freedom within cyberspace.3 However, the state isn’t just the
potential censor and regulator of the Net. At the same time, the public
sector provides essential support for the hi-tech gift economy. For
instance, in the past, the founders of the Net never bothered to
incorporate intellectual property within the system because their wages
were funded from taxation. In the future, governments will have to
impose universal service provisions upon commercial telecommunications
companies if all sections of society are to have the opportunity to
circulate free information.4 Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari claimed

1
See Netscape Communications Corporation, ‘Netscape Announces Plans
to Make Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on
the Net’. This pragmatic collaboration between hackers and
entrepreneurs already exists within the Linux community. Eric C.
Raymond, ‘Homesteading the Noosphere’, pages 1-3.
2
Eric Raymond describing his pitch on behalf of open source policies to
commercial software companies in Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software
Go!’, page 8.
3
As the ex-associate editor of the UK edition of Wired puts it: ‘...’anti-
Statist’ is... ‘Anti top-down control’... I use ‘The State’ in the sense largely
derived from Deleuze and Guattari as a cipher for any power structure
which seeks to transcend the social field and channel matter and energy
into its singularity, in order to perpetuate itself.’ Hari Kunzru, ‘Rewiring
Technoculture’, page 10.
4
For a discussion of the possibility of imposing universal service
provisions on broadband telecommunications networks within the EU, see

96
that participatory ‘post-media’ would supplant electoral politics. Yet,
when access is available, many people use the Net for political purposes,
including lobbying their political representatives.1 Within the digital mixed
economy, anarcho-communism is also symbiotic with the state.

The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is threatened by this miscegenation of

the hi-tech gift economy with the private and public sectors. Faithful to
the traditions of the European avant-garde, the holy prophets proclaimed
the purifying ethical-aesthetic rebellion against bourgeois society.
Anarcho-communism symbolised moral integrity: the romance of artistic
‘delirium’ undermining the ‘machinic assemblages’ of bourgeois
conformity. In their theory-art, contemporary intellectuals remix
Deleuzoguattarian discourse to celebrate the experimental and
innovative potential of the Net. However, the hi-tech gift economy cannot
act as the ‘holy idea’ of the avant-garde minority for much longer. As Net
access grows, more and more people are circulating free information
across the Net. Crucially, their potlatches are not attempts to regain a
lost emotional authenticity. Far from having any belief in the
revolutionary ideals of May ‘68, the overwhelming majority of people
participate within the hi-tech gift economy for entirely pragmatic reasons.
In the late-1990s, digital anarcho-communism is being built by hackers
like Eric Raymond: ‘a self-described neo-pagan [right-wing] libertarian
who enjoys shooting semi-automatic weapons...’2

According to Deleuze and Guattari, anarcho-communism also symbolised

the ethical-aesthetic revolution against the oppressive ‘grand narrative’
of modernity. However, the hi-tech gift economy is formed by the
practical activities of people who mainly live in highly-industrialised
countries.3 This libertarian way of working was not an immanent

Nicholas Garnham, ‘Regulatory Issues’. Government intervention will be

particularly needed to extend Net access in developing countries. See
Alain Gresh, ‘Et les Citoyens du Sud?’, page 17.
1
See Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pages 241-275.
2
Andrew Leonard, ‘Let My Software Go!’, page 2. Despite the absence of
any commodity exchange, Raymond has to describe the hi-tech gift
economy as a ‘bazaar’ - or even as a ‘free market in egoboo’ (i.e.
respect). See Eric C. Raymond, ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’. Similarly,
Ghosh claims that gifts are being circulated within a ‘cooking-pot market’
even though he realises that they’re not the same social phenomenon as
commodities. See Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets’. In both
cases, the practice of anarcho-communism is made compatible with the
ideology of neo-liberalism.
3
Not surprisingly, the most connected nations are in the North and the
countries with the lost proportion of on-line subscribers are in the South.
See Alex Brummer, ‘Dash For Cash in the Online Marketplace’; and Alain
Gresh, ‘Et les Citoyens du Sud?’ Even within industrialised societies, the
people who use the Net are predominantly employed in well-paid jobs

97
possibility in every age. On the contrary, this really existing form of
anarcho-communism could only have been built at the advanced
technological and social levels of contemporary capitalism. Back in
medieval times, the expansion of feudal society spawned the precursors
of the modern market and state. At the end of the millennium, three
centuries of capitalist industrialisation are culminating in the emergence
of digital anarcho-communism. The market and the state could only be
surpassed in this specific sector at this particular historical moment.

