For those who believe 'Digital surveillance' is the end of world:

'Your world is not safe, your data is not private, you are prey to various spying machines. '

We have been hearing Mr.Snowden since mid last year. A contract employee for US security agencies has become the source of all top classified information! It has raised eyebrows of many of us to hear that USA is prying on even its closest of the allies. Now Mr.Snowden is saying that even Industries are not spared from the arms of internet surveillance.  Though all these seems quite shocking in public, this has been the practice of nations for many years, if not decades and centuries. What seems unique in this story is the role of technology and internet as the medium and tool for data leak and espionage.

Is Edward Snowden a real whistle blower for people, or just a cheer leader for imperial agencies?

If Snowden was a self willed crusader against the espionage regimes in USA and elsewhere, he would have shown an inclination towards any anti-imperial praxis. What we are seeing is a person broadcasting inside stories of an empire in regular intervals. When we look at the nature of events we are forced to think about the motives of these so called whistle blowers. Sometime before Snowden became a runaway hit, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange were making waves around the world with their revelations.

Revelations are welcome! CIA also does declassification of their heroic deeds in Cuba and other Latin American nations years after overthrowing people's governments and heinous crimes. When we uphold the brave acts of Snowden and Assange, we are forgetting that imperialism is not only living on our data. Data theft and digital survilence are not the end of the imperial logic on the social relations. They robe our culture, social relations, political sovereignty, trade unions, progressive literature and every possible elements of human labor and its innate values. The whole world of exploitation still hinges on the brutal force in the political economy and markets.

Information is always key to market hegemony, as market is heavily volatile and dependent on the cues from the society in which it exists.  However, our world of life is not market alone. People, Governments, social relations, economic policies, dominant ideologies all exercise influence over our lives. These forces are not dependent on mere data exchange or any associated properties of information hierarchies. 

Our world is not lost even if imperialism cast their prying eyes on all the corners of earth with their powerful prisms and snooping servers and all sort of digital surveillance strategies. The world of resistance and consciousness is still very much in the political economy and the creative power of human labor. 

Let's hail 'Eadward Snowden' for what he really is! ....

Discourses of Disguise: Unmasking the post-colonial project

MN Vijayan Remembrance 2013

Keynote speech - S.Sudhish

Domestic Colonialism and Imperial Colonialism

Domestic colonialism? the term may sound a bit odd for most of us who are familiar with the imperial origins and expansion of colonialism in the ages of British empire in India. This is not an oxymoron but a key finding by Lenin in his studies on colonial questions.

Perhaps Lenin gave the best elaboration of the Colonial Question. Internationally, he critiqued the relations between oppressor and oppressed nations as closely related to the relations between classes within nations. ( http://sdonline.org/55/toward-a-new-theory-of-internal-colonialism1/ )

Thus Lenin highlights the fact that while studying the national and colonial questions, the underlying class dynamics should not be forgotten. Colonization has been a development in the political economy of nations when imperialism achieved certain level of complex statecraft in the age of industrial capital. In the ages of feudalism and the days of monarchy, empires did not consist of remote or peripheral colonies. Empire signified the power for territorial expansionism and famous victories. The empires of Alexander, Genghis Khan and their likes were symbols of military wins across continents and seas. Later when the empires could amass and control significant amount of industrial capital they began to control the functions and political economy of the nations which they defeated. Thus the colonial nation states emerged. This was the colonialism from the above, or the imperialism. At the same time, as Lenin noted above, colonialism could exist within a nation state itself. The section of people with political and economic might within a nation state can exert power and exploit others. Caste system in India and the Apartheid suffered by African Americans are the good evidence for this.

Thus nationalism and a nation state as it is can be a site for domestic colonialism. The case of America in the time for British empire is a direct case for this. United States of America had a substantial native population when immigrants from Britain settled and occupied the land. When the British immigrants were fighting against the British empire, it was not based on any racial reasons. The reason was purely political and economic. The same immigrants were engaged in a fight with the natives at the same time. Thus the freedom fighters of America against British empire were colonizing the natives domestically. Thus U.S.A becomes a converging site of imperial and domestic colonialism.

Thus the thesis of domestic colonialism paved a way to a wider understanding of the Marxian analysis of a nation state within the class concept. 'Internationalism' was proposed as the outlook for the proletariat across the nations. Working class worldwide was urged to unite internationally. This view was actively supported by communist international ( Comintern) as well. 

Source: Fotopedia

Now domestic colonialism is no more heard in the research pursuits on the colonial question. Instead, the term 'Post-colonialism' has become the buzzword. In his famous work 'The Wretched Earth' Frantz Fanon deconstructed colonial question as a kind of oppressive effect and the residual effect of colonial hegemony. In 1978, when Edward Said published 'Eurocentrism' it reduced colonial question to a contradiction between the western imperialism and the oriental societies. After this, the thesis of post-colonialism emerged popular among academic circles and intelligentia. 

Thus the original thesis of domestic colonialism became largely unmasked and deconstructed in the inventiveness of post colonial narratives. In addition, post colonial studies could help the academic circles to sleep over the rising instances of neocolonialism using finance capital and the thesis of fragmentation of nation states. When post-colonial academicians like Homi Bhabha and Gayathri Chakravarthi Spivak continue to hunt the demigods of western imperial vestiges in the darkness of history, imperially funded NGO agencies and terrorist cells are tearing away every single site of political economy in the nation states. Thus post-colonialist thesis has become the dual mask to hide the residues of domestic colonialism and the intruding forces of neocolonialist finance capital, both eating away the political economy and the social fabric of nation states world wide.