The technological advances catalysed by capitalist modernisation are

preconditions for the emergence of anarcho-communism within the Net.
Crucially, people need sophisticated media, computing and
telecommunications technologies to participate within the hi-tech gift
economy. Over the last three hundred years, the reproduction,
distribution and manipulation of information have become slowly easier
through a long process of mechanisation. A manually-operated press
produced copies which were relatively expensive, limited in numbers and
impossible to alter without recopying. After generations of technological
improvements, the same quantity of text on the Net costs almost nothing
to circulate, can be copied as needed and can be remixed at will. The
scarcity of information is gradually being overcome within the hi-tech gift
economy.1

The utilisation of advanced communications tools presupposes that a

large proportion of the population have benefited from capitalist
modernisation. For individuals need both time and money to participate
within the hi-tech gift economy. While a large number of the world’s
population still lives in poverty, people within the industrialised countries
have steadily reduced their hours of employment and increased their
wealth over a long period of social struggles and economic
reorganisations. Ever since the advent of Fordism, mass production has

and live in the more prosperous regions. For instance, one British survey
discovered that: ‘The typical [Net] user is an affluent working father,
aged 35 or under, who lives in the South of England.’ Sarah Hall, ‘Britons
Log Fears about Threat of Internet’, page 8.
1
From McLuhan to the Tofflers, technological determinists have used
these constant improvements in the machinery used in media, computing
and telecommunications to explain much wider social changes. Just like
post-structuralism and neo-liberalism, this approach also denies that
people can consciously determine their own collective destinies. Feudal
society is ended by the invention the printing press. Fordism is perfected
by the television set. Now a new civilisation is being created by the Net.
In the writings of the technological determinists, the messy contingencies
of human history have been replaced by a procession of clean machines.
See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media; Alvin Toffler, The Third
Wave; George Gilder, Life After Television; Manuel Castells, The Rise of
Network Society; and many articles in Wired.

98
depended upon workers having enough leisure and resources for mass
consumption.1 As spare time grows, people can carve out a personal
space for living their own lives, including within cyberspace.2 With rising
incomes, they can afford the ‘self-service’ technologies needed for doing
things for themselves, such as equipment for accessing the Net.3 By
working for public institutions or private companies for some of the week,
people can enjoy the delights of the hi-tech gift economy at other times.
Only at this particular historical moment have the technical and social
conditions of the metropolitan countries developed sufficiently for the
emergence of digital anarcho-communism.4

Following the implosion of the Soviet Union, almost nobody still believes
in the inevitable victory of communism. On the contrary, large numbers
of people accept that the Hegelian ‘end of history’ has culminated in
American neo-liberal capitalism.5 Yet, at exactly this moment in time, a

1
‘...if effective demand [for commodities] is deficient not only is the
public scandal of wasted resources intolerable, but the individual
entrepreneur who seeks to bring these resources into action is operating
with the odds loaded against him.’ John Maynard Keynes, The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money; pages 3880-381. Also see
Toni Negri, Revolution Retreived, pages 5-42; and Michel Aglietta, A
Theory of Capitalist Regulation.
2
‘A reduction in working hours will allow individuals to discover a new
sense of security, a new distancing from the ‘necessities of life’ and a
form of existential autonomy which will encourage them to demand... a
social space in which they can engage in voluntary and self-organised
activities.’ André Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason, page 101. Also see
Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy.
3
The growth in consumption goods represents a fundamental change in
the nature of economic activity. Instead of capital investment taking
place in industry, and industry providing services for individuals and
households, increasingly, capital investment takes place in the
household, leaving industry engaged in what is essentially intermediate
production, making the capital goods - the cookers, freezers, televisions,
motor cars - used in home production of the final product. This is the
trend towards the do-it-yourself economy...’ Jonathan Gershuny, After
Industrial Society, page 81. Also see André Gorz, Critique of Economic
Reason, pages 153-169.
4
‘Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They
arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity
problems whith survival goods.’ Eric C. Raymond, ‘Homesteading the
Noosphere’, page 9.
5
‘In our grandparents’ time, many reasonable people could foresee a
radiant socialist future in which private property and capitalism had been
abolished, and in which politics itself was somehow overcome. Today, by
contrast, we have trouble imagining a world that is radically better than
our own, or a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist...
Other, less reflective ages also thought of themselves as the best, but we

99
really existing form of anarcho-communism is being constructed within
the Net, especially by people living in the USA. When they go on-line,
almost everyone participates within the gift economy rather than
engages in market competition. Even the development of sophisticated
software is being organised around the free circulation of information.

Over the past few centuries, the productivity of labour has increased
dramatically through the mediation of money-commodity relations
protected by the rule of law. Yet, within cyberspace, the enforcement of
private property has become both technologically and socially regressive.
Because users receive much more information than they can ever give
away, there is no popular clamour for imposing the equal exchange of the
marketplace on the Net. For most people, the circulation of gifts is simply
the most efficient method of working together within cyberspace. Even
the West Coast neo-liberals encounter difficulties in explaining why
market prices for information are necessary when the marginal cost of
reproduction is nearly zero.1 Once again, the ‘end of history’ for
capitalism appears to be communism.

‘Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating
production.’2

arrive at this conclusion exhausted... from the pursuit of alternative we

felt had to be better than [Amercan] liberal capitalism.’ Francis
Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, page 46.
1
The West Coast neo-liberals want to turn the Net into an electronic
marketplace where information has to be bought and sold. Trying to
explain away the predominance of the hi-tech gift economy, one
prominent proponent of the Californian ideology claims that the free
circulation of information is only the first stage in developing commercial
applications. Over time, there is supposedly an inevitable evolution from
the ‘inefficencies’ of the gift economy to the ‘commercial economy’s
efficencies’. See Kevin Kelly, ‘New Rules for the New Economy’, page 190.
Yet, according to neo-classical economics, an efficent market system will
price commodities at the cost of producing the last item: ‘Only when the
prices of goods are equal to the Marginal Costs is the economy squeezing
from its scarce resources and limited technical knowledge the maximum
of outputs.’ Paul Samuelson, Economics, page 462. Since the cost of
reproducing informatin is almost zero, the enforcement of prices within
the Net would inevitably lead to a greater waste of ‘scarce resources
and... technical knowledge’ than giving away information. Even according
to neo-liberal ideology, the hi-tech gift economy must be operating closer
to optimal efficency than the monopoly pricing found within much of the
software industry!
2
Karl Marx, Grundrisse, page 700. According to nineteenth century
socialists, the regulation of economic activity through individual private
property would eventually become obsolete as the productivity of
collective labour steadily increased: ‘The mode of production is in

100
Despite the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy, markets and states
remain the primary methods of co-ordinating labour for the production of
goods and services in the rest of the economy, including within some
parts of cyberspace. Responding to changes in prices and funding,
workers and resources are distributed across the various sectors of the
economy.1 Being New Left gurus, Deleuze and Guattari denounced both
the market and the state as ‘machinic assemblages’ which controlled the
lives of the masses. Fréquence Libre therefore refused to sell advertising
and only took a small subsidy from the government. Despite this anti-
capitalist position, Deleuze and Guattari still rejected the ‘economism’ of
the mainstream Left. According to the holy prophets, society was formed
through the self-organising properties of psychic structures rather than
through the conscious organisation of practical work. The creative power
of human labour was only one expression of the vitalist energy of
semiotic flows.

Observing the hallowed custom of the European avant-garde, the two

philosophers had substituted ethical-aesthetic redemption for the social
revolution. The New Left no longer wanted to change the methods of
production. Instead, its philosophers called for the replacement of
disciplined labour by spontaneous desire: the ‘refusal of work’. The
proletarian had been turned into the artist.2 In the 1990s, the techno-
rebellion against the mode of exchange, the productive forces are in
rebellion against the mode of production which they have outgrown.’
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, page 327.
1
‘The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is
not originally the effect of any human wisdom... It is the necessary...
consequence of a certain propensity in human nature.. to truck and
barter and exchange one thing for another.’ Adam Smith, The Wealth of
Nations, page 117. For a more developed analysis of this interconnection,
see Isaak Illich Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value.
2
Even before May ‘68, Foucault had unfavourably contrasted the rational
discipline imposed by work with the libidinal idleness enjoyed by the
insane. See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilisation, pages 38-64. Later
in the 1970s, the ‘refusal of work’ became one of the principle slogans of
the Italian Autonomist movement. While the parliamentary Left still
campaigned for full employment, the New Left instead denounced the
oppressive discipline imposed in the factories and officecs. The
Autonomists therefore advocated that people should either disrupt
production or avoid working altogether. See Toni Negri, ‘Capitalist
Domination and Working Class Sabotage’. This theoretical turn within the
Italian ultra-left reflected the Autonomist movement’s abandonment of
labour struggles in favour of organising social movements. See Steven
Wright, ‘Negri’s Class Analysis’. Despite certain philosophical
incongruities, a common hatred of the ‘workerist’ policies of the
mainstream Left later enabled Negri to collaborate with Guattari in a
fundamentalist restatement of New Left politics. See Félix Guattari and