Additional Notes:

• Domestic and imperial colonialism: The dynamics of imperial colonialism - the contradiction between center and periphery. What about domestic colonialism? every nation will have center and periphery. 
• Internationalism becomes the alternative to the nationalist ideology which confines the working class to the interests of the dominant class.
• Episodes of American freedom struggle are one of the early historic sites for the contradiction between domestic colonialism and imperialist colonialism. Natives stood with British empire against American immigrant colonizers. Exploitation is the centripetal force to the domestic colonialism. 
• Kerala caste hierarchy and the associated social fabric is another site of domestic colonialism. Indulekha as a site of contradiction of domestic colonialism. During freedom struggle, domestic colonialism becomes subdued. Saraswathivijayam in 1890 as a site of domestic colonialism. Caste as a dominant discourse in Saraswathivijayam. 
• In the age of neocolonialism, domestic colonialism becomes a convenience. 
• Internationalism as an opposition to domestic colonialism.

Occupy Wall Street : A threat to finance capital or just a tickle?

Strike!, October, Battleship Potemkin! The vivid poetic montages of Eisenstein cinema created an intellectual universe that thrust upon us the sheer force of political movements. The vigor of emotions, kinesthetics of movement of people across the streets, the organic unity of the masses, the synthesis of ideas in public, dream vocabulary; it was the realization of a film sense that resonates in the heights of imagination. Even after nearly a century, this film sense inspires my political blood and rips of the media clutter of our times.

Occupy Wall street Movement (OWM) ! A conglomeration of people in the ivory towers of finance capital in gargantuan scale. The volume, variety and velocity of people associating at a global happening place! The world wide media coverage and the news flash showered upon their initiatives are beyond the reach for any working class organization aligned to communist or socialist movements. Yet they fail to send ripples down the memory lane. It freezes in the thin time frames of our life. When I tries to recollect the organic unity of the event, OWM reminds me of yet another flash-mob that happens in shopping malls or public spaces. 

The movement arithmetic of contemporary anarchists fail to rip off the fundamental equations and governing laws of finance capital and new forces of hegemony. OWM lacked the coherent vision required to overthrow the hegemonic forces of finance capital. They proclaimed themselves as the 'movement of squares'. Out of the polemic and rhetoric, what do they really signify? As a political activist, should I be concerned if my movement should be only inspired by Tiananmen square protests? A mass resistance to the walls of finance capital should not be allergic to the trade unions and political parties. International Socialism magazine hails OWM as 'Construction of mass experiments in cooperative living'. 

We know the deplorable extents to which the mass experiments of cooperative living corrupted the public spaces in the Anna Hazare model experiments for cooperative living. They fail even to qualify to be called as anarchist for the simple reason that they had no democratic ideology or a basic inspiration in the values of peoples democracy. 

Strike is not a carnival moment for participatory living in the market spaces. It is a call for overhaul in the ways of market capitalism. When required to communicate the strength and significance of the cause, it disrupts the passive living of the market dynamics. The obsessive embrace and hedonistic inspirations of mass experiments in OWM completely forgotten that the any movement that calls for a social change must be united by a logical goal that unites the length and breadth of the movement. 

They hail a term called direct democracy! Who would you like to be the cardinal of the direct democracy. Imperial nation states? multi national corporate syndicates? A movement rationale should know the phases and strategic critical path for transitioning from each phase. #Lenin and #Grmasci had written elaborately on the tactical directions for collective resistance against an oppressive market force and its institution.  

A collective resistance will never be frozen in time. The class struggle will not strive to amplify the market force or an institution. The first and foremost contribution of OWM to the social consciousnesses is that it amplified the significance of #WallStreet. What is wall street really? Just another trading center of market capitalism. It is just a place where all the market manipulations take place. By overthrowing wall street you are not going to eliminate the finance capital forces. They have incarcerated each ounce of our political institution. They have penetrated into the tiniest entities of governing and bureaucratic entities in government. 

Thus the basic nature of market hegemony still remains very much the same. The different form of commoditization that emerged in our times is in society and social organizations itself. It was what we call ambiguously as 'Social capital'. The #NGOs, #CSOs, the Carnival Celebration organizations (CMO) can be seen as the manifestations of this abhorrent and hedonistic conscience in the society. They act as the cheerleaders of the finance capital. They can stage manage the protests at any mammoth scale. They can get you any hit rate on social media and TRP in Global television channels. It is such a versatility and innovation that oppressors and oppressed becomes hale and happy at the end of a six month long mass resistance. All is well!

Thus mass resistance becomes a corporate ritual for branch awareness and market positioning. They strip naked their half baked intellect in front of the altars of the market and corporate. They scream, they howl, they dance, they enact all sort of epic plays to incite a tickle of laughter or an apathetic gaze in the pathological senses of finance colonialists. 

Yes, it is very hard to digest the sumptuous meals and the folk art served in your mass media in Kerala soil. When the communist movement of Kerala in Solar protest plummets to an OWM scale of irrationality it invokes the memories of a ritual to titillate the emotive prowess of the Sun God. It becomes nothing more than a 48 hour long stage drama forgetting the root causes of solar scam and the market dynamics of energy politics behind the scene. However this is the moment of truth for a political critic to realize that market can commodity even out of the resistances against it and to make mileage and media attention out of it.