101
nomads need this ultra-left myth to justify their resurrection of the avant-
garde tradition. While the majority of the population are supposedly
stupefied by the ‘machinic assemblages’ of the market and the state, the
artistic aristocracy can form its own ‘collective assemblage of
enunciation’ around the potlatch. After transformation into an ethical-
aesthetic stance, anarcho-communism becomes the signifier of the
techno-nomad Supermen.1

Despite their residual ultra-leftism, the cultural elitism of the techno-

nomads increasingly merges with the conservative positions of the
Californian ideologues. The two forms of Nietzschean philosophy are
fusing into one. For this convergence to take place, the holy prophets’
anathema against market competition must be skilfully abandoned. 2 First,
the new generation of adepts surreptitiously morphs the ‘refusal to work’
into the denial of the wealth-creating powers of human labour. Then the
work of living beings is subsumed within the mobility of dead matter.
Finally, far from being condemned as a ‘machinic assemblage’ imposed
from above, market competition is sanctified as the apotheosis of self-
organising systems.3 As in the Californian ideology, this

Toni Negri, Communists Like Us.

1
Inspired by their gurus, the Deleuzoguattarians have resurrected the
‘refusal of work’ as an integral part of their revival of 1960s ultra-leftism.
For instance, in 1997, nettime declared that: ‘We are... rejecting make-
work schemes... Participate in the nettime retirement plan, zero work by
the age of 40.’ As this call for the ‘refusal of work’ is inherently
aristocratic, it is not surprising that one of its signatories of this manifesto
was the high priest of Nietzschean anarcho-fascism: Hakim Bey. See
nettime, ‘The Piran Nettime Manifesto’.
2
‘Despite the fact that their philosophical work represents an intense
movement of destratification, Deleuze and Guattari seem to have
preserved their own stratum, Marxism... They retain the concept of...
‘capitalist system’ defined in a top-down way... It seems to me that it
would be useful to push their own line of flight even further, abandoning
molar concepts and dealing exclusively with multiplicities...’ Manuel De
Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, page 331.
3
In order to obscure the New Left origins of Deleuzoguattarian discourse,
this approach emphasises the mystical positivism found within the two
philosophers’ own writings: ‘...igneous rocks, ecosystems, and markets
are self-consistent aggregates, the result of the coming together and
interlocking of heterogeneous elements.’ Manuel De Landa, A Thousand
Years of Non-Linear History, page 66. Hidden under a smoke-screen of
pseudo-science, Deleuze and Guattari’s anarcho-communism can then be
transmuted into neo-liberalism. For instance, De Landa distinguishes
between the supposedly emancipatory effects of rhizomic ‘markets’
(happy peasants buying and selling to each other) as opposed to the
oppressive disciplines imposed by arboreal ‘anti-markets’ (militarised
labour working in factories and other large institutions). By
disaggregating society into multiple flows, De Landa is able to ignore the

102
Deleuzoguattarian heresy believes that the market is a chaotic force of
nature which cannot be controlled by state intervention.1 Abandoning any
residual connections with the Left, these TJs instead celebrate the new
aristocracy of nomadic artists and entrepreneurs who surf the ‘schiz-
flows’ of the information society.2 In this bizarre remix, anarcho-
communism becomes identical with neo-liberalism.

Mesmerised by this ecstatic vision, radical intellectuals are now incapable

of understanding the actual ‘world-historical’ significance of the Net. For
the cultural avant-garde’s recent reconciliation with market competition
has obscured the historical novelty of digital DIY culture. If both forms of
human activity are simply spontaneous semiotic flows, the exchange of
commodities and the circulation of gifts can be easily confused with each
other. As a consequence, the techno-nomads miss the major social
transformation catalysed by the new information technologies: the
widespread adoption of a new method of working. Rejecting the

intrinsic interdependence between the sphere of circulation and the

sphere of production. See Manuel De Landa, ‘Markets, Antimarkets and
Network Economies’. A diluted - and less anti-statist - version of this
Deleuzoguattarian approach is now entering mainstream sociology. For
instance, Manuel Castells claims that: ‘...society is constructed around
flows: flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of
organisational interaction, flows of images, sounds and symbols. Flows
are not just one element of the social organisation: they are the
expression of processes dominating our economic, political and symbolic
life.’ Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society, pages 411-412.
1
‘...the global economy... [is] ...an assemblage, a cluster... of systems... a
vast jumble of processes, actions and decisions, which effect each other
in unimaginably... complex ways... A control system predicated on top-
down control is simply not equipped to deal with this speed and
complexity, even if it employs computers. The speed will quite literally,
shake such a system apart. The Nation-State... is collapsing.’ Hari Kunzru,
‘Rewiring Technoculture’, page 8.
2
Just as the proponents of the Californian ideology romanticise the liberal
freedoms of the Old South, De Landa also uses Deleuzoguattarian
discourse to apologise for earlier forms of aristocratic rule. For instance,
he claims that the loss of their land and freedom by the East European
peasantry during the proto-industrial period was: ‘...not a step down the
ladder of progress, but rather a lateral move to a stable state (a stable
surplus-extraction strategy) that had been latent in... the dynamical
system all the time.’ Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear
History, page 156. At the time, this semiotic reorganisation in the ‘flow of
biomass’ really meant that the peasant who had become a serf was
compelled into ‘...devoting a large part of the week to forced labour on
the lord’s land, or its equivalent in other obligations. His unfreedom might
be so great as to be barely distinguishable from chattel slavery... he
could be sold separately from the land.’ E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of
Revolution, page 27.

103
‘economism’ of the Left, many TJs have replaced the creativity of human
labour on the Net with a digital vitalism inspired by Deleuze and
Guattari’s theory-art. Denying the ability of people to determine their
own destinies, these techno-nomads believe that information
technologies are semiotic forces determining culture, consciousness and
even the conception of existence. Humanity will not be liberated by its
own efforts, but by the new Messiah: the self-organising properties of
inert metal, sand and plastic transmuted into information technologies.

However, there is nothing inherently emancipatory in computer-mediated

communications. These technologies can also serve the state and the
market. The Net was originally invented for the transmission of orders
from the military hierarchy. Ever since the 1970s, computer networks
have provided the technical infrastructure for global financial markets to
impose neo-liberal policies on countries across the world. Nowadays,
many government bodies and commercial companies are building
Intranets to improve their internal management and Extranets to interact
with their clients. In the future, electronic commerce will play a significant
economic role and public services will increasingly be made available on-
line. Both the market and the state are becoming digital.1

For these purposes, computer-mediated communications can still be

organised by public and private institutions. Dependent upon wages,
people will move into the new jobs created within expanding sectors of
the economy. However, as in older industries, these workers will remain
unable to control their own productive activities. Even cyber-
entrepreneurs are constrained by the disciplines of the marketplace. In
contrast, millions of people are already spontaneously working together
on the Net without needing co-ordination by either the state or the
market. Instead of exchanging their labour for money, they give away
their creations in return for free access to information produced by
others. Far from being equivalent types of self-organising systems,
market competition and anarcho-communism are actually two
contrasting forms of collective labour.

‘The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it
with all the necessities and conveniences of life which it annually
consumes...’2

1
For pessimistic interpretations of this process, see Herbert Schiller, ‘The
Global Information Highway’; James Beniger, ‘Who Shall Control
Cyberspace?’; and Brian Winston, Media, Technology and Society, pages
321-336.
2
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, page 104. All activities on the Net
involve work. For instance, ‘...the post [to a newsgroup] - any post, even
“junk” and the rudest of “flames” - is a product...’ Therefore ‘...in a
knowledge economy, it is reasonable to treat all forms of knowledge -

104
The hi-tech gift economy is not the only way in which labour is organised
within cyberspace. The circulation of gifts coexists with the exchange of
commodities and funding from taxation. Like successful community radio
stations, participatory spaces within the Net can be constructed as
labours of love, but still be partially funded by advertising and public
money. Crucially, this hybridisation of working methods is not confined
within particular projects. When they’re on-line, people constantly pass
from one form of social activity to another. For instance, in one session, a
Net user could first purchase some clothes from an e-commerce
catalogue, then look for information about education services from the
local council’s site and then contribute some thoughts to an on-going
discussion on a listserver for fiction-writers. Without even consciously
having to think about it, this person would have successively been a
consumer in a market, a citizen of a state and an anarcho-communist
within a gift economy. Far from realising theory in its full purity, working
methods on the Net are inevitably compromised. The ‘New Economy’ is
an advanced form of social democracy.1

Although the boundaries between the different forms of collective labour

are often blurred, working for money is still very different from working
for recognition. Doing things on the orders of others is not the same as
doing things for yourself.2 Despite this crucial distinction, the techno-
nomads still cannot comprehend the subversive impact of the everyday
activities of Net users. As members of the avant-garde, they’re looking
for the intensity of ethical-aesthetic ‘delirium’ within the flows of self-
organising matter. For them, there can be nothing particularly special
about the mundane activities of Net users who aren’t producing
fashionable theory-art. Yet, at this particular historical moment, the
supersession of capitalism has ceased to be a moral stance. When using
the Net, almost everyone prefers to circulate gifts rather than to
exchange commodities. Instead of embodying a mystical ‘collective
with the broadest possible definition - as economic goods.’ Rishab Aiyer
Ghosh, ‘Cooking Pot Markets’, page 2. Even if the content of an item
remains the same, the methods of working used for its production can
change depending upon socio-historical circumstances: ‘Milton produced
Paradise Lost as silkworm produces silk, as the activity of his own nature.
He later sold his product for £5 and thus became a merchant.’ Karl Marx,
Capital, page 1044.
1
Wired uses ‘The New Economy’ as a synonym for its neo-liberal
fantasies about the Net. See Kevin Kelly, ‘New Rules for the New
Economy’.
2
‘...to the worker who appropriates nature through his labour,
appropriation [of his labour time] appears as estrangement, self-activity
as activity for another and of another, vitality as the sacrifice of life,
production of an object as loss of that object to an alien power, to an
alien man.’ Karl Marx, ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts’, page
334.

105
intelligence’, the hi-tech gift economy is precisely a new method of
collaborative working.

Within cyberspace, market competition is disappearing for entirely

pragmatic reasons. While commodified information is closed and fixed,
digital gifts are open and changeable. Instead of fixed divisions between
producers and consumers, users are simultaneously creators on the Net.
Obsessed with immanence of semiotic flows, the Deleuzoguattarians
cannot appreciate the deep irony of this contingent moment in human
history.1 This is the point in time when the old faith in the inevitable
triumph of communism has completely lost all credibility. Yet, at this very
moment, market competition is quietly ‘withering away’ within
cyberspace. For most Net users, anarcho-communism is simply the most
efficient way of working together. A new mode of production is being
born alongside market competition and state intervention.2

‘Shareware is a more highly evolved survival mechanism than [market]

competition.’3

The contemporary avant-garde resurrects the ‘refusal of work’ to

symbolise the primacy of its own artistic creativity. Yet, as Hegelians
have long pointed out, the only individuals who don’t have to work are
aristocrats. In contrast, ordinary people can only free themselves from
exploitation by ‘non-workers’ through their own skills as labourers. 4 Over

1
Being post-modernists, it is difficult for them to realise that:
‘...modernity [could] be the era of irony.’ Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to
Modernity, page 45.
2
Far from replacing commodity exchange, the circulation of gifts is now
intertwined with commercial activities. This hybridisation of the gift
economy with contemporary capitalism parallels the earlier integration of
economic intervention by the state. During the 1848 revolution, strong
government action to end unemployment and alleviate poverty was only
advocated by a left-wing minority. By 1948, such measures were even
being applied by conservative administrations. During the intervening
hundred years, government intervention had evolved from being the
symbol of a total social transformation into the reality of sound economic
management. See William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France, pages
243-276; and Toni Negri, Revolution Retrieved, pages 5-42. In a similar
fashion, what was revolutionary in the 1960s is now essential for the
continued growth of digital capitalism. Anarcho-communism is flourishing,
but not in ways envisaged by its New Left pioneers.
3
Douglas Rushkoff, ‘Free Lessons in Innovation’, page 16.
4
‘In the raw, natural, given World, the Slave is slave of the Master. In the
technical World transformed by his work, he rules - or, at least, will one
day rule - as absolute Master.’ Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the
Reading of Hegel, page 23. Also see Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of

106
the past few centuries, people within the industrialised countries have
slowly improved their incomes and reduced their hours of work. Although
still having little autonomy in their money-earning jobs, workers can now
experience non-alienated labour within the hi-tech gift economy.1 From
writing emails through making web sites to developing software, people
do things for themselves without the mediation of the market and the
state.

As access to the Net spreads, the majority of the population are

beginning to participate within cultural production. Unlike Fréquence
Libre, the avant-garde can no longer decide who can - and cannot - join
the hi-tech gift economy. The Net is too large for Microsoft to monopolise
let alone a small elite of radical intellectuals. Art therefore ceases being
the symbol of moral superiority. Everyone now has the opportunity to
express themselves in all sorts of ways, including aesthetically. When
working people finally have enough time and resources, they can then
concentrate upon ‘...art, love, play, etc., etc.; in short, everything which
makes Man [and Woman] happy.’2

During the twentieth-century, the European avant-garde championed

revolutionary politics, libertarian lifestyles and artistic experimentation.
Following in this tradition, the Deleuzoguattarians celebrate the new
ethical-aesthetic rebellion centred on the Net. However, by forming an
avant-garde, radical intellectuals are attempting to separate themselves
from the rest of the population. They want to be artistic Supermen within
cyberspace rather than ordinary workers using computer-mediated
communications. The very process of romanticising the hi-tech gift
economy into theory-art negates most of its subversive potential. For,
within the Net, really existing anarcho-communism is a pragmatic method
of working. Rather than buying and selling information, people circulate
gifts amongst each other. They always obtain much more than can ever
be contributed in return. By giving away something which is well-made,
they will gain recognition from those who download their work.3 Anarcho-

Spirit, pages 111-119; and Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of

Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, pages 174-177.
1
‘Work-for-oneself is... what we have to do to take possession of
ourselves and of that arrangement of objects which, as both extensions
of ourselves and mirror of our bodily existence, forms our niche within the
sensory world, our private sphere.’ André Gorz, Critique of Economic
Reason, page 158.
2
Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, page 159.
3
‘If he is truly self-conscious, Man who has created a technical World
knows that he can live in it only by living in it (also) as a worker. That is
why Man can want to continue working even after ceasing to be a Slave:
he can become a free Worker. Actually, Work is born from the Desire for
Recognition... and it preserves itself and evolves in relation to this same
Desire.’ Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, page

107
communism can no longer be confined to the adepts of
Deleuzoguattarian theory-art. It has now become a practical way of
working for everyone.

At such a historical moment, the cultural avant-garde is made obsolete

through the realisation of its own supposed principles. The techno-
nomads proclaim the ‘holy idea’ of digital DIY culture to distinguish
themselves from the rest of society. Yet, far from being confined to a
revolutionary minority, increasing numbers of ordinary people are now
participating within the hi-tech gift economy. For entirely pragmatic
reasons, Net users adopt anarcho-communism as the most efficient
method of working with each other. Rather than symbolising ethical-
aesthetic purity, the circulation of gifts is one way of working within the
advanced social democracy of cyberspace. Although it is impossible to
predict the future of the hi-tech gift economy, one thing is almost certain.
The intellectual elitism of Deleuzoguattarian discourse is being
superseded by the emancipatory ‘grand narrative’ of modernity. As more
and more ‘herd animals’ go on-line, radical intellectuals can no longer
fantasise about becoming cyborg Supermen. As digital anarcho-
communism becomes an everyday activity, there is no longer any need
for the leadership of the cultural avant-garde. The time for the revolution
of holy fools has passed. As has already happened within popular music,
the most innovative and experimental culture will be created by people
doing things for themselves. By participating within the hi-tech gift-
economy, everyone can potentially become a wise citizen and a creative
worker.1

‘...the word ‘creation’ will no longer be restricted to works of art but will
signify a self-conscious activity, self-conceiving, reproducing for its own
terms...and its own reality (body, desire, time, space), being its own
creation.’2

230.
1
After centuries of wars, revolutions and social struggles, ‘History... ends
in the coming of the satisfied Citizen and the Wise Man.’ Alexandre
Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, page 243.
2
Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World, page 204.

108
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